Page 108 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

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Other migrants were exposed o more startling conveyors f news.
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On her way fr om Wisconsin to California in 8 50, Lucene Parsons noted
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that bones were used as bulletin boards to report the exploits of Native
Americans. "We see writing on bones every day stating the deeds of the
Indians," she wrote. A few days later she added, "Here we saw a bone
stating that Indians had run off 17 mewls & horses."17 Later in the
decade, Helen Carpenter remarked that, in spite of the many rumors,
her party had not been overly concerned about Indians until they too
"found little messages by the roadside, written in pencil, on the bleached
bones of animals such as 'look out f o r the Indians; Indians ran off all the
stock of train ahead'; etc. etc."18
Apparently, when it came to reporting "Indian troubles," whether
real or f a bricated, ingenuity and imagination were unlimited. In 1 8 50,
Margaret Frink was disturbed by a rather sophisticated alarm system in
the fo rm of printed circulars distributed to emigrants. She was f u rther
distressed when the natives and "their doings" became the f o cus of camp
conversation. Soon she began "to think that three men, one woman, and
one eleven-year old boy, only armed with one gun and one Colt's
revolver, are but a small fo rce to defend themselves against many hos­
tile Indian tribes, along a journey of two thousand miles."!9
Other migrants were also intimidated by conjecture and story­
telling.20 The after-dinner fireside especially encouraged such activity.
In Cyrus Hurd's view, "It will do in the States to tell those stories fo r
f u n, but when you come to the spot it ain't so pleasant."2! More than a
decade later, in 1864, Mallie Stafford lamented the effectiveness of a
fireside gathering she attended in what she called "the middle of
Colorado Indian country." She declared that "the conversation naturally,
under the circumstances, centered on Indian stories, Indian attacks,
crossing the plains, etc., and as the night wore on they grew more and
more eloquent-it seemed to me they were gifted with an awful elo­
quence on that particular subject."22
For most migrants, the word-of-mouth reports that constantly
buffeted the wagon trains served as the main source of their consterna­
tion.23 Helen Love said she had listened to so many stories that by the
time she reached Fort Kearney in 1 8 53, she could no longer sleep. She
thought she "heard wolves howling and Indians screaming and all sorts

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