»Gold Fever« and Women: Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West 9783839466568

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abstract
1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory for Multifarious Transformations and Reforms
Introduction
2 Historical Reflections of American Autobiographical Narrative Practice(s)
Introduction
2.1 Women’s Life Writings in the “Forgotten Century”
2.2 “Damned mob of scribbling women”
2.3 Narrative Spaces of Life Writing
2.4 Native American Autobiography: A “Mangled” Genre
3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces
3.1 Cultural Concepts of Space and Place
3.2 “Manifest Destiny Aesthetics” – Cultural (Mis)representations of the West
3.3 Bringing “Progress” to the West
3.4 Go West, Young Woman!
3.5 Cultural Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Women’s “Proper Place”
3.6 The Transformation of Domestic Boundaries and Nineteenth-Century Medicine
4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives to the Ontological History of the 19th Century American West
4.1 Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte: “The First Woman Physician Among Her People”
4.2 Patty Bartlett Sessions: The Role of Mormon Women and Medicine in Settling Salt Lake, Utah
4.3 Life of Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair: “Mother of [Oregon’s] Sterilization Bill”
5 Blazing their Paths into the Future
Introduction
Works Cited

Citation preview

Sigrid Schönfelder “Gold Fever” and Women

American Culture Studies Volume 41

Sigrid Schönfelder completed her studies at the Technische Universität Dresden, where she majored in North American Studies, focusing on concepts of identity in Native American autobiographies. Her research on the transformation of nineteenth-century women’s lives and medicine in the American West at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the Universität Passau, Germany, culminated in her Ph.D. thesis.

Sigrid Schönfelder

“Gold Fever” and Women Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-n b.de

© 2023 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: John Gast, ”American Progress”, 1872, oil on cavas, Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeleles, California, USA. Public domain. Printed by: Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839466568 Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-6656-4 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-6656-8 ISSN of series: 2747-4372 eISSN of series: 2747-4380 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.

Contents

Acknowledgments.................................................................. 9 Abstract............................................................................13 1

The 19th-Century American West: A Social  Laboratory for Multifarious Transformations and Reforms ................... 15

2

Historical Reflections of American  Autobiographical Narrative Practice(s) ..................................... 37 2.1 Women’s Life Writings in the “Forgotten Century” .............................. 42 2.2 “Damned mob of scribbling women” ........................................... 43 2.3 Narrative Spaces of Life Writing ............................................... 51 2.3.1 Mapping the Invisible Landscape:  Autobiographical Epistemologies ...................................... 53 2.3.2 The West and “I”: A Complex Stage ..................................... 56 2.4 Native American Autobiography: A “Mangled” Genre............................ 59 2.4.1 Written on the Wind: Literary Tradition (Oral)  and Authorship (Identity)............................................... 63 2.4.2 Life Writings in “The Red Woman’s America” ............................ 65 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces ............. 69 Cultural Concepts of Space and Place .......................................... 71 “Manifest Destiny Aesthetics” – Cultural (Mis)representations of the West....... 75 Bringing “Progress” to the West ............................................... 78 Go West, Young Woman! ....................................................... 81 3.4.1 The Trails – On the Tracks of the Elephant ............................. 84 3.4.2 Granny Remedies ..................................................... 88 3.5 Cultural Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Women’s “Proper Place” .............. 90

3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

3.5.1 Apple Pie, Sex, and The Cult of True Womanhood ....................... 95 3.5.2 “Stepping Out of Place”—Expanding the Domestic Sphere ............... 99 3.6 The Transformation of Domestic Boundaries  and Nineteenth-Century Medicine ............................................ 105 3.6.1 Lay healers—Midwives, Nurses, and Thomsonians.......................107 3.6.2 The Professionalization of Medicine .................................... 113 4

Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives to the Ontological History  of the 19th Century American West........................................... 121 4.1 Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte: “The First Woman Physician  Among Her People” .......................................................... 125 4.1.1 “From the Tepee to Civilization” ....................................... 129 4.1.2 Life in the “Good Road”, Spirituality, and Iron Eye’s Family .............. 135 4.1.3 “If you knew the conditions...”......................................... 160 4.1.4 Legacy of the New “Medicine Woman,” Cultural Broker,  and Progressive Reformer ............................................ 169 4.2 Patty Bartlett Sessions: The Role of Mormon Women  and Medicine in Settling Salt Lake, Utah ...................................... 177 4.2.1 “Baptized in a Sessions Bathtub” ..................................... 178 4.2.2 “Doctor” Patty: Clever Businesswoman and Mother  of Mormon Midwifery .................................................. 181 4.2.3 “A Peculiar People” or “Quintessential American Religion”? ............. 186 4.2.4 Exodus: In Search of the Kingdom of Zion ............................. 189 4.2.5 Benevolent Heroines: Establishment of the Female Relief Society ....... 197 4.2.6 “Remember Me” (1795 -1892) ........................................... 203 4.3 Life of Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair: “Mother of [Oregon’s] Sterilization Bill” ...... 204 4.3.1 Early Life of an Oregon Pioneer “Doctress”............................. 206 4.3.2 The “Organized” New Woman and Maternalist Health Reformers ........ 218 4.3.3 Protestant Social Reformers: WCTU Crusaders on a Mission ............ 227 4.3.4 “End of the Last Chapter” ............................................. 253 5

Blazing their Paths into the Future.......................................... 257

Works Cited ...................................................................... 267

Í minningu ástkærrar móður minnar, Hildar Vilhjálmsdóttur (1941-1985)   ömmu, Bryndísar Sigurðardóttur (1916-1984), og formæðra okkar

Acknowledgments

I began this dissertation intending to find out about the participation of women in the California Gold Rush, which was inspired by a discussion with my students following a reading of Stefan Zweig’s essay “Die Entdeckung Eldorados” by J.A. Sutter in California, January 1848 in his book Sternstunde der Menschheit about the discovery of gold at Johann Sutter’s mill. During my research on women in the Gold Rush, I discovered that quite a few families accompanied their men on various trails to the West and that there is a vast field of research on the history of western women. Since I imagined that most of the people heading West in the nineteenth century must have been highly ambitious to make such a long journey, it led me to wonder what these families’ daily lives were like en route. Of particular interest to me were questions (that are presented further in the Introduction and throughout this research) relating to the presence of families, especially concerning the role (s) women played (if any), the impact of their presence, the overall effect of the westward journey on their and their family’s physical and mental health. In addition, I wondered how the women dealt with pregnancies, illness, accidents, and even the death of loved ones along the way. Foremost, I became interested in how women’s status had been affected by the journey once they settled in their new homes in the West. Finally, remembering Catherine Beecher’s portrayal of nineteenth-century women as citadels of virtue–I wondered how this, too, could/would have any impact. What I discovered is revealed in the following pages and the women’s life writings chosen for this research. My path to the Ph.D. has also been quite a fascinating journey that has taken me down over twenty-thousand roads. Along the way, I have encountered many supportive people who shared their invaluable knowledge and provided supportive guidance that helped sharpen my focus. I would foremost like to thank my Ph.D. advisor Professor Karsten Fitz whose belief in

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this project as “still being a hot topic” encouraged and motivated its completion by providing me when most needed with an alternative perspective and road map when I wandered off down another road. Many thanks to Professor Carmen Birkle for fruitful discussions and invitations to take part in the Marburg colloquiums, where it was possible to gain unique insights. I am very grateful to the librarians and archivists who not only helped to locate valuable sources for this research but also for making sure that they were received: University of Nebraska Library, Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, Nebraska, the Legacy Center & Special Archives in Philadelphia, Drexel Medical University, Philadelphia, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Oregon Historical Society–Davies Family Research Library, University of Oklahoma Press, Montana State University Library, Brigham Young University Library, Katholische Universität Eichstätt Bibliothek, Ingolstadt, and the Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek in Munich. I would also like to thank the following publishing companies and institutions for their help: Mountain Press Publishing Co., Missoula, Montana, Globe Pequot Press, Connecticut, Icelandic Historical & Emigration Society, Hofsós, Iceland. Special thanks go to the following authors with whom I had the privilege to interview for taking their time to answer my questions, as well as provide their valuable insights: Mari Graña, author of Pioneer Doctor: The Story of a Woman’s Work, The Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT, 2005 and granddaughter of pioneer Dr. Mary Babcock More, who represents the many female doctresses who made the arduous journey West to fulfill their dreams and to serve their communities as healthcare providers. Mary Barmeyer O’Brien, author of Outlasting the Trail: The Story of a Woman’s Journey West, The Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT, 2005. The novel of Mary Rockwood’s family journey to the West inspired my research on Mary Rockwood Powers, who represents the many nineteenth-century women living their lives following the Cult of True Womanhood principles. The research and writing process is one that not only requires solitary time at one’s desk1 but also sharing and making one’s work known to the public. Attendance at doctoral colloquiums at the University of Passau and

1

Although she lost her battle to breast cancer before the completion of this dissertation and therefore will not be able to read it like she wanted to; I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Christine Schretter (1962-2018) for presenting me with her beautiful and spacious desk under the condition that I promise to complete my writing on it.

Acknowledgments

University of Marburg has been invaluable in sharpening the focus of this dissertation and clarifying its claims. In addition, I am grateful to several institutions for their generous funding and for opportunities to present my work at the following conferences: 1) From 13.-14. May 2021 attended and chaired the panel “Writing Queer Lives” at the international workshop Narrated Lives–Remembered Selves: Emerging Research in Life Writing Studies hosted virtually by Verena Baier and Tamara Heger from the University of Regensburg, with keynote lectures held by Prof. Dr. Sidonie Smith (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and Prof. Dr. Julia Watson (Columbus, Ohio). 2) The Women’s Council of the University of Passau for their generous grant to present my paper: “Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair: ‘Gleanings’ from the life of Oregon’s First Doctress and Crusader in the Eugenics Movement” at the 42. Annual Conference of the Historians in the German Association for American Studies entitled Reform Movements in U.S. History in Bad Bevensen, Germany from the 14.-16. February 2020. 3) The Association Francaise D’Ètudes Américaines for a generous travel grant to present my paper “Saints in the Golden West: The Role of Mormon Women and Medicine in Settling Salt Lake, Utah” at the graduate student symposium and the international conference Movement, Place, Fixity in La Rochelle, France from 27.-30. May 2015. 4) In July 2019, I was invited by the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, to present my paper “Patty Bartlett Sessions: Mother of Mormon Midwifery and the Role of Mormon Women in Settling Salt Lake, Utah” at the international conference Religion in America. 5) The Women’s Council of the University of Passau for a travel grant to take part in a two-day workshop from August 6.–7., 2015 at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken entitled Border Cultures: Theorizing and (Con)textualizing Borders, where I presented my paper “Susan La Flesche Picotte, M.D.: The First Woman Physician Among Her People.” 6) In October 2014, I was invited to present my paper “The United States West as a ‘Place’ for the Transformation of Women’s Lives and Medicine in the 19th Century” at an international conference “L’OUEST Et Les Amériques” held by the Faculté Des Lettres, Langues, Sciences Humaines Et Sociales Lorient, France.

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7) In July 2013, I attended a workshop at the University of Passau lead by Doris Bachmann-Medick entitled “Cultural Translation: The Translational Turn.”

Finally, and foremost my most profound gratitude and appreciation go to my close friends and family for their enduring love and support and patience especially my daughter Natascha for listening to me talk things out and whose expertise as a professional midwife led to many fruitful discussions, my son Tristan for sacrificing time away from his own Ph.D. project to lend his technical support, and to Geir, my life partner, whose reminders to catch my breath from time to time and enjoy life have been my greatest source of strength.

Abstract

Keywords: Healthcare & Medicine, 19th-Century Women, Cult of True Womanhood and Domesticity, American West   The rhetoric of journalists, politicians, literary scholars, and popular culture has long propagated clichés about the North American West. However, while much has been written on men’s participation and the many opportunities afforded them in the nineteenth-century American West, the history written until the 1970s and 1980s of the last century excluded women. “Gold Fever!” The Transformation of 19th -Century Women’s Lives, Health Care, and Medicine in the American West examines the transformation of the lives of three nineteenth-century healthcare-providing women in the West through a close and broad reading of their life writings—autobiographies, diary entries, journal articles, speeches, and letters—which illustrate how they challenged widespread views of “appropriate” behavior for nineteenth-century women dictated by ideals ingrained in the Cult of True Womanhood philosophy, which became popular between 1820 and 1860. The Cult’s philosophy, which applied foremost to the white middle-class, distinguished between public and private life. Accordingly, men’s sphere was in the public arena where they dealt with affairs outside of the home, such as business and politics, and a woman’s place or sphere was in the home, where she was expected to embrace the four qualities of the Cult’s moral codex such as piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. The literature often argues that ideals rooted in the Cult of Domesticity served to keep women from realizing their potential outside of the private sphere. This dissertation challenges this assertion by focusing on the empowering aspects of piety and domesticity, arguing that they afforded women an indirect power of influence and strengthened the female community in the separate spheres of the home, religion, and, later, female associations that

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flourished at this time. I will suggest an alternative lens that views the Cult’s philosophy as a construct that enables women’s elevation through domestic spaces. Thus, women’s career opportunities increased to include professions associated with and an extension of their roles as caregivers since it was women who were assigned nurturing roles, such as the task of providing healthcare to children and family members. Thus, healthcare was most often considered an acceptable “profession” for women because caregiving was a domestic task women (and not men) gave to family, friends, and neighbors. Women’s entry into the public sphere was integrally connected to the rise of feminism and the “Culture of Professionalism” of women’s tasks. The significant contributions and long-lasting impact of their dedication to the communities they served in the West also paved the way for women’s visibility in the public sphere—notably their prominence in healthcare professions.

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The 19th-Century American West: A Social  Laboratory for Multifarious Transformations and Reforms

The North American West, familiar to most through clichés, has often been propagated in, marketed to, and branded into cultural memory through constructed visual imagery and produced by the rhetoric of literary scholars, journalists, the media, politicians in various institutions, and popular culture as a land of myths. Throughout its long history, the West symbolized a place of hope, new beginnings, where anything was possible. As this research seeks to illustrate, the nineteenth-century West served as a catalytic gold mine for many transformations, especially for women. One such example is the following quote, which appeared in a San Francisco newspaper in 1850. It was taken from an unsigned letter that perhaps summarizes the sentiments of some healthcare-providing women heading West during the nineteenth century, beginning with the Great Migration in 1843 and followed by the California Gold Rush in 1849: I am a New Yorker by birth, but I love my adopted country—the West. To it belongs the credit of making it possible for women to be recognized in the dental profession on equal terms with men. (Taylor qtd. in Enss 73) Doctor Lucy Hobbs Taylor, who made a name for herself as the first woman in the world to earn a Doctorate of Dental Science and whose “efforts made it possible for many women to enter the field of dentistry” (ibid 72), was impressed by the open-mindedness she found in the West “for allowing such progress to be made” (ibid 73). The North American West offered Dr. Taylor and the women studied in this dissertation unusual challenges and opportunities that made the arduous journey an endeavor that would transform their lives and leave a long-lasting impact on the communities they served.

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However, relatively little was known about many of these women’s lives and those in this dissertation. The history written until the 1970s and 1980s either mentioned them only briefly or, most often, excluded them altogether. An explanation for this is that, until the 1980s, the West was defined using masculine terms, and women were seen as having marginalized stereotypical roles. The male-dominated western historiography understood the West primarily from men’s perspectives, and within this masculinized western discourse, women were virtually invisible, or they were relegated to representations as dependent, helpless, passive victims. Often, they were portrayed against the backdrop of the rugged frontier environment as innocent and pure beings who were expected to bring a gentle, civilized culture and social manners to the wild, untamed land that Euro-American males cultivated. Stewart L. Udall puts it this way: The history of western settlement has been warped by interpreters whose dramatic portraits of explorers and other transient outriders have, too often, diminished the importance of the community-building work of settlers who came to stay. (Udall, The Forgotten Founders 6) These gross distortions blurring the vision of most Americans” (ibid xxvi) were based on the models of Turner’s work, who saw the West in masculine terms and failed to illustrate women’s lives beyond the limited male gaze that stereotyped them as “sunbonneted helpmates, pioneer drudges, Indian princesses and squaws, and soiled doves (Schackel 4). Most of these historical inaccuracies have since been documented in various media. Today, however, popular culture has continued to capitalize on the Western mythic theme by churning out, for example, television and Netflix series that present singular robust pioneer lady doctors, such as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, or the many unsung doctresses written in the chapters of Chris Enss’ The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West.1 These popular, romanticized representations have failed to portray an authentic, multifaceted, and inclusive West where female Native American healers, such as Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, served indigenous and White communities

1

Also see Gloria G. Harris and Hannah S. Cohen, Women Trailblazers of California: Pioneers to the Present; Marilyn Griggs Riley, High Altitude Attitudes: Six Savvy Colorado Women; Alice Fleming, Doctors in Petticoats.

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

or the Mormons2 who learned from Native American healers, such as the midwife Patty Bartlett Sessions whose birth was attended by a Native American midwife. Nor do such works mention that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promoted women’s education in the healing arts and medicine by establishing a female organization known as The Relief Society in 1842. These representations also do not address the instability of the term “doctor,” which was not yet a fixed “profession” in the nineteenth century since the field of medicine itself was also transforming. In the more recent series Hell on Wheels,3 which is set against the backdrop of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad and the boom towns that were hastily erected to house the workers (and some families), women appear primarily in stereotypical roles as prostitutes and sometimes as family members, preachers, or journalists. The only portrayals of representative healthcare providers are men who were surgeons in the Civil War. The clichéd portrayal of women’s secondary position to men’s heroic leading roles that popular culture and western historical discourse have promoted neglect the many ‘other’ stories that helped create the West. For this reason, early female scholars on the West, such as Joan Jensen and Darlis Miller,4 have, [i]n opposition to an “older male image of western women” illustrated in The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West by Dee Brown, advocated an

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The term “Mormon,” which is used throughout this dissertation interchangeably with LDS Church and its official designation, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, comes from the title of the sacred book The Book of Mormon, which Mormon followers use as their scripture in addition to using the Bible. Further discussion on the LDS Church’s origin and experience in the West appears in the case studies, see also Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, as well as James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints. This American/Canadian Western television series about the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States was broadcast in the United States and Canada on the cable channel AMC from November 6, 2011 to July 23, 2016. Their article “The Gentle Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West,” Pacific Historical Review, 49 (1980), 173-213, was not only a critique of Dee’s book, but it also helped establish Western Women’s History as a field of inquiry. In retrospect, Elizabeth Jameson lauds the critique, saying, “Jensen and Miller demonstrated that there was abundant scholarship to ground new histories, suggested new questions and topics to pursue, and articulated formative challenges for historians of western women and the West” (Jameson 575).

