from Sand Creek (Sun Tracks) (Paperback)

~ Simon J. Ortiz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Acres
Anger Meant Nothing To Them
Arkansas River Is Turgid
At The Salvation Army
Billy And Danny And Larry. And Me
Bones
Deranged
Don't Fret Now
The Dream
Dreams
Dusty Plays
Even This One
The Excuse Is Easy
Grief
If They Could Have
In 1969
Is The Dayroom
La Junta
Looking For Billy
Many Of Them
The Mind Is Stunned Stark
Nez Wanted To Break In
O Whitman
Probably
The Sky Is Brilliant
Sky Is Panned
Somehow
Summer Cheats
The Texan
There Should Be
There Was A Man
They Crossed Country
They Must Have Felt
They Must Have Known
They Were Amazed
They Were Simple Enough
This America
Toby Is Sick
The Traders Who Dealt
Violence Is Even
Violence
What Should Have Been
Words Stumble
You
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Description

The massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children by U.S. soldiers at Sand Creek in 1864 was a shameful episode in American history, and its battlefield was proposed as a National Historic Site in 1998 to pay homage to those innocent victims. Poet Simon Ortiz had honored those people seventeen years earlier in his own way. That book, from Sand Creek, is now back in print. Originally published in a small-press edition, from Sand Creek makes a large statement about injustices done to Native peoples in the name of Manifest Destiny. It also makes poignant reference to the spread of that ambition in other parts of the world--notably in Vietnam--as Ortiz asks himself what it is to be an American, a U.S. citizen, and an Indian. Indian people have often felt they have had no part in history, Ortiz observes, and through his work he shows how they can come to terms with this feeling. He invites Indian people to examine the process they have experienced as victims, subjects, and expendable resources--and asks people of European heritage to consider the motives that drive their own history and create their own form of victimization. Through the pages of this sobering work, Ortiz offers a new perspective on history and on America. Perhaps more important, he offers a breath of hope that our peoples might learn from each other:
This America
has been a burden
of steel and mad
death,
but, look now,
there are flowers
and new grass
and a spring wind
rising
from Sand Creek.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816519935
• ISBN-13: 978-0816519934
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #342,438 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Offers a spiritual center, April 14, 2000

By	James Stripes (Deer Park, WA United States) - See all my reviews

In November 1864 in Colorado Territory a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho was savagely assaulted by the Colorado Volunteers under the leadership of the Reverend Colonel Chivington. Ortiz calls to mind this event in prose, and then offers on the facing page poetry of hope and renewal. That is how this remarkable book begins. Throughout the book, the author (one of the best American poets writing today) pairs poems on one page with historical vignettes, personal notes, and political comments on the facing page. The book moves through alcohol treatment in VA hospitals, American mythology that undergirds a sense of mission, episodes in Indian-white relations, and many other such topics. In this work Ortiz builds toward a vision of America that is political committed, spiritually centered, and humanizing. He expresses this vision in full knowledge and acceptance of the awful truths of patterns of mistreatment and oppression. Unlike so much of the patriotism that is rooted in a "my country right or wrong" attitude, Ortiz writes as an Acoma Pueblo Indian and US citizen who loves this country deeply for what it can be.

I came to this book a number of years ago full of anger and cynicism developing as a result of learning the history that had been suppressed from the school curriculum. I had always been deeply patriotic, but was finding the truth might shatter that. Ortiz offered more evidence of the lies, but placed these facts in a framework of a dream "of love and compassion and knowledge" (96). No book has done more for the development of my sense of myself as a white American. From my point of view this book is simply the best book in print (and it was out of print for several years).