Page 106 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

C H APT E R TH R E E

Because the possibility f scalping dominated the minds o f many
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women, such thoughts led to a variety of protective measures. Going
west as a child in 8 6 r , Lucy Fosdick not only heard much about scalp­
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ing, but had her hair cropped short by her mother before departure.7
In r 874, another young woman, Emily Andrews, was so certain that two
T o nqua Indian guides had a peculiar " desire f o r light haired scalps" that
she "kept a good distance f r om them" throughout the journey.8 Even
near the turn of the twentieth century the situation had not noticeably
improved. Although Native Americans were largely vanquished, the
rumor mills continued to churn. One woman of the r890S said she had
heard so much about the Indians she was convinced she would be
scalped. One of her contemporaries related her consternation in more
detail.As a girl of sixteen in r 895, Mary Ellen Williams joined her f a ther's
f a mily, consisting of a Choctaw wife and offspring; she confessed she
"was absolutely scared to death." She continued, "I didn't expect any­
thing else but to be scalped if Dad got out of my sight."9 As late as r 8 99,
Martha Lowrence remembered her neighbors in Missouri warning her
family that Indians "would kill us and scalp us and burn us up and that
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they were bad people." o
It is litde wonder that many women expected to be scalped when
they actually met American Indians f o r the first time. With so many
traumatic stories f r esh in their minds, more than one woman's thoughts
f o cused immediately upon her hair as natives approached. When shad­
ows against the sky materialized into Indians, Annie Baker reacted in a
typical f a shion by "expecting momentarily to be scalped by the
Redskins."II In r870, some ten years after the Baker episode, Mabel
Beavers displayed a similar response when she was met at the train by
"a couple of f u ll blood Indians." Despite the f a ct that she had come to
teach school in the Oklahoma Indian e rritory, Beavers was consumed
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by fright. "I just knew," she said later, "that if one of those Indians had
touched my hair, my scalp would have come off without any pulling."
Although Indians treated Beavers with respect and consideration, she
remained a prisoner of her uneasiness. Her explanation was a simple yet
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telling one: "They were Indians. Horrors " 2
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Because the inflammatory f a mily legends of American Indian atroc­
ities that spurred such reactions pervaded the nineteenth century and