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“ethnically broader and more varied image of women in the West” based “on a multicultural approach which calls for an evaluation of the experiences of all ethnic groups of women within a historical framework incorporating women’s history into western history. (Jameson 575) A Western women’s history conference in 1983 followed, at which Susan Armitage, former editorial manager of Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, was the keynote speaker. Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson then followed up the conference with the publication of a collection of the papers presented at the conference, as well as many other articles that had previously been published in Frontiers. They compiled these into the first anthology of Western women’s history, entitled The Women’s West, published by the University of Oklahoma Press (1987). The anthology’s purpose, according to the authors, was to “identify and then correct some of the oversights and omissions in earlier histories of the West,” and it included ideas about work and roles within families; the authors also believed “that much male experience is also omitted” (ibid 4). Moreover, several of the articles addressed how gender roles transformed in the West by considering literature by and for women who consciously attempted to fit the Western experience—whether traveling or once settled—into a framework that assured them fulfilling social opportunities. In other words, the idea was to evaluate “whether the contradiction between daily reality and idealized expectations produced new roles for western women and men” (ibid).5 Scholars such as Julie Roy Jeffrey, Lillian Schlissel, Glenda Riley, Sandra Myres, Susan Armitage, Sandra K. Schackel, Karen Anderson, Sherry L. Smith, Elizabeth Jameson, and Patricia Nelson Limerick, to name a few, challenged and modified these approaches even further in the 1980s and 1990s.6 These scholars began re-examining and challenging the scholarship 5 6

John Mack Faragher’s early workWomen and Men on the Overland Trail, examines family life, especially between men and women on the Overland Trails. Patricia Nelson Limerick’s seminal work The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West draws attention to the misconceptions of “settling” the American West that has been propagated through the media and that continues to feed into powerful myths by focusing on the history of the American West within the context of conquest. Furthermore, she writes that the past experiences of indigenous peoples form an integral part of the legacy of the West. Regarding the romanticized and adventurous conquering of the Western territories, Limerick argues, “There is, in fact, nothing [romantic nor] mythic about the [conquest of the] American West. It has a history grounded in primary economic reality—in hard-headed questions of profit, loss, competition, and

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

on the West through a female gaze, drawing on life writings they found in archives and private collections, including published and unpublished articles, journals, travel narratives, diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, and letters to loved ones sent by men and women who realized that they were taking part in history on the trails and in their new homes. Furthermore, their works suggested many other categories and combinations to better understand the West through a female gaze, especially by emphasizing the value of women’s voices previously marginalized or silenced. Drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarship from New Western Women’s History employing intersectional frameworks7 , this dissertation engages the dialogues between feminist theories and methodologies that involve investigations into the transformations of nineteenth-century women’s lives through their life writings, which seek to understand, challenge, and change gendered divisions in society, especially in the West. Feminist theories and larger subdisciplines developed from the late 1970s onwards were created from the political context of the second wave of the feminist movement of the 1960s.8 A principal argument was that gender roles and the unequal positions and power of women and men in society had been largely ignored until then. As a result, in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars searched for a “usable past [that went] beyond a few token individual women and women’s oppression to reclaim the lives and contributions [of women] who identified with the Western religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity” (Lindley ix).

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consolidation. Behind every trapper lay a trader, before every Indian lay a homeland lost to an encroaching farmer. They, and hundreds of thousands like them, meant business. In dozens of ways, their descendants mean business today” (Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West - front and back flap of book cover). Historians working in areas that explore women’s lives have documented how gender, race, and class can intersect to illustrate multifarious socio-political and cultural constructs and negotiations of power, especially illuminating their impact and contradictory nature. This lens is very useful for its contribution to Western Women’s History in “demonstrating the dialectic of knowledge production” (Leong 622). For an in-depth discussion of how “[t]he wave narrative has come to frame academic and popular discussions of western feminist activism [as well as ] the multi-faceted nature of the term ‘third wave feminism’ [which, according to Elizabeth Evans,] is further complicated by the temporal overlap with second wave feminism [in addition to questions of] whether we are still in the third wave or if we are currently in a fourth wave of feminism”, see Evans, “What Makes a (Third) Wave?” 409-428.

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Since then, recent decades have also seen an explosion of research and publications, especially in religion, which has played an “overarching” and “pivotal role” in America’s foundation and the history of the American West. Former Arizona congressman and Secretary of the Interior under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Stewart L. Udall says that “people of faith were in the vanguard of western settlement” (Udall, The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West 7).9 However, as historian David M. Emmons notes in the “Forward” to Udall’s book The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West, this is not an easy point to make, especially among those who assume that because religion is of no importance to them, it cannot have been of any importance to anyone. For these individuals - and, there are many western historians among them - religion is reduced to a bizarre form of collective behavior that can be understood in a historical context only as it answered material needs. As an approach to the study of the past, this cannot capture the self-understanding of a people who believed in and lived a life beyond that in which the historians find and study them. The simple fact is that until rather recently and for the vast majority of the world’s people, including those who settled the American West, religion was central to both their material and their spiritual lives. It connected them - to one another and to the place where they lived. It defined who they were. (ibid xviii-xix) Thus, it seems that not only have many scholars overlooked the powerful impact of religion as one of the central precepts of America’s founding and importance to a vast majority of people’s sense of identity, whereby it “stands at the heart of the story of America itself” (Butler et al. xi), as other scholars such as Ashley Reed have argued, “this positioning made it difficult to study religion in any manner that did not reduce it to an anomaly to be explained or a disease to be cured” (Reed 16). In her recent book Heaven’s Interpreters: Women Writers Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America, she notes that a recent wave of American literary scholarship has begun to redress secularized critical practices and to demonstrate how careful attention to religion 9

He served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969. Following his retirement from public service in 1969, he devoted most of his time to writing books and articles dealing with environmental issues, and practicing law. In addition, when he was not writing, he represented Native American uranium miners in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah in their lawsuits against the United States Government.

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

not as a reified foil but as a vibrant, varied feature of the lives of individuals and communities - can enrich our understanding of the figures and texts we study. (ibid) Indeed, it appears to be one of the most fertile areas in recent scholarship that engage a broad geographic, ethnic, racial, and denominational range of American women’s religious experiences and contributions to the transformation of their lives. An awareness of the centrality of religion and its impact on American history makes it a productive site to read nineteenth-century women’s writing and to investigate and engage with ideas of how religion supposedly consigned women to the domestic sphere and minimized their socio-cultural authority. I discovered in this research that it did not, and therefore argue, instead, that it offered nineteenth-century women a way to assume authority in the public sphere through a Christian sense of duty. They accomplished this through various channels and by engaging “maternal rhetoric” through the domestic spaces of “women’s work” in religious and voluntary associations, missionary groups, women’s clubs, and reform organizations, where they gradually gained visibility. Thus, by drawing on the broad feminist scholarship that New Western Women historians engage in across disciplines, this study aims to make an original contribution by engaging this scholarship to reveal and illustrate the socio-political and historical impact relevance of nineteenth-century women’s lives. By leaning on the New Western Women historians’ scholarly methodologies that rest on intersectional or multicultural approaches recognizing the diversity of women’s experiences. This dissertation also seeks to evaluate the experiences of white women and ‘other’ groups of women who contributed to the West’s history long before the arrival of Europeans. Unfortunately, a multicultural evaluation of all the women across the transnational or ethnic divide goes beyond this research’s scope. However, they are recognized and mentioned for their roles and impact in shaping North America’s history throughout the following chapters. New Western History has undergone significant transformations over the past 30 years as a field. Also, it is currently “at the crossroads of a variety of fields that delve into the complexity and richness of the region’s past, [which has transformed] beyond the old place-versus-process debate and the Turnerian western history of miners, cowboys, Indians, and sun-bonneted white women moving across an empty prairie to the study of the American West [as it] contributes to discussions of transnationalism” (Bryan 272). Towards

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the end of the twentieth century, a paradigm shift occurred that has profoundly influenced scholars in various academic fields, especially literary and cultural studies in North America. This “shape-shifting,” also referred to as the transnational turn,10 has made it possible to “study diversity within a place, [since] no place in the American West ever was, or currently is, homogenous” (ibid 273). As a result of more recent scholarship from the “transnational turn,” it is transformed from “New Western History” and now referred to as the “Next Western History.” A U.S.-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Daniel Heath Justice, puts it this way: our nationhood and tribal specificity has, in many ways, been built upon a transnational foundation that has incorporated difference to assert more firmly and powerfully our distinctiveness as a people, [which was by] necessity, transnational, for vast and complex relations of diplomacy, trade, conflict, and kinship connected diverse Native peoples long before European invasion.” (Justice 170-71) Viewing the West in this way has the advantage, furthermore, that “narratives can hold and explain ambiguity, multiplicity, and contradictions in the West” (Miles qtd. in ibid). This latest scholarship is valuable, especially as it relates to new approaches to the Native American past and Indigenous studies, mainly how it influences and shapes our perceptions of the role and impact Native Americans had on the West’s history.11 The rich Native American history, whose cultural roots stretch back thousands of years, is also entrenched

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The “transnational turn,” “[i]n the context of the United States […] has centrally concerned itself with mounting a critique of American exceptionalism, the ideology that imagines America as a unique nation destined to achieve the enduring bliss of liberal republicanism and to serve as a model for the rest of the world’s peoples as they struggle—willingly or otherwise—to emulate the righteous path of American progress” (Bauerkemper 396) Annette Kolodny and Michael Witgen’s work focuses on early contact between Native Americans and Europeans, not only suggesting a re-periodization for thinking about conquest, but as Kolodny proposes, to “recover and reconstruct the linguistic and textual encodings of seriate interpenetrations … [and] to embark on a long-overdue literary history of the American frontier … by extending the implications of their investigations beyond European colonial beginnings [since] the interplay between European and indigenous traditions is … inadequate to any comprehensive understanding of the literary history of the American frontiers” (Kolodny, “Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: Notes toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers” 2, 7).

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in North American Culture. Throughout its history, successive waves of immigrants and Euro-American presence have led to socio-cultural transformations that have resulted from the encounters. The necessity of acknowledging and understanding how the encounters have impacted multifarious transformations that have shaped many institutions throughout North America is reflected in Arnold Krupat’s words: “You just can’t understand America, more specifically, the United States, without coming to terms with the indigenous presence on this continent” (Krupat, Red Matters: Native American Studies 3). Part of coming to terms with indigenous presence also requires acknowledging that women’s gender experiences and definitions were as diverse as the cultures from which they came. Women apprehended knowledge and acted within their universe according to the cultures and its particular economic and socio-politico-religious organization. [Thus], understanding the nature of gender systems and experiences before contact is critical to understanding how those experiences changed with conquest and colonialism and why women responded and acted the way they did in intercultural settings and relationships. It is also critical to understanding how they maintained, adapted, and transformed their own cultural forms while resisting, adopting, adapting, and affecting those of other groups (Castaneda, “Women of Color and the Rewriting” 42). Thus, an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates concepts from various fields can provide helpful tools to view women’s contributions in western American history, especially the women who reflect the racial and cultural diversity of the American West. This approach is best suited to highlight the dynamic and complex processes involved in historicizing and theorizing the socio-cultural, socio-political, cultural, and religious spaces of the women chosen for this dissertation, about whom truly little is known. They are all healthcare providers whose backgrounds vary considerably regarding culture, family, social status, education, and religion. Several different frameworks are thus required for analysis and interpretation. Placing these methodologies into dialogue with each other has the advantage of negotiating a combination of ways to historicizing and theorizing, which makes this dissertation unique. Indeed, the works of the three women chosen for this dissertation cannot be confined to a single approach. Instead, it is necessary to adopt a lens that is inter/trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural. It encompasses intersec-

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tional scholarship from areas that have contributed to Western U.S. women’s history, demonstrating the dialectic of knowledge production and legacies of oppression and dispossession of individuals and communities and institutional negotiations of power at specific historical moments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, as the results of other areas of early feminist research have demonstrated, gender relations were the outcome of and were reflected in the spatial structure(s) of society. Feminist geographers such as Linda McDowell and Doreen Massey, for instance, have emphasized how men and women’s perceptions of places, placelessness, and spaces, as well as their exclusion from them, are distinct because of their access to them. In other words, men and women have different spatial activity patterns and experiences in relation to material inequalities and terms of access to work, wealth, and power; the result ultimately leads to unequal access to public and private space. For example, power relations regarding access to institutions of higher learning resulted in the politicization of personal/private space that led to the feminist slogan “the personal is political.” The slogan reflects the conviction among many feminists that women’s experiences are rooted in their political position in society and hence at the heart of gender inequality.12 Given its focus on power, feminist theory has been extended to understand and explain other forms of spatial divisions centered on identity and cultural politics. This lens has led to productive engagements of feminist theory with other social theoretical frameworks found in post-colonialism. “Gold Fever!” focuses on the United States West not as a geographical place but as a “cultural space” for the transformation of women’s lives and medicine

12

The concepts and theories surrounding power and relationships are foremost associated with Michel Foucault, whose works have had a profound impact on many disciplines, including literary criticism, as well as on gender and feminist studies. Foucault wrote extensively on discourse theory, upon which feminist theory has drawn. It “has been particularly productive because of its concern with theorizing power [and because] feminist theorists are generally concerned with analyzing power relations and the way that women as individuals and members of groups negotiate relations of power” (Mills 69-70). The “discourses (ways of knowing and structuring the world through language)” (Felluga xi) allow for a conceptualization that illustrates the complexity of the “relation of power to knowledge and subjectivity” (ibid 237), as well as their impact on society. Indicative of this, according to Felluga, is that “power is not merely physical force but a pervasive human dynamic determining our relationships to others … in which a dominant group exerts its influence over others” (ibid 237-8).

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

in the nineteenth century. Various mythic notions of the West13 have generated a plethora of ideas and terms that contribute to academic debates about space and place. The debates have become increasingly important both due to the more recent globalized migrations that have displaced/disrupted many people’s lives and because they raise questions found in postcolonial theory that concentrate on concepts such as borders, frontiers (e)migration, deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Concepts such as these “advocated a cultural worldview that deeply values fragmentation, plurality, and transience,” according to Jeanette Den Toonder, and also “have been politicized in order for uprooted minorities or oppressed populations [such as the Native Americans and Mormons in this dissertation] to define themselves outside of the dominant culture” and while “living in a constant state of transition, [enable the capability for] self-transformation” (den Toonder 1, 3). Accentuating specific feminist geographical concepts in relation to landscapes has the advantage of looking beyond landscape geography as represented on maps to explore critical intersections of space and power in order to assign new meaning. The rich vocabulary generated around conceptualizing cultural space through its borders and zones of encounter/contact, as defined by Mary Louise Pratt, offers terms for nuancing the representations of the West with a particular emphasis on concepts that have “become central to debates in feminist, multicultural, postcolonial, and cultural studies” (Watson 15). Returning to Jensen and Miller’s observance that “a new, ethnically broader and more varied image of women in the West is today challenging that older view” (Jensen and Miller 178-179), which lead to their proposal for a more inclusive multicultural approach to evaluate the experience of all ethnic groups of women. Their proposal was undoubtedly influenced by the criticisms of feminist women of color for “a new multicultural framework as a focus for western women” (ibid 185).14 However, in her essay “Women of Color

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Notions of the West and western experience may have changed from originally being seen as a process of nationalization to broader notions contained within the experience of globalization. The resulting experience of both processes always deals with place-making and resulting identity issues. As Virginia Scharff also pointed out earlier but is still significant to the field of Western Women’s history, “scholars of color today are debating the merits of attempting to integrate their work into a politically suspect field, or building a separate body of knowledge” (V. Scharff, “Else Surely We Shall All Hang Separately: The Politics of Western Women’s History” 543).

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and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History,” Antonia Castañeda criticized this approach by arguing that earlier “multicultural works tend to emphasize harmonious, cooperative, mutually supportive relations between women of color and Anglo women in the American West,” (ibid 519) and pointing out that “by emphasizing the benign, conflict-free relationships between white women and women of color in the American West, multicultural studies reaffirm the notion that white women are the ‘gentle tamers’” (ibid 521). Scholars have since developed Castañeda’s ideas regarding the implication of women of color as “agents and objects of history” which is a big part of the western story, and it is a big part of the western women’s story,” according to Alberto Hurtado (Hurtado 3). Furthermore, as historians of colonialism have observed for many decades, the discourse involved in establishing and reconstructing borders is filled with gendered imagery. In his essay “Settler Women and Frontier Women: The Unsettling Past of Western Women’s History,” Hurtado examines the role of women on what he dubs the “intimate frontier”15 where gender and colonialism have taken place within the cultural space of the private sphere of the home by both the colonizers and the colonized. Especially in the nineteenth century marked by an intensified struggle for land, according to Hurtado, “[i]n demographic terms, women not only reproduced a population, they reproduced the society in which that population lived. [Thus], it is difficult to imagine what the American West would look like without women’s influence” (ibid 3).16 Further, he points out that [s]ettler women’s lives were a routine part of the day-to-day transformation of the American West from Indian country to public domain and to private property, and the establishment of political, economic, and social hegemony. The activities of settler women (whatever their ethnic background) were not value neutral. However homely and restricted their lives may seem [to us today], the presence of settler women in the West was not benign. Directly and indirectly they contributed to the dispossession of American Indians and the

15 16

Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California, It is interesting to note that “the sex ratio imbalance of the invading population heralded eventual population growth, conquest of Native peoples, and hegemony. The few women who came at first and the many who followed contributed to these results. In short, a few women with high birthrates plus steady immigration of new, fertile women eventually out-populated Native peoples” (ibid 2).

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transformation of Indian country into industrial and agricultural landscapes. (ibid 3)17 Other scholars of the North American West have offered other ways of viewing the domestic authority women assumed in the wake of national-territorial acquisitions, such as through their Christian duties. Domestic space, for example, can be viewed as a contact zone within which negotiations over ‘otherness’ and identity can be brought into focus. Anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler, whose book Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (2002), illustrates the many complex roles that women have played by utilizing maternalistic rhetoric and their impact on the institutions that created policies for colonizing the West through female teachers, missionaries, and reformers, refers to this zone as the “intimacies of empire.” Postcolonial approaches have further gained a place in disciplines such as the social sciences, arts, and cultural and literary fields. They provide a powerful lens through which to read various pieces of literature, especially those that have significantly been influenced by U.S. political or cultural imperialism. As an approach to ethnic works of literature, and especially life writing, they illustrate the complexity of other voices while at the same time emphasizing the importance of respecting them. This dissertation examines the role of women’s participation in shaping racial ideologies and their endorsement of the colonization of the West through maternalistic policies/politics, domesticity, piety, church groups, missionary societies, and reform organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The private sphere of the home as a site of colonial interactions is also examined to illustrate nineteenth-century societal views of women’s appropriate place, also referred to as the “woman question.” Underlying the question(s) surrounding the “woman question”/ women’s “proper” place in the nineteenth century were the significant social and economic changes in progress, resulting in the transformation of appropriate roles for women in American society. These widespread views of “appropriate” behavior for women were dictated by the value system inherent in the prescriptive codex of the “Cult of True Womanhood,” which I am particularly interested in exploring. According to this view, women were assigned to the private sphere of the home engaged in nurturing roles and the task of caregiving to children and family members. Healthcare was most often considered

17

Hurtado uses the term “settler women” here to mean all non-Indian women.

