Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee [antikvár]

Introduction s, 'iNCE the exploratory journey of Lewis and Clark to the Pacific Coast early in the nineteenth century, the number of published accounts describing the "opening" of the American West has risen into the thousands. The greatest concentration of recorded experience and observation came out of the thirty-year span betw^ji 1^0 and —the period covered by this book. It was an^incredible era of violence, greed, audacity, sen-1 timentality, undirected exuberance, and an almost reverential attitude toward jhe ideal of personal freedom for those who already had i^ During that time the culture ajnd civilization of the Americari Indian was desko^ed, an^~^t of that time came virtually all the great myths of th American West—tales of fur traders, mountain men, steamboat pilots, goldseekers, gamblers, gunmen, cavalrymen, cowboys, harlots, missionaries, schoolmarms, and homesteaders. Only occasionally was the voice of an Indian heard, and then more often than not it was recorded by the pen of a white man. The Indian was the dark menace of the myths, and even if he had known how to write in English, where would he have found a printer or a publisher? Yet they are not all lost, those Indian voices of the past. A few authentic accounts of American western_Jnstorv were re-corded by Indians either in pictographs or in translated English, and some managed to get published in obscure jQurnds,_pan^^ lets, or books of small circulation. In the late nineteenth century, when the white man's curiosity about Indian survivors of the wars reached a high point, enterprising newspaper reporters frequently interviewed warriors and chiefs and gave them an opportunity to express their opinions on what was happening in the West. The quality of these interviews varied greatly, depending upon the abilities of the interpreters, or upon the inclination of the Indians to speak freely. Some feared reprisals for telling the truth, while others delightedlnlioaxing reporters with tall tales and shaggy-dog stories. Contemporary newspaper statements by Indians must therefore be read with skepticism.