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Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Volume 26, Number 3, Fall2014, pp. 293-309 (Article)

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“Like You Could Read What Was Insideof Me”: Genocide, Hermeneutics, andReligion in The Wizard of OzKen DerryUniversity of Toronto

Abstract: Ten years before he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum pro-duced two editorials calling for the death of all Native American people. These editorialshave affected how both Baum’s novel and its 1939 MGM adaptation are interpreted. Forsome, the tale is a utopian vision that vindicates its author, while for others it clearlyembodies Baum’s genocidal impulses. This essay explores this hermeneutical issue, argu-ing that The Wizard of Oz—like “religion” itself—can support opposing interpretationsbecause the world it depicts is complex and contradictory.

Keywords: film, genocide, hermeneutics, L. Frank Baum, myth, Native Americans, reli-gion, theosophy, violence, The Wizard of Oz

Dorothy has just run away from her home on a Kansas farm when she meets ProfessorMarvel. He stops her from identifying herself and proceeds to perform what professionalmentalists and illusionists call a “cold reading” in order to determine who she is, offeringeducated guesses that he adjusts according to verbal or physical responses.1 He makes acouple of statements—“You’re travelling in disguise”; “You’re going on a visit”—and whenDorothy’s body language indicates that he is wrong each time, he hits upon the right answer:“You’re running away.” From this point his job is relatively easy, as he posits vague, genericreasons behind Dorothy’s sojourn: that she is not understood or appreciated at home, that shewants to see new lands. Although in fact Dorothy has specifically run away because she isafraid for the safety of her dog Toto, a reason that Marvel does not hit upon, she neverthelessseizes on the parts of the travelling showman’s conjectures that ring true to her and declares:“It’s just like you could read what was inside of me.”2

In fact, of course, Marvel can do nothing of the sort. And while most viewers see himtherefore as a charlatan, pretending to have powers he does not possess,3 it is possible to viewhis acts within a more positive academic framework. That is to say, Marvel does what allresponsible interpreters do—namely, he uses material evidence to devise a hypothesis, teststhis hypothesis to the extent that he can, and revises it if necessary as new data becomesavailable.

In contrast to this approach, many scholars of The Wizard of Oz itself appear to becaught in a closed hermeneutical loop. That is to say, they already have an idea of what thisstory is on the “inside,” what its “essence” is, and this idea informs how they understand theevidence they encounter and perhaps even which evidence they are willing to examine. As Iindicate in my conclusions below, this sort of interpretive move is also evident in academic

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discussions of religion, particularly in relation to the topic of violence.4 In a similar fashion,hermeneutic problems involving The Wizard of Oz appear most clearly with regard to L.Frank Baum’s calls for genocide.

Ten years before he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum produced two editorialsfor The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in which he commented on current issues involvingNative Americans.5 The first editorial appeared on 20 December 1890, a few days after SittingBull was killed by police in Grand River, South Dakota. He begins the piece positively, laudingSitting Bull as the “most renowned Sioux of modern history” and “the greatest Medicine Manof his time.” He also expresses sympathy for the great man’s desire to push back against settlerpopulations, since “these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people byselfishness, falsehood and treachery.” Then Baum’s tone changes:

With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack ofwhining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justiceof civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settle-ments will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.

Baum is unequivocal in his call for genocide. He concludes by asserting that “history wouldforget these latter despicable beings,” and that, therefore, “we cannot honestly regret theirextermination.”

Nine days after Baum’s comments about Sitting Bull appeared, the US Calvary attemptedto relocate an encampment of Lakota Sioux near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota—just250 miles from Baum’s home in Aberdeen—in order to free up the land for colonial settlers.The result was a massacre. Twenty-five soldiers died in the course of killing as many as 300Sioux, among them unarmed women and children; some of the Lakota were shot in the backas they tried to run away.

Baum wrote a second editorial. This one wastes no words of praise on Native Americansbut opens instead with a critique of the US government, whose policies regarding “the uneasyIndians” have “resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers.” Baum then renews hisunqualified support for the full-scale destruction of America’s first inhabitants:

Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it upby 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.

This repeated murderous demand turned out to be L. Frank Baum’s last word on NativeAmericans; he never published anything explicitly on the topic again.

A great deal of critical work on Baum’s original story of Oz, and its 1939 MGM adapta-tion, has appeared over the years, but few analyses mention the genocide editorials. Althoughimpossible to prove, I suspect that this omission in many cases is not accidental, as the edi-torials clearly problematize the dominant, positive readings of Baum’s work. Interpretationsthat do mention the author’s calls for the “extermination” of an entire continent of humanbeings invariably fall into one of two camps. For some critics, The Wizard of Oz vindicates itsauthor, promoting a utopian vision of inclusive tolerance and equality. For others, however,the story embodies Baum’s genocidal impulses, offering justification for colonization, appro-priation, and murder. Although both pro- and anti-Baum critics tend to focus on Baum’s firstOz book, the vast majority of their comments apply also to the 1939 film itself. My discussionof these comments below is divided into three sections that accord with the three differentself-descriptions that the Wizard offers in this film when Toto exposes his charade, when weget our first look at the man behind the curtain:

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SCARECROW: You humbug!

WIZARD: Yes, that’s exactly so, I’m a humbug.

DOROTHY: You’re a very bad man.

WIZARD: Oh, no, my dear. I—I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad Wizard.

A Very Good ManAs David B. Parker (1996) points out, the first several decades of scholarly work on Oz con-sistently regarded the popular fictional land as fundamentally utopian. This critical spell wasfirst cast in the late 1920s by Edward Wagenknecht’s description of Oz as an “Americanutopia” ([1929] 1983, 152). Very little was written on Baum’s text again until Martin Gardnerand Russell B. Nye’s 1957 edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which the two menpraise the text and its values: Gardner lauds the “theme of tolerance” in Baum’s work (30),while Nye affirms that “Oz is a family-style Utopia” (12) that promotes “the homelyAmerican virtues of family love, friendliness for the stranger, sympathy for the underdog,practicality and common sense in facing life, [and] reliance on one’s self for solutions toone’s problems” (16). Just three years later, S. J. Sackett published his influential article “TheUtopia of Oz” (1960), which refined the perspective initiated by Wagenknecht while furthercementing its core idea in the burgeoning landscape of Oz scholarship.