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an acceptable “profession” for women because caregiving was a domestic task that women (and not men) gave to family, friends, and neighbors. Throughout history, women commonly practiced medicine as midwives and nurses, and doctors. Thus, it is among my main arguments throughout “Gold Fever!” that certain ideals inherent in the Cult’s ideology promoted women’s career opportunities to professions associated with and as an extension of their roles as caregivers, such as nurses, midwives, and doctors. This dissertation seeks to answer the following questions: 1) What opportunities existed in the nineteenth century for women to realize their potential outside of their domestic realms? How did the Cult of True Womanhood /Cult of Domesticity value system influence women’s career choices? In what ways were women able to extend their domestic authority as caregivers into the public sphere? 2) How/Did the West, with its absence of physicians and high demand for healthcare, provide women social and economic opportunities (beginning on the trails and following settlement in towns) to break the glass ceiling and gain entry into the male-dominated public sphere, ultimately enabling them to enter medicine and assume these tasks as “professionals”? 3) What contributions and impact did healthcare-giving women have on nineteenth-century American society’s socio-political and cultural transformations, especially in the West?

While much has been written on men’s participation and the many opportunities afforded them in the nineteenth-century American West, the above questions remain to be answered adequately regarding women, especially those whose backgrounds differed from the mainstream, white middle class. Therefore, I have attempted to reconstruct different life narratives by drawing on primary sources such as diaries, letters, journal and newspaper articles, as well as secondary sources, to present a close and broad reading of the rich textual representation of the socio-political and cultural diversity of the three healthcare-giving women chosen for the corpus analysis: Patty Bartlett Sessions (Mormon midwife), Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair (white middle-class medical doctor), and Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte (Native American of the Omaha tribe). Their narratives contribute to the ongoing postcolonial/transnational academic discussions that pertain to the intersectionality of multicultural women’s voices and their contribution to healthcare in the nineteenth-century West. These women are unique because they are not well

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

known, and very little information is available in secondary literature thus far. Chapter 2 lays out the conceptual foundation necessary for the analytical close and broad reading of the life writings of Susan La Flesche Picotte, Patty Bartlett Sessions, and Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair. Scholars have argued that the history of North America is intimately connected to the history of autobiographical practices and therefore traces a different timeline than perhaps in other countries. Indeed, not only is the historical timeline different, but a transnational/transcultural perspective makes it increasingly difficult to determine a fixed definition of autobiography when analyzing life experiences across socio-cultural (economic, religious, and racial) boundaries. While newer methodological strategies have developed because of media and social platforms, this approach does not consider the broad socio-cultural transformations that affected the lives of nineteenth-century women living their lives at a time that Smith and Watson refer to as the “forgotten century for American women’s life writing.” The study of ego-documents, a prominent topic in cutting-edge research among academics in recent years, focuses on life writings such as memoirs, autobiographies, travel accounts, private letters, and diaries, and other narrative sources that recount a person’s life experience.18 There is also a wide variety of sub-genres within autobiography, including spiritual autobiographies, autobiography in cartoons, autobiography in dance and film, celebrity autobiographies, therapeutic autobiography, indigenous autobiography, online writing of the self, and autobiography in translation. Jacques Presser coined the term around 1955 and defined ego documents as writings in which the “I,” the writer, is continuously present in the text as the writing and describing subject. While Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson outline several “Is” in life writing: the narrated “I,” the narrating “I,” the ideological “I,” and the historical “I,” Judith Butler describes the complexities of reading the “I” as a performative act, which is best described as a transformative process. Furthermore, the life narratives of the three women in this project are examined from a New Historicist perspective that considers gender, class,

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The terms ego-documents, autobiography, and life writing are used interchangeably throughout “Gold Fever!” to reflect a broad and classic explication of the genre, in which the authors give a retrospective account of their lives by attempting to reconstruct personal events within a given historical, social, and cultural framework.

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ethnicity, and social and political events while considering them as historical records/products of their time. New Historicism is considered part of a contemporary development in literary theory and criticism that examines historical situatedness by evaluating how a particular work is influenced by the time in which the author wrote it. It involves examining the author’s social background by considering the socio-cultural and political views inherent in the text. Thus, it offers a powerful lens to examine the dialectical history and personal transformation of women’s identities within the broader dynamic context of the American West, as well to as show how their writing enabled them, as women, to actively engage in public life. The chapter concludes with a separate discussion of Native American autobiography as an expanded/alternate approach to life writing that requires reading outside the Eurocentric frameworks. Indigenous perspectives provide glimpses into how autobiographical writing was conceived for members of society who appeared to have little or no voice. This has the advantage of exposing the limitations of traditional readings of autobiography while illustrating how each life narrative authorized their writing and performed their identity against the socially inscribed norms for women of the nineteenth century. Chapter 3 sets the cultural stage and provides the historical context for “Gold Fever!”. It aims to illustrate the rich and complex vocabulary stimulated by a poststructuralist approach within a postmodern line of thought that rejects the notion of assigning an ultimate meaning to discourse. Instead, it leans on the Foucauldian aim of discourse analysis that postulates that everything is subject to history’s fragmented gaze and that there are no absolutes: “Seeing historically how effects of truth are produced in discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false” (Foucault 88), and of the role of language as it pertains to power relations. Together, these approaches offer ways of nuancing representations of the West, especially related to transformation, the conceptualization of place, and the constructed representations of the North American nineteenth-century West’s social spaces that have evolved from power relationships.19 Several media representations

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However, due to their breadth and complexity, the conceptualizations presented in this chapter do not presume to be exhaustive, which would go beyond the intention and scope of this dissertation. Rather, they are an effort to illustrate several gradations as they apply to an understanding of the links between place and space, as well as how concepts of identity were negotiated in nineteenth-century American women’s lives. The West is thus best understood not only as a geographical location, but as a con-

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

of nineteenth-century social transformations and their relevance to the collective memory of American identity, especially as they pertain to the status of women and Native Americans, are briefly assessed and conceptualized using John Gast’s famed painting Progress. They are useful for illustrating and framing the socio-political and cultural nineteenth-century western space. The discussion continues with reflections on distinct gendered spaces, the journey–hygiene/illnesses on the trails, and the reliance on women. It concludes with a discussion of the rhetoric of separate spheres, the Cult of True Womanhood’s prescriptive ideology, with particular focus on “piety” (religion) and “domesticity.” Domestic politics and social reforms were connected with women’s increased visibility in the public sphere throughout the nineteenth century, ultimately leading to suffrage. While the Cult’s ideology provides a valuable framework for understanding nineteenth-century views on appropriate behavior for white, middle-class women, some scholars have also criticized it for bias and the exclusion of women from “other” backgrounds. In this dissertation, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte of the Omaha tribe has therefore been chosen to represent “other” women who lived their lives outside of the Cult’s ideology but were nevertheless affected by its impact in various ways. Although they are mentioned, “Gold Fever!” does not aim to provide a comprehensive discussion of the Cult’s prescriptive four qualities. To do so would not only go beyond the scope of this dissertation but would also ignore the main focus, which is to examine facets of the Cult’s ideology, especially with an emphasis on the socio-politically- transforming aspects of piety and domesticity, which I will argue promoted women’s career opportunities in professions associated with and as an extension of their roles as caregivers. They succeeded in expanding their roles by first addressing and challenging, and redefining them. These socially prescribed roles (in)directly empowered women to expand their role(s) within the private sphere of the home, which women further developed during the Reform Era. They began organizing religious, benevolent, and reform groups voicing a broad range of domestic concerns that pointed to critical forms of inequality on many levels. Their effectiveness resulted in establishing nationwide women’s clubs, culminating in the launch of the largest and most successful Christian woman’s organizations known up to that time. These organizations will be focused on in this dissertation; the structed place of many spaces, where power relations were (and still are) in a constant state of flux and transformation.

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Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Relief Society. These organizations and clubs led to legal reforms that opened up unexpected possibilities for many women, giving them a voice and ultimately leading to their visibility in the public sphere. Chapter 4 reconstructs and analyzes the lives of the three women by reflecting how each woman’s agency situates her authorial and transformative “I” within the spaces of the West and the socio-political/cultural context of the nineteenth century to challenge the prescriptive behavioral codex of the Cult of True Womanhood. These women emerge at the end of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, when suffrage was granted first to women in the West, as the New Woman in the public sphere during a time that coincided with public reforms that were evolving. As professional healthcare providers championing domestic reforms during the Age of Science, they joined other reformers seeking to improve society by eliminating domestic and public health issues they believed were associated with lack of opportunities, often leading to poverty, crime, and alcoholism. Therefore, they sought to promote better hygiene, healthy habits, and the Christian faith. Section 4.1 begins with and illustrates the life of “The First Woman Physician Among Her People,” Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte - an Omaha Native American, who in this dissertation represents how oppressed women define themselves outside of the dominant culture and dictates of True Womanhood. La Flesche Picotte’s life writing represents a transformative life of living outside of the mainstream and within a liminal third-space allowing her to act as a “cultural broker” in the borderlands between two cultures. Her upbringing as one of eight children by the last recognized chief of the Omaha, Joseph La Flesche, taught her that the survival of her people depended, on the one hand, on learning and adapting to the dominant white culture, while on the other hand never rejecting her Omaha identity. Her father converted the family to Christianity and encouraged his children to pursue higher education. She advocated and campaigned for temperance and preventive healthcare measures for her people. She was appointed a government physician at the Omaha Agency Indian School, where she successfully managed her medical practice on the reservation, serving as the only doctor to white patients and approximately 1200 members of the Omaha tribe. Furthermore, her public health campaigns included instructing the community that epidemics and infectious diseases (often introduced by white settlers) could be controlled by discontinuing the sharing of drinking cups and controlling flies in their homes. Unfortunately, the availability of cheap al-

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

cohol harmed the Omaha society, including Susan’s husband, who left her a widow early. He also left her land, which the Indian Office granted her upon her request for inheritance. Later, she successfully argued before the Secretary of the Interior in Washington, DC, that the Omaha people should control the land allotted to them in 1885. Finally, her dream of opening a hospital on the reservation was fulfilled shortly before her death. In section 4.2, Patty Bartlett Sessions represents uprooted minorities also living in a diasporic space who define themselves outside of the dominant culture’s religious beliefs. The concept of diaspora, as in Edward Said’s description of his personal experience of being placeless or displaced as an “overriding sensation I had of always being out of place” (Said xvi), is instrumental in describing the nineteenth-century Mormon community’s experience of being banished from place to place, ultimately resulting in their exodus to the West and final destination (for many) in Utah. This conceptual framework is also a valuable lens through which to view concepts of (inner/outer) transformation(s), movement, and “home” (with its multifarious possibilities for interpretation) through the “diasporic gaze” (consciousness), which could imply “the place of origin,” or “that of an imaginary or imagined homeland” (ibid) as in the subsequent Mormon case study’s focus. The displacement and exodus of the Mormon community resulted in shifting ideas surrounding religious ideals, identity, and space. Sessions’ diaries and life writings are drawn on to provide valuable glimpses into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (LDS) 20 , which some scholars consider to be the “most successful homegrown alternative religious movement in American history” (Stein 270). “Doctor Patty,”21 along with many Mormon women, played a significant role in Utah’s early settlement/ “kingdom-building” in the nineteenth century. Her life writings reveal the significance of the many activities she was involved in during her long life as a pious and devoted Saint, who participated in female ritual healing and her service as an active member of the Council of Health and later as president of the Indian Relief Society. Thus, in order to 20

21

The following descriptions will be used interchangeably throughout to refer to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the acronym LDS, the popular name “Mormon(s)”, and Saints – as the Mormons sometimes refer to themselves. Patty Bartlett Sessions “is recognized by the Mormon Church as the “Mother of Mormon Midwifery” and went by several names including “Doctor Patty” – as she was fondly referred to by the communities she served (Enss 64). Since she was addressed by many names, she will be referred to interchangeably throughout as: Patty Sessions, Doctor Patty, Sessions, or simply as Patty.

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grasp women’s position in nineteenth-century Mormon society, it is essential to understand and appreciate the LDS Church’s stalwart determination to build what they considered to be the kingdom of God - a self-contained utopian society “that involved significant elements of their belief system” and also contributed to their collective “Mormon” identity (Jackson 135). Once settled in their utopian society, which they reverently called “Deseret,”22 a benevolent organization called the Relief Society was (re)established that advocated women’s social and healthcare-providing work in and outside of the home. As part of the self-contained society and sustenance of the Mormon community’s health, Mormon Church leaders encouraged women to serve as midwives and nurses and supported those who wanted to study medicine. Next, in section 4.3, the third study elaborates further on nineteenth-century domestic reforms that were integrally connected to the rise of feminism. The discussion examines the development and advancement of early public health policies that involved the emerging science of biology and genetics in healthy human reproduction, which aimed to improve and treat disabilities associated with heredity. Many healthcare providers in the nineteenth century believed that there was a strong correlation between the increasing rates of alcohol consumption and criminal behavior, which Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair considered “the curse of our country” and which she firmly believed correlated with hereditary illnesses that required treatment. As a result of seeing the damaging effects of alcohol abuse in her family and society, and as an active member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU), to her mind, “this subject demands more radical treatment” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 2). The radical treatment she “called upon the [Oregon] legislature to prevent the future propagation of criminals, idiots, insane and all that class of objectionables by and through sterilization” [whom she firmly believed are] not only a burden, but a curse 22

The term “deseret” is found in The Book of Mormon: “And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honeybee, and thus, they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind” Ether 2:3. The honeybee’s beehive is the state symbol of Utah and therefore nicknamed “The Beehive State”. Donna Toland Smart, editor of Patty Sessions’ diaries, says of the Saints and Sessions “Zion was proliferating […] from the first moment any of the Latter-day Saints arrived, they were caught up in the building of the Mormon kingdom. No one fit the image of a honeybee better than Patty Sessions [whose] racing entries reflect the energy expended in Zion. […] a reader may figuratively gasp for air while trying to follow her frenetic pace” (Sessions 125).

1 The 19th-Century American West: A Social Laboratory

to our homes, our state, and our nation as well” (ibid 13). Her radical views ultimately led to a radical solution and drafting of the Sterilization Bill signed into law by Governor West on February 18, 1913. “Gold Fever!” concludes by summarizing the major findings and answering the research questions posed in the Introduction, as well as providing directions for further discussion. Thus, this research creates a type of “newness” by linking evidence and approaches that have not been connected before. The lives of the women in this research, whose life narratives have remained relatively unknown, were transformed in many ways as they emerged onto the public stage and intervened in the social, racial, and religious constraints that aimed to keep them fixed in domestic life. They stepped out of nineteenth-century expectations of woman’s place and challenged the dictates of True Womanhood. They accomplished this without, in most cases, renouncing the communities that sustained them and the activist commitments to important issues of their times (S. and W. J. Smith 18). The history as they tell it in their own words is a key to understanding how they contributed to their communities, and their impact on providing healthcare in the nineteenth and turn of the twentieth-century American West are revealed in the stories they tell in their life writings, which finally deserve recognition and to be heard as counter-narratives to the ontological history of the nineteenth-century American West.

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2 Historical Reflections of American  Autobiographical Narrative Practice(s)

The history of “America” and the history of autobiographical practices are intimately connected. Autobiographical writing emerges as a compelling cultural activity in the West at approximately the same historical moment that European colonists and enslaved Africans began settling into the space described as “the New World,” a world well known to its indigenous inhabitants. This New World, laid out in all its abundance before the colonists, invited ever-new opportunities for recreating self and community. (Smith and Watson, Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing 1819-1919 7)

Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s contention could be taken further to suggest that “[t]he investigation of the past remains a peculiarly American pastime: America is not just the land of immigrants, but [also] the land of autobiography” (Olney 377). James Olney writes that the American view [regarding autobiography] is quite undeniably, and whether one speaks historically, political, psychologically, or literally, an American phenomenon, the autobiographer par excellence would be, of course, Benjamin Franklin unless he is Walt Whitman. (ibid) To this phenomenon belongs an American character or identity, which Samuel P. Huntington characterizes as product of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries [containing key elements that] include the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals, and dissenting Protestant values of individualism,

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the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a ‘city on a hill’ (Huntington xv-xvi). The Founding Fathers, however, were neither driven by a single faith nor “uniformly Christian,” as noted by the feminist critic Robin Morgan, but included “freethinkers, agnostics, atheists, Christians, Freemasons [...]”, among others (Morgan 1).1 The origins of autobiography as a narrative prose form told in the first person are ascribed to a masculine tradition dating to antiquity, with Augustine’s Confessions, in which the “mirroring capacity” of the autobiographer is revealed as an assumed, self-given authority that is “held by both author and reader that the life being written/read is an exemplary one: his universality, his representativeness, his role as spokesman for the community” (Brodzki and Schenck 1). However, the history of autobiographical narrative practices in North America traces a different timeline, as the above contention made by Sidonia Smith and Julia Watson clearly states. Indeed, not only is the historical timeline different, but a transnational/transcultural perspective makes it increasingly difficult to determine a fixed definition of autobiography when analyzing life experiences across socio-cultural (economic, religious, and racial) boundaries.2 An explanation for this can be found in the assertions of autobiography scholars such as Laura J. Beard, G. Thomas Couser, Paul John Eakin, Susanna Egan, Leigh Gilmore, Estell C. Jelinek, Nancy K. Miller,

1

2

“This flexible approach”, according to Melissa Knox “which gained momentum in the 18th century, was championed by Thomas Jefferson, and many Founding Fathers [who] abandoned their original religion for another or abandoned religious faith altogether as his letters amply demonstrate” (Knox 1). In a letter to Peter Carr on August 10, 1787, for example, Jefferson questions “with boldness even the existence of god [sic], I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself” (qtd. in ibid). Towards the end of the twentieth century, a paradigm shift occurred that profoundly influenced scholars in various academic and interdisciplinary fields, especially literary and cultural studies of North America. The “transnational turn,” “[i]n the context of the United States … has centrally concerned itself with mounting a critique of American exceptionalism, the ideology that imagines America as a unique nation destined to achieve the enduring bliss of liberal republicanism and to serve as a model for the rest of the world’s peoples as they struggle—willingly or otherwise—to emulate the righteous path of American progress” (Bauerkemper 396).

