Their Own Frontier: Women Intellectuals Re-Visioning the American West

Conclusion

As the contributors to this volume have shown us, the ten women chronicled here were pioneering scholars. Each helped to lay the foundation for later developments in history, anthropology, archaeology, and folklore that appear groundbreaking and contemporary today as they relate to current studies of the Native peoples of the trans-Mississippi West. Despite the advances women and minorities have made in history and anthropology, the contributions of these women were too often ignored in the past. This is especially true of the volumes dedicated to the important figures who have shaped these disciplines, especially in the regional specializations of the American West and its Native peoples. Noted historian Anne Firor Scott, author of the first major book on southern women to appear in the second-wave feminist movement, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics (1970), characterizes Annie Heloise Abel in Unheard Voices: The First Historians of Southern Women (1993) as the founder of Native American history. We found no other historian who gives Abel that credit, but we agree with Scott’s assessment .1 The situation is similar for other women historians honored in this volume. Angie Debo and Mari Sandoz are too often overlooked as pioneers in ethnohistory and precursors for the development of the New Indian history. Finally, activist and writer Gertrude Bonnin, selected as a contributor to history and folklore and a chronicler of the harm wrought by assimilationist policies through her autobiographical works, is still discussed primarily as a literary figure, not as a public intellectual documenting her times. Since potential and established female scholars were unwelcome in the professionalized disciplines of history and anthropology, the women whose lives we have examined here struggled hard to enter their fields, and even more fiercely to maintain their footholds. Male responses to women’s professional careers ranged from outright hosConclusion Shirley A. Leckie and Nancy J. Parezo 374 Leckie and Parezo tility to effective mentoring that encouraged female scholars to complete their degrees or undertake independent research projects. Even the most supportive mentors, however, sent women not-so-subtle messages , cautioning them not to expect much in the way of full-time careers , advancement, or recognition within academia. There were exceptions. Annie Abel seemed to escape this all-toocommon fate as she rose to full professor at Smith College and established a strong reputation as a foremost scholar among her peers, both male and female. Beginning with her graduate-level studies, she was interested in American Indians and how they lost their lands. As scholars Theda Perdue and Michael Green inform their readers in their introduction to Abel’s trilogy on the Five Southern Tribes as slaveholders during the Civil War and Reconstruction, she was the first scholar to perceive American Indians as agents on the historical stage.2 Despite her pathbreaking spirit in taking such a stance, Abel, like Dorothea Leighton, was more conventional when it came to her personal life. Her marriage at age fifty brought about her required resignation from the university. Although the union ended in divorce and she remained a productive scholar, she never regained her professorial status. Perhaps, as Suzanne Julin suggests, Abel welcomed her freedom from the responsibilities of full-time teaching. No male professor, however, would have resigned his position because of a change in his marital status. By contrast, Abel played out the seemingly predetermined , gendered script, resigning as a gainfully employed professional woman although she was past her childbearing years. The idea of the husband as the professional provider and the needs of the household came first. Even when women pledged themselves to celibacy to pursue an academic career, they had no guarantee of obtaining a permanent position in higher education or one that recognized their potential and actual contributions to a discipline. Angie Debo, who built on Abel’s works and pioneered in American Indian–centered history, discovered that gaining her doctorate led not to promotion but to dismissal. Although Debo received one of the most prestigious prizes—the Dunning Award from the American Historical Association—for transforming her dissertation into a book, her achievement never convinced her mentor, conclusion 375 Edward Everett Dale, to bring her into his department even as a parttime or adjunct instructor or lecturer, despite her embarrassed request. Even though Dale wrote letters of recommendation on her behalf when Debo sought positions at other institutions, he reserved his wholehearted mentoring and professional favors for the careers of younger...