Page 40 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

C H APTER ONE

were capable of advancing gender reform, interracial contact, and the
nation's best interests in positive and effective ways. In other words,
Anglo women went west with an attitude.

-- On the Indian " O ther" --

Because the number-one recipient of Anglo women's imputed moral­
ity and charity was to be the American Indian, female migrants were
urged at every turn to exert their moral powers on behalf of native peo­
ples. Female "civilizing" gave to women's migration a powerful organ­
izing force, a mythology, a higher meaning in migrating westward. 7 0 Far
from being considered travel, which offered new experiences and novel
ideas, the objective of women's westering was to establish the known in
a more conducive setting. In I849, for example, missionary Mary
Eastman published a book intended to draw attention to "the moral
wants of the Dahcotahs." In a similar vein, the frontier editor Jane
Swisshelm admonished her female readers not to let themselves become
bored with the oft-discussed cause of the American Indian or to have
their attention diverted from Indian problems by more immediate
causes, including the Civil War.7! Novels of the period reinforced this
message, especially among middle- and upper-class readers, who drew
upon them for entertainment and guidance. In one, the young heroine,
Natalie, displayed laudable talent in saving the souls of Indians and
blacks. She was duly praised, in dialect that most whites thought appro­
priate to natives, by an Indian convert to Christianity as he lay near
death: "Me love Great Spirit; Great Spirit so good to send his little white­
face to tell me how to get home."72
This trend of depicting women as the special liberators of American
Indians was so accepted that it intensified by the end of the nineteenth
century and continued well into the twentieth. 73 No one seemed aware
of a basic paradox: white women had reason to leave the old society yet
they went west believing the society they had rejected was the best. For
most white women, the rejection was more symbolic than real. They
took with them every psychical and psychological bit possible of the

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