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Julie Rak, Sidonie Smith, and Julia Watson, among others, who tend to agree that, while scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of life writing generally focuses on discourses of identity and self-representation, the term “autobiography” is generally considered “an umbrella concept rather than a single genre” (Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 218). Female life writing not only encompasses but exponentially exceeds “genre” boundaries because of its broad variety, “methodological proliferation [and] wide array of different forms,” as Alfred Hornung further notes: The conventional genre of autobiography as the presentation of one’s life, traditionally reserved for and used by eminent members of society, has transformed substantially, from chronological narrative accounts aiming at the construction of a self, like Benjamin Franklin’s, to free forms in all kinds of media. Hence the umbrella term of “life writing” [which] covers autobiography, biography, journals, diaries, e-lives, Internet, blogs, performances of self, film and video clips, photography, selfies, comics visualizations, musical orchestration and the manifold appearances in the social media like Facebook and Twitter. (Hornung 38) The newer methodological strategies Hornung mentions have evolved as a result of the media and social platforms more recent authors use to present their lives. Consequently, “these free and open forms for presentation of the self individually and collectively have democratized the field of life writing,” as they are “increasingly used by women, ethnic minorities and postcolonial migrants of different classes and different persuasions for auto-reflection” (ibid 38-9). Examples of such forms in narration and visualization/image-text relations in autobiography that offer alternatives with which to interpret lives can be found in autographic memoirs such as Pasua Bashi’s Nylon Road: A Graphic Memoir of Coming of Age in Iran and pictorial autobiographies such as Hertha D. Sweet Wong’s Picturing Identity: Contemporary American Autobiography in Image and Text. Both forms of narration offer alternative modes to underscore and highlight how “global reading publics are intervening in debates about ideologically conflicted histories, issues, and subject formations today” (Smith and Watson, Life Writing in the Long Run: Autobiography Studies Reader xxxiii). Until the 1980s, however, major critical studies of autobiography excluded serious considerations of women’s texts. Feminist scholars have argued that women’s exclusion was due to the fact that, at that time, the academy was

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“by and large an androcentric enterprise” that persisted “in either erasing women’s story” or “relegating it to the margins of critical discourse” (Smith 15). The exclusion of women thus seemed to demand new theories and approaches to reading female life narratives. As a result, the 1980s witnessed a surge of research by feminist scholars who uncovered a wealth of women’s personal histories found in their life writings, which they made known to the public (Jelinek 29). Feminist scholarly work on women’s life writing in the 1980s attempted to reconstruct a tradition of women’s autobiography that analyzed women’s writing from all periods. This effort began with Mary G. Mason’s The Other Voice (1980), Estelle C. Jelinek’s groundbreaking The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography (1986),3 Sidonie Smith’s Poetics of Women’s Autobiography (1987), Carolyn Heilbrun’s Writing a Woman’s Life (1988), and Leigh Gilmore’s Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation (1994), among many others. More recent academic theories provide new ways to reflect how men and women define themselves. Scholars have suggested, for instance, that identity is a fluid process that can promote an understanding of how personal transformation is enabled, thus allowing people to change and adapt over time, especially when their surroundings are altered. Further, it is a significant lens through which to investigate transformational processes that are uniquely individual, require self-reflection, and can lead to profound changes. As a dynamic and uniquely individualized process, transformation implies a heightened awareness “whereby individuals become critically aware of old and new self-views and choose to integrate these views into a new self-definition” (Wade 713-14). Hence, personal transformation can be understood as an intense change in one’s perception of reality as a result of self-reflection that leads to a dynamic and expanded level of consciousness; the individual chooses to release former ways of knowing and is open to reinterpreting him or herself and integrating/negotiating those experiences in a new context. New Historicism is a form of literary criticism that focuses on understanding a literary work through its historical context and comprehending historical events through literary analysis. This school of criticism arose in the 1980s, and Stephen Greenblatt was one of its prominent advocates. It gained wide acceptance during the 1990s and arose as a response to schools of literary criticism, such as the New Criticism of the 1920s to 1970s, that focused 3

Jelinek’s book is considered the first to argue the existence of a distinct female tradition in life writing.

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entirely on the text of a literary work, disregarding its historical context. To those critics, a literary work had to be understood solely on its own merits, existing essentially independently of its intended audience and even of its author’s intentions. Against these views, New Historicists argued that works had to be understood within their production’s cultural and social context. Greenblatt begins his most theoretical statement about New Historicism in Towards a Poetics of Culture by stating that his methodology is at best a “practice” rather than a “doctrine.” Furthermore, he states, “the world is full of texts, most of which are virtually incomprehensible when they are removed from their immediate surroundings,” and in order “to recover the meaning and make sense of texts—we need to reconstruct the situation in which they were produced” (Greenblatt and Gallagher 227). A situation could mean how experience is negotiated and how “that reality is not simply a given but is constructed by means of language and culture” (Fitz, Negotiating History and Culture: Transculturation in Contemporary Native American Fiction 4). Within this context, “what has been thought of as ‘real’ is, in fact, historical construction and interpretation” (ibid 8). New Historicism is rooted in Marxism, but unlike true Marxism, it sees power as extending throughout society rather than being solely related to class. The theoretical frameworks provided by Marxist criticism have furthermore been adopted by other schools that focus on marginalized groups including feminist, African American, gay and lesbian literary criticism or colonial literary studies. Text-oriented theoretical approaches such as deconstruction and new historicism are also indebted to Marxist thought, both for their terminology and philosophical foundations. (Klarer 90) However, unlike Postmodernists, New Historicists tend to be willing to conduct more historical textual analysis, such as analyzing context and a text’s potential bias. They also tend to be more concerned with how widely a text was redistributed and how it helped impose the cultural practices of the time on society. The concept differs from traditional historicism, as it places a much greater emphasis on the ideology of the culture and the author’s political character, which consciously or subconsciously governed his or her work. New Historicism is also grounded in critical discourse theory, which argues that all human actions are ultimately linked to knowledge and power, especially to the institutions that define and govern them. Therefore, New Historicist research tends to examine texts to identify how they represent ex-

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amples of the culturally prevalent power structures, which reflect the time in which they were written. From this perspective, this study, which also considers gender, class, and ethnicity, aims at examining the social and political events at the time of writing by addressing the issues surrounding the gender roles of nineteenth-century American women whose lives were dictated by “the Cult of True Womanhood.” Thus, as a conceptual guide, New Historicism is most suited to interpreting the primary texts in this research and allowing them to be interpreted as historical records.

2.1

Women’s Life Writings in the “Forgotten Century”

By considering the broad socio-cultural transformations in the nineteenth century, the life narratives of the women in “Gold Fever!” provide a minuscule sampling of a cross-section of three women to reflect the complex challenges that not only they but also many others faced throughout the century that ultimately led up to women’s suffrage, that took them outside the home, and outside the imminent foreclosure of sentimental fiction’s plots of marriage, childbirth, and/or death. Collectively they challenge our assumptions about what characterized their pursuit of action and agency in public worlds, the worlds of labor (physical and intellectual) and professional work, the world of communities, and the worlds beyond the borders of the expanding nation. (Smith and Watson, Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing 1819-1919 18) This approach has the advantage of regarding the women’s personal narratives and literary texts in this dissertation as historical records while emphasizing their ability to function both as performative acts of history and as a retrospective constructed account of their life. This approach also makes it possible “to do justice to the energy of specific women’s texts and the complexity of [the] diverse and changing practices of autobiographical writing” in what Smith and Watson refer to as the “‘forgotten’ century for American women’s life writing” (ibid)—a time when autobiographical forms were still being discovered but had not yet been “organized as a canon” (ibid 6). In addition, the life writings of Susan La Flesche Picotte M.D., Patty Bartlett Sessions, and Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair, offer the possibility to examine the dialectical history and personal transformation of the women’s identities within the broader dy-

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namic context of American myths in and of the West, as well as show how their writing enabled them, as women, to engage actively in public life. Although I do not intend to give a comprehensive overview of life writing in the following, I suggest several reasons and highlight how the investigation of female life writing offers a productive site for this research. There are several advantages of reading women’s autobiographies through a feminist framework which moves beyond prior male epistemological narrative models based on male experience by “challenging the biases they reveal regarding power hierarchies of gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity and class that hinder[ed] their expression” (Gilmore 24). The nineteenth-century North American West offers a productive site for this research, as a particularly uni que sense of place characterizes it. However, “place” is not understood as merely a regional setting, but as a contested space where the “[l]ife narrators anchor their narratives in their own temporal, geographical milieu” (Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 9). The goal of this chapter is to examine several complex phenomenological hermeneutic approaches to autobiographical acts, such as agency (spiritual/religious authority) and epistemological concepts of identity and transformation, especially in terms of (dis)place(ment)/home and memory. These concepts, though, are not applicable in the same way when discussing Native American life writing. Therefore, they are discussed separately at the end of the chapter, which concludes with reflections on concepts intricately woven into Native American autobiographical practices.4

2.2

“Damned mob of scribbling women” We may safely assert that the knowledge men acquire of women, even as they have been and are, without reference to what they might be, is

4

Scholars consider these practices to be “[t]he earliest autobiographical acts that engaged in self-expression and self-construction in the West [and that] pre-date nation and region” (Boardman and Woods 17). Native American autobiographical practices are the best illustration of “heterogeneous forms of writing and testimony through which seemingly marginal subjects exert their claims to a subjective agency not necessarily grounded in being of European descent, male, prosperous, or Christian” (Smith and Watson, Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing 18191919 16)

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wretchedly imperfect and superficial and will always be so until women themselves have told all they have to tell. (John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women qtd. in Smith 3) Even though women in the nineteenth century did not publish the classic, hermeneutic ego documents prevalent among male writers of this time, they often wrote about their private lives. Therefore, their accounts are also very public because they mirror their daily domestic situations while reflecting important debates surrounding women’s position in nineteenthcentury American society. American women’s autobiographical writing of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was neglected by scholars who focused on other literary and cultural forms, such as slave narratives, “astold-to” captivity narratives, suffragist tracts, and Civil War diaries (ibid 3). Scholars have suggested several reasons for this oversight. However, one that particularly stands out is that female autobiographical writing was perceived as either insignificant or marginal to other literary forms, which women had allegedly produced and contributed to but unfortunately were not taken seriously. However, attitudes towards women and writing gradually changed during the first half of the nineteenth century, following the development of new technologies in the publishing industry. They offered women one of the first platforms in the public sphere to support themselves through their writing. Here we need only to remember Nathanial Hawthorne’s bitter criticism of the women who poorly earned some pocket money with their writing; it reflects his anger and his intimidation regarding their abilities to write something worth reading and their ability to have their work published. Infuriated by the outpouring of female writing, he wrote a letter to his publisher William D. Ticknor in January 1855 complaining that “America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash—and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed” (Nathanial Hawthorne). Contrary to Hawthorne’s seething disbelief about women’s writing capabilities, given its relevance across many fields within the arts and sciences, this dissertation argues that female life writing is a vibrant genre to investigate the lives of the healthcare-giving women, because “personal narratives allow women and others who have been denied access to public venues to give their own statements and become active ‘agents’ in the production of knowledge” (hooks, qtd. in (McDowell and Sharp, A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography 176). Thus, such narratives can reveal “institutional, economic and

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cultural sites of oppression” and offer ways of “interpreting how gendered identities and unequal power relations shape distinctive places and gendered experiences through space” (ibid). Undoubtedly, the American West provided such a socio-cultural space! Life writing by women is also an ideal resource for applying and expanding ideas about identity and providing first-hand accounts of women’s observations and personal experiences and their relationship to others. For instance, women are accustomed to thinking about themselves as someone’s wife, mother, or daughter, and therefore their life writing reflects and emphasizes personal relationships and concentrates on activities in the private sphere, but not only so, as the life writings in “Gold Fever!” demonstrate. Although faced with social challenges, women did not simply react to male authority but were invested with their own agency, which challenged nineteenth-century assumptions regarding woman’s “proper sphere.” Because of the diversity of the emerging forms of self-related discourse—such as family history, biography, diary, domestic memoir, and the classic spiritual autobiography—nineteenth-century women were better able to reflect both their domestic situation and important debates surrounding their societal position. Thus, to “the extent that authority and power are structured through their historically shifting modes, for women and men, in relation to institutions” (Gilmore ix), women’s self-representation in the nineteenth century consciously engaged different forms and conventions of life writing newly available to them. As Ashley Reed explains in her book Heaven’s Interpreters: Women Writers and Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America, many sociopolitical transformations culminating in the shifting boundaries of public and private institutions enabled women to consciously engage in new forms of agency in their life writing. The constantly shifting boundaries between religious and nonreligious produced fruitful conditions for women’s literary innovations (Reed 3).5

5

Reed further explains that although the nineteenth century was characterized by the establishment of many Christian groups, it is necessary to realize that “American Protestantism was not monolithic but made up of myriad and ever-multiplying denominations— denominations that were, in turn, constantly engaged in transformations of doctrine and practice” (ibid). The most influential sect among the many new ones that proliferated at this time was a group of Christians, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormons, but who also referred to themselves as Disciples of Christ.

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The concepts of religion, spiritual agency, and authority are fundamental throughout as they belong to one of the core values in reading the primary sources in Chapter 4. The analysis of the women’s life writing in this dissertation contrast with former contradictory paradigms such as those exposed by Sidonie Smith’s reading of Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography (1877). Smith’s analysis assumes at the outset that all (writing) women in the nineteenth century lacked the “cultural and literary authority to present themselves in the public sphere” (S. Smith 49). In agreement with and leaning on Mary Jean Corbett’s contention, Smith’s “analysis is skewed because her basic [and] quite orthodox feminist assumption—that only men possess authority [...] — does not adequately account for how Victorian women were invested with authority, literary and otherwise” (Corbett 13-14).6 Thus, in illustrating how women were otherwise invested with authority, this research also considers how nineteenth-century life writings engage religion and religious discourse assigned to women in the private sphere. I argue that these writings ultimately assisted women in achieving visibility in the public sphere. Since nineteenth-century society did not perceive Christian discourse as a threat to the socio-cultural expectations of women’s place, it extends interpretive authority to all believing Christians to invoke a system of values that sanctifies [women’s] work as useful and important. [Hence] Christian discourse gives the autobiographer authority over that domestic space, which is redefined as the new locus for cultural and even literary authority. Far from being marginal, then, the woman who writes herself in relation to God and the home is [not only] at the center of the private sphere ... leading an exemplary life, she is also empowered by a spiritual authority that serves as a vehicle to act in the public sphere. (ibid 15, 27) The positioning of women in the public and private sphere relates to notions of women’s “proper place” in nineteenth-century society’s view. In addressing the lives and writings of women in the nineteenth century, feminist lit-

6

Corbett further notes Martineau’s “privileged position within Victorian culture”, she “textually participates in perpetuating patriarchal discourse even though her life as a public woman challenges some of its assumptions about women’s ‘proper sphere.’ And her Autobiography reenacts her ideological positioning as a woman empowered to speak and to represent herself publicly so long as her speech and writing do not threaten the basic socioeconomic principles that structure the culture, including the separation of the domestic world from the public one” (ibid 14).

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erary scholars have tended to read their writing through Victorian critical paradigms such as the Cult of True Womanhood that addressed society’s expectations concerning the question of women’s proper position. Through this lens, examining the women’s life writing in this dissertation engages in discussions reflected by the Cult’s paradigm by leaning on Margaret J. J. Ezell’s argument that “the nineteenth century had had an unusual influence in our construction of a literary history for women writers” (Ezell 38). Women “selfconsciously drew on many genres of life writing as they represented their experiences,” which enabled them to “enter important Victorian debates about the condition of women’s lives” (Peterson x). Women’s life writing in the nineteenth century took on many forms and addressed many issues concerning women’s place in society. Often, women in the East wrote these ideas and transported them to the West, as the following discussion illustrates. The development of inexpensive printing techniques promoted mass emigration to the mythic West and made magazines an essential medium of cultural communication. Improvements in transportation through the railroads facilitated the spread of ideas more quickly and cheaply, making them available even to rural and frontier areas. According to David D. Hall, Several factors coalesced to bring about this transformation: new printing and paper-making technologies that reduced the price of books, improvements in how books were marketed, a rapid increase in the rate of literacy, and a general speeding up of communication. With abundance came the introduction of new literary genres. (Hall qtd. in Smith and Watson, Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing 1819-1919 10) The easily accessible cheap paperbacks, novels, and magazines were widely read, especially by Americans who wondered what living in the West was like and how traveling to and settling in the region would affect their lives (Rezé and Bowen, The American West: History, Myth and the National Identity 97).7 For example, the circulation of “dime novels” and “pulps,” cheap paperbacks that Erastus and Irwin Beadle published around 1860, promoted popular cultural ideas about the many adventures to be had in the West. It filled the pages with action-packed stories focusing on figures of the hunters and gunfighters circulating at this time, as well as adventurous male folk heroes such as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. However, despite the widespread idea that 7

Richard Slotkin discusses the Boone legend in detail in Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Wesleyan University Press, 1973.

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the genre was exclusively masculine; it is interesting to note that the historian Nina Baym reveals “three dime novels [written by women] from the 1860s [containing] frank fantasies directed toward women readers” (Baym 247).8 Another type of widely read literature, emigrants’ guidebooks, provided a valuable source of information for prospective travelers about what they needed for the journey, such as equipment, costs, and which of the major routes to take. The health benefits of the climate in the West promoted a new kind of tourism, especially for those with respiratory conditions. As early as the 1850s, for example, fur traders and mountain men such as Kit Carson had already described the healthful benefits of the West. Traveler Max Green discussed the benefits he experienced in The Kanzas Region, a guide he authored and published in 1856: There is a vitality in the atmosphere that is truly wonderful. As soon as you pass upon the upland swells a new life seems breathed around, and buoyancy and vigor is felt coming to old limbs. Such was my experience, and hundreds have said to me theirs was similar. Progressing westward, farther from the distressing humidity of the Mississippi region, there was to me a hopefulness, an elation in the very sense of being: an affluence which pulsed through the frame of nature, and, at times, would thrill every fibre of my body like the deep joy which penetrates the heart of a child. (qtd. in Dary 215) Sometimes, the guidebooks also included information in the form of written letters and private journals from emigrants who had recently made the trip 8

Baym, who said that “[m]ost women’s western books were about the place, not getting to it” (Baym 246), made an extensive compilation of American women writing about various regions of the West between 1833-1927. The three dime novels she mentions from the 1860s are Ann Sophia Stephens’s Esther: A Story of the Oregon Trail (1862), Metta Victoria Victor’s The Gold Hunters (1863), and The Canon Camp, A Romance of the Santa Fe Trail (1865). Sandra Wilson Smith has also analyzed a compilation of nineteenth-century female archetypes in The Action-Adventure Heroine: Rediscovering an American Literary Character, 1697-1895. She describes the action-adventure heroines as “risk-taking, independent, heroines” who go on adventurous journeys that take them “beyond the boundaries of the home to perform active feats of heroism in public spaces,” where “they get to perform ‘female masculinity’ in addition to tending her home that if called upon to violently defend it”—as a true woman living her life according to Victorian principles—she would do so without hesitation “in the name of domesticity” (Smith book presentation at Catherine Sedgwick Society—Summer Webinar, Friday, August 14, 2020, 3-4 pm ET).

