Big Massacre on the Prairie


Posted On: Thursday - June 1st 2023 7:51PM MST
In Topics: 
  Internets  TV, aka Gov't Media  Political Correctness  History  Media Stupidity  Americans



In the 1970s, there was a weekly hour-long TV show called Little House on the Prairie. For some reason, I can even remember the name of the star actress, Melissa Gilbert, who played little "Half Pint", aka, Laura Ingalls. This TV show was adapted from a series of popular fictional, but personal-account-based, books, first Little House in the Big Woods (that was in Wisconsin) and then Little House on the Prairie.*

The real-life Laura Ingalls, later Ingalls Wilder by marriage, was born in 1867. The Ingalls family had moved to what's now Independence, Kansas, due to Mr. Ingalls' mistaken believe that it could be settled. They found out if was Osage Indian territory, moved around more, and then ended up in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, about 50 miles west (where there's now US Highway 14) of Mankato. This was in 1876, when little Half Pint was 9 years old.

I was only looking up details on this old TV show because, under a Steve Sailer post** with opinion poll data on that persistent myth of the American Indians having lived in "peace and harmony"***, even without Co~Caine based Coca~Cola, a commenter had written something about Mark Twain's hatred of Indians and then another's about Laura Ingalls Wilder.

It happens that the young Miss Wilder moved with her family to Walnut Grove only 14 years after a Dakota Sioux massacre of 358 civilian men, women, and children near that very Mankato, Minnesota. That horrific event took place in 1862. I remember this history, but I wanted to look up a few details to write a comment.

A photo of residents who had fled the massacre by Dakota Sioux Indians:



This was another amazing realization for me of the evil deeds of the Lyin' Press, internet-search department. Looking up the terms "Mankato" and "massacre" and a couple of other words in combination gave me only the story - many blurbs worth - of the subsequent hanging of 38 Indians after the massacre of those 358 White settlers. That was based on US Gov't justice, as crude as it would have been, though better than today's, I'd guess. The list of people to be hanged was approved, as pared down from a from a larger list of over 300, by President Lincoln.

After DuckDuckGo refused to to give me the information I wanted, I tried the Russian Yandex site even. Nope, nobody wants to talk about the massacre of a significant number of the White settlers in the area, and if they do, the search engines don't want me to know about it, not directly. OK, I finally got to this message on a minor "message board".

Yes, I could read about the Dakota Wars, which is what this was part of. I don't dismiss the grievances of those Indians, BTW. The US Gov't had screwed over Indians all over the country, reneging on deals made left and right. The Dakota had had enough of it, and there was a 6 week-long war, and war can be hell. I'm no historian, but I don't believe the American soldiers would have massacred non-combatant Indians in this manner.

Whatever you think of that, it's sobering to keep in mind that young Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in a town very near where this massacre had occurred only 14 years prior. There were no myths of the peaceful and loving Indians in perfect harmony in mid-1800s Minnesota, out on the prairie. What had recently happened - as if in 2009 for us - was very REAL.


* Of course, as the first sold well, I imagine Mrs. Ingalls-Wilder and the publisher decided to keep rolling with this, hence, there were a number of the "Prairie" books, at least.

** Yeah, we're kind of glomming on his material ourselves this and last week but with different points.

*** For a great take on this from one of the tribe that presents the best rebuttal, read the Sam Gwynne book Empire of the Summer Moon about the Comanche tribe. Peak Stupidity has a 3 part review Part 1 - - Part 2, and Part 3.

Comments:
Corrupt
Wednesday - June 7th 2023 4:42PM MST
PS

“ Yes, I meant persistent from the time the "Indians as noble savages" really started up in earnest, say the 1960s. ”

It all started with the commercial of the Indian crying when someone threw trash at him.
Moderator
Monday - June 5th 2023 10:25AM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, I, for one, am glad to see you writing back on the UR again. You were very disciplined to have quit cold turkey and then kept to that for 3 years and a couple of months.

