A History of the Wife (36 page)

Because frontier women were ethnically diverse, they spoke different languages, had different customs, and practiced different religions. Protestants, Catholics, and a sprinkling of Jews inhabited the frontier, often in tight communities where women continued to speak their native languages with one another and shore up their particular reli- gious beliefs and rituals. Many groups clung to their old-world tradi- tions of courtship and marriage, even in the face of the freer American modes. European-born women who had crossed the Atlantic to escape the mandated dowries their parents could not afford were often glad to be guided by members of their ethnic communities in America, espe- cially the married women responsible for steering them in the direction of eligible men. Russian immigrants in the Midwest, for example, con- tinued the practice of arranged marriages, with the elder women sizing up a prospective bride by “pinching her strong forearms and noting the shine of her freshly scoured kitchen.” Unlike the Russians, Italians quickly abandoned the practice of arranged marriage, and like most other Americans, married “for love,” yet they continued to be wed within the Catholic church and to abide by its constraints on conjugal intimacy—no sex on fast days, feast days, or during pregnancy.
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Inevitably, the European immigrants were influenced by the pre- dominant Anglo-American culture. Even if they worshiped on Sundays or Saturdays with members of their own faith, during the school season they sent their children to the one-room, coeducational schoolhouses that soon cropped up on prairie and plain, and from their children, if

not from other American women, they learned the language and cus- toms of their new homeland.

One type of woman that Euro-Americans rarely got to know were Native Americans. Pioneer wives were more likely to encounter Indian men, who boldly approached them for food, usually when their hus- bands were away from home. A study of these incidents in women’s diaries, letters, memoirs, and novels shows that the Indians were almost always interested in acquiring food—a cooked meal, newly baked bread, or family staples. Contrary to the myth, the Indian men were not generally interested in carrying off scalps or female captives (though there were notorious exceptions), and they inspired virtually no fear of rape.
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The pioneer women recording these incidents remem- bered they were frightened, but they managed, nonetheless, to feed the intruder and hold back their rage if he carried away precious provi- sions. This was considered the prudent thing to do.

Some pioneer women living in close proximity to Indian tribes—for example, the Northern Cheyenne in Montana—showed sympathy with their neighbors, though enduring friendships between women from the two groups were virtually nonexistent. A few accounts penned or told by the Indian women themselves describe tribal life as experienced by the squaws.

Princess Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins spent part of her adolescence in a white school and married two white men (the first marriage ended in divorce). Neither man seems to have had much influence on her adult life, which was devoted primarily to promoting the cause of her people, the Pauites. In 1883 she wrote an autobiography to acquaint Americans with the misfortunes the Pauites had suffered at the hands of the white man.
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First they had been forced by the arrival of immigrants to move from Nevada to California; later they were herded onto reser- vations, where they were often swindled by corrupt administrators. She contrasted the present abuse and humiliation of the Pauites with an account of their earlier, idyllic history, including detailed descriptions of the rituals of courtship and marriage.

The girls are not allowed to get married until they have come to womanhood; and that period is recognized as a very sacred thing. . . . The young woman is set apart under the care of two of her friends,

somewhat older, and a little wigwam, called a teepee, just big enough for the three, is made for them. . . . She goes through certain labors which are thought to be strengthening. . . . Every day, three times a day, she must gather, and pile up as high as she can, five stacks of wood. This makes fifteen stacks a day. At the end of every five days the attendants take her to a river to bathe. She fasts from all flesh-meat during these twenty-five days, and continues to do this for five days in every month all her life. At the end of the twenty-five days she returns to the family lodge, and gives all her clothing to her attendants in payment for their care. . . .

It is thus publicly known that there is another marriageable woman, and any young man interested in her, or wishing to form an alliance, comes forward, but the courting is very different from the courting of the white people. He never speaks to her, or visits the fam- ily, but endeavors to attract her attention by showing his horseman- ship etc.

