Page 248 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

-- Chapter S e ven --
FRONTIER PRODUCT: A DIFFICULT LEGACY

All fr ontiers have products, some emerging during their existence and
some appearing later. Positive product is easily identified. For example,
the W e st has been a model of economic development, with prosperous
cities and growing populations. Negative product is more subtle. One
of these was an inaccurate image of vulnerable white woman versus
rapacious Native Americans.
Legends and myths concerning the nature of white women, Native
Americans, and the interaction of the two have exerted tremendous
influence fr om the settlement of Britain's American colonies to the pres­
ent. Advocating that women were weak and vulnerable, whereas Indians
were savage and predatory, myth and media promoted the idea that
contact between the two was almost always calamitous. According to
typical scenarios-whether they be in prose, poetry, film, or television­
women are usually broken in spirit and body fr om their encounters with
American Indians. This belief provided one more rationalization that
"unmanageable" Indians must be exterminated or at least physically
constrained under the watchful eye of a reservation agent.
In truth, neither white women nor Native Americans were as
extreme as thought.Although white women had been taught about their
exceptional morality, paired with physical fr ailty, they discovered
through the demands of westward migration that these characteristics