http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/baumedts.htm#sitting
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD 57401
Ten years before he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
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.
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.)
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.
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.

The Sitting Bull Editorial
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.
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.
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.
justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights
(Saturday Pioneer, December 20, 1890)
previously published on-line version of Baum's writing.

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
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.
that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians
win it, it is a massacre."
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.