Wikipedia confirms bilby's comments. As for Frank Baum, the author of the book, he was a terrible bigot who advocated the total annihilation of native Americans.
He was, and in unequivocal terms, plain and cruel in a way that was becoming uncommon for a man of his station, even at the time. In 1850, you could advertise bounties for Indian scalps in the local paper and there'd be no backlash. By 1890, the public was beginning to grow squeamish of overt calls for genocide, and celebrities in particular were starting to obscure their intentions with "Progressive" solutions like forced boarding schools, but Baum saw no reason to hide his intent behind pretty justifications or displaced blame. "
Why not annihilation?" he wrote that year in his obituary for the recently assassinated war hero of the Lakohta, Sitting Bull. "...
Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are".
(1)
The tension between Baum the kids book writer and Baum the genocidal maniac is something that Gregory Maguire did not shy away from when he adapted
Wizard of Oz into
Wicked, a dark fantasy critique that was also
recently put to film. In Maguire's version, the Witch of the East is the half-breed bastard daughter of an indigenous Quadling, a traveling adventurer co-opted into the ruling family by the witches' swinging parents, religious missionaries sent to Quadling Country. This becomes awkward when their other half-brother, the Wizard of Oz, orders a genocidal purge of the Quadling people so he can build a highway through their territory.
Guess what plotline got removed as
Wicked was adapted into a Broadway musical, and now a film again? Yep, you guessed it. The moral of
Wicked was once again downgraded from "being socially inappropriate is bad, but genocide is worse" to the more socially palatable "save the animals". Starring Ariana Grande!
