Louis Proyect wrote:
> At 02:48 PM 12/30/98 -0600, you wrote:
> >Wasn't Baum a racist? I remember someone (Noam Chomsky, Christopher
> >Simpson?) quoting something of his that was pretty outrageous ... but
> >perhaps I have him confused with someone else (Will Rogers?).
> >
> >Anyone know anything about this?
> >
> >Bill
>
> I don't know about his attitudes toward blacks, but he was a notorious
> Indian-hater. I posted the piece on Baum to warriornet, after this appeared:
>
> "The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and 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 best, is a
> disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and
> decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this
> disaster.
>
> "The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total
> extirmination 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.
>
> "An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that `when
> the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is
> a massacre."
>
> -- L. Frank Baum
>
> Louis Proyect
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
--
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901