Page 68 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CH APTER Two

commentaries regarding the western frontier.7 Similarly, in 1818 the
"West" of W i lliam Cobbett was Indiana; in the 1830S Alexis de
T o cqueville's West was New York and Michigan; in the 1840S Albert
Koch's West was the Keokuk-Burlington region of the Iowa territory;
and in the early 1850S Moritz Busch's West was Ohio and Kentucky. 8
During the same period, Isabella Bird approached Rock Island on the
Mississippi River, rhapsodizing, "On we flew to the West, the land of
Wild Indians and Buffaloes."9 Also during the 1850s, Swedish observer
Fredrika Bremer waxed eloquent: "the West is the garden where the
rivers carry along with them gold . . . this enigmatic, promised land of
the future, I shall now behold!" I O
For another, how could European interpreters of the American
frontier possibly write with objectivity and impartiality while pressure
toward misrepresentation swirled around them? Largely middle and
upper class, well educated, and usually male, they were unprepared by
virtue of their background or experience to serve as accurate reporters
of the western American scene. W h ether they analyzed the New
England frontier of the 1600s, the Midwestern frontier of the early nine­
teenth century, the Far West of the late nineteenth century, or vestiges
of the frontier that continued to exist into the twentieth century,
European observations were permeated with image and myth. Factual
reporting was elusive at best and impossible at worst.
Moreover, Europeans whose nations had joined the world race for
colonies were awash in colonialist sentiment. Although Americans stood
largely united behind Manifest Destiny, Europeans, beginning around
1870, experienced a tremendous discussion of whether imperialism was
"right." II In England, for example, Britons who wanted to be proper
at all times found the question of entering other peoples' lands
momentous and often distressing. Some had specific reasons to criticize
colonization. Those opposed to high taxes needed to fund colonial
developments spoke against expansion. Advocates of "free trade"
claimed that economic gains would be minimal. Others argued that
imperialism and its "racial theory " were destructive to indigenous
12
peoples and their cultures.
At the same time, various versions of what Americans called domes­
ticity inundated white European women. Especially in England, the idea

60