Page 81 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P H I L OSOP HY: EUROPEAN DISCOURSE

domestic labors they were usually complimentary in tone. Although an
occasional visitor depicted "wives of settlers" as living in "sloth and inac­
tivity," others were delighted to learn that all women were not as lazy
as rumored.82 Still others represented western women as very diligent
indeed. According to Sealsfield, a f a rm wife was "in motion fr om morn­
ing till evening." 83 The Englishman William Blane was even more lauda­
tory. In his view, women in the backwoods of the 1820S were "the most
industrious fe males" he had ever seen in any country.84
Even though fr ontierswomen labored assiduously within their
homes, they reportedly never worked in the fields. Travelers consistently
characterized fr ontierswomen as hard workers in the home but pro­
tected fr om "unwomanly employment" in the fields.8s In 1841, an
Englishman emphasized that "every man here, rich or poor, seems on
all occasions sedulously to give place and precedence to f e males, and
the meanest of them are exempt, or I might rather say debarred, fr om
those masculine or laborious tasks which are commonly enough
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assigned the sex, or assumed by them, in our country. 86 And in 1860,
a Swede wrote home that "women never work in the fields-not even
,,
milking cows. 87
Europeans identified a variety of reasons fo r this practice, which
was very strange to Europeans who were used to women working in
the fields. Many speculated that the generally high regard paid western
women explained the situation. At least one writer suggested, however,
that the inordinate cost of imported British goods caused women to be
,,
"chiefly employed in making articles of domestic clothing. 88 Generally,
observers assumed that the restriction of f r ontierswomen to domestic
labor meant a relatively easy life f o r them. They often characterized set­
tlers' wives and daughters as "ladies" who refused to draw their own
water fr om a well.89 In 1848, a Swedish f a rmer in Illinois wrote home
that "women do not have to do any other work here but wash clothes
and cups and keep the house tidied up and at some places also cook
f o od."9 0 A Frenchman traveling in Kansas during the 8 70S claimed that
1
"an American woman's only job is to make a home and to make little
Americans; we were never able to make the women there understand
that country women in France work on the land and know how to do
it almost as well as their husbands."91

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