A genuine paradigm shift in understanding Baum’s story arrived in 1964 in the form ofHenry Littlefield’s seminal analysis of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a Populist allegory. Thekey elements of this reading are well-known to anyone with even a passing interest in Baumscholarship: the Scarecrow represents farming, the Tin Man industrial labour, and the Lion isDemocratic presidential candidate and US Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who forhis anti-imperial pacifism was accused of cowardice by his opponents (52–53). Bryan alsoopposed the pure gold standard, the dangers of which are indicated by the perilous YellowBrick Road (53). Dorothy symbolizes the naïve innocence that leads the wayfarers to seek helpfrom the holders of national political power (57). The Winged Monkeys, finally, “substitutefor the plains Indians,” a once free race of beings who only “do evil” when under an “evilinfluence” (55) and who therefore deserve our sympathy. The merits of Littlefield’s allegoricalinterpretation have been much debated over the years,6 but one element has rarely beenchallenged: the notion, once again, of Oz as a kind of utopia, a place where “goodness andinnocence prevail even over the powers of evil and delusion” (52).

Significantly, while Littlefield does mention Baum’s time in Aberdeen (48), he does notcite the genocide editorials. The first major critical work to do so is Michael Patrick Hearn’s1973 Annotated Wizard of Oz. Hearn, who has been described as “the leading scholar on L.Frank Baum” (Parker 1994, 57), offers no quotes from the editorials or any details regardingtheir content. Instead, while referencing the author’s time as editor of the Pioneer, he simplyand parenthetically asserts that “Baum’s editorials on the Indian situation were the leasttolerant of all his work” (19). This rhetorical move compartmentalizes the editorials whileunderstating the severity of their message, which in turn makes it easier for Hearn to continuereading Oz itself as “Baum’s quiet utopia,” “a gentle kingdom where the good are rewardedand the evil forgiven” (75).

Hearn is not alone in his apologetic stance on the genocide editorials. Ranjit Dighe (2002)similarly writes that, “as monstrous and inexcusable as those editorials were : : : there is little

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in Baum’s life and writing to suggest that they were typical of his thinking” (102, n. 47). Inthis same footnote, Dighe suggests a possible reason why these columns were penned in thefirst place: “Baum, like many other Western settlers, was easily led to feel hostility toward theSioux.”7 Katharine Rogers (2002) also sees Baum’s hostile comments both as “atypical” (272,n. 34) and as resulting from the prevailing negative attitudes toward Native people commonat the time. She softens the picture of Baum in this regard somewhat, by supposing that theseattitudes were more fearful than angry, that Baum’s “shocking editorial on December 20,1890” was “prompted by his own and his neighbors’ terror at the thought of an Indian in-vasion of their homes” (269, n. 27).8 In this regard, Evan Schwartz (2009) states unequivocallythat Baum “succumbed to the potent narcotic of racism” (184). Rebecca Loncraine (2009)similarly imagines that the author was “driven by the reverse side of guilt and sorrow, namelyanger and fear” (123) and that, in his “two outrageous editorials on the Sioux : : : Baumexpressed the settlers’ ambivalence and viciousness in regard to the ‘Indian Question’” (127).

All of these accounts of the genocide editorials accept them at face value and attempt toput them in a context that exonerates Baum at least to some extent. Jason and Jessica Bell(2010), however, take an entirely different approach, arguing that Baum in these pieces is infact satirically critiquing the position he appears to be voicing:

As for the newspaper editorials, we have read them and were struck not by their racism, but byBaum’s loud and bitterly ironic denunciation of the racist genocide of the Native peoples that wasoccurring at the time of their publication. In these editorials, Baum mocks those who destroy theNative peoples using so many jokes, so tightly packed together, that one comes to realize that heneeded to write the Oz books in part so that he could retell the jokes, but with some plot inbetween them. (243, emphasis added)

Not only was Baum not being racist, then, but by satirizing the prevailing genocidal attitudesof the day he was in fact being heroic. Bell and Bell further point out that his heroism wasaccentuated by his geographic proximity to the events he is discussing: “It is not to discreditthe other American critics of genocide of that day, but it is indeed the case that most of themwrote from comfortably distant East Coast cities while Baum did it from near the front linesof battle” (273).

One consequence of the Bells’ position is that, unlike Baum’s other defenders, they do notregard the editorials as “atypical” works. Instead, the values they perceive as being espoused inthese columns are in fact congruent with the fundamentally utopian elements of The Won-derful Wizard of Oz. In particular, these values align with the book’s central focus on equalityand emancipation. Dorothy, for example, does not discriminate among the various beings ofOz, befriending others “no matter their color” (245). Her first act upon arriving in Oz is toliberate the munchkins from servitude to the Wicked Witch of the East by accidentally killingher with a house (225). The young girl quickly becomes more intentionally emancipatory, asshe releases the Scarecrow and the Tin Man from their respective bonds and in the end freesthe Winkies from their role as the Wicked Witch of the West’s slave army (225–26).9

Dorothy’s abolitionist leanings are also perhaps signalled in the film by the words she singsto the Scarecrow: “With the thoughts you’ll be thinkin’ / You could be another Lincoln.”

