Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of theAmerican West is a 1970 non-fiction book by American writer Dee Brown thatcovers the history of Native Americans in the American West in the latenineteenth century. The book expresses details of the history of Americanexpansionism from a point of view that is critical of its effects on the NativeAmericans. Brown describes Native Americans' displacement through forcedrelocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government.The government's dealings are portrayed as a continuing effort to destroy theculture, religion, and way of life of Native American peoples. Helen HuntJackson's 1881 book A Century of Dishonor is often considered anineteenth-century precursor to Dee Brown's book.Before the publication of Bury My Heart..., Brown had becomewell-versed in the history of the American frontier. Having grown up inArkansas, he developed a keen interest in the American West, and during hisgraduate education at George Washington University and his career as alibrarian for both the US Department of Agriculture and the University ofIllinois at Urbana–Champaign, he wrote numerous books on the subject. Brown'sworks maintained a focus on the American West, but ranged anywhere from westernfiction to histories to children's books. Many of Brown's books revolved aroundsimilar Native American topics, including his Showdown at Little Bighorn (1964)and The Fetterman Massacre (1974).Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was first published in 1970 togenerally strong reviews. Published at a time of increasing American Indianactivism, the book has never gone out of print and has been translated into 17languages. The title is taken from the final phrase of a twentieth-century poemtitled "American Names" by Stephen Vincent Benet. The full quotation,"I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at WoundedKnee.", appears at the beginning of Brown's book. Although Benet's poem isnot about the plight of Native Americans, Wounded Knee was the site of the lastmajor attack by the US Army on Native Americans. It is also where Crazy Horse'sparents buried his heart and some of his bones after his murder in 1877.