South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889. One year and 27 days after joining the Union nearly 300 innocent men, women and children were murdered at a community within its boundaries: A community known as Wounded Knee, Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála.
When I lived at Wounded Knee as a boy I would often listen to the elders while they sat on the porch of the Trading Post where my father worked and I heard the stories about the horrific damage the Hotchkiss Revolving Cannons mounted on the hills overlooking the encampment did to the women and children caught in their fire. The 37mm shells nearly tore the children apart. Death rained down upon the Lakota people that terrible day of December 29, 1890.
It took several days for the news to reach out across the State of South Dakota. For the most part the editorials written after that day addressed the tragedy of the event. But not all.
A few days after one of the worst massacres in U. S. history an editorial appeared in a newspaper published in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It was written by the editor L. Frank Baum, who 10 years later would write a book called The Wizard of Oz. Baum wrote:
“The (Aberdeen) Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination 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 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.”
