Page 16 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

INTRODUCTION

place where cultures met and often clashed, and the product, or
aftereffects, of the f r ontier era.
Based on this f o ur-part scheme, the first two chapters deal with
philosophy , namely, the American and European discourse that prepared
women to be proper f e males, encouraged them to go westward, at least
in part to help others, and to expect the worst at the hands of Native
Americans. Chapters 3 and 4 address issues of process, especially the
vilification of Indians, the fe ar-based contact and conflict that resulted
between Anglos and Indians, and the eventual humanizing of Indians
by numerous white women. Chapters 5 and 6 look at place: how the
geographical f r ontier brought types of people together, especially during
the early years, and how colonialist attitudes endured. Chapter 7 sum­
marizes f r ontier product, in this case, long-lived enmity between racial
groups that reaches into the early twenty-first century .
Several notes on terminology are in order. Manifest Destiny, a term
first coined in 1 8 45, means the conviction of white Americans,
Canadians, and Europeans that God intended them to migrate to and
shape to their own ends the f r ontier W e st. Regarding terms f o r groups
of people, white people are also called Anglos. Indians are also termed
American Indians or Native Americans. Hispanics are sometimes called
peoples of Spanish heritage. Blacks are fr equently referred to as African
Americans. Those f r om Asia are Asians.
The examples and case studies of Anglo-Indian contact used here
are wide reaching. They derive f r om all areas of the trans-Mississippi
W e st, ranging f r om the Old Wild W e st of the prairie and Great Plains
to the far-flung Southwest and Pacific Northwest. Examples also come
fr om the entire period between the 1 8 10S and 19lOS.Although western
f r ontiers changed, perhaps through improved technology or the infu­
sion of immigrants of color, these were not sea changes. And, even
though some of the situations of Anglo women modified during this
period, including taking up paid labor, entering the professions, and,
during the early twentieth century, even daring to smoke in public, their
interrelations with American Indians on various f r ontiers had an eerie
sameness. This occurred, at least in part, because the more women
changed, the more writers of such prescriptive literature as etiquette and
guide books f o r women urged their readers to be "true" or "proper"

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