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westward.9 The information these contained provided conflicting hints and implicit messages and questions regarding the significance of the Western experience for women, which is discussed in the next chapter. However, let it suffice for now to remark that, although the westward journey is often perceived as a solely male endeavor, scholars of the West agree that the “journey was a family matter,” and “women were essential to the success of the enterprise as they later were to the settlement of the areas toward which they travelled” (Carl N. Degler qtd. in Schlissel 4). Early researchers and scholars on nineteenth-century pioneering western women, mentioned in the Introduction, have revealed a wealth of material on women in recent decades as published and unpublished journals, diaries, letters, memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies. Their contributions to creating a female history by discovering personal texts written at various times in the past can serve as historical evidence and reveal the preoccupations of their daily lives. Furthermore, in the 1970s, Western women’s historians began assessing the diverse, gender-related experiences of migration by reconstructing female perceptions of the region and placing them in the context of the West’s environmental and cultural diversity, which included many stories. As they moved away from the distorted “notion of the West as a region defined by conquest” (Blew qtd. in Schlissel x), they discovered that women’s perceptions and experiences differed socially and spatially from men’s. Scholars found that upperclass and elite women also perceived the West differently from less advantaged, middle-class, or poorer women. For instance, in The Desert Is No Lady, Janice Monk and Vera Norwood explore women’s experiences in the Southwest, whereas Jeanne Kay Guelke and Karin Morin examine the relationship between place and Mormon women in the West. Thus, they showed that female travel narratives provide valuable insights into how some women reflected on the journey. Other scholars on life writing have questioned why “the very act of writing [was] so important to women on the overland journey,” suggesting that perhaps “it was virtually the only activity women could call their own” (Monk

9

For a more detailed description of the emigrant guidebooks, see Helen B. Kroll, “The Books That Enlightened the Emigrants,”; Thomas F. Andres, “‘Ho! For Oregon and California!’: An Annotated Bibliography of Published Advice to the Emigrant, 1841-47”; and John D. Unruh, Jr. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60.

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and Norwood ix). To this context I add Elizabeth Hampsten’s contention in Read This Only to Yourself : Private writings of women ask of us, if we wish to read them knowingly, a special inventive patience. We must interpret what is not written as well as what is, and, rather than dismiss repetitions, value them especially. “Nothing happened” asks that we consider what, in the context of a particular woman’s stream of days, she means by something happening. (ibid) Thus, as Hampsten suggests, when consciously and patiently reading women’s life writing, special attention should be given to what someone repeated or left out, as these can provide valuable clues to the intention of the writer to convey information. Heather Beattie writes, “diaries written by women have been seen as particularly valuable, in part because in many cases women did not create the same kind of public records as men,” and, historically, “diary keeping has been a practical way of keeping track of events for many women as well as an acceptable way of expressing their creativity when other forms, such as writing a novel or play, would have been considered presumptuous and inappropriate” (Beattie 85). Women’s contributions to creating a female history through the discovery of personal texts can therefore serve as historical evidence and reveal their daily preoccupations. For many women, keeping a diary may have been one way of keeping track of events, or perhaps for women who were traveling, it provided an outlet for coping with the challenges of being some “place” else—either physically or outside of their comfort zone. Scholars of the West have shown that emigrating often challenged the performance of gender roles and familial expectations. Moreover, it was a journey no one today could imagine or experience, except indirectly, in the written accounts of the emigrants themselves or those who had already emigrated. Thus, the texts are valuable when considering the West because of the awareness of most pioneers heading West in the nineteenth century that they were taking part in “a great national adventure and therefore probably felt that their participation should somehow be recorded” (Rohrbough 300). In order to perform a nuanced reading of texts and engage in a meaningful analysis, it is essential to understand the dynamic processes and complex narrative strategies that are employed in the autobiographical discourses to bring identities and selves into being, which also requires an understanding of the unique acts associated with autobiographical subjects, both today and historically. While there are many overlapping distinctions and features to consider, this dissertation examines concepts such as memory, experience,

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agency, truth, and identity, especially related to the self and sense of place. The concepts of place and space are valuable tropes in autobiographical narratives and are briefly contextualized in the following discussion: they are picked up again and discussed further within a cultural context in the next chapter.

2.3

Narrative Spaces of Life Writing My way of finding a place in this world is to write one. (Kingsolver qtd. in Sinor and Kaufman 15)

Barbara Kingsolver’s notion of finding her place in the world involves the act of creating that place through writing; it then becomes more than a mere construction, but “an essential part of ... who we are” (Eakin ix). In the words of the philosopher Stephen H. Daniel, “to speak or write the world is to make it accessible to a reading, that is, to make it into a place” (Daniel 18). Thus, the process of locating where and how we fit into the larger scheme of things requires us to pay particular attention to our surroundings by exploring the effect they have on us and, in doing so, try to understand their connections to us. In short: “Who we are is dependent on where we are, and the influence of landscape does not end with our habits or customs [...] but extends to how we read, write, think, [and] learn” (Sinor and Kaufman 5). Since we all experience the notion of place in different ways, “[w]hen we write, we reduce the complexity of the world around us [thereby turning] spaces into places” (ibid 14). Although we may be repetitive or leave certain experiences out, “what remains tells the story of who we are” and thus contributes to our sense of identity (ibid). Therefore, in autobiographical narratives, the concepts of space and place are invaluable tropes, according to Julia Watson: “Space” as a concept within Anglo-American theorizing of life narrative invites us to consider the social and cultural, interactively constructed, and differently localized borders, margins and centers that mark zones of selfrelation, of encounter, and of discursive networks of the autobiographical. Thus, by understanding life narratives as situated not only in the peritextual spaces that surround them, but also in the spaces they come to occupy in our daily lives over time, we locate how we ourselves are addressed within the spaces of the autobiographical. (Watson 25)

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In other words, the autobiographical narrator situates his or her life writing in relation to others for various reasons, and this has been expanded to include the concept of location. Location does not necessarily refer to geography but also to socio-cultural, gender, ethnic space. Therefore, a spatial lens can provide further ideal ways to investigate concepts of (collective) cultural identities10 and the “sense of place”11 in life narratives since social life necessarily happens within these spaces. To illustrate this point, some scholars have asserted that, for some life writers, “place is a problem to be solved, for others, it is the basis (or ‘ground’) for a claim to authenticity.” Therefore, identity may be performed at the intersection of three locations: physical, rhetorical, and political (Boardman and Woods 3, 19). Furthermore, certain qualities of place may also include a sense of emotional attachment, personal memory, and collective history, and they may indicate where exclusion occurs. Besides, social rejection of a group or groups may occur when boundaries or borders (symbolic, material, or otherwise) are erected in order to separate people. Thus, “stereotypes play an important part in the configuration of social space because of the importance of social distancing in the behavior of social groups, that is, distancing from others who are represented negatively” (Sibley 14).12 Examples of exclusionary spaces may include “a contested terrain, a site of continuous social and cultural conflict [where] many foundational issues in American history (the dislocation of Native and African Americans, the geo-political13 implications of nation-build10 11

12

13

Especially with regard to American identity formations, “the relation to space has always played a particularly prominent role” (Achilles 53). As humanistic geographers have suggested, certain places can invoke emotions and attachments to places which may then be expressed in arts and literature, “or become part of an individual’s or group memory” (McDowell and Sharp, A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography 201). “While Anglo-American and Australian theorists of settler colonialism have emphasized encounters across borders, postcolonial theory has importantly emphasized another sense of the location of colonized subjects as the “third space” Homi Bhabha describes the “third space” as a zone or “place of hybridity,” a socio-political cultural site of translation between cultures that ensues at the time of a colonial encounter in which both the colonizer and the colonized are transformed (Watson 16-17). Julia Watson has said that social relations are “situated within geographic space”, on the other hand, she claims that geopolitical space is “explicitly foregrounded, as transnational cultural studies proposes,” [and thus] “for subjects located in complex space of citizenship, or multiculturally across nations with histories of conflict, questions of migration and the negotiation of border or points of transition engage contradictions of

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ing, immigration, and transmigration, the increasing division and ‘clustering’ of contemporary American society, etc.) involve differing ideals and notions of space” (Benesch 19).14 Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of la frontera engages examples of such geopolitical spaces as the subject of multicultural examinations of identity through encounters between different cultures and border spaces. Anzaldúa’s “borderlands” study offers a lens through which to view and conceptualize space through borders and zones. The borderland concept discussed again in Chapter 4 shows how encounters and colonial practices of power and authority between the dominant culture and subordinated are negotiated.15 This idea aligns with Gioia Woods’ observation regarding the interconnectedness between identity and place: “[l]ife writing, in particular, is marked by a preoccupation with place and the resultant identity issues related to place: rootedness and diaspora, anxiety and nostalgia, migration and nomadism” (Woods 338). People’s sense of personal identity16 is related to and depends on remembering the places they have lived and how they have affected or even transformed their lives.

2.3.1

Mapping the Invisible Landscape:  Autobiographical Epistemologies

Life narratives, through the memories they construct, are records of acts of interpretation by subjects inescapably in historical time, and in relation to

14

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geopolitical space” (Watson 21). As further explanation, she offers the example of a narrative of the ambiguous status of Puerto Ricans living in the United States in the 1950s, they were stereotyped as a “Spanglish-speaking impoverished minority [and] ethnic other” (ibid) who did not have a voice in elections, but for the purpose of serving in the military are recognized as citizens. Regarding newer trends in technologies across many fields, Klaus Benesch has noted, “More recently, electronic extensions into cyberspace, on the one hand, and the successful exploration and ‘colonization’ of the intra-human, microscopic space of genetic engineering, on the other, initiated a further, perhaps even more dramatic redefinition of space in American culture” (ibid). Anzaldúa’s borderland concept of living between cultures is discussed again in subsequent chapters. Trinh T. Minh-ha writes that “identity is largely constituted through the process of othering.” Furthermore, “it is a process that can evolve within societies, but which is especially evident transculturally, at the point of contact, when our sense of Self is most under threat, frequently in need of reassurance, and likeliest to resort to binary modes of discourse as a form of defense” (Minh-ha, “Other than Myself/My Other Self” 15).

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their own ever-moving pasts. (Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 30, 56) As this quote by Smith and Watson asserts, while life writings may seem to be factual by claiming to tell the story of a “real” person, they are inevitably a cognitive construction at “a moment in history” [or] “space in culture—performing cultural work by deeply influencing autobiographical acts” (ibid 56). Therefore, they require the reader to question the author’s intention, motive, purpose, and reliability. Diaries and letters, for example, can rarely be treated as reliable reports about an event or place; instead, they must be read as constructs and in terms of the individual perspective (and time) from which they were written. If read as an indicator of what the author considers being his/her truth, it should be kept in mind that, as constructs, the author’s “truth” can be an unreliable notion based on an individual recounting of an event based on memory (Rockwell 59). Researchers and scholars from fields such as cognitive psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience have contended that the act of remembering involves recalling experiences from the past and reinterpreting them in the present. This process is not considered passive, but a cognitively complex act that “requires the capacity to make sense of lived experience both at one point in time and across the life span [while at the same time] recognizing that the process is an interpretive feat” (Thorne 46). The person remembering recollects actively and then constructs or (re)creates a meaningful account by selecting situations from the past. The accounts are then linked to “the events into a coherent and personally meaningful life story.” However, “as an interpretation of the past narrated memory can never fully be recovered” (Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 22). Hence, the memory is simply an interpretation of the past and not the past itself. As Daniel L. Schacter has suggested, “memories are records of how we have experienced events, not replicas of the events themselves [since the narratives] we construct our autobiographies from [are] fragments of experience that change over time” (6, 9 qtd. in ibid).17 17

Regarding the narrator’s experience as being authoritative or credible, according to Smith and Watson, “the authority of experience serves a variety of rhetorical purposes [that] invites or compels the reader’s belief in the story and the veracity of the narrator, it persuades the reader of the narrative’s authenticity, it validates certain claims as truthful, and it justifies writing and publicizing the life story” (Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 33).

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In order to assign meaningful accounts to situations we select to remember, we learn various techniques to accomplish this on a personal level, as well as when we use them for cultural uses of remembering. For example, public and religious holidays and private rituals such as family reunions serve to reaffirm a collective past. However, techniques and practices of remembering change are considered historically specific. Thus, “[a] culture’s understanding of memory at a particular moment of its history shapes the life narrator’s process of remembering” (ibid 23). Remembering is also a contextual phenomenon whereby “the memory invoked in an autobiographical narrative is specific to the time of writing and the contexts of telling,” and it is also “charged politically.” Questions and “struggles over who is authorized to remember and what they are authorized to remember” or forget, both personally and collectively, arise (ibid 24). For instance, the westward/westering experience had different cultural and political implications in the nineteenth century for white middle-class women than it did for Native American women, other women of color, or even those who were religiously persecuted, such as the Mormons, who were forced to migrate after their leader and prophet Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered. The following diary entry by the Mormon midwife Patty Bartlett Sessions from February 1846 illustrates her traumatic memory of the Mormon community’s forced exile following the martyrdom of Smith and his brother Hyrum: Feb 10th 1846 Nauvoo or City of Joseph My things are now packed ready for the west have been and put Richards ^Bird^ Wife [Emeline Crandall] to bed with a daughter [Amanda Fidelia]. in the afternoon put sister Hariet Young to bed with a son [Oscar Brigham]18 11th mad[e] me a cap and in the evening went to the [Masonic] Hall to see the scenery of the massacre of Joseph and Hyram Smith19 Patty’s diary entry exemplifies how memory, especially collective memory, is central to the cultural production of knowledge—particularly to an individual’s self-knowledge, which can help them mark and mourn their loss. Ac-

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Putting Richard Bird’s wife to bed is Patty’s shorthand for delivering a baby, not tucking her into bed in order to sleep. Harriet Elizabeth Cook (1824-1898) was the fourth wife of Brigham Young (1801-1877). The founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith (18051844), and his brother Hyrum (1800-1844) were both martyred at Carthage Jail in Illinois on 27 June 1844.

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cording to Maurice Halbwachs, this explanation can help explain the power of memory and how individuals process memories related to the places that have (trans)formed them: Feelings and reflection, like all other events, have to be resituated in some place where I have resided or passed by and which is still in existence. Let us endeavor to go back further. When we reach that period when we are unable to represent places to ourselves, even in a confused manner, we have arrived at the regions of our past inaccessible to memory. That we remember only by transporting ourselves outside space is therefore incorrect. Indeed, quite the contrary, it is the spatial image alone that, by reason of its stability, gives us an illusion of not having changed through time and of retrieving the past in the present. But that’s how memory is defined. Space alone is stable enough to endure without growing old or losing any of its parts. (Halbwachs 157) Thus, in order for us to remember the places and feelings associated with those where we have lived, it is necessary to have a frame of reference to some physical context. However, if this context—which does not necessarily have to be physical—is destroyed, then the memory associated with it could also be altered. Similarly, since contexts may also be politically charged, the act of remembering can ignite struggles over who is authorized to remember and produce “different versions of national memory” (Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives 24). Thus, the production of politically charged acts of remembering, not only in life writing but also in other autobiographical forms, must be negotiated (see discussion at the beginning of this chapter). Chapter 3.3., “Bringing ‘Progress’ to the West,” further explores how collective memory works in different ways depending on whose version is being interpreted, which is exemplified by the contrasting versions of the meanings of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion. The images captured and projected in John Gast’s iconic painting invite interpretation in terms of the resulting socio-political impact the imagery had on various communities—gendered, familial, religious, displaced Native Americans—against the cataclysmic socio-cultural nineteenth-century transformations taking place throughout the “Forgotten Century.”

2.3.2

The West and “I”: A Complex Stage

As already noted, we interconnect the concept of place with complex multicultural notions of space and identity that further offer perspectives

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to give an account of oneself [...], that is never fully mine and is never fully for me [since] my perspective as mine can take place in different ways. [...] This means that my narrative begins in media res, when many things have already taken place to make me and my story in language possible. And it means that my story always arrives late. I am always recuperating, reconstructing, even as I produce myself differently in the very act of telling. My account of myself is partial, haunted by that for which I have no definitive story. I cannot explain exactly why I have merged in this way, and my efforts at narrative reconstruction are always undergoing revision. (Butler 22, 26-27) Thus, as Butler suggests, the complexities of reading the “I” might best be described as a transformative process which Smith and Watson describe as the “Is” in autobiography: the narrated “I,” the narrating “I,” the ideological “I,” and the historical “I” (ibid 59). As suggested in the previous discussion, self-representation in life narrating is furthermore concerned with how the narrating “I” analyzes earlier moments of experience in relation to a present time. For instance, a person narrating their life from an “I-then” (younger self) perspective does so in a way that differs from the perspective of who they are at the time of telling. They also differ from what Watson has called “narrative junctures” or “turning points” (ibid 15), which I refer to in this research as the “I” following a transformative experience which also aligns with Butler’s premise that “the encounters [the] I undergo[es] are those by which [the] I [is] invariably transformed, [and in] the process [...] cease[s] to be able to return to what [the]I was” (ibid 23). In other words, once the narrator has been transformed by a life experience that has taken place at different stages of their life, they are not able to revert to who they were before the transformative encounter. In fact, life narratives written in certain places and spaces, such as the American West, are written on a “complex stage” (Woods 337) since American literature about the West often deals with place-making and concepts of making a new home in entirely new surroundings. “The meaning of home, the nature of a house and the consequences of homelessness across space and time in different societies and regions” (ibid) are a subject of increasing scholarly attention in cross-disciplinary investigations. Furthermore, feminist scholars have argued that, “although the house and the home is one of the most strongly gendered spatial locations, it is important not to take the associations for granted, nor to see them as permanent and unchanging” (McDowell 93), as the following quote by bell hooks illustrates:

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I had to leave that space I called home to move beyond boundaries. Indeed, the very meaning of home changes. At times, home is nowhere. At times, one knows only extreme estrangement and alienation. Then home is no longer just one place. It is many locations. Home is that place which enables and promotes varied and ever-changing perspectives, a place where one discovers new ways of seeing reality, frontiers of difference. (hooks qtd. in ibid) hooks’ implication that home is nowhere, especially for women and their families and the new perspectives that they gained after almost half a year on the road, applies to Mary Rockwood Powers’ diary entry, in which she describes her family’s arrival in their new home in the West. She reflects on her health and the distance she and her family put behind them: Our house up the valley into which we had moved, a house twelve by sixteen. It had a good roof but a miserable floor. My health was most miserable and grew worse very fast. We have seen hard times indeed since we left our eastern friends. Our journey across the Plains was a long and hard one. We lost everything but our lives. Thanks to our heavenly father we were spared the trial of leaving any of our little ones to slumber in those dreary wastes, and though worn in body and mind we were all here. (Rockwood Powers 64) However, the house is still not a place Mary considers home, but rather more like a refuge from her family’s arduous journey. It will need time to transform and take on the meaning of home, as the family settles in. Furthermore, a sense of place is always a social construct and not simply a notion of unmarked space. Therefore, another aspect to consider is that place writing is less significant in terms of the relationship of the author to a specific place, but rather how the authorial “I” frames that experience of being in that place (Buell 73). Nowhere is the “potential to reframe the self, to interrogate dominant knowledges, and to speak from a place of resistance more powerful” than in the American West (ibid 337), where these notions resonate with multiple narratives. Thus, returning to Judith Butler’s contention that “the ‘I’ has no story of its own that is not also the story of a relation—or set of relations—to a set of norms” (Butler 8). Her assertion clarifies that life writing not only takes place in relation to others but does so for diverse reasons; as Watson suggests, it is “to chronicle, to justify or exculpate, to negotiate communities of membership, to memorialize, to testify and to bear witness in ethical acts of disputing or reframing dominant narratives” (Watson 15).

