Page 184 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPTER FIVE

changed (or did not change) their personal views of American Indians.
The divergences between male and f e male perspectives appeared
not so much in their tendency to enumerate, but in the issues that were
important to them. One male migrant of 8 41 began his trip by reck­
1
oning the number of people in his party and the number of oxen, mules,
and horses.5 Men were also very aware of distances covered. Crossing
the western plains in 1850, Iowan William Edmundson included mileage
figures in each day's notations. The Ohioan Hiram Shutes was so con­
cerned with distances traversed that he concocted a device fo r a wagon
wheel that counted the number of revolutions. From that figure, Shutes
calculated mileage. 6
Even though women shared the same adventure, most were by role
and f u nction concerned with other aspects of arrangements. When
women remarked on such topics as wagons and provisions they did so
fr om their own point of view. On the Oregon Trail, Kitturah Belknap
devoted paragraphs to the way in which she had sewn inner and outer
wagon covers by hand, what dishes she packed, what medical supplies
she included, what her workbasket contained, and the nature of the
tablecloths she tucked into the wagon.7 Moreover, at the same time that
men counted miles, women counted graves. a lking by the wagons a
W
good part of each day, women were in close proximity to newly dug
graves. 8 They also demonstrated an almost macabre desire to know the
toll that the journey took on individuals.
Men and women also differed regarding daily concerns. Men's
accounts fo cused on wagons, terrain, directions and maps, stock,
finances, land purchase and clearing, crops, equipment, and innumer­
able other technical and mechanical matters. Men typically gave metic­
ulous descriptions of a watering place or campground, a fo rd or fe rry,
a land investment, a crop f a ilure, a harvest, or a house-raising. Since the
care and safety of stock was of great importance, men also wrote of
spending time in herding and resting animals, searching f o r grass and
water, and hunting fo r lost, strayed, or stolen animals.9
Men who had to purchase goods, including wagon wheels or
ammunition, or hire such services as help in fo rding a swollen stream,
usually paid cash, especially to white storekeepers and farmers. With
Indians, however, white men fr equently used threats or sheer pugnacity.