Page 124 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

C H APTER THREE

Indians, tossed her his rifle and shouted at her to get in the back of the
wagon. "Should they attack us and capture me and you see that you can
not escape," he yelled, "you will have the gun and can decide what you
wish to do about your life." 122 Another woman with small children wore
a locket on a thin gold chain; while beautiful, the locket contained a
meticulously f o lded paper and inside were small pellets of cyanide f o r
her and her children to consume rather than f a ce capture by Native
Americans. 12 3 In these cases and probably many others, the threat came
to naught and neither the pills nor the gun were ever employed. 12 4
T o other men, such precautions were impractical or unattractive.
They left their homes and f a milies to conduct business in nearby towns
or county seats, to work fields, to hunt, to fight Indians, and fo r a vari­
ety of other reasons.Yet the terror experienced by the women left behind
them was crushingly painful, even though it might be inspired by imag­
ination rather than by reality. Given the intensity of their terror, numer­
ous women maintained equanimity and even rejected alarmist thinking
regarding natives. Furthermore, despite nineteenth-century stereotypes
of hysterical women and stoic men, not all men were as imperturbable
as they were reputed to have been. Despite supposedly steady hands and
stout hearts, men's courage occasionally displayed cracks.
Men were also scared. Some imagined a fe w American Indians turn­
ing into hordes. In one case, "hundreds" ofIndians turned out to be closer
to fifteen, and in another instance, "thousands were actually fo rty
Indians." 12 5 This tendency toward exaggeration was viewed with scorn
by more implacable men. Byron McKinstry, a member of a train headed
toward the California gold fields in 1 8 50,jeeringly wrote in his journal
about a f e llow traveler. He wished "the Indians had Potts and half a dozen
more of our co. that I could name, then our Indian trouble would be at
an end, at least the imaginary part of them." A f e w days later McKinstry
!
added: "We had a hard rain last night-and an alarm ofIndians ! ! Blood
!
and murder what shall we do? W e shall surely all be slain ! Why did we
not make our wills and have our lives insured before we adventured
among these horrible savages!" He wrote that later, as he was sleeping
in his tent,
Bang! Bang! from the guns of the sentinels . . . the cry of Indians!
.
Indians! from voices in every direction . . . I commenced dressing

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