Page 152 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

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male returned with the ponies and was rejected, the "joke" discomfited
Indians and whites.73 In other instances, reactions to the offer of ponies
ranged from sarcasm to levity. When an Ottawa Indian proposed to
Emily Horton, who was on her way to California in 1852, she stated
caustically, "I was too unsophisticated to appreciate the honor."74 In a
similar situation in 1 8 6 2, Harriet Smith jested, "I thought I would wait
untill some one would give Unc a lot of ponies fo r me and I would go
and stay awhile with them then run away, and then we would have some
ponies."75 Mary W a rner joked that her "Uncle Chester traded Aunt
Lizzie off o r two ponies but she would not gO."76 And Catherine Bell
f
wrote home that "there was an Indian chief offered Charlie two of his
best ponys f o r me, don't you think he ought to have traded?"77 Here
again, white women made marriage between Indians and whites sound
impossible; the f a ntasy of irrational minds.
Many white women were also outraged by what they perceived as
degrading treatment of native wives by husbands. When they witnessed
men taking money f r om women who had earned it by selling their
handiwork, men riding horses while women walked, or men expecting
women to carry the load while they went unburdened, white women
labeled Indian men as detestable and contemptible.Women who had no
conception of the variations of domestic power condemned that of
Indian women.78 These misinterpretations of the treatment of native
women by Indian males increased white women's f o rebodings regard­
ing their possible captivity.79 "I have no desire to go among the Indians
in that way," one emigrant asserted. A Kansas settler of the 1 8 50S admit­
ted that she asked her son to watch her while she fe tched water so that
Indians would not carry her off.8°When another woman sighted some
Indians garbed in blankets and f e athers, she too worried that captivity
was imminent.81 None wanted to fill what they saw as the degraded
position of an Indian "squaw." Rather, they preferred to stick with fo rms
of gender domination and exploitation to which they were accustomed.
Because white women disapproved of so many f e atures of
American Indian life, they decided that Indian character was of the
lowest order. What they saw with their own eyes convinced them that
the native population of the West was indeed debased, ruthless, and
savage. Interpreting native cultures in light of their own white values,

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