Page 53 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRONTIER P H I L O S O P H Y: AMERI CAN D I SCOURSE

state. In The Prairie, Cooper's "crones" heaped verbal abuse on their
unfortunate victim. In Cooper's words, "they lavished upon their
unmoved captive a torrent of that vindictive abuse, in which the women
of the savages are so well known to excel." In other fictional accounts,
women physically attacked their captives. In an 1830 story titled "The
Bois Brule," Indian women "unsheathed their knives and would have
immolated the prisoner on the spot had they not been restrained by
their men." In 1835,William Gilmore Simms, in The Yemassee, described
Indian women as directing blows toward a captive. He explained that
these women had "lost the gentle nature of the woman without acquir­
ing the magnanimity of the man, which is the result of his conscious­
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ness of strength." 2 3 Although some of these scenes touched on reality,
such actions by Indian women were highly ritualized and usually in ret­
ribution for one of their own dead.
If white women who became westward migrants managed to
escape all these types of social constructions of Indians, they probably
had seen the fierce warrior and his obedient squaw, both caricatures
bordering on buffoonery, in the many circuses that crisscrossed the
United States. By the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early
years of the twentieth, Indians also appeared in Buffalo Bill Cody's and
other Wild West shows, as well as in numerous " congresses" and " expo­
sitions." 1 2 4 Cody was one of the few who tried to present authentic
Indians, whom he recruited largely from Sioux reservations in the
Dakota territory. Cody soon learned, however, that his audiences cared
little about real Indians and their cultures. They wanted excitement,
action, and blood, all of which Cody grudgingly gave them. Prior to a
performance, Cody put on display in a store window the scalp and
feather headdress he claimed to have taken from Yellow Hair, also known
as Yellow Hand. Cody elevated the "Battle of Summit Springs" from a
minor skirmish into a major battle, replaying it with gusto during every
performance. In the "Attack on the Settlers' Cabin," Cody raised the
possibility of rape and the abduction of women and children by Indians,
a fate from which white men mounted on powerful horses saved
them.125 After Sitting Bull's tragic death, Cody retrieved the horse he
had given the chief. Cody had trained the horse to raise its front leg and
shake hands. Now he added it to his program, billing it as Sitting Bull's

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