This sense yet again that Oz represents a kind of utopia is also shared by all of the criticswho believe that Baum meant what he said in the genocide editorials but that the editorials donot represent his true values. Thus The Wonderful Wizard of Oz affirms Baum’s essentialbelief in “the pastoral ideal” of goodness and harmony (Rogers 2002, 245–47). It is a storyof tolerance (Dighe 2002 46, n. 5), of the divinity that resides within us all (Schwartz 2009,289). It is a “utopian dream” (Loncraine 2009, 174) that emphasizes gender equity in part

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through the central importance of powerful female figures: Auntie Em, Dorothy, and thewitches (Rogers 2002, 79, 246–47; Loncraine 2009, 175; Schwartz 2009, 288). The only maleleader is exposed as a powerless sham, a revelation that underlines the tale’s critique ofpatriarchy in particular and of hierarchies and imperial power more generally (Rogers2002, 79, 84; Loncraine 2009, 179). Rogers (2002) points out that the young girl at the centreof the story stands as the true role model in this regard: “Dorothy, quietly conscious of herworth, speaks forthrightly to the Witches and the Wizard and recognizes the equality of aScarecrow and a Lion” (94). For those who favour Littlefield’s allegorical interpretation of theLion as William Jennings Bryan, Dighe (2002) notes that since Baum’s text affirms the Lion asin fact possessing courage, it therefore must be understood to validate Bryan’s anti-imperialistposition (65–66, n. 22; cf. Littlefield 1964, 54).

These utopian perspectives are very often understood to derive from Baum’s religiousorientation, which is to say his interest in theosophy. This interest was initially documentedby Hearn (1973, 69–73), with John Algeo (1986a) becoming the first to identify connectionsbetween theosophical beliefs and Baum’s writings.10 These connections have been furtherhighlighted by several of the critics who have taken up the cause of defending Baum fromhis genocide editorials. Thus The Wizard of Oz reflects the theosophical belief in the equalityand worth of all beings, male and female, regardless of social status (Rogers 2002, 50–52;Schwartz 2009, 289). It also tells the story of “a journey of self-discovery,” with each characterarriving at a core truth of theosophy, that they must “learn from experience, not from some-one else. Neither a swami nor a wizard can give them what they want, for they already possessit inside” (Schwartz 2009, 276; cf. Rogers 2002, 52; Loncraine 2009, 177). Incorporatingtheosophical principles thus enabled Baum not only to imagine a utopian fantasy world butin fact to construct a powerful and deeply resonant “American myth” (Loncraine 2009, 185;cf. Hearn 1973, 39; Schwartz 2009, 286–90).

Baum’s theosophical orientation has also provided further grist for the allegorical readingmill.11 Evan Schwartz (2009) is the only critic, however, to accept the challenge of offeringsuch a reading that simultaneously functions as an apologetic for Baum’s genocide editorials.He makes the claim, in fact, that the author embraced theosophy specifically in order “toatone for his small role in the great American tragedy that had just transpired [i.e., theWounded Knee massacre], to somehow commemorate those whom he had wronged withhis bitter pen. To fight a myth of darkness one is best served by wielding a myth of light”(189–90). This new myth of light commemorated Native Americans in the form of theWinged Monkeys, inspired perhaps by the Sioux wakinyan (“winged one”), “a mysteriousgargoyle-like creature with multijointed wings” (178). The deadly poppy fields represent “theterrible allure of racism and prejudice” to which Baum once succumbed; the scene in whichDorothy is roused back to consciousness in the field thus symbolizes Baum’s own “spiritualawakening” (277).12 The Yellow Brick Road serves a similar semiotic function: “This long anddifficult path of tests and trials was inspired by a concept central to Theosophy, Buddhism,and Hinduism. Even the color is significant, as yellow is the hue of sunlight, the daily processof awakening and awareness representing consciousness itself” (268).

A Very Bad WizardAs noted above, most commenters on Baum’s story, or on the Wizard of Oz film, do notreference the genocide editorials. And virtually all of them find the same utopian virtuespromoted in these narratives: tolerance and racial harmony (e.g., Rockoff 1990, 751; Nathan-son 1991, 273; Earle 1993, 188–89;); gender equality (e.g., Sackett 1960, 290; Moore 1974,

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126–34; Payne 1989, 34–36; Kent 2010); and the critique of irresponsibly wielded power (e.g.,Rahn 1998, 103; Durand 2010; Gibson 2010, 112). To Alissa Burger (2012), this criticalconsensus tells us that “predominant discourses surrounding Baum and his literary worksmarginalize or silence the historical context established by the author’s Aberdeen SaturdayPioneer editorials” (99; cf. St. John 2004).

Burger herself is the most recent of a handful of critics to seriously consider this historicalcontext in the reading of Dorothy’s first adventure. These are critics, that is to say, who takethe genocide editorials at face value and see them as consistent with the perspectives embod-ied in The Wizard of Oz. Thus Burger perceives Baum’s “public prejudice against NativeAmericans” (38) in particular, and his “colonial impulse” (97) more generally, reflected inhis literary work. The first voice to be heard along these lines was that of Tom St. John,who in 1982 made the deeply radical assertion at the time that The Wonderful Wizard ofOz put “a happy face on terror, on the sordid land-grab for the land sacred to the Sioux”(351). Even further, St. John later writes, through this text Baum in fact once again “advocatedthe extermination of the American Indian” (2004, para. 1). William Leach (1991a) somewhatmore subtly concludes that Baum’s editorials show that he did not “care much about theIndians” (11) and so, unsurprisingly, failed to use The Wizard of Oz “as a means of drawingattention to economic suffering and racial injustice” (Leach 1991b, 161). Lastly, BrianD’Amato (2001, 241–45) explains how his discovery of Baum’s editorials re-coloured hisunderstanding of the Oz stories:

In the eyes of most people who write about Oz, Baum’s world is a sunny one and his outlook onlife is enlightened : : : But I think it’s also possible to distinguish a sub-theme, one that may beequally integral to Oz—not only as a foil to the books’ more conscious intentions, but as a com-ponent of the fuel that powered Baum’s imagination. (244–45)

In the end, D’Amato concludes, Baum’s stories do not simply depict “occasional instances ofmalevolence” but that there is in fact “a submerged but ever-present evil in the Land of Ozitself” (278).

