Page 73 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P H I L OSOPHY: E U ROP EAN DISCOURSE

sweethearts."27 Late in the 1 8 80s, the newspaper reported that only one
unmarried woman lived in the town of Delta in W a shington T e rritory
and that in Modoc County, California, "ladies are rare birds."28
Despite this reported scarcity of white f r ontierswomen, some
Europeans included them in their commentaries. In the manner of their
time, but in a way that would now be termed sexist, they usually fo cused
first on women as sexual and ornamental beings, concentrating their
remarks on physical appearance, beauty , and dress. It seems that not only
gender, but ethnicity, could affect how a nonwesterner looked at west­
ern women. For example, the Frenchman Edouard de Montule
declared, as one might stereotypically expect of a French male, that
although western women were o n the whole very pretty and shapely"
"
he had only encountered one woman who in his opinion had "truly
lovely breasts (which American women rarely have)." In 1 8 2 1 , he again
complimented some and damned others. In his view, fr ontierswomen
were "generally pleasing; and, with due respect to the amiable ladies of
Philadelphia, they are much more attractive in the W e st than in the
regions bordering the coast."29
In other cases, neither gender nor nationality carried any weight.
Some Europeans concurred with Montule in his assessment of western
women. In 1828, the Englishman Charles Sealsfield asserted that they
were "considered very handsome" and the German woman Fredrika
Bremer said that in the American West " one seems to meet nothing but
handsome f a ces, scarcely a countenance . . . may be called ugly."3o But
many thought that western women grew old prematurely, with their
beauty f a ding and their health disintegrating. They attributed this to a
variety of f a ctors, including climate, heavy labor, and poor dietY One
British traveler, William Shepard, added that scores of western women
displayed dull, expressionless f a ces due to hard work, poverty, and
cheerless lives. 32
The French traveler Alexis de T o cqueville carried the debate to a
higher level, that of inner beauty. He agreed that even though most
women endured "fever, solitude, and a tedious life" in a "comf o rtless
home" in the "Western wilds," they had not lost "the springs of their
courage." T o him, their fe atures might be impaired and f a ded, but
their looks were firm: they appeared to be at once sad and resolute. "I

65