Watching the episodes of "Into the West" over the past two months has reminded me of a book I read many years ago called "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown, published in 1971.
I was happy to discover it in my collection of old nonfiction books, and I've been re-reading portions of it as the story develops. There are some interesting differences in the details, but overall I would say that ITW sticks to the historical facts without too much spin on either side.
I recommend the above-named book to anyone who sees "Into the West" and has questions about the events that are shown. Of course, Dee Brown's book is not a full, complete history of the USA vs. Indian wars of the late 19th century -- but it is very well-documented, and it offers many accounts from the viewpoint of the defeated tribes.
In particular, chapters 18 and 19 of her book are well worth reading after seeing Episode Six of ITW -- regarding the "Ghost Dancers" and Sitting Bull, the subjugation of the Plains Indians, and that fateful massacre in December 1890.
A real person named "Black Elk" was an eyewitness to many of the events depicted in ITW. I'd like to think he is the young Lakota character who learned to write at an Indian school, but... that would be fiction.
Years later, Black Elk wrote this: "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream... the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."
I was happy to discover it in my collection of old nonfiction books, and I've been re-reading portions of it as the story develops. There are some interesting differences in the details, but overall I would say that ITW sticks to the historical facts without too much spin on either side.
I recommend the above-named book to anyone who sees "Into the West" and has questions about the events that are shown. Of course, Dee Brown's book is not a full, complete history of the USA vs. Indian wars of the late 19th century -- but it is very well-documented, and it offers many accounts from the viewpoint of the defeated tribes.
In particular, chapters 18 and 19 of her book are well worth reading after seeing Episode Six of ITW -- regarding the "Ghost Dancers" and Sitting Bull, the subjugation of the Plains Indians, and that fateful massacre in December 1890.
A real person named "Black Elk" was an eyewitness to many of the events depicted in ITW. I'd like to think he is the young Lakota character who learned to write at an Indian school, but... that would be fiction.
Years later, Black Elk wrote this: "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream... the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."