Introduction

When Dee Brown's history of the American West, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, was first published in 1970, it was unlike anything readers had seen before. For a century, legends and stories about the Old West had told of events from a strictly white perspective. According to popular belief, heroic men such as General George Custer bravely battled savage Indians to open up the American landscape and spread the light of civilization from coast to coast. It was seen as the "manifest destiny" of white Americans to take control of the land. In the history that was written by the victors, the Indians were cast not only as treacherous and violent, but also as an...