Page 213 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRON I E R PL A C E : G E N D E R M A TT ERS
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assaulted.Yet numerous unpublished women's accounts do not mention
or even hint at sexual threats, nor do they record women's fe ar of rape
by Indian males. 193
It might be argued that nineteenth-century women, schooled in
modesty and an aversion to speaking of sexual matters, refused to com­
ment upon sexual matters. But, using veiled terms, women discussed such
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issues in published captivity narratives. o men also brought up issues of
sexual abuse in petitions, called memorials, that they introduced to the
u.s. Congress, asking f o r compensation f o r their suffering. 194
Furthermore, captivity accounts include tremendous detail about every
type of "atrocity" imaginable. It is difficult to believe that writers of
unpublished accounts restrained themselves f r om including sexual misuse
if it was widespread. 195
Another important question regarding captives was their desire to
remain with their American Indian captors. The New England study dis­
f
cussed above revealed that a greater number of e males than males chose
to remain among Indians. Evidence f o r the trans-Mississippi W e st sug­
gests a similar situation. There was, f o r example, the widely told story of
Cynthia Ann Parker, who was a Comanche captive between 1 8 36 and
1 8 60. She married a man who became a noted leader, bore three chil­
dren, and took the Comanche way of life as her own. When T e xas
Rangers "liberated" Cynthia Ann and her two-year-old child,
T o psannah, she had no desire to go with them. She lost her husband,
children, extended f a mily, and f r iends in one day, and never recovered
f r om her loss. Although the T e xas legislature gave Cynthia Ann money
and land as compensation f o r her trials, she made repeated attempts to
run away with T o psannah. During the f a ll of 8 63, T o psannah died of a
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f e ver. The depressed Cynthia Ann, who eventually refused to eat, fo l­
lowed in 1 8 7 0.196
Another example was Olive Oatman. After being ransomed away
f r om her Indian captors, Oatman spent most of her time longing f o r and
attempting to return to her native husband and children. "For f o ur years
she lived with us," a fr iend explained, "but she was a grieving, unsatisfied
woman, who shook one's belief in civilization." Although the Indian
tattoo marks were removed fr om her f a ce, Oatman's white f a mily and
f r iends could not erase what they called "the wild life fr om her heart." 197

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