Dee Brown

Dorris Alexander "Dee" Brown (1908 – 002) was an American novelist, historian, and librarian. His most famous work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970) details the history of American expansionism from the point of view of the Native Americans.

As a part-time writer, Brown published nine books, three fiction and six nonfiction, by the end of the 1950s. During the 1960s, he completed eight more including The Galvanized Yankees, which Brown described as requiring more research than any of his other books, and The Year of the Century: 1876, which he described as his personal favorite.

In 1971, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee became a best-seller. Many readers assumed that Brown was of Indian heritage but he was not. He did come from a family with deep history on the frontier.

In 1973, Brown and his wife retired in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he devoted his time to writing. His later works include Creek Mary's Blood, a novel telling of several generations of a family descended from one Creek woman, and Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow, which described the chicanery and romance surrounding the construction of the western railroads. His last book-length work, Way To Bright Star is a picaresque novel set during the Civil War.

Brown died at the age of 94 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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The Transcontinental Railroad, February 1977 | Vol. 28, No. 2

What it was like for the first travelers

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