Page 97 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRON I E R P H I L OSOPHY: E U R OPEAN D I S C OURSE
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The practice of polygyny, or plural wives, among some Indian
groups especially shocked European visitors. Because the practice was
not part of their own cultural background, they were unprepared to find
any validity in such an institution. Travelers f r equently commented upon
it at length, and many novelists incorporated it into their works as a
commonplace of American Indian life. 193 The usual interpretation was
that polygyny implied disdain f o r Indian women by their men. Louis
Philippe claimed that plural wives had to be "contemptible" in men's
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eyes o n Raumer took the position that polygyny contradicted the mild
and happy relationships that Europeans assumed to exist among Native
Americans. 194 Other travelers recounted dramatic tales of women's
responses to what Europeans viewed as reprehensible treatment. These
included stories of wives who f o ught violently the admittance of
another wife into their home or who took their own lives and those of
their children rather than tolerate such an indignity. 195
The fe ature that most struck European spectators about Native
American f a milies was the women's total accountability f o r all
domestic and agricultural labor, whereas the men were expected
"only" to hunt, fish, care f o r animals and weapons, and conduct
warfare. The list of men's duties might appear to some to be
demanding, dangerous, and exhausting, yet to most Europeans, who
came fr om settled agrarian or industrial backgrounds, such tasks
seemed incidental and even amusing. Montule depicted Indian males
as "by nature very lazy in cultivating the land or in working as do
civilized people."To him, they seemed to have energy only f o r amusing
activities, that is, hunting, fishing, and preparing f o r fighting by playing
war games. 196 V e ry rare indeed was the traveler such as Friedrich
Gerstacker, who argued that "in a state of society where the lives of the
f a mily, depend upon the success of the hunter, he must have his arms
f r ee and unencumbered f o r action at every minute, and dare not toil
under a heavy load, fo r it would make his aim unsteady."197 Rather,
visitors endlessly lamented the plight of the poor woman who did all
the domestic chores, labored in the fields, and took complete care of
f a mily and housing matters, whereas her mate did little or nothing. 198
Such statements were repeated so often that they became truisms.
Some observers even claimed that American Indian men did no work