Page 229 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915
P. 229
FRONTIER P L ACE: COLONIALISM TRIUMPHANT
Mission Society and the W o men's National Indian Association had a
strong missionary bent.4 6
Moreover, as white women realized that American Indians were not
stock characters-bestial, wanton, and licentious-they hoped f o r the
salvation of at least some Indians. Because these women's objectives were
misguided and based on cultural arrogance, they wanted to replace
Indian culture, language, art, and crafts with white ways. After decades
of absorbing colonialist tenets stating that white culture provided the
center f o r all Americans, these women failed to realize that such colo
nized peoples as American Indians did not believe in white superiority
and did not want to take on white beliefs and behavior.47 Y e t white
women had f a ith in Indians' ability to adapt, change, and learn. They did
not argue, as did many male reformers, that natives were hopeless because
they were dying out, obviously incapable oflearning, growing, and con
tributing to white society.48
These women extended to Indians their compassion, respect, or
even affection. Because whites had prevailed, they were able to be altru
istic and solicitous. White women no longer f a ced a threat of
disfigurement, dismemberment, or death at the hands of rancorous
Indians. Consequently, they could be gracious, kindhearted, and benev
olent. Indians had no such leeway. They were allowed to love nothing,
neither their language nor their art nor their culture. As vanquished peo
ples, they had to remain largely silent, wearing the masks of compliance
that whites prescribed fo r them. Because colonial racism was indirect,
meaning that whites disavowed negative f e elings and said the problem
was" over," the system leached away Indians' self-respect by denying them
political rights and economic independence. Those on reservations
endured institutionalized racism, whereas those who went to cities f o und
themselves shunned, impoverished, and marginalized. Both had to quash
their emotions, at least when whites were around. They lived with two
f r ames of reference, one Indian, one white. Whites only heard Indians
when they acted as "wild" and as "savage" as whites thought them to be.
Or, like the Indian reformer Sarah Winnemucca, Indians devoted to their
cause could be heard by making public spectacles of themselves on the
stages of white theaters.49
Consequently, only a f e w white women could imagine Indians
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