Page 77 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P H I L OSOPHY: EUROPEAN D I S C O U R S E

drenching the other passengers. "The water f e ll like a cascade over
unfortunate me," he wryly noted. 52 Regarding stagecoaches, f e male
travelers agreed. The Englishwoman Lady Duff u s Hardy stated that to
a woman "the manly heart yields his interest in car or stage, gives her
the best seat, that she might be screened and curtained, while he broils
in the sun; f o r her he fights a way to the f r ont ranks of refreshment
rooms, skirmishes with the coffee pot, and bears triumphant ices aloft." 53
Some European male spectators of the western scene were astute
enough to look deeper than behavior on public conveyances. They
probed the educational opportunities offered to women in the W e st,
agreeing that "female" education was widely available and of high qual­
ity. Pulszky pointed out that schools fo r young women were more
common in the W e st than in the East, whereas Busch, upon viewing a
Cincinnati ladies' school, remarked that "an offspring of f a shionable
refinement does exist and is flourishing."54
W e re these male observers impressed by the mere existence of
schools fo r western women or were they struck by their quality?
Because they were accustomed to girls being taught such f e male
"accomplishments" as doing f a ncy needlework, playing the pianoforte,
and cultivating an interest in literature, they viewed such education as
being of high quality. Although f e male students received little education
in English, history, and science, they appeared to observers to be reach­
ing what one called "a high taste f o r literary and mental accomplish­
ments."55 T o o, women living in boardinghouses in western towns filled
their hours with a great deal of reading and with their attendance at
public lectures. 56 And western white women in general were given more
time to cultivate accomplishments, so that they were more " civilized"
than western men. 57
Male visitors were similarly overwhelmed by widespread coeduca­
tion. In 1869, after studying coeducation in Kansas, the Englishman
William Bell stated that it was little wonder that political contests in
Kansas were marked by "petticoats . . . well to the fr ont," and that
"woman's suffrage and equal rights f o rm part of each platform in every
election." He added that it would take a particularly bold Kansas man
to oppose "openly the phalanx of political Amazons" that the Kansas
educational system produced. 58This less than salutary reaction was heard