This
is not a cheerful book, but history has a way of intruding upon the present,
and perhaps those who read it will have a clearer understanding of what the
American Indian is, by knowing what he was.
They may be surprised to hear words of gentle reasonableness coming from
the mouths of Indians stereotyped in the American myth as ruthless savages. (…)
The Indians knew that life was equated with the earth and its resources, that
America was a paradise, and they could not comprehend why the intruders from the
East were determined to destroy all that was Indian as well as America itself.
And if the readers of this book should ever chance to see the poverty,
the hopelessness, and the squalor of a modern Indian reservation, they may find
it possible to truly understand the reasons why.
(Dee Brown, in the introduction to this book)
(from Bury My
Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown)
.
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