Page 115 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRONTIER P R O C E S S : VIL I F YING

Once again, the number of American Indians living in a region, the
degree of settlement that the area had achieved, the number of prob­
lems encountered, or the point in time did not seem to have any dis­
cernible correlation with the quantity of stories in circulation. Rather,
people's interpretation of the dangers inherent in their situations
influenced the number and scope of the tales. One Oregon woman of
the 1840S remembered that "often the news would come that the Indians
would murder us," rumors that resulted in her parents keeping all-night
vigils.65 Another Oregon woman maintained that although her f a mily
experienced several scares they were never molested and were probably
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"never in actual danger. 66 A T e xas woman of the 1860s recalled that an
attack became so imminent that men "wore guns in the f l eld and at all
times." In explaining people's fright, she exclaimed, "And Indians, Oh
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horrors, we expected to be massacreed at any time. 67 Significantly, these
women not only survived to make these statements but retained both
their wits and their scalps in the process.
As with trail events, newspaper editors were quick to print, and
often enlarge on, stories concerning Indian "atrocities." Hungry f o r
news to fill their pages and anxious to enlarge their readership, editors
often printed Indian atrocity tales that were unmarked by any degree
of taste or discrimination. As one woman noted in 1 8 56, she was sure
that a f r iend had received all the Indian news available fr om Oregon
T e rritory and "perhaps more" since news accounts "do not generally
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lose anything. 68 The same journalists who used rumors and scares to
justify the practice of excessive literary license, gave authentic armed
conflicts, such as one near Fort Phil Kearney in 1866, the grand treat­
ment. Army wife Margaret Carrington commented that "as there was
no one to contradict, and no one who knew the truth, a large margin
was left fo r the play of the f a ncy, and the imagination was drawn upon
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with great fr eedom and success. 69
Such unfounded tattle reinforced in eastern minds images of
marauding Native Americans. One fe male visitor to Wyoming, whose
travel account appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in 1875, said she
refrained fr om discussing the "Indian question" because "everybody all
over the East has an opinion ready f o rmed upon the subject."7o Other
writers were not so reticent. They offered to their readers accounts of

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