Page 227 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R ONTIER P L ACE: C O L ONIALISM TRI UMPHANT

W o men had other complaints about reservations. When the army
wife Eveline Alexander saw eight thousand Navajos confined to a New
Mexico reservation in the 1 8 60s, she noted that rations were inadequate.
"Not much to support life on, one would think," she concluded. T w o
decades later, Carrie Strahorn observed Navajo reservations in Arizona
and Utah. One of their worst f e atures, she was convinced, was that "the
Government divided f a milies by taking them to different localities
making them justly angry and revengeful." 34 When, such women won­
dered, would Manifest Destiny reach the trusteeship phase of imperial­
ism that made natives trustees of themselves?
When they considered solutions, many women talked in vague
terms about "civilizing" American Indians."35 More specifically, whites
thought that Indian men should f a rm and Indian women should take
care of the children and house, much like white men and women did.
Of course, whites wanted Indians to be f a rmers, not only to imitate them,
but because agriculture provided the means by which whites colonized
the W e st-farmstead by f a rmstead. With plows and other implements,
whites cleared the W e st of trees, grass, and weeds, planting instead the
crops that f e d white fo lks.36 In such a system, Indians who hunted would
have no land on which to hunt, nor would they be controllable by whites.
Along with wild landscapes and wild animals, wild Indians had to be
subjugated f o r the good of white hegemony.
As a result, white women complimented Indians who took up f a rm­
ing. In 1885, Alice Fletcher cited the example of Omaha Indian f a rmers
in Nebraska as proof that Indians could indeed be "civilized." Fletcher
went on that Omahas demonstrated that "civilization is no f a nciful
theory" but "within the grasp of all the Indians." Even as many white
people questioned whether Indians would work, could be educated, and
could become self-sustaining, Omahas were demonstrating that these
things were possible.37 T o Fletcher, civilizing American Indians meant
turning Indians into productive beings engaged in white-style liveli­
hoods, notably f a rming, and educating them to become like whites.
Similarly, the reformer Annie K. Bidwell of California took the posi­
tion that reservations had to be replaced by individual f a rms. Her rancher
husband partially underwrote her scheme by donating land to Indian
f a milies. Bidwell added a mission school and a temperance brigade. In a

2 1 9