Books: The Forked-Tongue Syndrome

BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE by Dee Brown. 487 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $10.95.

On Dec. 29, 1890, nearly 500 troopers of the U.S. 7th Cavalry opened fire on a bedraggled band of Minneconjou Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek, S. Dak. When the last carbine bullet splattered to a stop and the final Hotchkiss shell exploded, more than half the 350 Indian men, women and children were dead. Many were slaughtered as they lay wounded in their tents. Others were hunted down in the surrounding gullies. The massacre concluded with a heavy snowfall that shrouded the dead and closed...