Dee Brown, 94, whose Homeric vision of the American West, meticulous research and masterly storytelling produced the 1970 best-seller Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, died Thursday at his home in Little Rock, Ark.
Mr. Brown was a librarian who was writing books after his children had gone to bed when his best-seller Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was published. The book, which sold more than 5 million copies, told a grim, revisionist tale of the ruthless mistreatment and eventual displacement of the Indians by white conquerors from 1860 to 1890.
Some historians have since taken a more moderate view, but before Mr. Brown's portrayal of white beastliness and Indian saintliness entered the public consciousness, the history of Western conquest was usually told from a much more Eurocentric point of view, a perspective echoed by countless Hollywood movies.
The racism and wanton carelessness of whites and the betrayals and killings they perpetrated were relentless themes for Mr. Brown, who was white. His vivid terms are the ones used by Indians at the time: They called General Custer "Hard Backsides" and white soldiers "maggots."
"What surprised me most was how much the Indians believed the white man over and over again," Mr. Brown said in a 1971 interview with The New York Post in 1971. "Their trust in authority was amazing. They just never seemed to believe that anyone could lie."
He said that over the two years he wrote the book on a typewriter, which he did not stop using until he was past 90, he tried to imagine himself as a Native American.
His book had a powerful impact on Indians. Its final scene takes place in 1890 at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, where 300 Sioux men, women and children were killed by the 7th Cavalry. Young Sioux returned to Wounded Knee in 1973 to protest federal Indian policies and had a 71-day standoff with the police; two Indians were killed then.
In many of his 29 fiction and nonfiction books, Mr. Brown strove to see things from a new, often contrarian perspective. And contrary to most people's expectations, he was not a Westerner. His history Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: Railroads in the West was an expose of the railroad owners' treacherous dealings, and his Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West sought to dispel what he called the "sunbonnet myth" of stoic pioneer women.
Dorris Alexander Brown, who from early in his life preferred to be called Dee, was born in a logging camp near Alberta, La. His father died when he was 5, and young Brown, his mother, a brother and two sisters moved to Ouachita County, Ark., where his mother worked as a store clerk.
His grandmother's father had known Davy Crockett, and she regaled young Dee with tales about him. By the time young Brown entered first grade, he had read Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain. He went to cowboy movies with Indian friends. When he asked one what he thought of the cinematic portrayal of Indians, the friend replied, "Those aren't real Indians."
Billy Pearson, 82, a hard-living former jockey, 1950s television quiz show winner and art expert, died Thanksgiving Day in Kingston, N.Y. His sixth wife, Margaret Pearson, said the cause was pneumonia.
Mr. Pearson led and passionately defended a devil-may-care way of life. In a Parade magazine profile titled, "How I Squandered a Million Dollars," he declared, "I am reconciled to the fact that I will never get out of this life alive, and while I'm still breathing, I'm going to live it up."
He smoked, drank and gambled, and suffered many injuries at the racetrack. He won 826 races around the world, but never hid his contempt for horses. "They are dumber than canaries and don't know a thing about art," he once said.
In 1956, Mr. Pearson's knowledge of art gained him national fame when he won the top prize on The $64,000 Question -- and was never tarnished by the scandal that later arose over some contestants receiving answers ahead of time. He also won the top prize on The $64,000 Challenge.
He used part of his first prize to buy an early version of Edward Hicks' painting The Peaceable Kingdom, but some was spent elsewhere -- as he told Art Buchwald, "I had obligations to bookies, dice tables, Ferraris, imported wines and friends I had never met before."
He learned about art himself, and from art lovers who owned horses he rode. Later, he collected houses -- starting with an abandoned farmhouse 75 miles north of San Francisco. It was the first of 17 houses that he acquired, rebuilt and filled with art.
Salman Raduyev, a Chechen warlord who led a bloody 1996 raid on a Russian hospital that killed 78 people, died Saturday in a hard labor camp while serving a life sentence, Russia's Justice Ministry said.
Mr. Raduyev -- who was about 35 -- became the first prominent Chechen rebel warlord to be prosecuted by Russian authorities. A year ago, a court in southern Russia sentenced him to life imprisonment after he was found guilty of terrorism and murder. The charges focused on a January 1996 raid on the southern Russian town of Kizlyar.