Talk:Spirit Lake Massacre

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)

POV
An editor has removed material and cites about the causes and aftermath of the massacre, claiming these are biased sources. The solution is not to add unsourced POV content with inflammatory language (blatantly, racist, etc.), but to find reliable third-party sources that support contemporary historical thinking, and takes into account the context of the Dakota actions. While the captivity narratives never pretended to be objective accounts, they are told by one party in the events and cannot be totally discounted. Other points of view can be presented here and have probably been covered in academic histories.Parkwells (talk) 19:03, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

The argument goes on and on (forever), who initiated a conflict, who is the most to blame, who was the most innocently provoked and who has the greatest shocking unprovoked horror of slaughter, torture and rape, who suffered the most? There is no answer, this was war and there is often little justification. This is obviously a bleeding heart version, a very very old and incomplete rendition. I agree it should be reworked and details added, I wish I was a writer. It is supposed to be history, please take your platforms and personal feelings elsewhere. 10 June 2014 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.115.25.128 (talk) 16:28, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Spirit Lake Massacre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20051218234009/http://members.aol.com:80/dlbristow/inkpadut.htm to http://members.aol.com/dlbristow/inkpadut.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 16:24, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 one external links on Spirit Lake Massacre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081223142314/http://www.iowahistory.org:80/historic-sites/gardner-cabin/index.html to http://www.iowahistory.org/historic-sites/gardner-cabin/index.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060208012210/http://www.iowanationalguard.com:80/pages/Pub_Affair/history/Spirit_Lake_NS_Borders.html to http://www.iowanationalguard.com/pages/Pub_Affair/history/Spirit_Lake_NS_Borders.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051224162417/http://ftp.rootsweb.com:80/pub/usgenweb/ia/dickinson/history/splkmass.txt to http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ia/dickinson/history/splkmass.txt
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060325051541/http://www.iowagreatlakes.com/_ent/areaattractions/sl_massacre/index.asp to http://www.iowagreatlakes.com/_ent/areaattractions/sl_massacre/index.asp

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 02:21, 2 December 2016 (UTC)