Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - the Division in American Society

In the nineteenth century, America was arranging itself into socially acceptable categories by those who were in charge. These layers and classes of people created divisions in society and how people should interact. Social norms and roles were created and interactions came down to two things: race and sex. From as simple as women in genre scenes to slavery and the treatment of American Indians, this dissection of people has repeatedly been maintained and challenged by those surrounding both ends of it. 

Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a documented account of the system that hosted the destruction of American Indians during the end of the nineteenth century. When the English had first come over, specifically in Plymouth, the American Indians taught them how to live on the land, and they lived in peace until the English outgrow their land and wanted more of it. The American Indians thought that the land came from the “Great Spirit” and that it belonged to no man, and “to the Indians, it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature”. 

Andrew Jackson only kept adding to the broken promises that kept being pushed onto the American Indians as he believed that they could no longer live in peace together. And with this, Brown states that the “Indian’s bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders”. They were nothing more than an obstacle that these invaders had to get through in order to be even more powerful and to own everything. They justified this expansion through the United States by inventing the Manifest Destiny. The Europeans believed that they were ordered by destiny to have all of America. The Indians, specifically the Navajos, were always trying to keep the peace and to keep the word of the whites, the promises, but it was never good enough and the Americans were always wanting more. Although the American Indians always tried to challenge these developing and spreading social norms, they were always stuck with surrendering in the end because they weren’t powerful enough. 

In conclusion, nineteenth century America produced a divided nation, one that was full of those who wanted to keep and maintain these societal divisions, and those who wanted to challenge and change it. In the end, it has always come down to power and who has it. These norms that were created and influenced interactions still affect society today. Sex and race are just two of the many separations that have been integrated into our society.