As it happens, seeing this evil involves overturning precisely those elements of race,gender, and power in The Wizard of Oz identified as utopian by the majority of scholars.St. John (1982) argues, for example, that, “in its essential structure and elements, the Oz fantasybelongs to the already two-hundred year old tradition of the Indian captivity narrative” (357).Having taken Dorothy prisoner, the Wicked Witch of the West thus stands in for the NativeAmerican villains of these narratives; just as she must be destroyed by her captive, so does thestory justify prejudice and violence directed against Natives (357; cf. 2004, para. 9). Burger(2012) broadens this analysis, arguing that the Witch is coded as entirely Other through herappearance and actions and so invites violence against her (108–9). She “poses a threat to theidealized and neatly compartmentalized existence of Oz and its citizens. Therefore, as a resultof her Otherness, the Wicked Witch can—and, in fact, must—be destroyed” (98–99). Burgerfurther asserts that the compartmentalization of Oz is itself racially problematic: although dif-ferent groups may live together in this land, they do so in separate regions, and this “strictsegregation” may well reflect “Baum’s notions of an exclusionary and genocidal Americanidentity” (93). And genocide, as D’Amato (2001) points out, is often facilitated by dehumaniz-ing ideologies; it thus worth noting that Oz is populated by beings like the Scarecrow and theTin Man, inanimate matter brought to life, since “these same powers that turn a thing into abeing can as easily turn a being into a thing” (273).

Burger (2012) provides an extremely thorough critique of gender relations and represen-tations in The Wizard of Oz.13 The Wicked Witch of the West does not only symbolize the

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Other in general terms, she is also specifically “vilified through her aberrant femininity,” andthrough her “direct opposition to the patriarchal ruling authority of the Wizard” (98).Dorothy, for her part, does indeed act to free others throughout her adventure; however,she is herself constantly suppressed, controlled, and manipulated by others, from ElviraGulch, to her aunt and uncle, to the Wizard (60). In this regard, it is not insignificant that,although Dorothy at the start of the film wishes to leave home, almost her first thought uponarrival in Oz is to go back; she “has deviated from her expected gender position in rejectinghome and family by willfully leaving the domestic space, and her conscience suffers as aresult” (134). Thus, while Dorothy does enjoy in Oz “a position of independence and powerunparalleled at home in Kansas” (131), this position is severely undercut by her primarymotive throughout the narrative to return to her family, since “her return functions as avalidation of traditional gender roles” (132).

Burger finds that the 1939 film further accentuates the reactionary gender politics ofBaum’s text through the framing sequences at the farm, which deviate from the originalnarrative. Dorothy’s lack of metaphorical voice at the beginning is highlighted by the factthat no one will literally listen to her; consequently her uncomplicated, unbegrudging desireto once again be a part of this dynamic clearly points to the kind of role that is most appro-priate for young women: silent, submissive, domestic helpers (133–34).14 The film also tells usthat Dorothy’s adventure was a dream, not a journey to an actual place as in Baum’s story,and so her experience of agency and accomplishment never really happened. Moreover, de-spite her protests that the experience was real, Dorothy is forced once again to sacrifice hervoice, to agree with the assembled adults that her trip to Oz was indeed all in her head: “Sheseems to decide that her successful reincorporation into the domestic sphere of home andfamily is more important than arguing the point of her independence and self-reliance” (135).

Unsurprisingly, critics who regard Baum’s genocide editorials as both sincere andgenuinely representative of his worldview tend to agree with St. John (1982) that The Wizardof Oz “implicitly sustain[s] the conservative position of the ruling order” (359). They alsotypically see the Wizard as the key plank in this platform, the common argument being that,although the narrative does indeed expose him as a “humbug,” it is still very much on his side.For Leach (1991b), this dynamic is evident in the way that, despite being a manipulative liar,the Wizard is warmly embraced by everyone at the end as “a hero and savior” (177). Inaddition, although he indeed does not possess magical abilities, “he is powerful in the modernAmerican sense of the word, powerful because he is able to manipulate others to do hisbidding, to make them believe what is unbelievable” (179). Leach concludes:

Far from being critical of tricksterism in The Wizard of Oz, Baum’s portrait of the Wizard andthe tale itself can be seen as a light-hearted tribute to all of those new activities and strategies ofmanipulation and artifice—merchandising, advertising, the new commercial theater, the newspiritual therapies, the whole spectacle of American technological inventiveness—that were sucha large part of America’s new economy and culture. (179)

A very different criticism of the Wizard sees his unmasking as a distraction from his realsins, sins that the narrative goes out of its way to hide, to transform into ideology. What istruly upsetting about his actions, D’Amato (2001) suggests, is not the Wizard’s “opportunisticfakery” but his tendency to solve problems through killing (278). Rather than risk exposure asa fraud by Dorothy and her companions, for example, the Wizard sends them on a missionthat can only end in death: their own or that of the Wicked Witch of the West. Either way,the Wizard wins. The horrific implications of his actions, however, are erased by the narra-tive’s closure, by the Wizard’s kindness and charm in handing out his tokens, by his bumbling

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avuncularity as he floats off alone in his balloon. In addition, as Burger (2012) has argued, thedepiction of the Wicked Witch as oppositional Other also implicitly justifies the Wizard’sdesire for her destruction. This ideological move, when combined with the narrative’s supportof traditional gender roles, leads Burger to conclude that The Wizard of Oz reflects Baum’sinterests in “marginalizing non-whites and firmly situating the proper place of the woman aswithin the domestic sphere of the home. In doing so, the myth-making imperative [is] toreinforce patriarchal power, make sense of the struggle of settlement, and underscore a senseof nationalist exceptionalism” (194).

