Page 119 - 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

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f r equented the f o rt. e t she noted that a serious alarm had been created
by nothing more than a herd of buffalo. 93 Another army wife, Ada o gdes,
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who considered herself a "nervous excitable person," stated that she was
unsuited fo r life in places such as Fort Laramie and Fort Fetterman during
the 1 8 60s. As a result, she spent most of her time being "frightened to
death." This state of mind caused her to mistake coyotes, dogs, two
drunken cooks, and a soldier returning stealthily f r om the quarters of a
laundress, f o r Indians. She refused to leave the f o rt fo r outings with her
husband because she was "frightened nearly to death f o r f e ar we might
encounter some Indians." And when an unfounded alarm swept the f o rt
she professed herself, once again, to be "frightened to death."94
Given the existence of such tension . and worry on the part of so
many settlers, it is little wonder that when actual Native Americans
appeared they were blamed f o r all manner of misdoing. Expecting
Indians to be disreputable and troublesome, settlers eagerly laid a wide
spectrum of offenses at the f e et of available natives. An Iowa woman of
the early 1 8 30S described the alacrity with which some whites assigned
a missing hat and ax to Indian theft. When they discovered the articles,
they simply dismissed their mistake with a "hearty laugh."95 Some years
later, during the Civil W a r, another Iowa woman quickly jumped to the
conclusion that a begging Indian was undoubtedly a Sioux spy.96
Such reactions were usually irrational. Several Oklahoma women
admitted that they had f e ared American Indians because they did not
know how to handle difference, in this case, clothing, dirtiness, singing,
and "jabbering and grunting" speech. In reality, Indians had never harmed
them.97 Another Oklahoma woman remembered that her distrust of
Indians was instilled in her by her mother, who would spend Sunday
mornings distractedly watching natives file by the house on their way to
church at a nearby mission.98 On one particular Sunday morning in 8 84,
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in Canon City, Colorado, ragged and begging Indians disrupted church
service and caused a general chaos during which many people screamed
and others fainted. Y e t once they had been given bread and other
f o odstuffs, the Indians quietly departed.99
Many settlers responded to an Indian's approach by fleeing, either
to hide f o r days or weeks in a barn or in the nearby woods or to desert
the area entirely. 100 According to the Iowa settler Ambrose A. Call, after

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