Page 204 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915
P. 204
CHAPTER FIVE
baskets and elaborate moccasins worked with beads and fe athers" that
Indian women brought to her mother when her baby , the first white
child in that part of the country, was born. Another remembered the
Indian woman who brought her persimmon bread and a papoose board
intricately worked with beading and f r inge. IS O
A representative case of exchanges between white and native
women was Leola Lehman, an Oklahoma settler who befriended Indian
women. In turn, they visited her, bringing small presents and admiring
her new baby. As Baldwin had mentioned, elements of f e male culture
drew Lehman and Indian women into an easy bond. Lehman especially
liked one native woman who had come to see her because she thought
that Lehman "might be lonesome." Lehman came to regard this native
woman,in her words,"as one of the best women she had ever known." I 5I
Lehman made an important point when she suggested that posi
tive interchanges between whites and natives were possible if whites
would only realize that Indians had heard as many horror stories about
whites as whites had heard about Indians. Their inability to understand
white language, religion, and culture made them as vulnerable to
rumors and alarmism as were whites toward Indians. Having no other
information, Indians believed much of what they heard, including leg
ends of Spanish atrocities. Indians were also afraid of whites taking them
captive and raping them, killing their babies, and perhaps selling them
and their children as slaves and prostitutes. I52 Many despised Catholic
priests f o r establishing sexual liaisons with native women. Adults
detested white greed and corruption, and children, who heard that
whites would eat them, screamed at the sight of a white f a ce. If Indians
acted strange, Lehman said, their behavior stemmed f r om their "fear of
white people." I53
When other Oklahoma settlers had an opportunity to interact on
an amicable basis with their Indian neighbors, they too f o und that they
liked Indians. I 54 These settlers occasionally entertained Native
Americans in their homes. Occasionally, even a white man and Indian
man became close. In one case, an Indian man openly cried when his
white fr iend died. "Not much stoicism there," the deceased man's sister
fr
commented. ISS W o men's iendships were more common, however, due
to the role that fe male values played in drawing together white and