The Wizard on Wounded Knee

[Diane Merkel]

This is a bit off-topic although LBHA is dedicated to seeking the truth about all aspects of the LBH battle and the Seventh Cavalry. I did not know of L. Frank Baum's connection to South Dakota let alone his view about Wounded Knee. Can anyone verify the truthfulness of this article?

Here are excerpts:

The Foley Center Library at Gonzaga University opened the exhibit in the eastern Washington city of Spokane called, “Oz and Beyond: Highlights from the L. Frank Baum Collection of Currie Corbin.” Of course, every American knows about the characters in the book from the movie with Judy Garland that featured the Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, The Scare Crow and the Wicked Witch of the West. The song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Garland that was almost cut from the film has become an American standard.

On the occasion of Baum’s 150th birthday anniversary I would like to point out a few little known facts that I hope will take some of the glitter from this exhibit.

Most Americans know about one horrible day, at least horrible to Native Americans, that occurred on December 29, 1890. It was the day when the officers and enlisted men of the 7th Cavalry, General George Armstrong Custer’s old outfit, turned their Hotchkiss guns, their rifles and pistols on the nearly 300 Lakota men, women and children at a creek called Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and slaughtered them in an orgy of bloodletting that was dreadful to behold.

. . .

Six days after the massacre, while the frozen bodies of the Lakota men, women and children were being dumped into a mass grave, L. Frank Baum, the editor of a weekly newspaper in Aberdeen, SD, wrote an editorial calling for the annihilation of any Lakota still alive.

His editorial read in part, “Having wronged them once perhaps we should wrong them again and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”

For the complete article: www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7897

[mort aux vaches]

Not touching on the views expressed in the article, I remember that I've stumbled across this information on Baum before in some Wounded Knee-related history book. Flipping through a few I can't find it at the moment though. Most papers in the area reflected his view too, of course.

[jjm]

Be interesting what our reaction would be if he'd said the same about Blacks, Irishmen, Southerners or Jews...

[kiktayokangi]

he was a racist pig.

somewhere online there is an article he wrote about the death of Sitting Bull. It made my skin crawl.

[Scout]

I've read that before. I've also read that Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) had a thing for underage girls and J.M Barrie (Peter Pan) had a thing for young boys. I don't know if it changes anything though. Perhaps all these writers were writing about there fantasies. Yea, pretty creepy.