Page 122 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

C H APTE R T H R E E

-- The Role o f Gender --

Even though the climate of fe ar that whites created on the trail and in
settlements affected men and women, women were generally more hys­
terical in their reactions to alarms than were men. Because of nine­
teenth-century dictums concerning woman's weak and nervous nature
as opposed to man's strong and calm disposition, fr ontier people believed
that the threat of Indian troubles was more debilitating to women than
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to men. On a wagon train en route f r om Illinois to the Willamette a lley
in 1845, the cry of lndians caused the "frightened men," as one person
described them, to arm themselves and to f o rm a corral, whereas the
women, all in a state of panic, reacted by crying, wringing their hands,
and praying. III During her 1 8 53 trip f r om T e xas to California, Maggie
Hall similarly described male and f e male behavior in the f a ce of alarms.
The "groundless scares in the night," she said, were "very exasperating"
to her f a ther, but "they made the women nervous and sick."II2 Some
years later, in 1 8 73, on a train moving fr om Kansas to T e xas, Olivia
Holmes tersely noted that "we got up a little excitement about the
Indians but it did not amount to anything" except to "frighten us
women f o lks."II3
In numerous cases, women raised the alarms, often to the scorn or
amusement of their menfolk. In 1 8 53, on her way fr om Iowa to Oregon,
Catherine W a shburn jotted in her diary that "some of the women were
very much allarmed to night they thought they herd the Indians coming
to attack us which turned out to be the fe rry rope splashing in the
water."II4 In another incident of " Indian excitement" at Fort Dawes in
1 8 65, Samuel Newcomb disdainfully described distraught women gath­
ering their children and running "from place to place like they had lost
all reason." Il5 As late as 1900, Lois Brown awakened her husband to
inform him that natives were whispering and conniving among some
nearby trees, but he took it calmly; he laughed and told her that her
Indians were only screech owls. II6
Y e t, in several instances when American Indians were believed to
be attacking, some women maintained their composure. They neither
cringed in terror nor f e ll into an incoherent state of hysteria. Instead,

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