Page 148 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

C H APT E R FOUR

recognize 'The noble red man.'" She concluded that Indians were "lazy,
dirty, obnoxious-looking creatures."45
One indication of white conceit was women's habit of calling
Indians "creatures."The repeated use of "creature," which implies some­
thing less than a human being, suggests that to many white women
American Indians were not really people.46 One Indian practice that rein­
f o rced this view was the habit of some groups eating insects, including
crickets and locusts. Women who sanctioned or even advocated drink­
ing alcohol, devouring f o ods dripping with butter or pork grease, eating
highly spiced or sugared dishes, and the use of tobacco and snuff, f o und
the consumption of insects disconcerting, at best, and repulsive, at worst.
W o men's appraisals of such practices were quick and acrimonious.
When Algeline Ashley observed Utah Indians pulling wings off locusts
and harvesting them in sacks, she declared that they were "very low
Indians and very ugly 100king."47 The reaction was even more vituper­
ative when the insects were lice. One California settler of the early 1850S
watched an Indian woman eating lice from her husband's head, while,
according to her, she was f e eding him a few of the choice ones. The set­
tler stated unequivocally that Indians were contemptible objects because
of the " extreme indolence of their nature, the squalid conditions in which
they live . . . and the general imbecility of their intellects."48 Helen Stewart
indicated that she preferred Indians to avoid her camp because they were
not only "the durtyist creatures I ever saw" but "they will pick the lice
out of there head and eat them."49 Unfortunately , these women seldom
analyzed economic realities or customs ofIndians.They were equally slow
to understand the eating of f a re that they f o und unacceptable. Instead,
while white men encouraged Native Americans to entertain them by
shooting at targets with bows and arrows, white women seemed com­
pelled to watch Indians eat grasshoppers. 50
In a similar distortion, white women associated "peculiar" odors with
American Indians. They held the notion that the presence of Indians
could be detected through their smells. 51 Whites often claimed they could
smell a nearby Indian camp or that their horses and dogs responded with
fe ar to the aroma of a Native American. 52 Whites thought that the Indian
scent, which was indeed different fr om their own, was odd, unpleasant,
W
and "strongly Indian."53 Lydia a ters explained that the smell derived, at

1 4 0