Page 72 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

C H APTER Two

Of course, many Europeans completely neglected to mention white
f r ontierswomen as a separate category in their commentaries. In the
f a shion of the era, many onlookers, both male and f e male, either sub­
sumed women under the category of "men" or ignored them entirely.
Thus, when observer Francis Grund stated in 1837 that nine-tenths of
western emigrants were f a rmers or planters, one might reasonably
assume that he meant that women also engaged in agrarian pursuits. But
when W Faux announced in the 8 2 0S that 90 percent of the adult pop­
1
ulation in the W e st owned land and Charles Dickens noted during the
1 8 50S that westerners of any grade could climb the social ladder, it is
likely that these writers literally meant "men."22 They tended to disre­
gard women because they did not visualize fe males as being personally
or legally qualified to own land or having social status of their own.23
Such assumptions perpetuated a myth that the experiences of many
women in the W e st contradicted. Some western women occasionally
owned or controlled land and had social status of their own.
The small size of the fe male population in relation to men also
affected European opinion. Some Europeans ignored white fr ontiers­
women simply because they were relatively few in number, at least in
certain areas or during the early years of settlement. Others, however,
emphasized the dearth of women.24 One British traveler who visited
T e xas in 1841 collected the f o llowing statements fr om T e xas men: "a
maid is hardly to be met with in a day's march"; any woman "has only
to go to T e xas to charm and f a scinate at least one-half of a town's bach­
elor population"; and "Wimmen was powerful scarce in these diggins,
and almost any sort of one was looked on as a reglar find."25
Apparently, the shortage of women enhanced their importance in
many people's eyes, especially in men looking f o r wives. As late as the
1870S, an Italian traveler in Colorado estimated the ratio of men to
women as fifteen to one, whereas a British traveler placed it as high as
twenty to one. "The cry is everywhere f o r girls; girls; and more girls,"
the latter wrote.26 Another Briton claimed that a Denver man was will­
ing to pay "a ten-dollar piece to have seen the skirt of a servant-girl a
mile off." In 1881 , a British publication, the American Settler, repeated a
Durango newspaper's claim that the greatest want in Colorado was
women, especially those "who can wait at table" and "above all . . . fo r