Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies

Cathleen D. Cahill
Native Men, White Women, and Marriage in the Indian Service
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies - Volume 29, Numbers 2 & 3, 2008, pp. 106-145

University of Nebraska Press

Project MUSE - Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies - Native Men, White Women, and Marriage in the Indian Service Project MUSE Journals Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies Volume 29, Numbers 2 & 3, 2008 Native Men, White Women, and Marriage in the Indian Service Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies Volume 29, Numbers 2 & 3, 2008 E-ISSN: 1536-0334 Print ISSN: 0160-9009 DOI: 10.1353/fro.0.0014 "You Think It Strange That I Can Love an Indian"1Native Men, White Women, and Marriage in the Indian Service Cathleen D. Cahill The history of intermarriage between whites and American Indians is a half-told tale. Scholars have produced an impressive body of work on the political and economic benefits that accrued from pairings between white men and Native women, but the literature on relationships between Native men and white women remains sparse.2 Studies focusing on unions between white men and Native women are often situated on frontiers where whites accepted the relationships (if sometimes grudgingly), particularly when the couples remained outside of white society. Relationships between white women and Indian men, by contrast, were more deeply interwoven into the fabric of white society because of white women's symbolic importance as the moral centers of American civilization. Through their marriages, Native husbands became "Indians in unexpected places," in the homes of white women and therefore in the bosom of white society. Such relationships also...