Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Dee Brown

Quote by Dee Brown

Work

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

This historical account documents the systematic displacement, broken treaties, and violent conflicts that shaped the experience of Native American peoples during the westward expansion of the United States. The book draws upon government records, memoirs, and traditional accounts to present events as witnessed by Native Americans rather than through the lens of settlers or government officials. It covers key instances of resistance, removal, and surrender across multiple tribes and generations, illustrating the profound impact of federal Indian policies on indigenous populations. The work has been recognized for offering an alternative viewpoint to traditional frontier narratives. more

Author

Dee Brown
Dee Brown

Dee Brown was an American novelist known for his profound insights into racial and social issues. His works often focused on the history and reality of the African American community, particularly on racial relations and class struggles. His notable works include 'Bleeding Kansas' and 'Manchild in the Promised Land'. more

You May Also Like

“With each surge of westward movement a new community came into being. These communities devoted themselves not to marching onward but to cultivating the earth. They plowed the virgin land and put in crops, and the great Interior Valley was transformed into a garden for the imagination, the Garden of the World. The vision of this vast and constantly growing agricultural society in the interior of the continent became one of the dominant symbols of nineteenth-century American society - a collective representation, a poetic idea (as [Alexis de] Tocqueville [1805-59] noted in the early 1830s) that defined the promise of American life. The master symbol of the garden embraced a cluster of metaphors expressing fecundity, growth, increase and blissful labor in the earth, all centring about the heroic figure of the idealized frontier farmer armed with that supreme agrarian weapon, the sacred plow.”

FrontierFarmerAmerican WestPlowAlexis De Tocqueville
Book:Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
Create image

“...perhaps the Great American Desert's importance to the Western genre derives from the nineteenth-century view of the arid West as the natural refuge of Indians and, by extension, of all outlaws. The agrarian ideal, with its roots in Rousseau's thought, defined civilisation as arising from the agricultural life, so the migratory Indians - often compared in nineteent-century writings to Tartars and Bedouin - were, by reason of their socioeconomic organisation, outside the pale of civilised society and the area in which they moved was regarded as fit only for outlaws. It is as a milieu within which men outside civilised, agrarian society resolve their tensions, both personal and social, that the Western has used the myth of the Great American Desert, as in Riders of Death Valley (Forde Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1941), The Last Wagon (Delmer Daves, 1956), The Law and Jake Wade (John Sturges, 1958) and the Boetticher cycle.”

Civilized SocietyNative AmericansAmerican WestOutlawsRousseauWesternsThe Desert
Book:Cinema, A Quarterly Magazine, No. 4, October 1969
Create image

“In the decade following the Civil War the impetus of the westward movement and the implied pledge of the victorious Republican Party to develop the West were uncontrollable forces urging the agricultural frontier forward. On the level of the imagination it was therefore necessary that the settlers' battle with drought and dust and wind and grasshoppers should be supported by the westward expansion of the myth of the garden. In order to establish itself in the vast new area of the plains, however, the myth of the garden had to confront and overcome another myth of exactly opposed meaning, although of inferior strength - the myth of the Great American Desert.”

Republican PartyAmerican WestPlainsAmerican FrontierThe Desert
Book:Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
Create image

“It may not be fair that people make judgments so quickly, usually within a few seconds of observation, but it's unrealistic to expect that they won't. So, if you want to be judged in a certain manner, be sure that your look and demeanor give that impression.”

Richelle GoodrichRichelleLookJudging OthersDemeanorImpressionsJudgments
Book:Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
Create image