Danish socialists and the Cheyenne 1878

[andersen]

This is Louis Pio, the founder of the Danish Labour Party (Socialdemokratiet) in 1871. He was kind of an upper class brat, lieutenant in the Danish/German War 1864 - and a charismatic left wing idealist in close contact with Marx and Engels. After the initial success forming a moderate socialist party in Denmark in the early 1870s, he was jailed in Copenhagen and thrown/bribed out of Denmark by the state. He arrived in NYC in the spring of 1877 with his close followers. One year later they were ready for their great trek, their great dream, founding a socialist colony under flying red flags in the Northwestern part of Kansas. The dream lasted only half a year. Came to an end in the Fall of 1878, when the Cheyenne of Little Wolf and Dull Knife came through these parts. In Danish archives we find nothing about this. It is seen as just an another string of the downfalls of Louis Pio, which led to his early death in Chicago in 1893, 53 years old. But what happened out in Kansas? How was the relationship with their German neighbours who was badly hit? Why did they give up their socialist dream?

I am a Danish screenwriter (Flammen og Citronen/Flame & Citron, WW2 movie, 2008) considering writing about either Camp Robinson 1876/77, Minnesota 1862 (Scandinavian angle) or lately more and more Sappa Creek 1878 (likewise Scandinavian/European angle).

This is most likely a TV-series - European/American.

Any inputs from a Native American perspective?

Best regards -- Lars K. Andersen.

Attachments:

[cinemo]

Hi andersen,

I think, there are a few small mistakes.

1. This Danish colonization ( Ellis County ) begun and ended in 1877, not in 1878 .

www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-collections-scandinavians/13742

Here an excerpt of this link :

An interesting Danish colonization project was the ill-starred and short-lived Socialist colony near Hays City, in Ellis county. It was begun and ended in 1877. The leaders were Louis Albert Francois Pio, Paul Geleff, and W. A. Hansen.[7] All were Socialists who had been forced, or at least found it advisable, to leave Denmark. There were eighteen colonists, some married and some single. They at once set to work to build a log cabin with separate apartments for the married and the unmarried. Tools and stock were purchased. The men worked "like hell." The women quarreled. And the naked prairie--save for an abundance of buffalo bones, rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, owls and an occasional soldier--seemed so unresponsive to the demands for a better social order, that the colonists could stand it no longer than six weeks. The property was then sold and the proceeds divided among the colonists, netting each some thirty dollars. ( ( exerpt end )

2. The Cheyenne group of Little Wolf and Dull Knife came in 1878 not through Ellis County, their
trail was more to the western part of Kansas.

3. Louis Pio died on June 27, 1894 , in Chicago

Greetings from Germany - cinemo

[andersen]

Thanks, cinemo, for this information, which will actually make the idea stronger, as it is one house, a tightly knit little group of people with a dream/a goal = a social experiment, they want to unfold the most unlikely place on Earth - and failing. You might say the story of many a hippie community in the 1970s, but taking place hundred years before. Given this new information, maybe more a feature film than a series. Depending on the conflicts between the characters. Thanks once again for a swift and efficient reply.