Page 9 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

Introduction

When this study first appeared in 1984 it was distinctive in that it took
into account the role that gender, race, and, to a lesser extent, social class
played in white-Indian relations. Bef o re that time, scholars generally
assumed that Anglo men and women held similar prejudicial attitudes
toward Indians. White men and white women f e ared, f o ught with, or
fled fr om Indians at pretty much the same rates and f o r pretty much
the same reasons. I By taking a close look at men's and women's docu­
ments, however, W o men and Indians demonstrated that white women
traveling west by overland trails and establishing homes there had
significantly different reactions to American Indians, and thus very
different interactions with them, than did white men. On the trail and
in settlements, f e male gender roles moderated women's racial and social­
class beliefs, thus allowing Anglo women to become colleagues of sorts
with Indians, trading items of f o od and apparel or sharing child-care
hints with Indian women, and hiring Indian women and men to help
inside their homes and out. At the same time, Anglo men, especially
those charged with protecting their f a milies, obtaining land, and clear­
ing an area of its original inhabitants, developed an adversarial rela­
tionship with Indians, in which white men f r equently engaged in assess­
ing the number and potential of warriors, weapons, and horses they
would have to overcome.