![]() | Indian Creek massacre was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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The article passed the GA review, meets the whole criteria, the only thing it needs is a good copyedit. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 20:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the requirements of the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Conflicts, battles and military exercises" articles. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. As a side not, a source should be added for "The entire massacre, which claimed 15 lives, took about 10 minutes to complete." If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have edited the article history to reflect this review. Regards, -- Nehrams2020 19:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Does not meet good article criteria "factually accurate". As mentioned at Talk:Mike Girty and Talk:Execution of Lucy and James Sample, problems have arisen from using old or non-scholarly sources that do not qualify as reliable sources. Much cleanup needed here and elsewhere. — Kevin Myers 04:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I can find no reliable source for the claim that cries of "Remember Indian Creek!" were heard from the Warrior before the Bad Axe massacre. It may be true, but the only mention of the phrase I can find on Google books is from a modern novel. The only source we have here is an unreferenced, amateur history article from DeKalb County Online (no longer live) that does not qualify as a reliable source. — Kevin Myers 14:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Alas, Mike Girty is probably a fictional person.
My suspicions were aroused after seeing him described on Wikipedia as leading the Indian Creek massacre, and yet no modern scholarly source on the Black Hawk War makes any mention of him. A recent biography of Simon Girty by Phillip Hoffman makes no mention of any Mike or Michael Girty, nor does the classic History of the Girtys by Butterfield, if I'm not mistaken. The Black Hawk War documents compiled by Ellen Whitney makes no mention of any Girty, as far as I can tell.
It appears that the story of Mike Girty in the Black Hawk War originated in 1872 with Reminiscences of Bureau County... by Nehemiah Matson. Matson was an amateur historian who embellished his books with tall tales. Or, as this article says: "Because of his indiscriminate mixing of fact and legend, however, scholars generally discount his books as valid sources." Matson does get cited by scholars on occasion, but they've apparently rejected the Mike Girty story as fiction or an unfounded local legend.
This illustrates the importance of adhering to the Wikipedia guideline of using only reliable sources to write articles. The main source used for this article is a self-published book on canoeing, which absolutely does not qualify as a reliable source for a history article.
So what do we do? We must get rid of the unreliable sources, to be sure. That would leave us with very little. Do we then delete the article? Or do we keep it to alert unwary readers of old or unreliable books that the Mike Girty story has not been repeated by modern scholars? — Kevin Myers 10:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
In his discussion of the Massacre at Indian Creek, Rajtar, Steve, Indian War Sites: A Guidebook to Battlefield, Monuments and Memorials, State by State with Canada and Mexico, McFarland & Company, Jefferson North Carolina, 1999 lists works by (1) Gurko, (2) Havighurst, (3) Edmunds, and (4) Eby as his sources. All seem to have been published in the 1970s and I have access to none of them. Let me know if you need more information.
Also, while I have you here, I think that the drawing in the article needs to go. It was (
opinion) produced as anti native propaganda at a time when
Manifest Destiny was considered the only way to go and we (White Americans) needed "reasons" to show why our treatment of the natives was civilized and civilizing and this sort of image was produced to do that. "See what savages these primitives are? We need to get them away from us. Etc." Einar aka
Carptrash (
talk)
20:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Anyone have access to all four volumes of the Black Hawk War documents compiled by Ellen Whitney? The first two volumes are online at the Internet Archive, but the final two appear not to be. This is unfortunate, since Google Books hits about the Indian Creek massacre often point to snippet views of the final volume. Maybe someone can take a look and fill out a few details in this article.
