Page 150 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPTER F O UR

of white people with their overstuffed wagons and teams of cumber­
some oxen. They may have been as amazed and as belittling as Harriet
W a rd. On her way to California in 1853, W a rd said that when Indians
moved they constituted "a strange and altogether interesting sight."To
her, they were "poor half naked creatures with their all packed upon
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their horses." In 8 54,Mary Burrell concurred.After counting 402 Sioux
in a procession, Burrell asserted in a patronizing way that this "aston­
ishing" sight was "equal to 50 caravans or circuses."62 Evidently, neither
W a rd nor Burrell could view themselves and their companions objec­
tively enough to see them as "strange," perhaps a veritable circus parade.
Such disrespect turned into outright irreverence when women
encountered American Indian burial grounds, where corpses were
placed on open racks.Women who thought underground burial was the
"right" way to dispose of a corpse were shocked to see bodies in the
open air. T o Marie Nash, migrating to California in 1861, the bodies
presented a "sad sight." Other women minimized Indian burial customs
by seeing them as simple practicality in raising the bodies f a r enough
off the ground to prevent pillaging and mutilation by wolves.63 Some
women had so little respect f o r Indian burial customs that they entered
burial grounds to "visit" and to collect beads to wear as ornaments.64
White women also f o und strange the mating practices of American
Indians. Given the white social construction of marriage as involving
one white man and one white woman and of a mily as two white par­
f
ents and their offspring, white women were stunned to find cases of
intermarriage and the existence of metis, or what white women called
"half-breeds." Moreover, white women f e ared the disappearance of
white superiority if whites and Indians cohabited and produced mixed­
race children. Some women reacted by chronicling every French trader
who had an Indian wife and "half-breed" children.65 Mary Fish acted
amused by it all.When she encountered a French trader with two native
wives, she quipped that "the Frenchmen go f o r amalgamation."When
she saw another with a dozen wives she joked that he was simply "fond
of a plural number."66 Of course, white women's " j okes" denied the
validity of Indian beliefs.
An even more condescending reaction to intermarriage was sur­
prise that the parties involved got along well. White women could not

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