I hope it will help drive traffic to your blog also.
Hail
Saturday - June 3rd 2023 8:53PM MST
PS

Wow -- Mr. Smith finds that Jack Frazier was an Indian himself. According to that day-after report from 1862, Jack Frazier is the only local "trader" that the Indians spared during their raid into the town. They discriminated in their choice of victims.
Adam Smith
Saturday - June 3rd 2023 11:27AM MST
PS: Jack Frazier? The celebrated friendly half-breed?

https://athrillingnarrative.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/dscn3086.jpg

https://tinyurl.com/z7c6fd3t

https://www.radc.org/media/userfiles/subsite_60/files/history/Tablets_Monuments_small.pdf

Moderator
Friday - June 2nd 2023 5:53PM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, I agree with your nice essay in the comment @ 06/02-0717 MST. I don't think too much about polling either, and yours is a great explanation of some of its pitfalls. I can tell you that, not due to wanting to fit in, but due to my wanting to come in clearly on a particular side, I'd answer in favor of Blompf too on questions that were questionable to me. It'a feeling of making the pollsters or interpreters of polls clear on where I stand.

Yes, I meant persistent from the time the "Indians as noble savages" really started up in earnest, say the 1960s. Before that, they perhaps got more respect than they deserved, some of the time, going back until the day when there were people around who experienced the conflict. (It's one that's bound to happen between a people who believe in property rights and a people who don't understand it or want no part of it.)

It's hard to fight this myth, because the history is harder to find than more woke history, or people don't want to know.

That was an amazing desperate letter from Major Hatch to Col. Thompson! To think that this violence with large numbers of death to/of their people was going on, and it was pretty much a local thing at this point. (Later, the President got involved, but just to implement justice, without any emotional BS). 168 years later, one dumbass drug-addled reprobate died on the street, and the whole country went into a fit.

I couldn't agree more, Mr. Blanc. Thank you.
The Alarmist
Friday - June 2nd 2023 4:27PM MST
PS

Though, Mr Mod, Dieter fessed in earlier posts that Konstanz is in his neck of the woods, as is the Upper Rhein and the Bayrische Alpen.
MBlanc46
Friday - June 2nd 2023 8:50AM MST
PS When the Redskins (no, not the football team) weren’t butchering white folks, they were butchering each other. Bunch of danged savages for the most part. That doesn’t mean that the Europeans didn’t steal their land. But they stole it fair and square. (And didn’t, for the most part, simply slaughter the Indians [no, not the baseball team].) As far as I’m concerned, it’s ours, and I’m keeping my bit.
Hail
Friday - June 2nd 2023 7:54AM MST
PS

I feel certain that the Minnesota Indian uprising of 1862 has been well covered, written about in great detail in well-researched and well-presented books, over the years, in the 1860s and up through the 1970s at least.

That there is little info on the uprising online is a testament to the value of books, in paper form, firmly held, accessible. And the weaknesses of all info being funneled through the Internet-guzzle.

There may be nothing on the Indian massacre of 1862, but there is a 12,000-word wikipedia article on the DeSantis "Twitter Spaces" campaign-launch broadcast of last week...!
Hail
Friday - June 2nd 2023 7:48AM MST
PS

primary source

Letter published in the "St. Cloud Democrat" (newspaper serving the population of Stearns County, Minnestoa, then-population 7,500), the August 21st, 1862 edition:

____________

Major E. A. C. Hatch (at Fort Ridgley, Minnesota) to Colonel C. W. Thompson (at St. Cloud, Minnesota), dated Tuesday morning, Aug. 19th, 1862:

"...The Indians commenced killing at the Lower Agency, on Monday morning about 6 o'clock and it is believed that it was a preconcerted move. At nine o'clock the news reached this point and the captain commanding, left with forty-four men for Red Wood. They were ambushed at the crossing and only nineteen of them saved themselves. No officer saved. This will include or draw in all the Upper Indians, and you will be in danger without troops...