Although Burger does not parse the notion “mythmaking” to any extent, her remarknevertheless returns us to the question of the religious sources of the Oz narrative. Amongthose who are critical of Baum’s views, William Leach (1991b) explores this question mostfully as he considers the influence of theosophy on the author’s thought and writings.Specifically, according to Leach, “it is as mind-cure ideology that theosophy is most importantas a shaping force in The Wizard of Oz” (170, emphasis in the original). There are twoprimary elements to this ideology: the removal of distress and conflict and the recognitionof inner strength. The first element accounts for the prevailing sense of Oz’s utopian nature,its “benign ambience” (171). This ambience comes at the cost of any meaningful socialcritique; however, any attempt to draw attention “to the new alienating forms of industriallabor, to the extravagance and greed of many affluent Americans, and to the pooling of wealthand power that was increasingly becoming a distinguishing, chronic feature of American cap-italist society” (161). There is no reason to highlight such problems, since the real challengefor all of us lies within: although the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion all believe thattheir most important needs can be met by external agencies, what these characters actuallyrequire “is confidence in themselves, the belief that they are endowed with the very thingsthey long for” (173). Thus, Leach summarizes, “So long as one has confidence and realizesthat the world is really a very plentiful place, one need not worry about the future or that onewill ever lack for anything. One need not struggle or suffer or go through the agonies ofgrowing up or of developing. All one needs, really, is to think positively” (174).15

Finally, in the tradition of Henry Littlefield, Tom St. John offers his own allegorical read-ings of key elements of The Wizard of Oz, interpretations that in this case accord with Baum’santi-Native prejudices. For St. John, the Yellow Brick Road that ultimately leads Dorothy andher friends to success in fact represents the Bozeman Road, or “Thieves Road,” which led tothe Montana gold field. This route passed through areas protected by the Fort Laramie Treatysigned with Chief Red Cloud; however, “when George Armstrong Custer cut ‘the Thieves’Road’ during his 1874 gold expedition invasion of the sacred Black Hills, he violated thistreaty, and turned US foreign policy toward the Little Big Horn and the Wounded Kneemassacre” (2004, para. 2; cf. 1982, 352). The Winged Monkeys, in their distinctive caps andtunics marked with red, are satirical stand-ins for the Northwest Mounted Police. Accordingto St. John, “Villagers across the Dakota territory heartily despised these British police,especially after 1877, when Sitting Bull retreated across the border and into their protectionafter killing Custer” (2004, para. 3; cf. 1981, 352–53). The poppy fields are among the mostpotent symbols in The Wizard of Oz used “to justify extermination” of Native Americans(2004, para. 1). As in Schwartz’s reading, St. John understands the poppies to represent sleepand death. In this case, however, they do so through their association with the “opium : : :sold in patent medicines, in the Wizard Oil, at the travelling Indian medicine shows” (2004,para. 7). The white pitchmen who sold such oils presented themselves as having obtained themedicines from Native communities through an experience modelled—like Baum’s Oz storyitself—on the Indian captivity narratives (1981, 358). Such narratives, again, served “as a

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vehicle for propaganda and Indian hatred” (1981, 357), thereby offering Baum’s audience aready target for the kind of “fatal dream” induced by the “poison opium” (2004, para. 7).

A HumbugAnd so, is The Wizard of Oz a utopian myth of gender parity, racial harmony, and politicalegalitarianism that exonerates its progenitor? Or is it a twisted patriarchal fantasy that reflectsBaum’s genocidal agenda? Do the poppy fields symbolize the author’s regret over his racisteditorials? Or are they the very embodiment of that racism? And what of the Wizard at thecentre of the story: Is he “good” or is he “bad”?

These are much the same binary choices often offered to us by scholars of religion,particularly when faced with questions of violence. Religion is like the Wizard in this sense:it is “good” or it is “bad.” The latter option is often explicated by scholars like RussellMcCutcheon, who as Michael Ostling (2014) has discussed, sees religion as fundamentallydeceitful, disguising its manipulative, hegemonic apparatuses behind a mask of transcendencelike an old man pulling levers and blowing smoke (280–82). Earlier influential thinkers in thisintellectual lineage include Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, who of course similarly regardedreligion as a kind of false consciousness that facilitated social oppression or psychologicalharm. In fact, thinkers foundational to the entire Western academic enterprise—from Lockeand Hobbes to Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, Kant, and Rousseau—considered religion anessentially violent, or violating, force. Opposing traditions of ignorance and superstition thatsuppressed autonomous thought, these eighteenth-century philosophes sought to supplantreligion with reason and science. They were not simply concerned with religion as a kindof intellectual violence, however: as Bruce Lincoln (2000) notes, the Enlightenment projectwas undertaken in part as a reaction against the series of brutal European religious wars in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “with the determination that such horrors would not berepeated” (417).

Within the academic study of religion, these voices have faded. The view of religion asfundamentally violent is the minority one, much like critiques of The Wizard of Oz asreactionary and oppressive. When modern academics consider religious violence, they mostoften take an apologetic, idealist stance that echoes the dominant critical response to Baum’sgenocide editorials: regardless of what havoc religious institutions or participants havewrought, such violence is understood to contradict the “essence” of the tradition(s) in ques-tion. As expressed in a 2005 Numen editorial:

Few subjects arouse more controversy than the connections between religion and violence, thecontroversies being due to the assumption that such links are either apparent or illegitimate. Inthe first case, it is claimed that it is not religion itself which is the cause for violence, but ratherthat the label “religion” is being used to validate economic, political or other interests. In thesecond case, even when it is assumed that it is religion itself that is at the heart of violent acts,it is still claimed that such involvement goes against the very nature of religion, constituting infact its betrayal. (Numen 2005, 1)

R. Scott Appleby (2000) is about as pointed as one may be in asserting connections betweenreligion and violence, while still managing in the end to defend religion in essentialist terms.He states, for example, that to “define all acts of ‘sacred violence’ as ipso facto irreligious is tomisunderstand religion and to underestimate its ability to underwrite deadly conflict on itsown terms (30, emphasis in the original). The point here would seem to be clear enough, butAppleby’s own conviction that violence is in fact “irreligious” is evident when he declares that

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“purveyors of violence : : : transgress against core precepts of the religious tradition” (16,emphasis added).

Feminist criticism of religion has also been centrally concerned with violence, and yethere again we frequently encounter apologetic turns. Mary Ann Rossi (1993) sees an “injusticeto all women inherent in Christianity” (56) and that consequently there is “a strong connec-tion between Christian upbringing and the acceptance of battering by women and men” (57).And yet she affirms that this “man-centered cult” bears little relation to the “original version”of Christianity, which was “a religion rooted in equality and mutuality” (56). Rita Gross(1993) similarly critiques the ways in which Buddhism has endorsed the oppression andabuse of women. She, too, maintains that these crimes violate the inherently peaceful “truth”of the historical Buddha, that “the key concepts of Buddhism, in every period of Buddhistintellectual development, are incompatible with gender hierarchy and with discriminationagainst women” (4).16 Cheryl Kirk-Duggan (2001) takes a broader view, using various femi-nist critical approaches to explore “the intersection of violence and religion” in general (xiii).This exploration is based, however, on an assumption that violence is in fact “blasphemous; itis an assault upon holiness, upon creation” (155).

