Burry My Heart At Wounded Knee (Book Report, History 22) Essay, Research Paper

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee is a compilation of accounts covering a period in American history which should be remembered with shame by all descendants of the Europeans who settled this land.

The truths contained within this book show the attempt at the genocide of the Indian nations, which rival that of the Holocaust during World War Two. The parcels are too strong to ignore. Beginning with the long walk of the Navaho where children were stolen and sold into slavery and many died during the journey. When they arrived at the camp they were counted daily. What a correlation to the relocation to the Jews to the concentration camp, many of whom also dying along the way.

It is also made clear that the savage atrocities blamed on the Indians. When looked at historically truly must be blamed on the whites. They paid up to twenty-five dollars as a bounty for Indian scalps, before the Indians ever took a single one for trophies. The whites were also responsible for the first mutilations of corpses, the Indians just folowed suit off the method s they witnessed for interrogation and trophies.

There was an underlying prejudice against Indians; their skin color made it easy to identify their race. They were prohibited from many jobs and professions even El Parker, a very well educated Native American, who had to obtain aid of his friend U.S. Grant before he could join the union army and fight in the Civil War. Again the striking similarity to the plight of the European Jews during World War Two, when they were marked with a star and their rights were revoked.

These comparisons are quite disturbing and the similarities continue even to the treatment of the gentle California tribes the Spanish first virtually enslaved the native people then corrupted them. The European Jews were also were also a peaceful industrious people who were herded into ghetto s then camps in inhospitable areas.

This book is very disturbing with its factual accounts of constant lies, manipulations, and the attempted genocide of the many Native Americans tribes. This book also shows glimpses of the rich heritage that the Native American people have. A great respect for the land and the wild life, unlike the buffalo hunters who slaughtered millions of buffalo for the hides and left the rest as rotting corpses littering the plains.

The progress of the European descendants of the original settlers across the continent was not made so much upon the hard work of the people but their greed and the distruction and degradation of a very proud people. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee shows the truth about the mortar that is holding the building blocks of a nation together is heavily made with Indian blood. Maybe Hitler should have studied the history of the Native Americans. Because as it has been said many times those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it.