Talk:Spirit Lake Massacre

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MINOR?

What is "minor" about the slaughter of 40 innocent people? Would the author dare use such language if the victims were Indians massacred by whites?

Yes, this is minor compared to the other atrocities committed against the D/L/Nakota Sioux. Either way, the white folk has all of Iowa to live in without any trouble from us.

    Wade Crowe, enrolled with the Yanktonai Hunkpati Dakota Sioux of Crow Creek, South Dakota

Tuelj (talk) 16:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)I would concur with eliminating "minor." No killing of non-combatants is minor. The whole term "massacre" is problematic. It is way too generally tossed about including a lot of references to battles between legitimate combatants that happen to have been lost by the US or European forces, e.g. "The Fetterman Massacre." But Wiki-pedia uses the term all over so I guess that stands.

Beyond this, the article is generally poor as an encyclopedic article. (Sorry to whoever started it.) It lacks detail and specific references to key facts. (Was the one reference actually the only one used? Page numbers? Wiki isn't super formal (sort of a Chicago ref. style) but generally an article should be as tight as an undergrad research paper would be.) It is confusing about the sites--Camp Foster was only one site of confrontation and is miles away from Gardner-Sharp Cabin. There is no detail of the dénouement of Inkpaduta's band after Southern Minnesota mobilized, nothing about the misconceptions that Cantor and the 1927 film inspired, etc. I also have never seen the Dakota Oyate's band name transliterated as "Wahpekute." And I haven't researched it lately but if I remember right from my reading/oral tradition years ago Inkpaduta had Wahpeton and/or Sisseton band members with him too.

This article just really needs to be expanded/edited to include some more detail about the actual killing (the sequence at least) of non-combatants and about the Dakota's motivators--for instance that Inkpaduta's band was starving after one of the worst winters in memory. It also would be relevant to mention that Marble Cabin was probably viewed by the Dakota as a desecration of a sacred religious site. It should include more on the details of the captives. These details don't have to politicize the article if a strict historiographic approach is taken.

On a semi-political note--it's time for people to get a little smarter and stop using often pejorative names for the Nations. I think that except for the first parenthetical reference to Sioux at the beginning all other instances should be Dakota. I may be in error--should the "D" be an "N"?--but point being it should not be Sioux; it should be what the people refer to themselves as.Tuelj (talk) 16:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)