The largest, most ambitious single work on the subject of religion and violence yet is thefour volume Destructive Power of Religion (2004a), edited by J. Harold Ellens. The workmeans to be definitive: according to comments by Archbishop Desmond Tutu included ineach volume, “future work on this matter will need to begin with this publication. This willbecome a classic” (2004, xv). In his Foreword, Martin E. Marty notes that what he “took awayfrom the chapters, especially, is a sense of the pervasiveness of violence across the spectrum ofreligions” (2004, xii). Ellens himself explains in the preface that the project was an attempt “tosee the unsacred in sacred scriptures” (2004b, xviii). The distinction here between “sacred”and “unsacred,” however, points to the work’s underlying—and within the study of religion,normative—inclination to regard violence as an aberration of religion. This perspective ismade explicit when Ellens declares that in addition to their violent aspects, these same sacredscriptures have “a more central message as well”; namely, that “the real God is a God ofunconditional grace—the only thing that works in life, for God or for humans” (2004b, xix,emphasis added).

Again, these two orientations toward religion—as fundamentally “good” or “bad”—mirror the dichotomous readings of The Wizard of Oz. But the film, like the eponymouscharacter at its centre, resists such binary hermeneutics. Toto of course reveals the Wizardto be in fact a “humbug,” a powerless impersonator. But that identity itself can be viewed asyet another curtain behind which the Wizard hides. For he is not just a charlatan: he is also asuccessful manipulator, an insecure wretch, an excellent strategist, a kindly benefactor, amurderous liar, a technical genius, a lost man. The Wizard is, in effect, legion. And as hecontains multitudes, so does the story named for him. In addition to the varied, oppositionalreadings already offered, consider the following:

• “The boyish girls of Oz are phallic, and thus deeply reassuring to boys (or men) with castrationanxieties” (Beckwith 1976, 87).

• “Despite the utopian nature of L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz, a recurrent theme of cannibalismundermines its status as a halcyon land” (Pugh 2008, 324).

• “Like menstruation, the tornado that sweeps Dorothy up is a natural force that transforms her lifeand reality” (Payne 1989, 31).

I know of few children’s tales capable of inspiring such wide-ranging—not to mention imagi-native and entertaining—interpretations.

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The polysemic attributes of The Wizard of Oz have been explicitly recognized by a fewcritics, including some who otherwise affirm clear, closed readings of the story. Despite con-victions that this tale is inherently utopian, for example, Neil Earle (1993) nevertheless re-ferences its many elements of “contradiction and ambiguity” (187), while Michael PatrickHearn (1973) admits that, both generally and in Baum’s text, “a symbol can represent manythings at the same time” (39). Ranjit Dighe (2002) actually identifies what strikes me as thehermeneutical principle underlying a good deal of work on The Wizard of Oz—and on reli-gion itself—in his biblically allusive critique of allegorical interpretations: “Once one is evenvaguely aware of the concept of the book as a Populist parable, reading the book becomes amatter of ‘seek and ye shall find’” (8).

While these particular commenters present such qualifying remarks as incidental asides,there are those for whom the complicated nature of The Wizard of Oz is more integral to theirreadings. Two such critics are Gretchen Ritter (1997) and Richard Tuerk (2007), both ofwhom also discuss the genocide editorials at length. And while they do accept that Baummeans what he says in them, they do not see this understanding as predetermining thesignificance of the man’s entire oeuvre or that of his most famous story’s cinematic repre-sentation. Tuerk states this point directly, asserting that “it is often very difficult to read one’sbeliefs from one’s works of fiction” (42) and that in Baum’s case this fiction is “richer thanmost critics recognize” (204). Thus Tuerk understands that The Wizard of Oz is both pro-and anti-imperialist (43–44, 205–7) and that “it is not so easy to evaluate the Wizard in termsof his being a purely good or bad man” (42). Ritter likewise argues that Baum’s tale is “neithersimply pro-Populist nor pro-capitalist” (183); that its gender politics are both progressive andreactionary (173–74); that its worldview is, in different respects, both tolerant and racist (184–87). The choice between different poles of interpretation, Ritter insists, “is a false one. Baumand his work well represented the contingent and incoherent nature of their times, somethingthat can be missed when scholarship imposes historical coherence on the past” (198).

In her own analysis of The Wizard of Oz, Katherine Fowkes (2010) similarly eschews amanufactured coherence: “The popularity and staying power of Wizard and other classicfilms may lie precisely in their myth-like ability to juggle conflicting ideas and impulses, there-by providing the possibility of various and sometimes opposite interpretations” (61, emphasisadded). And compared to a single film, or children’s book, how much more complicated andmultiplicitous, how much less susceptible to definitive interpretations, might the accumulatedrecord of an entire world’s history of myths be? When we add in the associated rituals, art,teachings, music, architecture, and on, and on, how can we possibly say that “religion” is thisor that one thing? Simply put, if The Wizard of Oz is too complicated to essentialize, perhapswe should approach our investigations of data we identify as religious with a little morecaution and humility than we are sometimes inclined to do.

None of this is to say that we should not try to understand or that understanding is animpossible goal. The point here is not to draw another curtain in front of our object of study.The point, rather, is to be honest with ourselves, and with one another, about the entirelyreasonable limits of our understanding when we encounter them. It is also to abandon thefiction that there is a “core” of “truth” to religion that we can somehow uncover. WhenProfessor Marvel finally hits on the correct interpretation of Dorothy’s situation, that sheis running away, the young girl asks him: “How did you guess?” The magician replies witha flourish: “Professor Marvel never guesses, he knows!” Of course he is lying. He neitherguesses nor knows; he uses logic and observation to arrive at a reasonable conclusion giventhe available evidence. But Marvel, like the Wizard, is a humbug: it is his job to pretend thathe knows. That is not our job; scholars of religion are not, or should not be, illusionists. And

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Marvel at least knows that he does not know, which is to say he is entirely aware that hecannot really read what is “inside” Dorothy. We could do worse than follow his example inthis way, remembering that we, too, do not really know what is “inside” L. Frank Baum, orThe Wizard of Oz, or religion.

