Page 193 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRONTIER P L AC E : G E N D E R MATTERS

surveyed here violated the sanctity of Indian cemeteries by taking fr om
one a bead as a souvenir. 6 7 Unlike women, men treated the dead of any
group with esteem.Their attitude is best summed up by the army officer
who declared that "in no instance will one nation disturb the dead of
another or anything that may be about them, not even when at war."
He added that "the Indians deserve great credit fo r the respect they show
their dead" and that no one in his command would dare enter burial
grounds or lodges. 68
Most men also respected or ignored Indian marriage customs,
including intermarriage and plural wives. White men seldom disparaged
these practices the way white women did. Men recognized that although
plural marriage was vastly different f r om their own ideas, Indians did
not engage in what one emigrant termed "indiscriminate cohabita­
tion." 69 On intermarriage, men made such notations as the f o llowing:
"there is quite a village with stores owned by white men, the most of
whom are married to Indian women." Another man said that "there are
some ten or a dozen Frenchmen living here in lodges or wigwams, withe
Squaws f o r their wives." Still another man remarked, "I saw a white man
with a squaw and several children."7 0 When they considered the issue
of mixed-race offspring, most men thought that,judging f r om what one
called the "variation of complexion" to be f o und, intermarriages were
successful. When Byron McKinstry noticed that "the little ones at the
trading posts are much whiter than their mothers," he dismissed it: "the
cause of this extraordinary phenomenon I shall have to leave to be solved
by the learned in such matters."71
Only a f e w men agreed with women on intermarriage. One argued
that interbreeding "produced a villainous horde who disgraced the
beautiful plains."72 But numerous men sided with women on Indian
men's treatment of women. They were under the impression that Indian
men purchased wives fo r, as one said, "the price of a good horse."73 An
explorer of the I 8 3 0 S claimed that Indian men compelled their women
to do the work, whereas men had "only" to hunt and fight.74
Regarding the use of alcohol, white men were less condemnatory
than women of Indian drinking habits. Men mentioned that Indians
requested whiskey or that visiting Indians did not ask f o r whiskey.75 Men
who gave accounts of incidents involving drunken Indians did not

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