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
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