Page 201 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R ONT I E R PLAC E : G E N D E R MATTERS

firewood, draw water, and even wash clothes. 130 Other women, evidently
f r ee of fo rmer anxieties, invited Indians into their homes as domestic
helpers. Native men, women, and children performed household chores,
including washing dishes and clothes. White fe male employers, who f r e­
quently commented that Indians were "a great help," paid Indian work­
ers with such commodities as sugar, salt, and bread.131
The most significant capacity in which women employed both
Indian men and women was as nursemaids to their children 1 3 2 In light
.
of white women's f e ar that American Indians lay in wait to pounce upon
white children and carry them away as adoptees or as captives, their
employment of Indian nursemaids seems unbelievable. Mothers grew
to trust individual Indians enough to bring them into their nurseries.
When, in 1 8 68, army wife Eveline Alexander arranged f o r an Apache
girl to care f o r her newborn baby she wrote to her f a ther in New o rk:
Y
"I wish the grandmothers of the young one, who are so afraid of her
'falling' into the hands of the Apachees could have looked in upon us a
while ago." Alexander explained that "they would have seen the infant
prodigy awake in her cradle, cooing to herself, and being rocked to sleep
by a bona fide wild Apachee, who a week ago was roaming the moun­
tains, guiltless of any other covering but her maiden modesty." Later,
Alexander told her f a ther that the Apache nurse seemed "to love to be
with the baby" and "is quite useful already in drawing it around in its
wagon and rocking the cradle."133
Unlike white women in Asian and African empires, those in the
W e st who hired American Indian nurses did not object to them teach­
ing the children native customs, dialects, f o od preferences, and games. 134
Nannie Alderson was pleased that her baby's "good and faithful" nurse
carried the child on her back like a "papoose," as well as crooning native
songs to the baby, teaching her a "squaw" dance, making her beaded
moccasins, and observing the Indian custom of never spanking the
child.135 Because white people had established their dominance, such
women as Alderson could afford to be flexible. Moreover, as whites
increasingly moved Indians to reservations, their role in white house­
holds became a nonissue. Still, some cross-cultural understanding
occurred between white women and Native Americans. During the
1 8 30s, when her male Indian nurse died, Caroline Phelps said that her

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