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Regarding literature produced by Indigenous peoples, the set of norms inherent in the narratives may be an indication of where “Native heritage is marked with memories of events that newcomers seldom remember and Indians never forget” (McMaster 74). The reason for this is that “indigenous peoples do not have the belief that their culture, stories, or people can be lost forever as Euro-Americans believe can happen. Herein is a profound difference between the cultures” (Sellers 32). These “issues” include those that relate to the challenges of Native American life narratives, the topic of the next section.

2.4

Native American Autobiography: A “Mangled” Genre Given the colonial history of the American West how can we claim autobiography as a representative genre [especially] for whom the promise of equality proved empty? Whereas the genre serves many voices, and each voice contributes to the meaning of western American identity, Native American autobiographers began writing their life stories and re-constructing their selves within the pressures of cultural mediation roughly around the time emigrants were traveling overland in the nineteenth century. (Woods 342)20

According to Gioia Woods, the earliest autobiographical acts in the West predate nation and region. Indigenous people west of the Mississippi certainly engaged in self-expression and self-construction as they tried to make sense of the meaning of their lives, their communities, and their “western” homes (ibid 338). While Indian-white relations during the nineteenth century had considerable influence on the popularity of and interest in the personal narratives of the lives of the “vanishing Americans” (Bataille and Mullen Sands

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Jo-Ann Episkenew is Associate Professor of English at the First Nations University of Canada and a member of the Riel Local of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan. Her commitment to working with Indigenous communities healing from historical trauma has resulted in her book Taking Back Our Spirits, in which she champions the purpose of Native American Autobiography in response to settler colonialism: “By drawing attention to the sickness inherent in [settler] colonialism, Indigenous life writing [not only] challenges the settlers’ delusions and prompts them to rethink their collective myth [but also] helps Indigenous readers to heal from postcolonial trauma by helping them recraft their personal and collective myths” (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing 70).

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29), it was only towards the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth that interest increased in their life and customs “to salvage the remains of a culture.” This interest from scholars resulted in anthropologists and ethnologists recording life stories. Their purpose was to to “salvage what [they feared] would soon be lost.” The following echoes this stance: It is evident that aboriginal manners and customs are rapidly disappearing, but notwithstanding that disappearance much remains unknown, and there has come a more urgent necessity to preserve for posterity by adequate record the many survivals before they disappear. (ibid 30) Despite the obvious shortcomings of the above attitudes, scholars viewed the Native American autobiography as a useful tool for anthropological research. They were convinced that [s]uch personal reminiscences and impressions, inadequate as they are, are likely to throw more light on the working of the mind and emotions of primitive man than any amount of speculation from a sophisticated ethnologist or ethnological theorist. (Radin 1-2) Towards the end of the nineteenth century, in the wake of Indian Removal, Native American Autobiography flourished as a genre, along with the new anthropological science founded by Franz Boas (Krupat, For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography 23).21 The early autobiographies by Native Americans in the West include William Apess’ A Son of the Forest (1829),22 Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’ Life among the Piutes (1883), Francis La Flesche’s The Middle Five: Indian Schoolboys of the Omaha Tribe (1900), and Charles Eastman’s Indian Boyhood (1902). These autobiographies illustrate and address the authors’ experiences in the mission schools and their conversion to Christianity. However, Francis La Flesche (an accomplished ethnographer) 21

22

Franz Boas, however, is not particularly convinced of the value of autobiography, insinuating that it is “of limited value, and useful chiefly for the study of the perversion of truth by memory” (Boas qtd. in Kroeber 320). Contrary to Boas’ view of employing autobiography as a useless endeavor, however, Alfred Kroeber has argued that “among non-literate tribal folk some normal elderly persons are likely to feel their life not as something in its individuation and distinctiveness, but as an exemplification of a socialization. Such a person is conscious of himself first of all as a preserver and transmitter of his culture” (ibid 324). William Apess (1798-1839) was the first Native American to write and publish his own autobiography.

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was from an affluent and acculturated family. His half-French and half-Ponca father, Joseph “Iron Eye,” was the last recognized chief of the Omaha tribe. In addition, his mother, Mary Gale, “The One Woman,” was mixed-blood, Omaha, and white. As parents of mixed-blood, they strongly influenced their children to assimilate into the white culture while at the same time honor and cherish the traditions of their Native American heritage of the Omaha. Thus, like his sisters Susette La Flesche “Bright Eyes” and Susan La Flesche, Francis La Flesche also served as a cultural broker between the authentic past of his people and their future (see discussion in chapter 4.). Unlike the focus of the other, earlier autobiographies, Francis “adopts a different posture toward the West and the project of self-construction as both outsider and insider with his reliance upon binary constructions to demonstrate his own as a bicultural mediator arguing for a new, authentic Indian, one who consents to assimilation” (Woods 343). The relevance of his family’s engagement(s) as cultural brokers will be elaborated further in Chapter 4. As an expanded approach to life writing, these perspectives provide glimpses into how autobiographical writing was conceived for members of society who appeared to have little or no voice. For example, among Indigenous life narrating, “the self is most typically not constituted by the achievement of a distinctive, special voice that separates it from others, but rather, by the achievement of a particular placement in relation to many voices” (Krupat, The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon 133). While the act of defining oneself is central to autobiography, indigenous “selves” think in terms of the community, not as an “I,” but as “we.” As the above quote reveals, and as Krupat has argued in his pivotal work Native American Autobiography, following a structuralist understanding of presenting life chronologically from childhood to old age, many scholars have assumed that because Native Americans did not present their lives in a text (but rather in oral form), their autobiographies simply did not exist. In addition, Native Americans did not present themselves as individuals performing heroic deeds but as part of a community living according to the seasons. How, then, “[g]iven the colonial history of the American West [...] can we claim autobiography as a representative genre?” (Woods 342). How is it possible to understand the way Native Americans present themselves differently in their life narratives when “[t]o Native nations, there is no separation of human ways of knowing and experiencing?” (Sellers 9). Stephanie A. Sellers puts it this way:

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To the non-Native American, separating people into groups because they are ideologically in conflict (like political parties and religions), separating life events by the passage of time, separating ancestry from their descendants, separating types of beings from each other by grouping them into categories (like tree beings, animal beings, human beings, and so on) are all acceptable cultural notions. [However,] most nations have their unique way of understanding and expressing this interconnection [...] so that the events of the “past” are as relevant and alive to those living beings today as they were when the events first occurred. (ibid)23 Thus, as Gioia Woods, Arnold Krupat, Gretchen Bataille, Kathleen Mullen Sands, Paula Gunn Allen, David H. Brumble III, Vine Deloria Jr., Gerald Vizenor, Hertha D. Sweet Wong, and many other scholars would agree, “in Native ... life stories, the subject [...] is situated within the entire life system: that community of living things, geography, climate, spirit, people, and supernaturals” (Gunn Allen 2). Indigenous communities define themselves and their communities holistically in which a person is never a singular, isolated individual. Instead, Indigenous people view themselves as part of a complex network of relationships that “respect the autonomy of the individual within the supportive environment of the group” (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing 194). The belief that human beings must live in harmony with the physical and spiritual universe is central to the Native American traditional way of life. They reflect this desire for harmony in their deep reverence for the land, which is a recurring theme in Native American oral and written literature. Because the earth nurtured them and because they associate their tribal origins and histories with specific places, Native Americans have a strong sense of the sacredness of these places.

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Sellers is a scholar of Native American Studies who defines herself as a culturally identified woman of Native ancestry (Eastern Woodlands). In her bookNative American Autobiography Redefined: A Handbook, she focuses on what she calls “communal narrative,” that distinguishes itself from the Eurocentric perspective and western cultural notions of autobiography.

2 Historical Reflections of American Autobiographical Narrative Practice(s)

2.4.1

Written on the Wind: Literary Tradition (Oral)  and Authorship (Identity)

Indigenous societies were oral cultures and remained so “well into the twentieth century, exhibiting great diversity but still sharing certain characteristics as oral cultures” (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing 4 ). An oral culture is based on tradition, draws on experience, and is passed down by the members of a group, especially the storytellers and orators (Washburn 33-34). As a result, Native American personal narration techniques differ significantly from the sequential form of Euro-American autobiography. First, such narratives are usually oral and are not necessarily delivered chronologically; instead, they are organized as a dynamic, event-filled historical account of the world and the people’s place in it. The stories are communicated to all group members and are then passed down from one generation to another with uncanny accuracy. According to Sarah E. Turner: “The power of words to shape reality is a direct extension of Native Americans’ cultural formation through storytelling, the oral tradition, and its translation into the written text that serves to ensure the continuing existence of Native American culture” (Turner 6). Although Native Americans understood that language had the power to change events, both spiritual and otherwise, the ability to read and write, however, was considered a skill of the colonizers. According to Wong, [l]ike many postcolonial, neocolonial, and marginalized peoples, Native writers and artists insist on the need to reconsider time and its fundamental connection to space-place on many levels: to retell history from Native perspectives, to make visible an indigenous presence in a contemporary global world, and to articulate a place-based subjectivity (in opposition to a colonizer-settler identity) that is grounded firmly in the present but has deep roots in the past and a stake in the future. (Wong 61)24 Indigenous societies placed a higher value on memory and shared and passed on their collective truths via oral narratives. The stories “were central to the functioning of the Indigenous societies” (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing 4), as they explained the peoples’ history. By creating the entire story of their people through the spoken word, cultural practices and norms could be reinforced. They articulated 24

The concepts of time and place are central to most of Silko’s work.

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the peoples’ relationship with the world, as the following lines from Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller show. She illustrates the orality of her Laguna culture: As with any generation The oral tradition depends upon each person Listening and remembering a portion And it is together – All of us remembering what we have heard together – That creates the whole story The long story of the people (Silko 6-7) Storyteller (1981) is only one of Leslie Marmon Silko’s autobiographical projects that use photographs with texts in a series of photo-and-text juxtapositions to create stories, photographs, personal narratives, poems, letters, gossip, anecdotes, and Laguna Pueblo myths. Throughout Storyteller, which is considered a hybrid narrative, Silko artistically weaves oral forms of narrating together with contemporary identity forms, thereby demonstrating how she recovers indigenous forms of personal narrative while “enrich[ing] and extend[ing] Western traditions of autobiography” (H. D. Wong 9). By employing this form of narrating, Silko further shows the fine line between experience and telling a cultural story. Thus, it becomes clear that “storytelling [is] a practice radically different from Western practices of autobiography [and] understood as an example of how language shapes the world, not merely reflects it, and how it represents an alternative discourse to the white man’s stories of Indians” (Turner 126). Furthermore, “oral narratives were adaptable because they could be revised to meet the changing need of their societies and, therefore, could evolve as their contexts changed” (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing 4). In particular, Crystal Kurzen has noted that “Silko uses form to suggest multiple ways of identifying as Native and welcomes cultural histories and family stories in whatever composition best suits their work in the world” (Kurzen 207). In addition, it is, according to Wong, through a ‘subtle resonance’ between words and images, that Silko thematizes and illustrates an indigenous time-space continuum which constitutes a Native subjectivity “grounded in place, particularly the land where the Pueblo people have lived for thousands of years, [and where] the past is not lost but very much part of the present—alive in the stories embedded throughout the land” (H. D. S. Wong 81-82).

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As a particular form of self-written life, or as “a narrative of a person’s life written by himself,” autobiography is a European invention and does not define Native American autobiography (Krupat, For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography 307), the Eurocentric concept of life writing is a prose narrative told in the first person. The life narratives of Native Americans include linguistic understandings and word choices that differ from the Eurocentric model, especially in using personal and possessive pronouns among certain Native American peoples, as Barbara Alice Mann explains in Native American Speakers of the Woodlands. Whereas, for example, “I” and “you” can refer to the individual speaker or entire group, “he” and “she” are used to referring to all third parties (49, cited in Sellers 8). Employing language in this way illustrates further the holistic life philosophy of indigenous people.

2.4.2

Life Writings in “The Red Woman’s America”

The modern way to write a[n] [auto]biography involves, among other things, a process that singles out an individual, cuts her out of the total biota or life system within which she lives and from which she derives her identity, gives her value and prestige above the rest. (Gunn Allen 2) As Paula Gunn Allen reminds us in Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat, both European and Native American forms reflect complex literary traditions when considered separately, but they are even more complex when combined to reflect the personal experience of Native American women. This was especially the case in the past, when many narratives were produced in collaboration with non-Native collectors and editors of “as-told-to” autobiographies that “engaged with various kinds of Native American auto/biographical forms,” thus making them “composite in nature.”25 Gender politics basically made it very difficult to prepare and organize the collected transcriptions, according to Kathleen Mullen Sands: 25

Regarding more contemporary collaborative research forms and projects that are “flourishing across North America and Canada,” Sarah Henzi says that, “[u]ltimately, the question of genre in the field of Indigenous Studies is a very slippery notion indeed: the line between the literary and the non-literary is often blurred, whereas the mixing and upsetting of genres and devices is common practice for many artists” (Henzi 665). She therefore pleads for an “open space in which one can discuss the complexities, specificities, and differences within Native American and Canadian Indigenous litera-

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For decades, like most women’s literary production, they [Native American women’s life narratives] were deemed too insignificant for serious study or relegated to case-study status which focused on content rather than attending to form, style, or narrative intentions (Sands 39).26 Scholars consider native American autobiography a transitional genre that combines elements of the tribal oral tradition, which flourished before the arrival of Europeans, and the Euro-American written tradition. Scholars consider life writing by Native Americans to be founded on both models (Bataille and Mullen Sands 3). For example, Hertha Sweet Wong has described her work, Sending My Heart Back Across the Years, as “a detailed consideration of a select number of distinctly native traditions of self-narration and their later interaction with Euro-American forms of autobiography” (qtd. in Sellers 33). However, she seems at odds with the seminal research on Native American autobiography by Arnold Krupat, Kathleen Mullen Sands, and Gretchen Bataille by claiming that their research approach does not reflect authentic indigenous life narration but a Eurocentric gaze, thus “negat[ing] the possibility of pre-European contact tribal traditions of personal narrative” (ibid 5). Wong’s book includes detailed non-written forms of indigenous self-narration, such as pictographs and other indigenous artworks, and presents them as proof of pre-Columbian autobiography. The work thus claims to “expand the Eurocentric definitions of autobiography to include non-written forms of personal narrative and non-Western concepts of self and highlight the interaction of traditional tribal modes of self-narration with Western forms of autobiography” (ibid). In alignment with Wong’s argument and praise for her work, Sellers notes, “[u]nlike the work of major contemporary scholars like Krupat, Sands, and Bataille, Hertha Wong’s book Sending My Heart Back Across the Years

26

tures in relation to their respective and particular sociological, historical, political and economical contexts” (ibid 654). The case studies revealed only part of the story and were thus flawed, according to Sellers, since the “presumption of the ethnographer/writer [was] that one Native person is representative of her entire nation [and therefore] no other voices need to be heard to gain cultural authenticity. In most Native American autobiographies readers will find information that is seemingly about the whole nation when it is in fact only about the women or the men. [B]ecause of gendering protocol, it is not appropriate for the men to discuss women’s business” and vice versa (Krupat, For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography 7-8).

2 Historical Reflections of American Autobiographical Narrative Practice(s)

is an excellent example of Native-centered scholarship that reflects a complex understanding of western and Native cultural differences” (ibid).27 Other cultural differences between western Indigenous cultures involve notions of events occurring in time, which Euro-Americans view as fixed and linear. Both female and Native American autobiographical narratives focus on a communal or relational identity and tend to be cyclical rather than linear. Furthermore, Native Americans have their unique way of understanding, knowing, and experiencing the interconnectedness of life events and the universe, and therefore interpretations of life writings by Native American women must be informed by and reflect an indigenous methodology. Native American women were important in their communities because they maintained the cultural traditions of their people and as advocators of change. Thus, they were crucial to the ongoing transformation of their culture and communities: “we might do well to think of Native American women as translators of Indian cultures or as cultural mediators between mainstream and Native American cultures” (Kilcup 4). The act of writing and telling their stories creates both the space for Native American women to explore their identity and promote their often-overlooked cultural legacy and history through their unique expression: Whether a text is a composite of Native and non-Native interaction [...] or a narrative linked to precontact oral or pictographic identity constructions [...], 27

Sellers’ praise of Wong’s “excellent Native-centered scholarship” and call for “the present and next generation of writers to shape these works into authentic articles of nation-specific Native culture” as the next step (Sellers 33-34) was heeded in the first week of the new decade, 2021, with an announcement of the publication of a new, international, scholarly peer-reviewed journal entitled thrivance – journal of Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing, whose mission is “to engage in multi- cross- inter-disciplinary dialogue that uplifts Indigenous communities, nations, or individuals, and critically examines topics that are relevant to Indigenous peoples. The aim of the journal is to promote Indigenous scholarship—Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, worldviews, theories, philosophies, methodologies, pedagogies, perspectives, practices, experiences, stories, and artistic expressions of cultural resurgence and reclamation, and decolonization. Submissions are encouraged by Indigenous scholars, researchers and practitioners. Indigenous ‘first’ authorship will be prioritized” (Journal Purpose). The themes and journal topics include: exploring Indigeneity, Land- place-based learning (Land as first teacher), deconstructing/challenging (or supporting) the term, and ideas behind ‘reconciliation.’ Finally, it raises the question, “Are there healthier or ‘moreIndigenous,’ ways of envisioning the future of North American society, relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples?” (Organization)

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these texts disrupt expected Western practices of self-narration, theorizing their own experiences and the lives of those who make up their communities. They do more than find subjectivity or voice as their texts work in the world to become models of activist engagement. (Kurzen 205) Therefore, it is essential to read ethnic women’s life writing outside of traditional frameworks, since the “production of autobiography outside of Western generic conventions often emerges out of a marginalized population’s call for a larger social awareness by the dominant culture or even among the perceptions of an author’s own communit[y]” (ibid 211-212). In this way, the autobiographies of Native American women can serve as powerful tools for advocating and promoting social change. Thus, while it is the “intention of life writing to give voice to those who are silenced”, Sellers explicitly reminds scholars that in order to gain a better understanding of how Native peoples represent themselves and their culture in their narratives, it is crucial for literary scholars to discontinue “examining these texts as literary artifacts, but [...] make them into something they should have been from the beginning: a way for non-Native peoples to know and appreciate Native peoples and their nations as they truly were/are by moving out of the age of ethnographic autobiography into one of communal narrative” (Sellers ix, 13-14). In sum, the intention throughout this chapter has been to illustrate how several phenomenological methods, as descriptive approaches, can offer “a reading practice of female autobiographical writing that encode insinuations and constructs of the self—the very essence of autobiography—by moving beyond the traditional and exploring more alternate forms of self-representation” (Gilmore 42). This has the advantage of exposing the limitations of traditional readings of autobiography while illustrating how each life narrative authorized their writing and performed their identity against the socially inscribed norms for women of the nineteenth century.

