Page 154 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915
P. 154

C  H  APTER  FOUR

            When in 1846, Catherine Haun explained that her party lightened their
            load by burying "the barrels of alcohol lest the Indians should drink it
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            and, f r enzied thereby ,  might fo llow and attack us. 88 In  1 8 52, a white
            woman who watched an Indian man attempt to trade a buffalo robe fo r
            whiskey lamented "Why do we try to thrust our civilization on a people
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            like this ? 89
                White  women believed their assertions. They failed  to  recognize
            that they  condemned a huge number of people  on the basis of a fe w
            and highly visible cases. Nor could they see that, at least during the early
            stages  of fr ontiering, they operated  on white American and European
            values. In addition, they seldom asked how white migration had affected
            Indian standards ofliving, morality, and aggressiveness.9o They assumed
            that whatever Indians were resulted fr om themselves rather than from
            white  actions. Thus, women's images of Indians do not provide  useful
            or accurate information regarding American Indians, but they do reveal
            a  tremendous  amount  about  the  thinking  of the  women  themselves.
            White women's reactions to a once proud and self-sufficient people now
            appear intolerant and heartless.
                As  noted, white women's thinking came from anti-Indian preju­
            dices, as well as from beliefs about themselves as the moral reformers.
            But f r ontierswomen's intolerance was also intensified by their need to
            survive. They guarded their safety  and that of their children closely. As
            the  primary  providers  of f o od  and  clothing  f o r  their  families,  they
            resented incursions  upon  their limited  supplies. Most  western women
            had to work very hard to maintain even an adequate level of provisions
            f o r themselves and their dependents. While on the Oregon Trail in 1853,
            Charlotte  Pengra  wrote  plaintively,  "I  always  have  to  improve  every
            moment  of time  when  not  traveling  to  provide  enough  to  eat."91
            Because women saw American Indians as potential threats to their safety
            and their resources, they automatically thought of Indians as dangerous
            and deadly f o es.92
                White women  were  also ignorant  of American  Indian  customs.
            When they came to the fr ontier, women knew little about Indian stan­
            dards of hospitality that called f o r strangers traveling through an area to
            offer token gifts to the inhabitants.93 White women were thus amazed
            to find that Indians were, in Sarah Royce's words of  8 49, "desirous of
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