The Indians have plunder and scalps in abundance and say they will have more. How many were killed in the first attack it is impossible to tell as many are straggling in. All the traders I think are killed except Jack Frazier...

It is the most terrible uprising of Indians that has ever occurred in the West...

Yours &c.,
E. A. C. Hatch."

-

(note - The letter was said to be delivered by a Mr. Allen, who rode 150 miles over 22 hours to get the message to the relevant persons; the letter delivered to its recipient in St. Cloud at noon, Aug. 20th; the letter's contents were shared with the local newspaper publisher, who put it in the next morning's edition. The same edition carried many other reports as refugees reached St. Cloud, reporting farm families attacked and killed.)
Hail
Friday - June 2nd 2023 7:17AM MST
PS

- A general-theory of poll results under Wokeness -

This is not a revolutionary theory but it bears statement here:

Poll results often more reflect the views that people -think- that they should signal, and less what they really believe or know.

On many questions, a wide swathe of people actually have views/opinions/knowledge (or lack(s) thereof) that aresomewhere in the "Unsure / Don't Know" range. The news-quizzes they also sometimes give to representative-random samples of adults bear this out (and from this we have data to the effect that women score a standard-deviation lower than men on the news-relevant info quizzes, when facts are involved that are of the right-or-wrong sort: "Name the U.S. Secretary of State," "Which country is hosting the upcoming BRICS Summit to which Vladimir Putin may attend, in defiance of the international-court arrest warrant," etc.)

But on these "what are your views" polls, the Don't Knows generally are generally a few percent. A lot of people are being pushed or induced to take up one banner or another, and signaling overpowers logic or firm-reality-groundedness. This also works with right-wingers, as the 2000s-era polls all showed, for years (maybe into the 2010s), that Republican-leaners mostly believed Saddam secretly had WMD all along.

For most people, the categories "what I know/believe," and "what I perceive to be social consensus," and "what I should signal," are blended to the point of not being distinguishable.

(What Dernald Blompf and his promoters accomplished in the creation of his personality-cult was creating a shadow version of this signaling, in which his supporters will signal support for him regardless of hos much of an ineffective, cheap political con-man he is. And it works---by the same mechanism, I think; the supporters are signaling they are on Team Red America, or something, and Trump gets a pass. The recent wave of anti-vaccine hecklers he's had to deal with is a small exception.)

It's important to keep this in mind, because, if you tend to gravitate towards places and milieux in which the people are capable of, and willing to, make independent judgements, it's possible we start to think everyone can.

Those willing to seek, state, or favor Truth regardless (to a wide degree) of possible or actual social cost are quintessentially White-Western Males -- it's not even all of us but it's a lot, and it defines our culture and civilization. This is not the norm in other groups. But these poll respondent-pools are based all-adults.

To get to the nub of it:

These responders who say that the American-Indian was peaceful, very few of them know much about the American-Indian. Their response(s) are simply a statement-of-faith in Wokeness.

For some, the pro-Wokeness signaling is from actual belief or moral-commitment in the doctrines and moral-posture of Wokeness; for others, it is out of being intimidated by the social-power of our ruling-and-guiding ideology (i.e., Wokeness).

The final step in understanding the results: the pro-Wokeness signal going on here is not even about the American-Indian. It's actually signaling against White-Christians.
Dieter Kief
Friday - June 2nd 2023 7:11AM MST
PS
Bears do wander, Mod., heheh
Thx. Adam - that's the one - . Mod., since you mentioned it: This Helen Andrews gem about the alleged misuse of native people in Aus. & Can esp. - is great journalism.
Hail
Friday - June 2nd 2023 7:07AM MST
PS

"persistent myth of the American Indians having lived in "peace and harmony"..."

This is probably the wrong wording to use -- depending on what timeframe is meant to be implied by "persistent" in "persistent myth."

