Sickening historical footnote: While browsing the web about the Indian wars, I stumbled across this 1891 newspaper editorial about Wounded Knee by L. Frank Baum, who went on nine years later to write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:
The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."
Link to pdf:
L. Frank Baum's Editorials on the Sioux Nation
The Sitting Bull editorial (Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, December 20, 1890)
The Wounded Knee editorial (Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, January 3, 1891)
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/hsmt/courses_reading/undergraduate/authority_of_nature/week_7/baum.pdfLink to the above article:
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/27/was_the_wizard_of_oz_a_major_medicine_man_like_sitting_bullEdited to add this from the link:
Baum the Editor
I get mad as hell when people attack my great grandfather without doing their homework. First he was not safe in New York, he was on main street Aberdeen when the editorials came out. As some of you have mentioned he was only one of many who wrote anti-Indian editorials. There were 6 other papers in Aberdeen, yet no one here has mentioned they read all of them for their thoughts on the Wonded Knee?/Indian "problem" facing the citizens of Aberdeen, Nor have they mentioned the some 500 other negative, no down right horrific comments by government officials at the same time. Not a single person has mentioned that his mother-in-law, Matilda Josyln Gage, Woman Suffragette, lived with them at times. She was inducted into the indian nation in New York and would never have abided by Baum's attack if she for one minute thought it was anything but a toung- in- cheek rebuke of the governments long history of atrocious treatment of the Indians. Noone has yet brought up the fact that many of his writings and stories of the time were in praise of the Noble Indians. He marveled at their stature and way of life. He and others raised money and supplies for many of the tribes in the area. I know as a family member by the stories passed down to me.
No one has looked at him as editor, writing at a time of great difficulty and lack of HOPE in his life, not to mention the decline of Aberdeen and it's citizens. In other words, in context to history.
Why do people feel they have the right to judge history by what ever passes for being politically correct today. My great grandfather went on to write many wonderful stories and has brought joy to all who read them, including many Native Americans!
Question to anyone who is bothered by my comments. Give me your name and family history. I will research it to every extent possible and them condem you and your family for just two or three things I find objectionable and deplorable requardless of when they were done or the circumstances surrounding them.
The only lesson we should get here is, what has happened, happened, get over it, move on and by God learn from past mistakes. By the way, my mother is part Native American.
I have not yet walked a mile in another man's shoes or moccasins, but I have begun the journey!
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/27/was_the_wizard_of_oz_a_major_medicine_man_like_sitting_bull
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