Time Improves All Things...Almost

Time improved Indian-White relations.  How women acted in their dealings with Indians appears to be vastly different from the story told in the East.  When woman after woman notes in her journal, diary or memoirs  "no trouble with Indians", we have to wonder if there was another version to the story.

Yes there were isolated incidents recorded - the Indians had issues which they didn't always solve peacefully, especially the Comanches in the 1830s and 1840s.  Martha Simmons wrote in 1839 of a Comanche attack in which her father was killed and she, her brother and her mother were taken captive and tortured until their escape in 1840.

Comanches resisted all advances of the white man on the Western Plains and were reported to be cannibals.  In Texas one woman wrote "this country was made for wild Indians and buffalo. I desire to flee from it"

Yet another woman's family was able to live without incident near her Creek and Comanche neighbors in the late 1880s. As she put it "they left us alone and we left them alone".  Texas remained a hostile environment well into the 1870s and frontier Texas was characterized by warlike tribes who stubbornly resisted white invaders in their hunting grounds. 

The case of Minne Carrington illustrates the willingness of some women to understand their captors.  Taken prisioner in 1862, she later spoke with fondness of two Indian women who cared for her.  "It seems wrong to call them squaws, the were as lady-like as any white woman and I will never forget them."

Next time...Indians in Service