Dee Brown is known primarily for his best-selling tragic history of American Indian policy, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee."… Although the prose was somewhat plain, the strength and conviction of Dee Brown's view of this history brought the book alive. "Creek Mary's Blood" covers much the same material but in the novel Mr. Brown attempts to deal with a point of view other than his own…. In attempting … to cover such great spans of history and ge...

Brown (the author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) keeps a tight focus in [Creek Mary's Blood], restricting his story to the life and descendants of a single woman, Creek Mary (Akusa Amayi), but tracing them through five generations and across most of the American continent…. Using fictional characters against a carefully researched historical background, he combines the attractions of both genres. The major incidents of his story are true, but by inventing fictional participants he is able t...

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a much better book than the title would indicate; it is, in fact, extraordinary on several accounts. It is first and foremost a compelling history of the American West, distinguished not because it is, as the dust jacket has it, an Indian history (it is based largely upon the records of treaty councils and the words of such Indian leaders as Chief Joseph, Geronimo and Crazy Horse), but because it is so carefully documented and designed. The book covers only 3...

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's best-selling history of the American Indian, had a sweep and an authenticity due in large measure to his letting the Indians speak for themselves. [But Dee Brown, as the author of Creek Mary's Blood,] simply does not share their eloquence; his characters talk history to one another in an improbably self-conscious way. Even more uncomfortable is Brown's imposition of contemporary social obsessions on a different time and culture. Creek Mary is m...