Genocide calls after Wounded Knee had popular support

For over a century the 1890 editorials of Wizard of Oz author L Frank Baum escaped mainstream public knowledge, scrutiny, or condemnation. The shocking content of these editorials makes the reason why self-evident. It is difficult to reconcile the beloved, wholesome, young adult fantasy writer, with the hate deranged zealot who penned these editorials. Yet, both were the same man.

In 1939 Baum’s book was adapted into one of the most iconic Hollywood productions in history, and it is hard to find a Native who hasn’t sat down and been thoroughly entertained by the movie. In and of itself, it is a work of art, as was the source material, and the dedication to the film expresses that:

“For nearly forty years this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart; and Time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashion.”

No dispute that the Oz series is rife with kindly philosophy, but nearly fifty years before Baum did not express a wit of that kindly philosophy in his Aberdeen, South Dakota, Sunday Pioneer editorial:

“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.”

Baum penned these words even after it was Sitting Bull who had been murdered, even after nearly 300 Lakota had been massacred, and despite the fact he could point to no Lakota anywhere having recently killed white people.

There are those who revel in the hate proffered by the colonizing enemy. They want to be outraged, persecuted, marginalized, they want to be the embittered survivors of those heinous times. But the wise are just perplexed, disheartened, that such a kind man could write words so vile.

In an editorial written week previously, Baum wrote: “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.”

Many of us have penned poison letters, let them ruminate for the night, and the next day wisely chose never to share them. Baum had weeks to reconsider his genocidal sentiments, and if anything, he doubled down.

The Army was equally as vile as Baum in thought, but far viler in action. They detailed the Seventh Cavalry, the very unit wiped out at Little Big Horn, to surround the victims at Wounded Knee. This could not have been anything but deliberate provocation. The troopers must have been hair triggered to retaliation.

Fear summons the ugliest angels of human nature, even in men committed to the “better angels of our nature.” These are words eloquently penned by one of our most principled and cerebral of presidents, Abraham Lincoln. But even he had his dark history with the Oceti Sakowin. In 1862, he signed the order for the execution of 38 Dakota Sioux. Lincoln’s case differs from that of Baum, in that fair minded scrutiny produces a clarifying context than what seems to be an equally vile act.

Lincoln anguished over his decision, stayed up all night personally reviewing each case, and then announced his decision with the greatest of reluctance, He was in the middle of the bloodiest war in American history, and he was losing on all fronts. More than that, Little Crow’s War had resulted in the death of hundreds and hundreds of white people, many of them women and children. The Minnesota Governor was calling for unrestrained retaliation, and to prevent genocide level consequence, Lincoln appeased by hanging 38.

None of these mitigations can be applied to Baum. If anything, his editorials helped gin up a fear wracked populace. Apologists will argue that Baum was just a socially acceptable expression of that time, and we cannot fairly judge him by the moral standards of the present. But Mark Twain and Helen Hunt Jackson were Baum’s contemporaries, and they held socially enlightened beliefs diametric to Baum’s attitude toward oppressed and marginalized peoples.

It is doubtful that Baum’s editorials contributed significantly to any subsequent racist action after the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. But they are a chilling window into how fear can generate depravity even in those otherwise kindly and civilized.

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of OST. Contact him at skindiesel@msn.com)

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