Since the first known post-Viking contacts with North America by Europeans, some Huguenots in the 1560s or so, and up to some time in the 20th century, probably in excess of four centuries, there was not much of such a myth. This myth is only as persistent as Wokeness and proto-Wokeness back a mere half-century or so.
Moderator
Friday - June 2nd 2023 5:55AM MST
PS: That's got to be the one, Adam. I may have read it, it being linked-to by an unz commenter probably.

BTW, I don't think Alpine Rhine Bear is Dieter Kief. Isn't it a different side of Germany/Switzerland, but more importantly, not enough typos!

Haha, no offense intended on that, Dieter Kief. Peak Stupidity makes quite a few, and English is our first language.
Adam Smith
Friday - June 2nd 2023 5:23AM MST
PS: Good morning, everyone,

Not sure if this is the article that Dieter is looking for...

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/stirring-up-hatred-against-indian-boarding-schools/

I'll have more time to look later.

I'm off to work. I hope you all have a great day!

Moderator
Friday - June 2nd 2023 4:55AM MST
PS: Thank you again for the link to an on-line book, Adam, and, in another recent post! I hope you will keep using that "handle" in the name field. If I gather them together, that will make it easier.
Moderator
Friday - June 2nd 2023 4:54AM MST
PS: True, Alarmist. That takes REAL, non-lazy-sitting-on-one's-ass-in-one's-underwear research, haha. I would imagine any real historian would take that route of going to actual physical libraries, something I remember doing but not wrt history. I see that as a lot more fun too, with the excitement of discovery, not just the sorting out of the chaff from the wheat.

As to this point, just as you noticed with the wiki page on the Dakota Wars, which I looked at too yesterday, you can find the information. The problem is that the search "engine" does not do a good job getting the information based on obvious (but unWoke) searches. One must already know some background - for example, that there WAS a Dakota War in this part of Minnesota - to get to the facts he is looking for.

What ticked me off is that the words "massacre" and "Mankato" together kept getting me to blurbs about the "massacre" of the 38 Indians. That was NOT a massacre, but the results of a war trial or inquiry as to the most guilty of the perpetrators of the actual massacre. It turns the story around. If a searcher just reads the blurbs, he'll have to wrong story of this history, probably from then on...
Moderator
Friday - June 2nd 2023 4:47AM MST
PS: Hey, we have another Deutsch man here. Good to read from you, Alpine Rhine Bear. I'm sure you can look other info up, but the commenter here - -

https://www.unz.com/isteve/skeptic-research-center/#comment-5986906

only left a long excerpt from Mr. Twain's (Sam Clemen's) writing.

I am glad you at least got a letter into that newspaper. Wasn't it Mark Twain too who wrote something about "A lie can go around the world in the time it takes the truth to put its boots on"?

I'll check out your links, and I hope you can re-find that Helen Andrews article. I have a friend who worked some job on the western Canada Indian Res's back in the 1970s. He didn't have too much good to say - not about the things you wrote about but just severe drunkeness and shootings, usually going on together.
Peak Stupidity Book Club
Friday - June 2nd 2023 4:44AM MST
PS: True Grit by Charles Portis

https://tinyurl.com/2p9ar52t

Moderator
Friday - June 2nd 2023 4:38AM MST
PS: SafeNow, I had to go to IMDB (which I'm about to bad-mouth in the very next post) because I didn't remember this, but and episode of the Little House on the Prairie show named "Freedom Flight" was about Indians.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0633008/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl

IMDB Summary:

"An Indian chief needs help from a white man's doctor and the closest town is Walnut Grove. Most of the townspeople want to massacre the Indians because of what other Indians had done to them in the past. Charles and Dr. Baker take the chief, his adult son (acting chief) and his son's two children to Ingalls' house to stay until the chief is well enough to travel. Unfortunately, some of the townspeople find out that the chief is there and they want to come kill him, so Charles transports them to safety."

