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

This study take into account the roles that gender, race, and class played in Indian/white relations during the westward migration. The monograph reflects the changes in western women's history and in the author's own approach. In spite of white women's shifting attitudes toward Indians, they retained colonialist outlooks toward all peoples. Women who migrated West carried deeply ingrained images and preconceptions of themselves and racially based ideas of the non-white groups they would meet. In their letters home and in their personal diaries and journals, they perpetuated racial stereotypes, institutions, and practices. [State Historical Society of Iowa]