Page 160 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHA PTE R FOUR

husband's invitations to explore the area surrounding the fo rt.Yet, when
a alarm led to a council that brought Indian leaders into camp, she
noticed that Red Cloud had a "pleasant smile" and that Big Bear had
"the most splendid chest, and shoulders, I ever laid my eyes upon." She
thought that Red Leaf had "a f a therly looking countenance, & one to
whom you would go in trouble, were we in different circumstances."
Although o gdes remained in " constant fe ar" whenever she left the f o rt,
V
she came to enjoy her position as what she termed "a belle amongst the
red men of the Plains." 130
When o gdes relocated to Fort Fetterman, she went through a sim­
V
ilar process. What she had learned at Fort Laramie turned out to be
specific to that situation. At Fetterman, V o gdes complained that "this
f r o ntier life is terrible fo r a nervous excitable person as I am, and it seems
as if I could not endure it much longer. For nearly two years the Indians
have been the bane of my existence." At Fetterman, she thought a sol­
dier returning fr om a laundress's quarters was an attacking Indian and
she shuddered with fe ar at the sight of Cheyenne Indians passing out­
side her windows. Again, however, when American Indian leaders came
into the f o rt, she was impressed by them. Although V o gdes considered
herself a properVictorian woman, she enjoyed commenting on the near­
naked male f o rm. Of Red Dog, she said that he "had nothing on but
the skin in which he was born . . . I never saw such shoulders, arms, &
.
legs, & hands . . . his legs were equally fine looking." After sitting with
him at a table, she maintained that although an easterner would think
it strange to see her with Red Dog, whom o gdes called "this naked
V
man," it did not seem strange to her at all. "I am not shocked if I see
them with no clothes on," she added.131
Such contradictory assessments by white women of American
Indians were not simply a result of what they had been taught about
the two-sided natures of women and Indians. They were also a product
of the gradual erosion of those attitudes. W o men were experiencing a
change in their views of themselves. They discovered that their supposed
ability to civilize was only one of a myriad of skills demanded of them
by the land they now inhabited. Moreover, they discovered that nothing
disastrous would happen to them or white society if they could not fu lly
exercise the role of cultural conservator. Although they washed clothes