Interesting. There must have been some back and forth between Mrs Wilder and any other kin and then the writers and directors on what was PC enough to put in the show. This was December of 1977, so the American love-fest for Indians had been going on for a decade or so already.

Oh, as to your point, I don't know if there's a TV plot factor nowadays. All the kid get info off the www, and those apps just let the wrong attitudes get amplified. It's a whole 'nother level beyond the influence of TV. But I think the show was done as you assumed, SafeNow.
The Alarmist
Friday - June 2nd 2023 3:27AM MST
PS

Surpringly, the Wikipedia entry on the Dakota wars is not as biased as I would have expected.

🕉

The Alarmist
Friday - June 2nd 2023 3:22AM MST
PS

I remember having a thing for the mum, played by smoldering-hottie California-girl Karen Grassle. Women back then were natural beauties without all the fillers that make many modern-day women look like fat-bottomed platypuses.

A lot of the history exists in print or physical form in libraries and other repositories, and the “sendible” custodians get to decide what is indexed or even scanned and put on the net, so it’s not just the censorious search engines keeping this stuff away from you. If you made a trip to a U of M library and looked through its stacks or fiches of local papers, you’d likely find what Mr. Paul Harvey, RIP ✝️, used to call “ the rest of the story.”
Alpine Rhine Bear
Friday - June 2nd 2023 12:10AM MST
PS

You can talk about this subject of indigenous violence if it is neatly packed. Steven Pinker is amongst the Top-Packers out there

https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1663907146927357959?s=20

I wrote a letter to the editor of our regional paper Südkurier about a year ago because a Canadian Indian woman by the name of Grizzlyclaws was giving lecturs and workshops at the Constance Youth Center Raitheberg about how the Canadian Indians were mentally ruined by the catholic schools that were set up in the nineteenth century to school them. And the Cathlics would even have killed Indigenous people in great numbers - - -

They did print my letter with reference to an article by Professor Roubillard, who said that there was not the least bit of evidence that this widely publicised story of death by catholic monks and nuns would be true.
google thsi link to a great article in tThe Dorcheter Review:

In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found – The Dorchester Review

The leftist/marxist Canadian writer Frances Widdowson is also a fierce critic of indigenous corruption and social decay not least of the leaders in the reservationshttps:

//www.mqup.ca/disrobing-the-aboriginal-industry-products-9780773534216.php

The really good journalist Helen Andrews (Adam de-paywalled her Sailer-portrait)  dived into the history of sexual abuse of Native Canadians and found reports about Indians in Canadian reservations that were so utterly devastating, that at times the government decided to send the military: The Mountain Police wasn't strong neough...
Turned out that in some reservations, there was no Indian kid that would not have been sexually abused time and time again, - - -all by the Indians (there are similar stories about Aborigines in Australia).

I had the link to Helen Andrews article - but  - - -now it is gone! - and goolge says: Nothing about this subject by Helen Andrews out there - - - I might try again later.
   
If somebody had a Mark Twain source about his hatred of Indians, I'd be grateful. I loved this guy's books as a kid. I think I still like him a lot. Wonder if Charles Portis (True Grit - - -this is one for eternity - - -and for the PS book club of course) had read a lot of Mark Twain - - and Tom Wolfe and whether Tom wolfe knew about Mark Twains indigenous hatred btw. that would all be interesting stuff, hehe.. Have a nice day Mod. - - and öh - - fellow-Peakers!
SafeNow
Thursday - June 1st 2023 9:49PM MST
PS
Back in my ancient, pre-Little-House day, the plot-line of weekly tv shows consisted of a new stressor emerging, and then being rationally, non-violently, managed. I assume Little House followed that template. This would sure be historically inaccurate, considering the massacres etc. on the actual Prairie. Over the last few years, my belief has been that the high prevalence of people settling disputes violently results in part from never having viewed shows like those viewed, in which a peaceable solution is forged, and everyone comes out a winner. Ward Cleaver never sent to Beaver, “Beaver, here’s a gun, go out and shoot Whitey.”
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