In particular, it might be nice to have more details about Keewasee, Toquame, and Comee. Perry A. Armstrong, in The Sauks and the Black Hawk War (1887), reprints some court documents about the three. He also repeats the story told by Matson in Memories of Shaubena about the Indians disguising themselves with paint to avoid being identified by the Hall girls in court. This story doesn't seem believable, and is apparently not repeated in modern scholarly sources. Does Whitney say anything about this? Do tell! The books are:
Thanks! — Kevin Myers 19:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
There needed to be a better separation of the massacre from the war. And by attempting to explain what happened with the massacre and what happened with the war just jumped chronology too often unless you already knew the story and used it to confirm what you knew instead of understanding the timeline or issue development. SharpQuillPen ( talk) 18:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
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![]() | Indian Creek massacre was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The article passed the GA review, meets the whole criteria, the only thing it needs is a good copyedit. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 20:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the requirements of the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Conflicts, battles and military exercises" articles. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. As a side not, a source should be added for "The entire massacre, which claimed 15 lives, took about 10 minutes to complete." If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have edited the article history to reflect this review. Regards, -- Nehrams2020 19:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Does not meet good article criteria "factually accurate". As mentioned at Talk:Mike Girty and Talk:Execution of Lucy and James Sample, problems have arisen from using old or non-scholarly sources that do not qualify as reliable sources. Much cleanup needed here and elsewhere. — Kevin Myers 04:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I can find no reliable source for the claim that cries of "Remember Indian Creek!" were heard from the Warrior before the Bad Axe massacre. It may be true, but the only mention of the phrase I can find on Google books is from a modern novel. The only source we have here is an unreferenced, amateur history article from DeKalb County Online (no longer live) that does not qualify as a reliable source. — Kevin Myers 14:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Alas, Mike Girty is probably a fictional person.
My suspicions were aroused after seeing him described on Wikipedia as leading the Indian Creek massacre, and yet no modern scholarly source on the Black Hawk War makes any mention of him. A recent biography of Simon Girty by Phillip Hoffman makes no mention of any Mike or Michael Girty, nor does the classic History of the Girtys by Butterfield, if I'm not mistaken. The Black Hawk War documents compiled by Ellen Whitney makes no mention of any Girty, as far as I can tell.
It appears that the story of Mike Girty in the Black Hawk War originated in 1872 with Reminiscences of Bureau County... by Nehemiah Matson. Matson was an amateur historian who embellished his books with tall tales. Or, as this article says: "Because of his indiscriminate mixing of fact and legend, however, scholars generally discount his books as valid sources." Matson does get cited by scholars on occasion, but they've apparently rejected the Mike Girty story as fiction or an unfounded local legend.
This illustrates the importance of adhering to the Wikipedia guideline of using only reliable sources to write articles. The main source used for this article is a self-published book on canoeing, which absolutely does not qualify as a reliable source for a history article.
So what do we do? We must get rid of the unreliable sources, to be sure. That would leave us with very little. Do we then delete the article? Or do we keep it to alert unwary readers of old or unreliable books that the Mike Girty story has not been repeated by modern scholars? — Kevin Myers 10:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
In his discussion of the Massacre at Indian Creek, Rajtar, Steve, Indian War Sites: A Guidebook to Battlefield, Monuments and Memorials, State by State with Canada and Mexico, McFarland & Company, Jefferson North Carolina, 1999 lists works by (1) Gurko, (2) Havighurst, (3) Edmunds, and (4) Eby as his sources. All seem to have been published in the 1970s and I have access to none of them. Let me know if you need more information.
Also, while I have you here, I think that the drawing in the article needs to go. It was (
opinion) produced as anti native propaganda at a time when
Manifest Destiny was considered the only way to go and we (White Americans) needed "reasons" to show why our treatment of the natives was civilized and civilizing and this sort of image was produced to do that. "See what savages these primitives are? We need to get them away from us. Etc." Einar aka
Carptrash (
talk)
20:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Anyone have access to all four volumes of the Black Hawk War documents compiled by Ellen Whitney? The first two volumes are online at the Internet Archive, but the final two appear not to be. This is unfortunate, since Google Books hits about the Indian Creek massacre often point to snippet views of the final volume. Maybe someone can take a look and fill out a few details in this article.
In particular, it might be nice to have more details about Keewasee, Toquame, and Comee. Perry A. Armstrong, in The Sauks and the Black Hawk War (1887), reprints some court documents about the three. He also repeats the story told by Matson in Memories of Shaubena about the Indians disguising themselves with paint to avoid being identified by the Hall girls in court. This story doesn't seem believable, and is apparently not repeated in modern scholarly sources. Does Whitney say anything about this? Do tell! The books are:
Thanks! — Kevin Myers 19:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
There needed to be a better separation of the massacre from the war. And by attempting to explain what happened with the massacre and what happened with the war just jumped chronology too often unless you already knew the story and used it to confirm what you knew instead of understanding the timeline or issue development. SharpQuillPen ( talk) 18:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Indian Creek 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:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:55, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Indian Creek 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:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 02:17, 13 November 2017 (UTC)