Page 161 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRONTI E R P R O C E S S : H U MANIZING

on the Sabbath, listened to oaths, came into contact with gambling,
drinking, and polygamy, life went on. White women in the trans­
Mississippi W e st also developed the ability to drive teams, perform trail
work, walk fo r miles over rough terrain, handle weapons, participate in
decisions, and make economic contributions.13 2 Under such circum­
stances, fr ontierswomen realized that their value to society was not
eroding, but was taking a new direction.
Given the emergence of women's new strengths and abilities, many
suspected that the inferior side of their nature was no more rockbound
than the superior side was proving to be. Numerous cases of western
women who grew strong, assertive, and confident in their own talents
and skills disproved the existence of f e male inferiority. Such women
believed that they could play a role in shaping their own lives, in pro­
tecting themselves and their children, and in determining their survival
in the W e st. Logically, then, if women were not of value primarily as
moral fo rces there was no need f o r them to emphasize the inferior aspects
of Indian character. And if women were not weak or incompetent there
was little need fo r them to depend f o r protection on the superior aspects
of Indian character. W o men who drove two-thousand-pound wagons,
wielded rifles, and survived the rigors of westering no longer needed to
find reassurance in an idealized vision of "noble" natives.
Moreover, such changes opened white women's eyes and minds to
a more humane exchange with the American Indians they encountered.
The result was a growing awareness that Indians were neither "bad" nor
"good." As women saw Indians as people like themselves, they gradually
rejected their interpretation of natives as a combination of the terribly
savage and the wonderfully noble. White women developed a more
balanced interpretation of white and native peoples caught in a complex,
tense, and potentially explosive situation. Lavinia Porter, f o r example,
recounted the usual tales of begging Indians infested with vermin, lazy
native men who expected women to do the work, and degraded
American Indians who possessed low moral standards. Like V o gdes, she
was f r equently "speechless with f r ight," suffering extreme anxiety about
"dangers of savage life." Increasingly interspersed with these statements
were Porter's remarks about helpful and kindly natives.At another point,
Porter said that an Indian had traveled with them fo r three days as a scout

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