Biographie de Dee Brown (1908-2002) (document en anglais)

Dee Brown (1908-2002), an American novelist and historian, having grown up near the Native Americans and drawing on his thorough reading of the American history, sets out to divulge the hidden and tell the untold story of the Native Indians plight in his book entitled ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee’, published in 1970. Delving as far back as the 1890’s, Dee Brown successfully managed to picture the horrifically upsetting carnages inflicted upon Indians, and thus helped bring the Indians issue to the forefront only two years after the establishment of the American Indian Movement (1968). In so doing, Dee Brown—throughout the document under study which is an excerpt from the last chapter of the aforementioned book—uses eyewitness accounts to draw readers into the Native−American plight: brutal murder and bitter dehumanisation during the massacre at Wounded Knee. The latter started as the once proud Sioux found their free-roaming life destroyed, the buffalo gone, themselves confined to reservations dependent on American Agents for their existence. In a desperate attempt to return to their days of glory, many sought salvation in a new mysticism preached by a Paiute shaman called Wovoka. He prophesied that the dead would soon join the living and a tidal wave of new soil would cover the earth, bury the whites, and restore the plains. To hasten the event, the Indians were to dance the Ghost Dance. Many dancers wore brightly coloured shirts decorated with images of eagles and buffaloes. These "Ghost Shirts" they believed would protect them from the whites’ bullets. During the fall of 1890, the Ghost Dance spread through the Sioux villages of the Dakota reservations, revitalizing the Indians and bringing fear to the whites who ordered to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation. Sitting Bull was killed in the attempt on December 15. Chief Big Foot was next on the list, the opportune time to murder him was at Wounded Knee.

Thus, we may understandably wonder to what extent Dee Brown did manage to highlight Whites’ bitter determination to provoke, dehumanise and exterminate the Natives at Wounded Knee.

In an attempt to answer this problématique, we shall first deal with the theme of Whites’ provocation and dehumanization of the Indians at Wounded Knee . Our second part will tackle the theme of massacre and violence. Then the last part of this documentary will be devoted to the author’s tone.

From the very beginning of the document, Brown, in the words of Wasumaza, sets out to announce that Chief Big Foot, while leading his followers south to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation, the American army, led by Colonel Forsyth, intercepted them on December 28th, 1890 and brought them to the edge of Wounded Knee, ‘Then I saw the soldiers mounting their horses and surrounding us. It announced that all men should come to the centre ” Lines 3-4. US forces knew how abhorred they were by the Indians; that was the reason why they wanted to disarm them, they wanted them dead. This is clearly shown in Lines 9-15 ‘The soldier chiefs were not satisfied with the number of weapons surrendered...still not satisfied, the soldiers chiefs ordered the warriors to remove their blankets and submit to searches for weapons’. All the Sioux surrendered their weapons without any resistance except for Yellow Bird, a medicine man, who advocated resistance, helplessly claiming the Ghost Shirts would protect them, and a deaf Indian named Black Coyote who refused to put down his arm . So, the US soldiers, looking for the least opportunity to massacre the Indians, would take hold of Black Coyote pushing him to fire his gun unintentionally, ‘Some years afterward Dewey Beard recalled that Black Coyote was deaf. If they had left him alone he was going to put his gun down where he should...He hadn’t his gun pointed at anyone. His intention was to was to put that gun down. They came on and grabbed the gun he was going to put down. Right after they spun him around there was the report of a gun’ Lines 24-29. To accentuate the slightest acts of dehumanisation, Brown highlights the fact that food was rationed “after issuing hardtack for breakfast rations” Line7.

During the battle, no Indian, dead or living, had escaped the Whites’ savagery. After the battle ended, the American soldiers left the dead to freeze in the open “The dead Indians were left lying where they had fallen” (Line 58) and the living were left to freeze too “ Because all available barracks they were filled with soldiers, they left lying in the open wagons in the bitter cold ” Lines 62-63. By including such events, Dee Brown wanted to emphasise the fact that the post battle treatment of the dead and the living was the same-dehumanisation. After the wounded were gathered, they were brought into a nearby church. It was right after Christmas, so the decorations were still up, and one of the banners read: Peace on earth, good will to men.

Thus far, we can deduce from what has been said that Dee Brown wanted to draw our attention to the unrequited hostility of the American soldiers by assigning narration to a Native Indian. By and large, Wasumaza’s story that Brown includes is precise yet powerful, cleanly summing up the predetermined fate of the Indians which is clearly stated in “they were to move on to Pine Ridge” Line 4 . He further asserts that the American soldiers looked for the least reason to provoke the Indians “they would go right into the tents and come out with bundles and tear them open” Line 12. This meticulous search for the Indians’ weapons highlights the American army’s bitter determination mass exterminate the Indians.

In fact, the Americans’ unrequited hostility exerted upon the Indians turned into a pure mass massacre . As Black Coyote unintentionally fired his gun, the American soldiers seized the opportunity to indiscriminately exterminate

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