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

Cultures are never static: they evolve through history. That is why the process of cultural reproduction is, in part, a process of cultural transformation. (Brah 18) Avtar Brah’s observation that cultural reproduction involves transformation is useful in understanding the former as a multidimensional concept that demands definition and contextualizing. It is instrumental in its application to the processes involved in constructing historical, cultural, and personal practices and their reproduction, especially concerning one of this dissertation’s main conceptual ideas and foci. A conducive environment is necessary for transformation to take place, and, within the context of culture, it must “be perceived at a number of different levels, from environment ([sacred] places, spaces, including institutions) to beliefs and values (cultural and related to identity)” (Katan 177). For instance, the nineteenth-century American West provided a conducive environment that gradually transformed into a place of extraordinary significance for many throughout the century. According to II. Milner, Ann M. Butler, and Davis Rich Lewis, “The nineteenth-century West served as a laboratory for political and social reform” (Milner et al. 268). Furthermore, for scholars and historians of the West, “the concept of the American West elicits images that highlight the great diversity of this region over space and time” (Hausladen 7). As such, “the evolution of the American West is a continuous process” which is not stagnant, but changes and transforms over time, “especially as we have moved from a singular perspective (of a single frontier), based on the thesis of

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Frederick Jackson Turner1 to multiple perspectives that take into account the complexity of processes” involving gender, race, economic and environmental (among others) “at work on the frontier” (ibid). Thus, viewed through this lens, the various socio-cultural movements of the nineteenth century- especially the American West - can be understood as a dynamic process in terms of “a negotiation of differences, as well as a difficult process of transformation” (Croitoru 8). Throughout “Gold Fever!” the intention is to explore how transformations were made possible in the contested spaces and places of the West, focusing on the ‘third space’ of postcolonialism. Following the conceptualization of the complex postmodernist vocabulary that illuminates the West as a constructed place of many spaces rooted in the preoccupation and meaning of identity negotiated in power relations that were transforming mid-century, the discussion will move on to illustrate/ contextualize the behavioral ideals and roles dictated by the female prescriptive behavioral codex inherent in the “Cult of True Womanhood,” with the main focus on “piety” and “domesticity.” The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the transformation of nineteenth-century “scientific” medicine and the introduction of women into public spaces as the “New Woman,” who championed the health care policies of “maternalistic,” “socialist,” and “scientific” medicine that were integrally connected to the rise of feminism, maternalism, domestic politics, progressivism, and early suffrage laws. 1

This singular perspective from a male gaze is advanced in his famous essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” wherein Turner claims that the American character has been shaped by westward expansion, as well as its effect on the promotion of democracy (Rezé and Bowen, The American West: History, Myth and the National Identity 6). Moreover, the following excerpt is illustrative of his attitude of the frontier as source of American exceptionalism: “…in the case of the United States” claiming that “we have a different phenomenon” clearly not taking into account other perspectives when referring to “[…] this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West” (Rezé and Bowen, The American West: History, Myth and the National Identity 2). Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1935) delivered his paper in Chicago at the American Historical Society July 12, 1893. Although controversial and debated among many historians, he is considered among many others to have revolutionized American historiography. For further discussion see (Rezé and Bowen, “Frederick Jackson Turner: The Frontier as the Source of American Exceptionalism” 134-39)

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

3.1

Cultural Concepts of Space and Place

To begin, space and place are fundamental ideas in regional studies, which typically focus on defining particular geographical locations and articulate what distinguishes certain regions from others. Scholars have suggested that one essential, enduring quality is “distinctiveness.” Thus, some discussions focus on place defined by a distinct environment that creates and provides for circumstances that affect the human condition. Focusing on place in this way can be useful when considering how a region’s environment shapes its socio-cultural, political, religious, and historical construction, as well as in understanding topics related to health, disease, medical practice. Thus, as a framework for exploring the interaction of physical environment and health care, for example, the concept of regional space can also inform the history of medicine, disease, medical practices, and the health-benefiting environment of the West.2 However, questions regarding space have not always been focused on particular geographical locations, as the discussion in the previous chapter has shown. Questions related to geographical space had already been established at the origin of the “spatial turn”3 and within a broader interest in globalization. The resulting spatial, social sciences increasingly concerned themselves with space rather than time, affecting how space was constructed and perceived. Spatial scientists became interested in the role of how space affected human activity, drawing “attention to the fact that social life necessarily happens in certain spaces and places” (McDowell and Sharp, A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography 261), as well as at certain times. According to Robert T. Tall y Jr., “space and place are indeed historical, and the changing spaces and perceptions of space over time are crucial to an understanding of the importance of spatiality in literary and cultural studies today” (Tally 5), such as “what Edward Soja has referred to as the ‘real-and-imagined’ spaces with which we are so intimately connected” (ibid 6).4 2

3 4

Although these highly interesting concepts will be briefly touched upon throughout this research, further in depth scholarly discussions can especially be found in the essays contained in Hildreth & Moran (eds) Disease and Medical Care in the Mountain West. See also (Antonovich). Scholars, among those most associated with, and leading the spatial turn, are Edward W. Soja, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel Foucault. See Edward W. Soja Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (qtd. in Tally 6).

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Feminist scholars have focused on how space and place are gendered in society. Since “people act relative to their intentions and beliefs, which are always culturally shaped and historically and spatially positioned,” their “understanding of the world and their place in it” is shaped by this understanding, as well. Furthermore, by focusing on public, private, and domestic space, feminist scholars have shown how women utilize and experience space differently from men as part of the social construct of gender itself as well as that of space. Linda McDowell and Joanne P. Sharp have illustrated this by noting the following: Spatial relations and layout, the differences within and between places, the nature and form of the BUILT ENVIRONMENT, images and representations of this environment and of the “natural” world, ways of writing about it, as well as our bodily place within it, are all part and parcel of the social constitution of gendered social relations and the structure and meaning of PLACE. The spaces in which social relations occur affect the nature of those practices, who is “in place” and who is “out of place” and even who is allowed to be there at all. But the spaces themselves in turn are constructed and given meaning through the social practices that define men and women as different and unequal. (McDowell and Sharp, Space, Gender, Knowledge: Feminist Readings 2-3) Thus, people are influenced by what they believe to be appropriate social behavior for men and women and the interactions within socially constructed spaces that define gender practices. In the 1970s, two “very different strands of geographical inquiry” emerged (Hubbard 41). The first includes humanistic accounts that emphasize the idea that different settings tend to have a different sense of place. The second is a Marxist perspective that examines domination and resistance across varied spaces and tends to focus on the importance of space as “both socially produced and consumed” (ibid). Perhaps in lieu of a definition of what space and place are, “the key question about space and place is not what they are, but what they do” (ibid 47). In the words of the French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre, “space may be said to embrace a multitude of intersections, each with its assigned location,” which may be expressed in the form of a “conceptual triad”: 1) Spatial practice, which embraces production and reproduction, and the particular locations and spatial sets characteristic of each social formation. Spatial practice ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion. In

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

terms of social space, and of each member of a given society’s relationship to that space, this cohesion implies a guaranteed level of competence and a specific level of performance. 2) Representations of space, which are tied to the relations of production and to the “order” which those relations impose, and hence to knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to “frontal” relations. 3) Representational spaces, embodying complex symbolisms, sometimes coded, sometimes not, linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life, as also to art (which may come eventually to be defined less as a code of space than as a code of representational spaces). (Lefebvre 41) Thus, Lefebvre’s conceptual triad demonstrates how space can offer a valuable approach to constructing specific histories of place or stories connected with certain landscapes, especially in the West. The Mormon or Indigenous landscape, for instance, refers to / includes anything from place names to architecture to cemeteries. In contrast, religion may refer to anything “from beliefs to practices to institutions and customs [that] involved significant elements of their belief system” on which they tried to establish the “City of Zion” in July 1831 “based on a combination of American frontier ideas of egalitarianism and cooperation combined with a Puritanical interpretation of the Bible” (Jackson 135).5 According to Ruedigar Paul Matthes (a practicing member of the LDS Church), ward meetinghouses exemplify unique places that hold special significance in Mormon culture due to their sacredness [which] is further enhanced by the spatial symbolism with which [they] describe their mythologies. These mythologies rely heavily on spatial symbolism [which] is used to create a distinction between righteousness and wickedness and is often presented as dichotomous pairings of geographically distinct locations: Zion/Babylon or Nephite land/Lamanite land. (Matthes, Abstract) As the intention of the discussion so far has hopefully made clear regarding how our perceptions of space construct reality, furthermore, in order to assign meaning and in Lefebvre’s sense of representations of spaces that may be embodied in art, it is necessary

5

For further discussion on the settlement of the LDS community in Utah see chapter 4.

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to consider for a moment what processes take place when physical space is culturally appropriated as imaginary space [in other words] - it is also possible to argue that literary or pictorial representations will, by definition, always be distorting, because it is the whole point of their existence that they do not simply reproduce something that is already there but that they redefine (and thereby recreate) it in the act of representation” (Fluck 25). Not only do literary or pictorial representations carry the potential to be distorting, but according to Karsten Fitz, their impact lies within “the connection between words, images, signification, and cultural conflict” (Fitz, The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s to 1850s: Competing Images and Conflicting Narratives 13) as the following further illustrates: [T]he power of images is realized foremost in the stories we allow or do not allow them to tell, through the histories we make them proclaim or deny, and, finally, through the theoretical concepts and discourses which we use in order to contain, regulate or liberate their force of signification. Words and images are thus always engaged within a complex system of conflicting or corresponding iconographies of empowerment and disempowerment. (Haselstein et al. qtd. in ibid) These images may be constructed intellectually and artistically before being transmitted via different media. The contributing efforts to reflect and represent a part of a collective historical and cultural portrait, according to Fitz, can offer a way of understanding “how individuals and groups connect to their collective national and historical experiences [...] that reveal much about the perception of particular historical events at a certain time and their impact on American cultural self-definition” (Fitz, “Contested Space: Washington Crossing the Delaware as a Site of American Cultural Memory” 557). Furthermore, they can reveal that visual culture is “not [only] defined by the medium” but can also be signified/illustrated “by the interaction between viewer and viewed” (Mirzoeff 13), as well as “ways of looking” (ibid 4).6

6

Hertha D. Sweet Wong’s analysis in Picturing Identity: Contemporary American Autobiography In Image and Text, “examines the visual-textual matrix as a place of intense personal and political engagement in which both men and women reenvision subjectivity, reclaim history, and challenge the status quo. [However] this task of self-formulation as a process of cultural and historical critique is not limited to women or ethnic Ameri-

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

Keeping the above conceptualizations in mind of how certain images can be documented and serve as historical visual representations of collective national memories7 , as well as reveal certain counter-narratives contained within them, the discussion now turns to the contextualization of mythical artistic representations of the West. It is followed by an interpretation of an iconic painting that not only serves as an allegory for Manifest Destiny and American westward expansion, but also provides a teleological site to illustrate contradictory narratives inherent in the culturally constructed identities of the nineteenth-century women in “Gold Fever!” who are visually represented from the male gaze in John Gast’s painting American Progress.8

3.2

“Manifest Destiny Aesthetics” – Cultural (Mis)representations of the West [The West] is a powerful symbol within the national mythology, but as soon as we attempt to connect symbol with substance, to assess the relationships between the West as a place in the imagination and the West as a piece of the American continent, we are confronted with great variation. (D.W. Meinig qtd. in Hausladen 19)

Throughout its history, the West has always served as a powerful national symbol, as Meinig and others have suggested when referring to a dominant myth9

7

8

9

cans. Nor is it a job that can ever be completed. The clash of competing representations and narratives – both personal and historical – is ongoing” (H. D. S. Wong 8-9). See Fitz The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s to 1850s for more in depth discussions on “the relationship between visual representations and cultural and historical memory (and forgetting) as well as between images and the historical and cultural construction (and self-interpretation) of a usable past” (Fitz, The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s to 1850s: Competing Images and Conflicting Narratives 8). The concept of the male gaze - introduced by Laura Mulvey – “subsumes” viewers of film, art, and other media “into a heterosexual male consumptive viewing, relegating females to the status of objects” (H. D. S. Wong 8). To speak of one single unified /collective national American myth is not only misleading, but also not true and requires explanation as national monuments are being torn down across the globe. The recent actions of angry protesters serve as reminders that “national myths can crash in an instant” as David Rothkopf recently reported in an editorial to USA Today. He says that “Every myth has a purpose [which] isn’t always about truth” and that reminds us “we are struggling in this moment not just with existential challenges to many of our other national myths, those founded on hope and ideals and

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of American identity from a predominantly white male perspective. However, it has also been characterized by cultural and ethnic diversity since the first encounters between Indigenous peoples living in North America when Europeans arrived, resulting in many interpretations and (mis)representations. During the nineteenth century, the historical events contributing to the West’s collective experiences and constructs were made possible through innovations in printing technologies. Promotional advertising schemes were “often funded by land or railroad companies, or by town-site promoters” and propagated variations on the romantic, subliminal mythic theme by eulogizing “areas, and states, often with little respect for veracity” (Riley 6) in order to attract settlers. A growing market for paintings, especially sublime landscape paintings, further perpetuated collective Western mythology variations. For instance, many early representations by painters and photographers focused on particular themes, such as subliminal landscapes and depictions of Native American tribes and their way of life, which were the subject of as many myths, rumors, clichés, and stereotypes (and occasionally outright lies) as its indigenous peoples. Indians of the West have been celebrated as the Noble Savage, revered as the mystical medicine man, mourned as the disappearing Red Man, upheld as the harmonious environmentalist, admired as the proud and able warrior, and vilified as the conniving and treacherous barbarian, to name of few of the broad-brush themes that have proliferated in dime-store novels, Hollywood Westerns, and New Age babble. (Reinhardt 184) The depictions were part of a broader campaign associated with westward expansion and an increased interest in the West that began before the Civil War. Interestingly, or perhaps ironically, it also coincided with industrialization and the removal of Native Americans that began during the 1830s with past achievements: democracy that promised everyone a voice, equal opportunity enlightened global leadership, no one being above the law”. These were the ideals that were taught at school and were believed by many immigrants which now seem to be crumbling. “Those of an America that not too long ago offered itself up as ‘a shining city upon a hill?” Rothkopf further questions cautiously whether “perhaps we should acknowledge that there is so much that is pernicious or ephemeral in myth making” such as to believe in a single unified /collective national American myth (my emphasis) and reminds that “the only truly enduring monument to any society is its truth”. For the full editorial “America’s national greatness myths are shattering. Can they survive? Should they?” Published July 27, 2020 in USA Today (Rothkopf).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

the Jacksonian Removal Act. Hence, as “with the press of westward expansion, that lens was increasingly shaded by Manifest Destiny visions of conquering the continent, building an empire, and romanticizing the landscape in pictures” (T. Ryan, “The View Beyond the Frame” 34), which Terre Ryan has referred to as “Manifest Destiny aesthetics” (T. Ryan, This Ecstatic Nation: American Landscape and the Aesthetics of Patriotism xv). In her book This Ecstatic Nation: American Landscape and the Aesthetics of Patriotism, Terre Ryan notes the contradiction with which the wilderness was viewed: This mastery of the landscape signified domestication of a wild continent that could be plumbed for divinely provided natural resources. Such images reflected what we might call Manifest Destiny aesthetics, which depicted spectacular terrain that either had been or would be conquered, romanticized the landscape, and left the costs of development—genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of Africans and their descendants, and environmental degradation—outside the frame. (ibid) Consequently, ubiquitous images of brutal male dominance over the land and annihilation of people and environment have not only influenced but have also clouded our perceptions of the Western narrative by a one-sided, mythical (white) male perspective of empire-building with women in stereotypical roles or relegated to minor ones.10 Therefore, in order to further explore how visual tropes can instruct and contribute to the collective memories and historical narratives of the nineteenth-century West, in the following the discussion will engage in investigating how John Gast’s iconic American painting Progress reveals the cataclysmic socio-cultural and multifarious ramifications of Industrialization and Westward expansion.

10

Margaret Jacobs has quite clearly criticized such projections in an article published in the Pacific Historical Review: “It’s easy to feel frustrated that thirty years of scholarship on western women’s history has not made much of a dent in popular images of the West” (Jacobs, “Getting Out of a Rut: Decolonizing Western Women’s History” 585).

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3.3

Bringing “Progress” to the West

Their goal was to eliminate Indigenous cultures and bring modernity and progress to Indigenous peoples. (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing 5) A well-known and influential pictorial example of how the “colonial creation myth promotes the belief that the good, brave, and enduring settlers battled the forces of nature to bring civilization and progress to a land sparsely populated by primitive people, and the settlers’ hard work and diligence resulted in the building of a new nation-state” (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits 109), is John Gast’s “widely reproduced” (Sandweiss qtd. in ibid) painting that engages cultural stereotypes and political ideas - also paradoxically named American Progress.11 Ronald Wright points to the contemptuous irony of how the choice of the word/term “progress” is loaded: Our practical faith in progress has ramified and hardened into an ideology–a secular religion which, like the religions that progress has challenged, is blind to certain flaws in its credentials. Progress, therefore, has become ‘myth’ in the anthropological sense. (Wright 4) The cultural images in Gast’s static, and yet dynamic, painting illustrate various transformations and coincide with ideas prevalent in nineteenth-century American thought regarding “Manifest Destiny,” as well as reinforcing a teleological story of American empire-building.12 The painting is not exemplary of the sublime imagery described above, but for its suggestive, powerful representation of how “physical space is culturally appropriated as imaginary space” (Fluck 25) and “condensed into a single canvas” (T. Ryan, “The View Beyond the Frame” 34). This “imaginary space” offers several interpretations of nineteenth-century narratives and counter-narratives regarding the meaning 11 12

John Gast was a painter from Brooklyn, New York who painted the picture in 1872 on commission for George Crofutt a publisher of popular western travel guides. Terre Ryan contends that “It would be easy to classify Gast’s American Progress […] as [an] artifact[] of an imperialist era. But during the nineteenth century, the nation’s landscape – including its mountains, canyons, waterfalls, enormous western trees, farms, prairies, and green terrain – and the control of that landscape assumed mythic resonance that has never ceased to reverberate. Versions of these images, laden with Manifest Destiny aesthetics, show up everywhere in contemporary culture, often featuring what critics call “the technological sublime,” which locates awesome power in technology rather than in wild nature” (ibid).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

of the West, especially for the women and Native Americans in “Gold Fever!”. Their contributions to “[w]estern history began long before Euro-Americans explored and settled North America”–more precisely–“It started with the Native American and Hispanic people who already lived in what we now call ‘the West’” (Armitage and Jameson 51). Contrary to the “cultural blindnesses” as well as “racial and gender stereotyping” imagery that was conventionally constructed and projected by male artists who would have perhaps preferred to envision a vast space to conquer, Native American women were also among the inhabitants living in the West at the time of Euro-American contact. Moreover, they were actively engaged in the transformational processes, as the discussions will reveal in Chapter 4 (V. Scharff, Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, And The West 12-13).

