The Lawrence Journal-World (Lawrence, Kansas) October 9, 2000
'Oz' author sought Indian holocaust:
Baum penned 'wonderful' book, plus editorials advocating genocide
By Tim Carpenter
L. Frank Baum's fairy tale about a Kansas girl swept by a tornado to a
magical world of munchkins and witches made both author and state
synonymous with Oz.
So deeply is "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" ingrained in American
popular culture that a development company is poised to build an $861
million Wonderful World of Oz theme park and resort near DeSoto to
capitalize on the tale's popularity. If built, the Oz development would
stand as a tribute to a genius storyteller whose essential work spawned
the most-watched film ever, "The Wizard of Oz."
But one slice of the story is largely ignored.
It is the piece of Baum's legacy that belies his place as the man who
captured the imagination of children with a book about the adventures of
Dorothy, Toto, Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion. And it's
contrary to a notion expressed in "The Wizard of Oz" that creatures of
great diversity can put differences aside and work together in respect and
harmony.
Step back in time to Aberdeen, S.D., in late 1890. Conflict among
white settlers and American Indians was intense.
It was a decade before "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" became a
bestseller.
Genocidal editorial
Salesman, typesetter, press operator and editor L. Frank Baum was
the publisher of The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. It was in the pages of
his weekly newspaper that Baum left his mark as a racist who repeatedly
called for the mass murder of American Indians.
Baum's first appeal for genocide was printed immediately after the
slaying of Sitting Bull and 10 days before U.S. Army troops, supported by
Indian mercenaries, killed about 300 Lakota men, women and children at
Wounded Knee Creek, S.D.
Here is what Baum wrote:
"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 this fall the nobility of the
redskin is
extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs.
"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. We cannot honestly regret their extermination."
Theme park hurdle
On Jan. 3, 1891, after Wounded Knee, Baum published an editorial
suggesting that the remnants of a dying culture should be eradicated to
make safe the ascendancy of another.
"The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon
the total extermination of the Indians," he 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."
Jimmie Oyler, a resident of DeSoto and self-described principal chief
of United Tribe of Shawnee Indians, said an Oz theme park on former
Shawnee lands near DeSoto would be offensive.
"He more or less said kill them all," he said. "If it has anything to do
with Baum ... it's never going to be on Shawnee land."
Joe Reitz, a business professor and director of the International
Center for Ethics at Kansas University, said the Baum editorials were
sufficient reason to rethink the Oz project.
"To build a monument to a man who advocated genocide among
Native Americans in this part of the country seems to be financially
suicidal," he said. "If you give people a reason not to spend money, they
probably won't do it."
Other hurdles
But Kristin McCallum, a spokesperson for Oz Entertainment Co. in
Los Angeles, said Baum's 110-year-old editorials weren't relevant.
"I don't see the relation," she said.
Oz Entertainment has negotiated draft agreements with state and
federal agencies to transfer 9,000 acres to the company in exchange for
the firm's commitment to spent an estimated $45 million to clean up
industrial contamination at the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant.
Before the transfer can occur, the Johnson County Commission and
the Kansas Development Finance Authority must approve Oz's
redevelopment plan.
McCallum called immaterial the fact that American Indians were once
occupants of land where World of Oz would be located. She said there
were many regrettable episodes in U.S. history that shouldn't have a
bearing on World of Oz.
What about the writing?
Sally Roesch Wagner said Baum's writings - all of them - are worth
exploring. Every element of his character should be open for discussion,
she said.
Wagner was raised in Aberdeen and now lives in the former
Fayetteville, N.Y., home of Baum's mother-in-law, feminist Matilda Joslyn
Gage. Wagner is executive director of the Gage Foundation and plans to
turn the house into a museum that interprets Baum's life.
She said there was benefit to studying both laudatory and loathsome
aspects of his personage.
"I think we need to understand him as both," Wagner said. "He was
both a man who wrote these (Oz) books and a man who called for the
extermination of the entire Sioux nation."
It's useful to put Baum's unfortunate editorials in the context of the
times, said Nancy Koupal, director of research and publishing at the
South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre, S.D.
The society recently published a book, "Baum's Road to Oz: The
Dakota Years."
Baum was concerned for his safety and that of other settlers, she
said. But the genocide of Native Americans wasn't a common theme in
his later writing and novels.
"He didn't spend much ink on the subject," Koupal said. "It was not a
deeply felt conviction. I don't think this was a big side of Baum. You
scratch any of your heroes, you're not going to like what you find in the
closet. There is no perfect man."
Intellectual freedom
Leonard Bruguier, a Yankton Sioux and director of the Institute of
American Indian Studies at University of South Dakota in Vermillion, S.D.,
said Baum's views were repugnant. But, he said, the author had the right
to express his opinion in 1890. That same intellectual freedom should be
granted citizens today, he said.
"There are skinheads, neo-Nazis saying 'Do away with people of
color.' I have to tolerate their opinion," Bruguier said.
Donald Fixico, director of KU's indigenous studies program, said the
editorials shouldn't necessarily doom the Oz project. He said Baum's
commentary should stand as a cautionary lesson to young writers.
"You never know when you're going to write something influential like
the Wizard of Oz," Fixico said. "Some things may come back to haunt
you."
Perhaps, Bruguier said, it's fitting irony that World of Oz developers
want to build a memorial to "The Wizard of Oz" on land ravaged by
pollutants from the manufacture of munitions.
"Maybe they deserve each other," he said.
