Page 116 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPTER THREE

"uprisings," embellished beyond belief. In 1 8 76, the Nebraska settler
Caroline Winne denigrated such overstatements. "Oh what a f a rce it is,"
she wrote her f a mily back East. "Come to get down to the f a cts of
Crook's expedition, the one hundred Indians killed amounted to just 4
killed." She added that "as there were f o ur soldiers killed and light
wounded . . . we f a iled to see the success-but twas a f a mous victory."71
Still, easterners who wanted to believe such bilge did so. The parents of
traveler Ellen Biddle became so alarmed that they entreated her to return
home. Biddle explained that the reports of an Indian alarm had reached
her f a mily through "newspapers in the East, and had lost nothing in tran­
sit."72
Y e t it was settlers themselves who caused the most chaos. Anything
that moved was suspect by these anxiety-ridden fr ontier people.
T u mbleweeds driven by the passing wind were imaginary Native
Americans f o r some Nebraska homesteaders. A colt alarmed some
Kansans, a screeching hoot owl fr ightened some Oklahomans, and a lone
mouse trying unsuccessfully to climb out of a tin dish of water became
an Indian intruder in an Iowa f a rmhouse.73 Shadowy Sioux dressed in
their white blankets and stalking through a dark and fo ggy barnyard were
discovered by other Iowa f a rmers to be no more than a flock of geese,
while a hired man carrying a fe atherbed through the fo g alarmed still
others.74 The era seemed to make little difference in peoples' f e ar. Near
Denver in the early 8 00s, f o r example, some Mexican cattle drovers were
1
discovered to be the source of similar trouble.7s In Oklahoma, nearly one
hundred years later, a noisy charivari party f o llowing a wedding was
enough to convince people that Native Americans were killing and scalp­
ing their neighbors. Although the citizens of the nearby town rallied to
the call by organizing an army of defense and emptying the hardware
stores of arms and ammunition, no Indians appeared and one more upris­
ing failed to occur.76
In addition, as on the trail, settlers often mistook a dismaying array
of people and things f o r American Indians. With their consternation at
an untenably high level, they determined that an attack was imminent
T
f r om the flimsiest evidence. During the 1870S in T e xas, May a nsill con­
cluded that a man approaching her was an Indian because he wore some­
thing red. "I had always f a ncied that Indians wore some thing red about

108