In 1987, Drex Brooks began photographing sites that had been important in the history of white/Native American relations, places such as treaty sites and battlefields. This body of work is named Sweet Medicine after a Cheyenne cultural hero who taught his people their rituals and ceremonies and who also foresaw the changes and destruction that the white man would bring. The photographs encompass not only places of death but also places of renewal, places that retain their sacred importance today, even though, in many cases, little is there to inform others of what occurred.
The meaning of what happened in these places, from Massachusetts to the state of Washington, from Minnesota to Mississippi, is difficult to fathom and accept, as Patricia Limerick notes in her provocative essay. The Indian wars are a topic most prefer to know only superficially, or to ignore altogether, but she maintains that an understanding of their complexity as well as their violence is critical to an understanding of this nation's history.
This book is for anyone interested in the history of the native peoples in this country and in the events from 1620 to 1890 that so profoundly altered—but didn't quite destroy—their lives.
