WOUNDED KNEE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2011

WOUNDED KNEE

December 29 is an important date for me, in my history as a writer. It appeared earlier today on a friend’s page, and I included some of the following information in my comments. But I don’t see it any more; maybe just another Facebook mystery.

         On December 28, 1890, troops under the command of Colonel James Forsyth, US Army, moved about 350 Lakota Sioux into an encampment near Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

         The following morning, the encampment was surrounded by a superior number of soldiers (Wikipedia’s report says 500) who had four Hotchkiss guns among them, strategically placed on high points overlooking the Lakota camp. A Hotchkiss gun was a light, mule-portable mountain artillery piece (1.65”, or 42mm); or, depending on the model, a rapid-firing 37mm early machine gun.

         At daybreak, Forsyth ordered the Indians to surrender all weapons. As the story goes, one old man, who was either deaf or did not understand English, or both, was struggling to keep his rifle, which went off in the struggle and killed a soldier.

         Little more than an hour later, 150 Lakota men, women and children (mostly women and children) lay dead on the snowy prairie (it was December in South Dakota), along with about 25 white soldiers. (Some of whom may have been killed by friendly fire; it was by all accounts a chaotic day.)

         Sometime late in 1990, I asked my editor at a small weekly in Santa Cruz, California, if I could write a review of the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” which was coming to town. He said “Write it, and let me see it.”

         I went downtown to a store that rented VCRs and video tapes, and asked the proprietor if he’d let me sit in the store and watch “The Wizard…” as it was coming to town and I wanted to write a review.

         Hm… no-brainer: more business. “Sure,” he said, “have a seat.”

         I sat through the movie, took lots of notes, and went home and wrote a piece that said Dorothy’s neighbor had every right to call the Sheriff because her dog Toto had been tearing up the neighbor’s garden, and anyway the Sheriff didn’t shoot the dog, just scolded Dorothy. So then, in the movie, the neighbor lady, who was only trying to protect her garden, metamorphoses into the Wicked Witch of the West.

         Later, the Wizard turns out to be a bullshit artist, the Cowardly Lion has his affliction cured by pinning a medal on his chest, and the Scarecrow and the Tin Man receive equally phoney solutions to their problems. When Dorothy wants to go home, all she has to do is click her red shoes together.

         I called bullshit on much of that: is this the stuff we want to raise our kids on? Tread on our neighbors’ rights, then send in troops when they get uppity about it?

         That editor usually accepted what I wrote -  typically an article about Reagan’s interventionist policies in Central America, mainly Nicaragua and El Salvador – without objection. But as I waited for a reaction to the review of Oz, none came. Finally I went in to see the editor: “Did you see my review?”

         He reached into a drawer, took out a manila envelope containing my manuscript, and tossed it rudely across the desk toward me. He didn’t say anything, but when I picked up the envelope, I saw he had scrawled across the front “Wizard of Odd.” I turned and left the room, to the accompaniment of snickers of my fellow staffers, the same people who were usually very supportive of my antiwar writings, and which were generally well received in that town which would later elect at least one Socialist mayor, and which was often lumped together with Berkeley as havens for leftists.

         Some weeks later, in late December, I was driving in four lanes of heavy traffic on Soquel Drive, at the end of the work day. Traffic was so heavy it just inched along, but I was content to listen to “All Things Considered” on NPR.

         A report came on which noted the 100^th Anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29^th, 1890. A woman historian was being interviewed. I didn’t catch her name, but she said that a few days after the massacre, a South Dakota newspaper editor wrote in his editorial advocating the extermination of the Sioux.

         That editor, she said, was L. Frank Baum, who was later to write and publish “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

         My shout was so loud it drew surprised and frightened looks from drivers and passengers across the four lanes of stalled traffic: I knew it! I FUCKING KNEW IT!!

         My shout, not understood by the alarmed motorists nearby, was an expression of self-righteous delight at my take weeks earlier on the story content of the “Wizard of Oz,” before I knew anything about L. Frank Baum, or very much about the massacre at Wounded Knee. It was all right there, in a story which millions of American families read to their children.

         I had seen it, looking at the story with the eyes I’d had in my head since I left the burning village of Tho An, over twenty years earlier.