Because Bury my heart at Wounded Knee is worth

While the White House, Richard Nixon presides over the destinies of America is more mired ever in the Viet Nam, on the giant screens of the drive-in, the Duke is King. John Wayne at the height of his fame continues to rout of the hordes of Indians over blockbusters. In the tribute film about the same time, John Ford, the master of the genre, confirms: "the public like to see Indian be killed."Arthur Penn in fact costs with its "Little Big Man": antiwestern, picaresque journey of Jack Crabb is not a box-office success. For some young hippies who cheer for the counterculture, millions of fans of westerns in the papa gnashing teeth.

This is the table, when a Librarian of sixty-two years, from Arkansas, publishes in the chronic Holt Rinehart & Winston a thorough New York editor of martyrdom that took the Indians from 1860 to 1890. "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" is taken to 10,000 copies. Dee Brown itself little more than a success of esteem on the part of a handful of academics expected. It is wrong. Applauded by critics, by the word-of-mouth, the salutary "working memory" the librarian turns quickly into real blockbuster both in the United States - where it will be sold several million copies - abroad - where it will be translated in over twenty languages. Far from falling into oblivion as most of the other texts of the author, "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" is now considered a classic. Thirty-nine years after its release, the House Albin Michel has had the good idea to offer a new version, completely redesigned, in his collection of Indian land.

Profound wisdom

Released in late may Bookstore, this pad of nearly 500 pages require on the part of its drive a hair more attention the last polar in vogue. Because "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" is worth. The battles there after another betrayal, tragic misunderstandings to bloody reprisals, with a host of details that are both the strength of the book and its weakness. Still factual, Dee Brown is allow outraged comments or digressions.

Extremely well documented, his book taking place as a long litany and edifying martyrdom of the "Native Americans", since the exodus of the Navajo in 1864 to the massacre of Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Same in which perished the great sioux Chief Big Foot. And which officially put an end to the Indian wars. This tragic history, including all the small white of the world have heard under the name of "conquest of the West", Dee Brown, who died in 2002, was of course not the only one memoirist. But it was the first to him have told from the point of view of the Indians themselves. In the mouth of the narrator of "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee", the President of the United States became the "Grand Father", the Congress the "Grand Council", the war of secession a distant and incompréhensible civil war between Blue Coat and grey tunics. Telegraph lines are of the "son-who-sing"; the "horse-de-fer" trains whistling, and spewing smoke. And the innumerable peace that they sign the white, small pieces of paper urging those who believe.

Using the voices of these glorious defeated the mythical name - Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Geronimo, Cochise and other-, Dee Brown changed the look we wear on them and their people. They knew their "bravitude", found here their profound wisdom. It said that of Gandhi in these alleged son of Attila. And that the Indians were pale faces, which in reality were rarely had the beautiful role. In contrast to John Wayne.