Page 117 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P R O C E S S : VILIFYING

them," she later explained, "so I jumped to the conclusion that an Indian
was approaching me."77 Another young woman was embarrassed when,
armed with a shotgun and "thinking only of wild Indians come to scalp
us," she opened the door to encounter a startled young f a rmer f r om
Kansas standing on her doorstep.78 Later, yet another woman precipi­
tated a massive Indian scare when she "started running and screaming to
a neighbor's house" after mistaking her son-approaching home and
wearing a jaunty f e ather in a newly purchased hat-for an American
Indian.79
Moreover, some f r ontier people perpetrated hoaxes simply to scare
their companions or to make an attempt at humor.80 Settlers reported
perverse attempts at humor on the part of their neighbors. After a night
of terror, one woman sarcastically remarked that had they been able to
identifY the prankster who raised the alarm "there would have been some
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hair lost, but not by scalping. 81 Another woman described her own par­
ticipation in an attempt to reduce the bumptious male attitudes of a local
judge and attorney by surrounding their wagon with whites mas­
querading as natives. When the "Indians" struck with appropriate shout­
ing, yelling, and shooting, the driver of the wagon fe ll backward with the
exclamation, "I am shot; everyone f o r themselves"; the judge fled the
scene, and the attorney ran to a nearby fo rt to return with two groups
of soldiers. 82
Such scares f r equently caused people to flock into a town's center.
Convinced that strength as well as ultimate survival lay in joining fo rces,
settlers willingly left their homes, fields, and businesses to devote exces­
sive, and usually needless, amounts of time and energy to preparing their
defense. Men drilled, and women sewed all day to make tents, but often
it came to nothing and the distraught populace soon dispersed.83 One
Oklahoma woman of the 1880s recollected many such gatherings, admit­
ting that she could not "remember of there ever being a fight." On one
occasion, her mother "cooked up a whole sack of flour into bread and
baked several hens, boiled hams, etc.," to last them through a coming
siege. Rumor had it that the Indians were holding a war dance prepara­
tory to killing all the "pale f a ces," yet, given a little time, it too blew over. 84
Men and women spent inordinate amounts of time, energy, and
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resources in "fortin up. 8s Often this meant that they gathered in

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