Author: Dee Brown
Genre: History
My great-great grandmother and several other ancestors were Cherokee and I wanted to learn more about their past, but this book began later, which is fine.
The point of view is almost entirely from the Indians, and it's very depressing. Many seemed more than willing to share the land with the encroaching settlers, but while the Indian groups were somewhat large, the settlers came in numbers which were overwhelming. Many Indian tribes needed to be able to hunt buffalo in order to survive, but the settlers wanted to build trains which would scare off the buffalo. They also wanted to chop down the forests in favor of agriculture and farming, while the Indians were adapted to living with the forests. The settlers won out, and wanted the Indians to live like they did, and wanted the Indians' lands, and the goal became to move the tribes to reservations. The reservations often contained very poor soil, and even though the government said it would offer food and supplies to the Indians on those reservations, often it did not, and many Indians died. So many tribes became extinct, and I've never even heard of some many tribes which used to have large numbers of Indians.
Here's a quote from the book I really liked. It's a bit lengthy, but it gives you an idea of what I'm trying to describe.
The book ends with the Ghost Dance. The tie-in with Christianity is fascinating."My people have never first drawn a bow or fired a gun against the whites. There has been trouble on the line between us, and my young men have danced the war dance. But it was not begun by us. It was you who sent out the first soldier and we who sent out the second. Two years ago I came upon this road, following the buffalo, that my wives and children might have their cheeks plump and their bodies warm. But the soldiers fired on us, and since that time there has been a noise like that of a thunderstorm, and we have not known which way to go. So it was upon the Canadian. Nor have we been made to cry once alone. The blue-dressed soldiers and the Utes came from out of the night when it was dark and still, and for campfires they lit our lodges. Instead of hunting game they killed my braves, and the warriors of the tribe cut short their hair for the dead. So it was in Texas. They made sorrow come in our camps, and we went out like buffalo bulls when their cows are attacked. When we found them we killed them, and their scalps hang in our lodges. The Comanches are not weak and blind, like the pups of a dog when seven sleeps old. They are strong and farsighted, like grown horses. We took their road and we went on it. The white women cried and our women laughed.
But there are things which you have said to me which I do not like. They are not sweet like sugar, but bitter like gourds. You said that you wanted to put us upon a reservation, to build us houses and make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. I have hunted and lived over that country. I lived like my fathers before me, and, like them, I lived happily. When I was at Washington the Great White Father told me that all the Comanche land was ours, and that no one should hinder us in living upon it.
So, why do you ask us to leave the rivers, and the sun, and the wind, and live in houses? Do not ask us to give up the buffalo for the sheep. The young men have heard talk of this, and it has made them sad and angry. Do not speak of it more. … If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace. But that which you now say we must live on is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew the thickest and the timber was the best. Had we kept that, we might have done the things you ask. But it is too late. The white man has the country which we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die."
—PARRA-WA-SAMEN (TEN BEARS) OF THE YAMPARIKA COMANCHES
If you're interested in history and the treament of the Native Americans, I highly recommend this book. No Cherokees, however.