Notes1. Marvel later performs a “hot reading,” which involves obtaining covert information about someone,

when he asks Dorothy to close her eyes and then searches through her basket for further clues to hersituation. He finds a photograph of Dorothy’s aunt and proceeds to intone: “There’s a woman : : :

she’s wearing a polka-dot dress : : : her face is careworn.” For discussions of cold and hot readingssee Dutton (1988) and Carroll (2013), respectively.

2. According to William W. Larsen Sr., a professional magician, it is not at all difficult to convincesomeone that very broad statements reflect great insight into their specific situation: “The averageperson will accept anything you tell him or her, and apply it personally. In other words, they’ll makeyour reading fit themselves. As a psychic, people want to believe you” (quoted in Dutton 1988, em-phasis in the original).

3. Linda Rohrer Paige (1996) offers a typical assessment of Marvel along these lines: “Though he ap-pears to be well intentioned, the professor remains, nonetheless, a fraud, his ‘magical’ powers merechicanery” (149).

4. For a discussion of this issue as it relates to the study and teaching of religion and violence in film, seeDerry (2012).

5. See the Appendix for the full text of both editorials.6. Parker (1994) provides an excellent summary of the reception of Littlefield’s thesis, from its early

proponents to its later critics. As he demonstrates, there is ample evidence that Baum’s own viewswere in fact far from those of Populism. He additionally cites an exchange of letters to the New YorkTimes between Michael Patrick Hearn and Littlefield himself, in which both men agree that “there isno basis in fact to consider Baum a supporter of turn-of-the-century Populist ideology” (58).

7. In making this point, Dighe may have been inspired by Hearn’s introduction to the 2000 edition ofhis Annotated Wizard of Oz. In his revised discussion of Baum’s editorial days, Hearn remarks:“There was always the fear of another Indian uprising like the New Ulm massacre of 1862, andxenophobia was rife with the appearance of the Ghost Dancers in Dakota” (xxiii). Dighe in factexplicitly cites Hearn in support of his first point about the exceptionality of Baum’s editorials: “Suchintolerance and racism were not typical of his thought and his paper” (Hearn 2000, xxiv; cf. Dighe2002, 102, n. 47).

8. It is perhaps not insignificant that, in an entire book devoted to Baum’s life and work, Rogers refersto just one of the genocide editorials (from 20 December 1890) and even then only in footnotes (259,n. 27; 272, n. 34; 274, n. 13). Howard Zinn ([1980] 1995) discusses a similar, although in many waysmuch more serious, situation regarding the tendency of scholars to disregard the genocidal acts andwritings of Christopher Columbus. He holds up Christopher Columbus, Mariner, by Samuel EliotMorrison, as an important example of such scholarship. Crucially, Morrison does not omit any ref-erence to Columbus-as-murderer in this text; on the contrary, he notes that “the cruel policy” initi-ated by Columbus “resulted in complete genocide” (quoted in Zinn ([1980] 1995, 7). Zinn finds thisremark scandalous, however, because it is the only one of its kind in a text that otherwise sings theseaman’s praises: Morrison, that is, “mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things moreimportant to him,” indicating in this way that, “yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that im-portant” (8). In Zinn’s view, the work of scholars like Morrison thus promotes “the quiet acceptanceof conquest and murder”; this kind of work, consequently, is “one reason these atrocities are still withus” (9).

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9. Bell and Bell present a similar discussion of emancipation in their chapter on “Freeing the Slaves inOz” (2008), which further links Dorothy to Socrates and John Brown.

10. Parker (1996) additionally offers a thorough review and expansion of Algeo’s analysis.11. The first critic to offer an allegorical reading from a theosophical perspective was, again, John Algeo

(1986b).12. Schwartz actually extends his allegorical reading of the poppy fields further:

This brilliant red flower was mythologized during the Napoleonic Wars, after this mysteriousplant was seen blooming around the fresh graves of fallen soldiers. The red color was said tocome from the blood of the slain, serving as an emblem of commemoration. Seen in this light,the deadly poppy fields can be read as a powerful symbol of Frank’s—and America’s—sadnessover the destruction of native cultures and the bloody slaughter of the Native Americans andtheir sacred buffalo. That Dorothy can’t help but fall asleep among the red flowers is rife withsymbolic meaning : : : As she slumbers, Dorothy becomes at one with the dead spirits. To be“at one” is to ‘atone’—something Frank Baum needed to do at this moment in his life. (190)

In sum, then, the poppy field represents not only racism, but also regret over racism, as well as boththe blood and the spirits of dead buffalo and Native Americans.

13. For similar critiques of gender in Oz that do not reference Baum’s genocide editorials, see Friedman(1996); Paige (1996); and Sailors (2008, 289–90).

14. For a detailed analysis of the specifically cinematic ways in which the movie’s farm sequences rep-resent Dorothy’s lack of voice and agency, see Walters (2008, 55–79).

15. Interestingly, Leach’s understanding of the theosophical focus of Baum’s work offers the only realpossibility—within the realm of Baum criticism—of accepting the genocide editorials as represent-ing Baum’s actual views but as stemming from a perspective other than blatant racism. AlthoughLeach does not make this argument himself, it is possible to see the editorials as congruent withBaum’s theosophically driven interest both in wishing away the negative aspects of life and focusingon economic wealth and progress. Native Americans quite possibly represented to Baum the an-tithesis of both of these interests, reminding Baum—as he himself points out—of his country’s poorrecord of Indian–White relations, while also representing to him the past, not the future. Addi-tionally, Baum implies that, while Natives may once have possessed the positive mental attributeslauded by theosophy, they have long since degenerated into “whining curs” who, presumably, donot deserve to share in the wealth that is reserved for those who have discovered their true innergreatness.

