Page 51 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P H I L OSOPHY: AMERICAN D I SCOURSE

Later in the same story, a female character excoriated her husband for
even listening to an offer of an Indian wife. "Would ye disgrace color,
and family, and nation," she cried out, "by mixing white blood with
red? " II 4
A similar point was made in later years by many others. In an I84I
love story in The Ladies Companion, "Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the
W h ite Hunter," author Ann Sophia Winterbotham Stephens presented
the tale of an unfortunate Indian princess married to a white man.
Although she had promised at her husband's deathbed to raise their son
like a white person, the boy was torn from her by whites who wanted
to ensure his "proper " upbringing. Bereft of husband and child, she
returned to her tribe. 1 I 5 Judging from dime novels, this debate contin­
ued into the twentieth century. In a I908 story, a young white woman
who was appalled and insulted by a marriage proposal from an Indian
chief graciously accepted her brother's impending marriage to a young
Indian "belle" living among whites in St. Louis. II 6
Little wonder that advertising seized upon such images, which were
popular with white consumers. Especially between I870 and I9IO, when
big business flourished in the United States,American advertisers appro­
priated the image of American Indians and turned it to their advantage.
Advertisers were able to steal Indian likenesses because they possessed
power-as whites, they were a cultural force, and as entrepreneurs they
had economic clout. Numerous companies distributed trade cards in
shops and with products. It soon became a fad to collect these postcard­
sized pictures, which used Native Americans to advertise such products
as corn starch and coffee, and to promote such businesses as a clothing
establishment in downtown Indianapolis. A little closer to the actual
product were trade cards portraying attractive Indian women on behalf
of "Indian Queen Perfume" and "Oswego Bitters."The point was not
that the pictured Indian used the product, but that his or her image
grabbed the attention of white consumers. II 7
Despite the existence of a female Noble Savage, however, the dom­
inant prototype of the Indian woman in various types of media was the
"squaw," an unfortunate and exploited female who did all the camp
work. This image was an inaccurate objectification of American Indian
women that has continued into the twenty -first century. II8 The "squaw "

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