Page 118 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPT E R TH R E E

someone's well-built house, barn, r other outbuilding. Others resorted
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to utilizing mine shafts, specially dug caves, hotels, and town squares as
their f o rts. Time after time they spent sleepless, terror-filled nights
during which no siege transpired.86 In some places, notably T e xas, these
precautions were necessary. One early T e xas woman, Jonaphrene
Faulkner, claimed that the worst times came during the f u ll moon
because Indians preferred nights of"Commanche moons" to attack. In
her community , she added, people "began to look fo rward with dread
to those beautiful seasons that had heretofore been our greatest joy; and
many f a milies accustomed themselves, upon such nights, to 'fort up,' in
,,
the largest and strongest house in their settlement. 87 In another area of
T e xas, the women and children f o rted up and the men lay out in the
f e nce corners under the f u ll moon to protect their stock. 88
Unfortunately, unscrupulous whites took advantage of these occasions.
One group ofTexans entrusted their stock to a concerned army captain
while they fo rted up, never to see their animals or the man again. 89
In many locales, such structures as f o rts, stockades, and blockhouses
were built.9° In places that rapidly "settled up," f o rts never logged a
battle. At Fort Dodge in Iowa, which became a state as early as 1 8 46,
soldiers spent three years without incident. In 1 8 53, the f o rt was dis­
mantled and sold at public auction. The fo llowing year, the local man
who purchased it f o unded the city of Fort Dodge on the f o rt's original
site. In nearby Sioux City, the f o rt was never finished, and its timbers
were sold f o r firewood and building material.9I
Understandably, frontier people living in viable f o rts stretching
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across the e st were especially prone to such scares.92 Because they were
in the center of native populations and because it was their primary
f u nction to control these peoples, conflict with American Indians was
always an imminent possibility. Even given their belief in white superi­
ority, f o rt dwellers were afraid and suspicious of the people of color who
surrounded and outnumbered them. They were unwilling to test
whether white goodness could stand in the f a ce of attacking "savages."
Hence their nerves were f r equently rubbed raw with f o reboding. As a
case in point, Frances Carrington warmly described the f r iendly
Cheyenne living around Fort Laramie, the "feeling of perfect security"
at the f o rt itself, and the large number of American Indian children who

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