A.
Waller Hastings
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD 57401
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)
Ten years before he wrote
The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum published an obscure weekly newspaper,
the Saturday Pioneer, in Aberdeen, S.D. The Saturday Pioneer
was a mix of boilerplate features and news stories, local society news,
humor and arts columns, and editorials about the issues of the day.
During Baum's tenure at the paper (from January 1890 to March 1891), the
chief issues about which he editorialized were the 1890 elections and the
question of which city, Pierre or Huron, would be made the capital of the
new state of South Dakota.
1890 was also the year
of one of the darkest passages in the troubled history of relations between
Native Americans and the expanding white population. On the afternoon
of December 28, 1890, units of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry captured a group
of Minneconjou Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South
Dakota. The next day, as the Indians surrendered their weapons, a
shot rang out and the cavalry opened fire. At least 153 of the Sioux
were killed (some estimate nearly 300, out of a band of about 350) -- most
of them women, children, and unarmed men. (These figures
reflect the account of the massacre given in Dee Brown's Bury My Heart
at Wounded Knee (New York: Henry Holt, 1970, pp. 439-45.)
In his newspaper, Baum
responded to the news of the Wounded Knee massacre, and to word of the
murder of Hunkpapa Sioux leader Sitting Bull two weeks earlier (December
15, 1890), with editorials calling for the total destruction of the Sioux
people. The originals of these editorials are difficult to obtain;
the only relatively complete run of the Saturday Pioneer is held
by the Alexander
Mitchell Library in Aberdeen, where it can be viewed on microfilm.
Baum's Wounded Knee editorials
have previously been published elsewhere
on
the World Wide Web. However, at least one paragraph was inadvertently
omitted from that version of the editorials. While the missing paragraph
does not exonerate Baum of charges of genocidal racism, it seemed advisable
to offer a complete transcription of the editorials as they appeared in
the newspaper, so that scholars and other interested parties might base
their understanding of this incident in our history on the complete version
of what Baum wrote. The editorials are given below.
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The Sitting Bull Editorial
Sitting Bull,
most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.
He was not a Chief,
but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest
Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.
He was an Indian with
a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him
and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from
their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse
the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his
conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness,
falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years
of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still
burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining
vengeance upon his natural enemies.
The proud spirit of
the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries
of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom
of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished,
and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that
smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization,
are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier
settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few
remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit
broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable
wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings,
and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and
plain that Cooper loved to heroism.
We cannot honestly
regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics
possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins
of America.
(Saturday Pioneer,
December 20, 1890)
|
It is the second paragraph of the above editorial
that is missing from the previously published on-line version of Baum's
writing.
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The Wounded Knee Editorial
The peculiar
policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person
as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible
loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at its best, is a disgrace
to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and
decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.
The Pioneer has before
declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic]
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.
An
eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when
the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it
is a massacre."
(Saturday Pioneer,
January 3, 1891)
|
The final paragraph is separated from the rest
of the editorial by a line, which usually in Baum's newspaper indicated
a change of subject. However, it does appear to be a further comment
upon the events at Wounded Knee, and so has been included here.
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