Page 90 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPTER Two

Even more than their dirty and ragged appearance, the drunkenness
of some American Indians disgusted Europeans. Seldom, if ever, did these
commentators reflect on why Indians drank or who supplied the liquor.
De T o cqueville, f o r example, recounted several instances of drunken
native men and women. T o him they were brutalized wild beasts, to be
fe ared when in a drunken state.142 Other writers ranged fr om extend­
ing sympathy to "poor corrupted f r ontier Indians" to concluding that
Indians would go to any lengths, including selling a wife or child, to
obtain liquor. 143 With insight and human understanding, a number of
Europeans pointed out that drunken Indians were not typical. Rather,
they argued that the most visible Indians were often those whose cul­
ture had been destroyed, and who were transformed into lazy, dirty beg­
gars hanging around towns and railroad depots in hopes of a handout. 144
During the r820s, Paul Wilhelm, Duke ofWurttemberg, pointed out that
it was highly unfair and inaccurate to extrapolate fr om a few drunken
Indians to construct an image of all Indians, whereas de T o cqueville
searched in vain f o r the unspoiled Native Americans who had surely
retreated into the wilds. 145
With so many countervailing and often less-than-enlightened con­
ceptions ofIndians swirling through their minds, some Europeans reacted
by simply giving the topic short shrift. Still others allowed their own
shock and disillusionment to interfere with objective and f a ir reporting.
Whatever the cause, the result was often a superficial and biased descrip­
tion ofIndian society, customs, and culture. When turning to the subject
,
ofIndian women E uropeans assigned Indian f e males a place on the other
end of the continuum f r om white f r ontierswomen; that is, Indian
women, like Indian men, were considered savages. Europeans believed
that white saints would triumph and Indian savages would disappear, fo r
saints deserved to survive, and savages deserved to disappear, a solid tenet
of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonialism. Given this
predilection, the observations of European writers and travelers were
shaded, colored, and limned until the portrait of white women became
slightly larger than life and that of American Indian women less.
As was the case with white women, writers often subsumed native
women under the generic label of "Indian." When they did refer
specifically to Indian women, Europeans tended to call them "squaws"

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