The courtship continues in silence for a year or longer. Even when the Indian brave enters the young woman’s tepee, he does not speak to her or her grandmother, at whose side she sleeps. If she confides her interest in the young man to her grandmother, he is summoned by her father, who asks the brave if he really loves his daughter, and asks his daughter the same question. He reminds each of them of their duties as husband and wife. “She is to dress the game, prepare the food, clean the buckskins, make his moccasins, dress his hair, bring all the wood—in short, do all the household work.”

Once the couple decides to marry, “a teepee is erected for the pres- ents that pour in from both sides,” and they prepare for the wedding ceremony.

At the wedding feast, all the food is prepared in baskets. The young woman sits by the young man, and hands him the basket of food pre- pared for him with her own hands. He does not take it with his right hand; but seizes her wrist, and takes it with the left hand. This consti- tutes the marriage ceremony, and the father pronounces them man and wife. They go to a wigwam of their own, where they live till the first child is born. This event also is celebrated. Both father and mother fast from all flesh, and the father goes through the labor of piling the wood

for twenty-five days, and assumes all his wife’s household work during that time. . . . The young mothers often get together and exchange their experiences about the attentions of their husbands; and inquire of each other if the fathers did their duty to their children, and were careful of their wives’ health.

While we can scarcely generalize about the experiences of other tribes on the basis of this one account, it does point to the importance of rituals marking significant passages in the life cycle, such as puberty, betrothal, marriage, and childbirth. It also points to the gender-specific obligations of husband and wife: Indian women, like their mainstream counterparts, were responsible for “all the household work,” except, interestingly enough, during the respite they were granted for twenty- five days after childbirth. And if the husband didn’t take over according to ritual, he was sure to be censured, at least by the female population.

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The practice of gift giving as a part of the courting ritual was wide- spread among Indian tribes. A young brave might silently sling a deer at the entrance of his sweetheart’s tepee. If his courtship found favor, the gifts were accepted. He would also make gifts to the young woman’s family—furs, feathers, livestock—and pay a “bride price” amounting to fifty horses or a pile of blankets. Among the Karok Indians, marriage was considered illegal without such payment, and among some coastal tribes, children born to a couple who had wed without abundant gifts would be thought of as bastards.
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Native American marital arrangements varied from tribe to tribe. Some allowed for cohabitation before marriage, some did not. Some practiced monogamy and some practiced polygamy. In polygamous tribes, like the Blackfoot, the first wife was honored as the “sits-beside- him” spouse, and reigned over any additional brides. The Fox Indians would bring a couple’s younger sister into their sleeping area, where she remained until she was old enough to become the husband’s sec- ond wife. In matrilineal tribes, a woman could try out one man after another until she chose the one she wanted permanently.

Most tribes expected fidelity and severely punished an unfaithful wife by maiming or expelling her. An adulterous Apache wife was liable to have her nose and her ears cut off. But wife sharing was another mat-

ter. This was considered courteous behavior in certain tribes, as in the Pueblo culture, especially during religious rites.

Mixed marriages with white men, while not encouraged, were not taboo. In the early 1800s, trappers and traders often took Indian brides, who were valuable helpmeets in many ways. They could trans- late between whites and Native Americans, ward off raids, prepare meals on the run, and help with hunting, curing hides, and repairing equipment.

Though many white men did not bother to legalize their mixed- blood relationships, others sought out the services of Protestant minis- ters or Catholic priests. The legendary trapper Andrew Garcia and his Pend d’Oreille bride were married by a Catholic priest when he was twenty-three and she nineteen.
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He had slept apart from her until the day when, to the amazement of his fellow trappers, he put a ring on her finger and promised to be a model husband. These early mixed- blood marriages remind us that American history has been, since the arrival of the white man, a story of multiple cultures coexisting and intermingling.

In the annals of American history, no legend is greater than that of the women and men who traveled across the prairies, plains, and moun- tains to reach the far west. It has been estimated that around 350,000 pioneers traveled on the Oregon and California Trails from 1841 to

1867.
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The Oregon Trail was known as the “family trail,” since it was favored by married men with wives and children, whereas single men were more likely to take the southern route to California, lured by the promise of gold and adventure.

