Page 225 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRONTIER PLACE: C O L ONIALISM TRIUMPHANT

her, these "harmless natives" stood and stared unsuspectingly at the
"strangely clothed men." The soldiers shot into their midst, wounding
and killing many of them. Frightened and grief stricken, the Indians fled
into nearby canyons. Although a number of white settlers protested to
the government, relations between whites and Indians were never
restored to their f o rmerly calm state. 19
W o men also accused Civil War troops of making trouble across the
f r ontier. In Oklahoma, soldiers terrorized Choctaw women by tearing
earrings fr om their ears and locking the women in unventilated rooms
fo r days.20 And in California, Eleanor Taylor condemned Civil W a r
soldiers who perpetuated "horrible butchery" in their battles with
natives, displaying "quite as much of the savage nature as did the
redskins." When two young soldiers deserted their troop, Taylor
applauded their action.21 The cause of suffering during the Indian wars
of the 8 7 0S was also laid at the f e et offormer Civil a r leaders. Caroline
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Winne, f o r example, rebuked Sheridan f o r supposedly being " drunk all
the time in Chicago in his fine house," and she blamed Sherman who
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lived " on his general's pay in a shington, never having fo ught an Indian
& knowing nothing at all about them" fo r making uninformed and
ruinous decisions.22
Officials of the United States government came in fo r their share
of the blame as well. Far away fr om the metropole in W a shington, D.c.,
western settlers carried on a slightly different discourse that put their
own needs as first priority.23 Greedy f e deral land policies, an inadequate
reservation system, and mismanagement of allotments and supplies were
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all cited by women as sources of American Indian troubles in the e st. 2+
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After an Indian war of the mid- 8 30s, Oregonian Elizabeth Lord main­
tained that "there was never any doubt that the Indians were treated
unjustly" by authorities who "allowed and supported wholesale seizures
of native lands."25 Mary Ann Tatum, writing in 1 8 70 at Fort Sill, the
Kiowa-Comanche Agency, also grumbled about white leaders: "The
heart grows sick with the repeated tale of wrongs and broken promises
by the whites & government why must it be so, why must the poor
untutored redman suffer so f r om the whites who f e el that they are so
much f u rther along."26
W o men reprimanded other specific types of white men fo r their

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