16. In taking this position, Gross (1993) explicitly states that her presuppositions are in line with amajority of scholars concerned with gender issues and religion; she follows, that is, the distinctiontypically made “between historical context, which may well reflect very limited cultural conditions,and essential core teachings of the religious symbol system” (4, emphasis added).

ReferencesAlgeo, John. 1986a. “A notable theosophist: L. Frank Baum.” American Theosophist 74: 270–73.Algeo, John. 1986b. “Oz and Kansas: A theosophical quest.” In Proceedings of the thirteenth annual

conference of the Children’s Literature Association, ed. Susan R. Gannon and Ruth Anne Thomp-son, 135–39. doi:10.1353/chq.1986.0026

Appleby, R. Scott. 2000. The ambivalence of the sacred: Religion, violence, and reconciliation. New York:Rowman & Littlefield.

Baum, L. Frank. 1890. “Editorial.” The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, December 20.Baum, L. Frank. 1891. “Editorial.” The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, January 3.Beckwith, Osmond. 1976. “The oddness of Oz.” Children’s Literature 5(1): 74–91. http://dx.doi.org/

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Bell, Jason M., and Jessica Bell. 2008. “Freeing the slaves in Oz.” In The Wizard of Oz and philosophy:Wicked wisdom of the West, ed. Randall E. Auxier and Phillip S. Seng, 49–61. Chicago: OpenCourt.

———. 2010. “The ethics and epistemology of emancipation in Oz.” In The universe of Oz: Essays onBaum’s series and its progeny, ed. Durand, Kevin K., and Mary K. Leigh, 225–46. Jefferson, NC:McFarland & Company.

Burger, Alissa. 2012. The Wizard of Oz: A critical study of six versions of the story, 1900–2007. Jefferson,NC: McFarland & Company.

Carroll, Robert Tod. 2013. “Hot Reading.” The Skeptic’s Dictionary. http://www.skepdic.com/hotread-ing.html (accessed February 26, 2014).

D’Amato, Brian. 2001. “The wooden gargoyles: Evil in Oz.” In Hard road: A Cat Marsala mystery, ed.Barbara D’Amato. 231–81. New York: Scribner.

Derry, Ken. 2012. “Believing is seeing: Teaching religion and violence in film.” In Teaching religion andviolence, ed. Brian Pennington, 185–217. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372427.003.0008

Dighe, Ranjit S., ed. 2002. The historian’s Wizard of Oz: Reading L. Frank Baum’s classic as a politicaland monetary allegory. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Durand, Kevin K. 2010. “The wicked Wizard of Oz.” In The universe of Oz: Essays on Baum’s series andits progeny, ed. Kevin K. Durand and Mary K. Leigh, 172–78. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

Dutton, Denis. 1988. “The cold reading technique.” Experientia 44(4): 326–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01961271

Earle, Neil. 1993. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in American popular culture: Uneasy in Eden. Lewiston,NY: Edward Mellen.

Ellens, J. Harold, ed. 2004a. The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, andIslam. 4 vols. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Ellens, J. Harold. 2004b. Preface to The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity,and Islam, ed. J. Harold Ellens, xvii–xix. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Fowkes, Katherine A. 2010. The fantasy film. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444320589

Friedman, Bonnie. 1996. “Relinquishing Oz: Every girl’s anti-adventure story.” Michigan QuarterlyReview. 35: 9–28.

Gardner, Martin, and Russell B. Nye, eds. 1957. The Wizard of Oz and who he was. East Lansing:Michigan State University Press.

Gibson, Charity. 2010. “The Wizard of Oz as a modernist work.” In The Universe of Oz: Essays onBaum’s series and its progeny, ed. Kevin K. Durand and Mary K. Leigh, 107–18. Jefferson, NC:McFarland & Company.

Gross, Rita. 1993. Buddhism after patriarchy: A feminist history, analysis, and reconstruction. Albany:State University of New York Press.

Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. 1973 The annotated Wizard of Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L.Frank Baum. New York: Clarkson N. Potter.

———. 2000. The annotated Wizard of Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. New York:Norton.

Kent, Paula. 2010. “A feminist stroll down the Yellow Brick Road: Dorothy’s heroine’s adventure.” InThe universe of Oz: Essays on Baum’s series and its progeny, ed. Kevin K. Durand and Mary K.Leigh, 179–87. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

Kirk-Duggan, Cheryl. 2001. Refiner’s fire: A religious engagement with violence. Minneapolis: Fortress.Leach, William R. 1991a. “The clown from Syracuse: The life and times of L. Frank Baum.” In The

Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, ed. William R. Leach, 1–34. Belmont, CA:Wadsworth.

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———. 1991b. “A trickster’s tale: L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” In The WonderfulWizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, ed. Leach, William R., 157–88. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Lincoln, Bruce. 2000. “Culture.” In Guide to the study of religion, ed. Willi Braun and Russell T.McCutcheon, 409–22. New York: Cassell.

Littlefield, Henry. 1964. “The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism.” American Quarterly 16(1): 47–58.http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2710826

Loncraine, Rebecca. 2009. The real Wizard of Oz: The life and times of L. Frank Baum. New York:Gotham.

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Appendix: L. Frank Baum’s Genocide Editorials

1. The Sitting Bull Editorial (20 December 1890)Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.

He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to thegreatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.

He was an Indian with a white man’s spirit of hatred and revenge for those who hadwronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from theirpossessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working anduncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their deal-ings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild na-ture, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage stillburned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeanceupon his natural enemies.

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuriesof fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. Withhis fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whiningcurs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civili-zation, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlementswill 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 livethe miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, andspeak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved toheroism.

We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manlycharacteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins ofAmerica.

2. The Wounded Knee Editorial (3 January 1891):The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person asGeneral Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood toour soldiers, and a battle which, at its best, is a disgrace to the war department. There hasbeen plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would haveprevented this disaster.

The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmina-tion [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect

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our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamablecreatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldierswho are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full oftrouble 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 whiteswin a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre.”

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