ON TO OREGON

The first American families to travel west to Oregon were four mis- sionary couples in 1838, and among them Elkanah Walker and Mary Richardson Walker. From Mary’s diaries and letters, we are able to piece together a remarkable story.
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In the first place, Mary’s union with Elka- nah was orchestrated by the Missionary Board after her request to become a missionary on her own had been turned down. Mary had studied at the Maine Wesleyan Seminary for three years beginning in 1830 when she was nineteen, but since no unmarried women were sent

to foreign missions, it was only as the wife of a missionary that she would be able to accomplish her goal. Enter Elkanah Walker, a six-foot- four, shy, awkward seminarian in need of a wife. Though Mary had had several other suitors (one in particular to whom she was greatly attracted but rejected because he was an “infidel”), she quickly came to an agreement with Elkanah and waited for him to finish his studies before they married and were sent from her native Maine to Missouri and from there through Indian lands all the way to Oregon. Such a journey into alien territory required a passport issued by the War Department.

In Missouri, they gathered together with three other honeymoon couples and joined a caravan with twenty-five horses and mules. Their provisions included flour, rice, sugar, pepper and salt, which was expected to last until they reached buffalo country and could live largely on fresh buffalo meat. By the time they reached that part of the journey, Mary was worn-out and discouraged. One diary entry reads: “I have a great deal I wish to write. But I am so tired. We have two tents about eight feet by twelve. Have a curtain to separate the families.... Mr. and Mrs. Smith are sleeping loudly in the other part of this tent. Mr. Walker lies by my side telling me I have written enough.”

In addition to the sheer physical fatigue and lack of privacy, Mary had to put up with her husband’s difficult nature. She complained to her diary: “Should feel so much better if Mr. W. would only treat me with some cordiality. It is so hard to please him I almost despair of ever being able to. If I stir, it is forwardness; if I am still, it is inactivity. I keep trying to please, but sometimes I feel it is no use.” Shortly thereafter, she “had a long bawl,” which seems to have made some impression on Elkanah, for she noted: “Today he has been very kind.”

The strains of a three-thousand-mile trip that lasted over six months were both external and internal, some probably engendered by Mary’s pregnancy, though, out of Victorian discretion, she never mentioned that fact. In Oregon, a few months after their arrival, she gave birth to the first of seven sons, and like most mothers in most times and places, the first- born was an occasion for unmitigated joy. Her description of the birth reflects a full panoply of feelings: fear, pain, fortitude, relief, and happi- ness.

About nine I became sick enough. Began to feel discouraged, felt as if

I almost wished I’d never been married. But there was no retreating. Meet it I must. About eleven I became quite discouraged. . . . But just as I supposed the worst was yet to come, my ears were saluted by the cry of my child. ‘A son’ was the salutation. Soon I forgot my misery in the joy of possessing a proper child. In that evening my husband returned with a thankful heart and plenty of kisses for me and my boy.

Missionary wives, like Mary Richardson Walker, helped their hus- bands spread the Word among the various Indian tribes from the Sioux in the Dakotas, to the Nez Percés in the Northwest, and to other tribes such as the Winnebagos and the Kickappos in the far West. Of the 270 Presbyterian men sent to convert Native Americans between 1838 and 1869, only one of them was a bachelor. Because church politics insisted that a missionary should have a wife, not having one could be a distinct disadvantage for an aspiring cleric. As one Oregon missionary com- plained after he was refused a church position in Alaska: “That made the third time I have missed a good appointment because I did not have a wife.”
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The story of Mary Richardson Walker has found its way into official history by virtue of her role as the wife of one of the first Christian mis- sionaries in the Northwest. But there are many, many other stories of anonymous, or scarcely known women, who left behind no record at all or only a fragmentary one. Such was the case of Kitturah (Kit) Pen- ton Belknap, a midwestern farm woman, whose journey to Oregon was vividly recorded in a few choice diary pages. Before leaving the state of Iowa with her husband George, she had borne four children and lost three of them. Her surviving son was one year old when she wrote in her journal in October 1847: “Now we have one little baby boy left. So now I will spend what little strength I have left getting ready to cross the Rockies.”
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