Figure 1: “American Progress” – Allegorical painting of Manifest Destiny and American westward expansion by Prussian-born artist John Gast, 1872.

The text under CC-BY-SA license creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In figure 1, we see that the right side of the picture is painted in lighter shades. There are two railroads, a stagecoach, and a covered wagon moving

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from East to West, suggesting that progress originates in the East and is brought to the West. The bottom left-hand corner shows a farmer plowing the land. Further, at the bottom, towards the middle, a man on a saddled horse walks together with several other men carrying guns and shovels. They appear to be driving away several Native American men—one bare-chestedmale with a tomahawk and another carrying a bow and arrow—who are walking next to a horse that pulls a travois carrying a woman and child. Two barechested Native American women, who look back over their shoulders, appear to scurry into the darkness, where several large animals—most likely bison—are barely visible. The Native Americans, who appear to be fleeing, can thus be interpreted as frightened and desperately attempting to escape an uncertain future. We can interpret the display of their gazes behind them as an awareness that their traditional way of life is transforming. Indeed, this was undoubtedly the situation for most indigenous people living in the West during westward expansion. However, Native American Susan La Flesche, M.D.–an Omaha leader and reformer–and her tribe did not flee progress as portrayed by Gast. Although, it cannot be denied that the Omaha’s were not left unscathed by the nineteenthcentury transformations. Dr. La Flesche, who was aware of how “progress” affected her people, became a “cultural broker” between her tribe and white culture to ease tensions between the two and alleviate the suffering incurred by the transitioning. La Flesche was also the first Native American woman to become a medical doctor in the nineteenth century, a real accomplishment. The dominating, angelic white woman figure known as Columbia in the middle of the painting bears a star on her forehead called “the Star of Empire.” She carries a schoolbook on her right arm, symbolic of education or enlightenment, and strings along a telegraph line, invoking a sense of technological, social, and economic advancement. She also appears to be guiding the pioneers westwards, illuminating the way for them, but not for the Native Americans, who flee into the darker part of the painting—the West. About the symbolism of Columbia, Amy Greenberg has suggested, “It is the benign domestic influence of [her] allegorical figure Gast seems to indicate, that is responsible for the smooth and uplifting transformation of wilderness into civilization” (Greenberg 2). The image of an angelic (white) female figure leading and lighting the way for the emigrants from a place of darkness (wilderness) into the light (civilization) is a powerful image that also inherently bears the potential for contradictory interpretations regarding the binaries of wilderness and civilization, as well as the proliferation of “the traditional cliché that [white]

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

women were the source of virtue in [...] society” (Mary Beth Norton qtd. in Fitz, The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s to 1850s: Competing Images and Conflicting Narratives 223). The concept of virtue belongs to one of the four foundations of The Cult of True Womanhood (that did not include all women and will be discussed more in-depth in 3.5.). This concept embraced “an attitude which decidedly elevated the moral position of American women during the early republic [and later following the Civil War] helped American women to envisage “themselves as active contributors to the public welfare through their domestic roles” (ibid). Thus, by reframing the view of Columbia as possessing agency in an active leadership role guiding emigrants to a brighter future can help to shift our perspective of women who undertook the arduous journey West not only as comforting wives and mothers providing maternal care along the way, but also as dynamically taking part in the westward journey, but as contributors to empire-building. Adopting a perspective in this direction could “reshape what we think about the important events in national history” (Bryan 273), especially Western history from the female gaze, and serve as a counter-narrative. In other words, by shifting attention away from an exclusive preoccupation with a male Euro-American perspective, it would be possible to recognize that women, Native Americans, and “others” also actively created the complex regional histories of the West. While (perhaps) for some emigrants, the westward journey was filled with mixed anticipation of an improved life (and for some even better health), for others, it was filled with anxiety and fears of the collapse of social stability and civilized values. This reality was undoubtedly true for Native Americans, whose way of life was (irreversibly) transformed by the end of the nineteenth century. The Transcontinental Railroad’s completion accelerated travel to the West, where many people sought opportunities to improve their lives and health. Among them were also health care-providing women who attended to the medical needs of their own and others’ families on the trails, to which the discussion now turns.

3.4

Go West, Young Woman! The new era began with the discovery of gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada of California on January 24, 1848. People rushed west in an emotional

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state described in the language of disease. They had caught a fever. (Hine et al. 225) Furthermore, their lives, as well as the spaces and places therein, were to be transformed as emigration in the middle of the nineteenth century coincided with rapidly transforming questions regarding women’s “proper place” in society. The Great Migration to the West in 1843, followed by the California Gold Rush in 1849, marked the beginning of a mass movement of people on various routes to the Western territories, inciting catalytic and unprecedented socioeconomic, political, and religious transformations for the emigrants who undertook the arduous journey. Also, “western colonization supplied raw materials and provided new markets for industrial capitalism. The West helped to build the nation as the nation built the West.13 [Thus], it would be a mistake to attach a single, unidirectional storyline to what transpired” (ibid 223). Hine et al. have discussed the migration(s) on the various routes in the subsequent decades: Between 1849 and 1920, the American West was aligned with impersonal large-scale organizations. The federal state exited the Civil War greatly enlarged and empowered, and it grew even more powerful administering the people and resources of the West. Yet the national government paled in comparison to some corporations, especially the railroads, the first truly largescale economic organizations in American history. [These organizations] defined the industrial West along with technological marvels and titanic undertakings. The region resembled a runaway train more than a well-planned and regulated colony. It pulled into modernity, but only after a hellishly wild ride. (ibid 224) Furthermore, scholars also noted that the people who participated in the westward migration, as well as in “Gold Rush society,” were “a polyglot collection of nationalities” (ibid 229) that included many women from multicultural and socio-economic backgrounds,14 such as English, French, Italian, German, Native American, African American, Hispanic, Scandinavian, and 13

14

According to María E. Montoya, [By] thinking about the West as a central place in U.S. history [and by] emphasizing the western experience, and putting it within its proper context, reshapes what we think about the important events in national history” (Bryan 273). Although I recognize the multicultural backgrounds of the many women who contributed to the creation/shaping of American history from the very beginning, and es-

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

Asian. Besides, from its first settlements, women were also a part of a western landscape that contributing to its unique characteristic. Thus, it appears that women’s visibility was recognized, and as the following will illustrate, they also impacted settling and shaping the West. Its territorial vastness offered much space they were seeking to be imaginative and enabled them to transform their lives. It was, in the historian Ralph Henry Gabriel’s words, in a sense a manifestation of that romantic spirit which stirred America. [T]he same spirit which in other realms expressed itself in the transcendentalism of Emerson and in the architecture of the Greek Revival. For many Americans the migration was a wistful search for a Never Never Land. (qtd. in Royce ix) Moreover, as it was enormously lucrative for many who offered services. For instance, “the big money makers of the Gold Rush were the men and women who supplied the miners with food, clothes, equipment, and entertainment” (Hine et al. 227). Although they did not earn “big money” for their services, the many women who provided health care on the trails and the settlements of the undeveloped (and later developed) territories should also be considered. As the population in urban communities in the West increased, the need for health care and medicine also grew. According to Peavy and Smith, “the skills of laywomen notwithstanding, there was a real need for well-trained physicians” (Peavey and Smith 124) and other health care givers in the West. Furthermore, it was not uncommon in the West for women to provide medical care and treatment or be practitioners of the healing arts, especially among several Native American tribes who had long resided in North America and were familiar with the healing properties of the surrounding flora and fauna. Notably, in early American communities, Native American healers were “held in quite as high repute as regular white doctors” (Pickard and Buley 36). Among the Crow, Gros Ventre, and Assiniboine, for instance, women were believed to have unique gifts as healers and were “sometimes summoned through a dream to become a medicine woman [where] they were the primary caretakers of the medicine bundle, and […] played an important part in doctoring the sick” (Steele 24-25). Thus, although it was not always easy, there were many opportunities for women in the West, especially as health care givers, beginning on the trails, pecially their impact in transforming the West, it is not possible to include them all in this dissertation.

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where they were heavily relied on to provide care for their family and friends, and later in the settlements and newly built urban cities. Ultimately, “there were many cultural indicators during the decades of emigration to the Far West which suggested that the cultural and social framework, established for women during the early decades of the nineteenth century, might need modifications and adjustment” upon arrival and settling into their new homes in the West. Nevertheless, this did not deter many women, who hoped “to realize and even extend their social role” (Jeffrey 24). Mary Florence Lathrop exemplifies this. Like many women in the West and those whose lives are illustrated in “Gold Fever!” she extended her social role in Colorado by becoming a wellestablished lawyer. In her words, “the West is the country for the woman. To a bright, ambitious woman, it offers freer opportunities, better wages for her work, less criticism concerning her ‘sphere’, more genuine courtesy, and more hearty respect. I say, go West, young woman” (July 17, 1886).

3.4.1

The Trails – On the Tracks of the Elephant

In the middle of the 19th century, the famous phrase “I have seen the elephant” referred to overcoming the hardships and adversities in one’s life,15 which I feel captures the quintessence of migrating and settling in the West for many of the women and their families in “Gold Fever!”. The expression originated from a popular tale told when circus parades first featured elephants. According to the story, a farmer who had heard that a circus had arrived in town and had never seen an elephant before loaded his wagon with vegetables and headed to market. He ran into the circus parade on his way into town, which was led by an elephant. The farmer, upon seeing the elephant, was thrilled to pieces. However, having never seen an elephant before, his horses were terrified and reacted by rearing up and overturning the wagon that destroyed the farmer’s produce. Despite his misfortune, the farmer exclaimed, “I don’t give a hang, for I have seen the elephant” (quoted in Levy xvi). And so it was, too, for most immigrants heading West in the 19th century – “the elephant 15

In her book entitled They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush, Jo Ann Levy claims that “no expression characterized the California Gold Rush, to forty-niners and those following, more than the words ‘seeing the elephant’. The elephant symbolized both the high cost of their endeavour – the myriad possibilities for misfortune on the journey or in California – and, like the farmer’s circus elephant, an exotic sight, an unequalled experience, the adventure of a lifetime.” However, the expression itself, predated the gold rush.

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

symbolized both the high cost of their endeavor – the myriad possibilities for misfortune on the journey [...] – and, like the farmer’s circus elephant, an exotic sight, an unequaled experience, the adventure of a lifetime” (ibid). By the time people reached their destination (if they survived the journey), they could claim that they, too, had seen the elephant. Many of the families heading West in the nineteenth century had very little idea of how much their lives would be transformed, or even worse, that many would never reach their destination. As one traveler noted, they could not have imagined how the journey “would be attended with hardships and dangers that no tongue can describe, no pencil can picture” (Hon. Judge Fulton qtd. in Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 248). The following description documented in Patty Bartlett Sessions’s diary of the Mormon exodus provides a glimpse into what several typical days on the road meant for her as a midwife, firmly rooted in her faith, and for her group: Tuesday 21 we move on 7 miles stop and make a bridge kill a wild hog we eat supper move over the bridge for fear the grass will get a fire here we camp for the night I travel a foot 3 miles Wednesday 22 I have slept but little got my breakfast went and put Hosea Stouts wife to bed with a daughter [Louisa] (...) let Dr Richards have some brandy to wash his wife with travelled 10 miles I went foot 7 miles rode 2 (...) saw many snakes Thursday 23 a very heavy thunderstorm last night we are on the grand river waters pleasant grove, two horses bit last night by snakes, the men have built a bridge (...) Sunday 26 I was sick all night have worked to hard overdone my self I go to meeting it is close to the waggon we had a good time and when Br Brigham blessed the people I felt his blessing even to the healing of my body have been better ever since (...). (Diary One April 1846) Although she felt better after the blessings of the Mormon leader Brigham Young, in the following weeks, she fell sick again due to heavy rains that did not subside, which made it challenging to keep the wagons dry. Besides, she was overworked with attending births and preparing meals. In contrast, for Mary Rockwood Powers and her family, a typical meal “consist[ed] of some coffee, the water of which is taken from the muddy waters of the Platte, some very good biscuit made from shorts without any shortening, and some side bacon,” which, she adds, is “a very good meal when one is hungry” (diary entry from June 13, 1856). In addition to the challenging daily hardships and dangers encountered on the routes, which included drownings and accidents that sometimes led

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to the death of family members and their animals, other women recorded illnesses such as typhoid, mountain fever, measles, and dysentery. Since it was more often than not women’s responsibility to care for the sick and dying, the women may have been more personally involved and therefore more likely to record such events. Moreover, the stress of months of traveling severely took its toll on the immigrants’ physical and mental health. For example, Mary Rockwood Powers’ journal exposed her husband’s inability to cope with the stress and responsibilities connected with the journey West. When they were urged to join the larger wagon trains for safety, he insisted on self-reliance and independence. Under the dire circumstances, “the Doctor’s behavior bordered on irrationality,” and Mary confided in her journal that she felt “at the mercy of a mad man” (Rockwood Powers 29).16 More often than not, the multiple health risks and deplorable conditions on the routes could be attributed to nineteenth-century American society’s lack of awareness concerning general hygiene, public sanitation, or public health as we know them today, not to mention the fact that health regulations were practically unheard of (Steele 87). Also, it is interesting to note that a cholera epidemic was in full swing during the heaviest emigration on the Overland Trail between 1849 and 1853. Cholera, a bacterial infection that causes watery diarrhea, was responsible for a very high death toll on the trails. Since most emigrants and travelers set up camp near water they used for cooking and washing, it has been suggested that a possible reason for the rapid spread of the infection was that the emigrants usually camped (and later settled) near sources of water such as creeks for their cooking and washing. However, the water sources were often contaminated with human waste and garbage that provided breeding grounds for bacteria. Moreover, many people “coughed and sneezed openly and spit at random” in these areas, which often resulted in highly contagious “respiratory diseases such as influenza, [that] spread easily among people congregated in dank, poorly ventilated spaces” (ibid). Israel Shipman Pelton Lord provides a definitive eyewitness account of a mining camp on the Sacramento River in his journal on Thursday, November 1, 1849: “This whole concern is surrounded with filth, bones, rags, chips, sticks, horns, skulls, hair, skin, entrails, blood, etc.” (Lord 167).17 The deplorable con-

16 17

Mary always refers to her husband by his profession and not by his first name - Americus. Historian J.S. Holliday and notable scholar on the California Gold Rush, says in the “Forward” to Lord’s diary that “his is one of the most detailed, opinionated (how enriching)

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

ditions on the westward trails and in the camps and settlements resulting in accidents, diseases, and terminal illnesses, thus underline the dire need for healthcare givers in the West. In addition to the many diseases resulting from people’s lack of hygienic awareness, women risked the added danger of childbirth along the way, which regularly took place during the long journey. Session’s diary entries testify to the many babies she delivered en route to Utah. The journey to the West came at the peak of many men’s lives which, according to Lillian Schlissel, “occurred when the rhythms of maturity were primed for a change,” and “the determination to go West was either the initial separation from a man’s parental family or the second major move,” namely, “the move ‘upward’ in the search for economic mobility and success” (Schlissel 106). However, for women, especially if they were pregnant, “there was simply no way that the rigorous exertions of the overland journey could be considered ‘normal’” (ibid). Furthermore, it is crucial to understand that expecting a child while traveling, especially in the late stages of the pregnancy, presented dangers: Even with the best of care, childbirth was a precarious business in the nineteenth century. It was even more risky on the open road, followed by immediate travel in a wagon with no springs and with very little access to water for drinking or for bathing. Any complications of delivery proved critical. And frailty in the newborn was life-threatening. The prospect of childbirth on the Trail must have meant months of heightened anxiety to women. (ibid) Illustrating this point, Mrs. Francis H. Sawyer wrote, “I have heard of several children being born on the plains, though it is not a very pleasant place for the little fellows to first see the light of day” (qtd. in Luchetti and Olwell 25). The following quotation presents this situation even more vividly: Picture in your own mind, if you can, what must have been the trials and sufferings on that long, weary, trying journey. How terrible must have been the physical and mental suffering of a mother, nursing her young babe in the fearful heat and dust of a long wagon train, crossing an alkali desert with the bed of a freight wagon for a mattress. (Fulton qtd. in Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 249-50)

and informed of all gold rush diaries, offering not only a superlative day-by-day description of the overland experience (with escape via Lassen’s Cutoff) but as well his vigorous recounting of life in mines and in Sacramento City” (Lord 3).

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3.4.2

Granny Remedies

As noted above, “women have shouldered much of the responsibility for health care since antiquity” (Steele 202). As “one of the most important functions of woman as comforter was her role as nurse” (Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860” 163), on the many westward trails, the burden fell to the women to care for themselves and the physical well-being of their families and of others. The medical historian of the Western frontier, Dr. Volney Steele, M.D., writes in Bleed, BLISTER, and Purge: A History of Medicine on the American Frontier: In the American West, tale after tale describes women’s roles as caregivers on the long trip from the so-called civilized world to the wild, untamed frontier. Many pioneers were nursed through sickness and injury by mothers, aunts, sisters, and grandmothers on the trails and pubescent towns of the western frontier. [These] women were caregivers in the true sense of the word, and they represented the first line of defense against disease. (Steele 133) In order to come to terms with the dire circumstances that presented themselves along the trails, such as injuries, childbirth, and even death, most women carried with them “first aid” recipes contained in journals filled with remedies and herbal medicine, perhaps in the form of hand-written copies from “the cookbooks of the period, [which] offer[ed] formulas for gout cordials, ointment for sore nipples, hiccough and cough remedies, opening pills and refreshing drinks for fever, along with recipes for pound cake, jumbles, stewed calves’ head and currant wine” (Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860” 164).18 Many of the first-aid kits taken on the journey were filled with juniper berries, garlic, laudanum, alcohol, and bitter roots, among 18

Some of what we would consider today to be ludicrous and often poisonous remedies, nostrums, and elixirs sold by quacks and other self-professing apothecaries in the West, are further illustrated in Wayne Bethard’s (researcher and registered pharmacist) book Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs: Frontier Medicine in America. A few noteworthy examples of the strange concoctions include “Mouse excrement, if pulverized in vinegar, is beneficial for alopecia (the loss of hair). The brain of camel, if dried, prepared in vinegar and imbibed, is of value against epilepsy” (Rosner qtd. in Bethard 31). As well as “the ridiculous benefits of lamb brains rubbed on the gums of teething children, the body cleansing benefits of pulverized earthworms, the eating of rabbit heads for treating tumors […and] the benefits of snakeroot, an aromatic, bitter stimulant, for use on hemorrhoids. How stimulating” (ibid).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

other ingredients, in order to cure ailments. These “granny remedies,” as they were called, were antidotes for a variety of illnesses ranging from nausea to typhoid. The remedies themselves were based on a combination of superstition, religious beliefs, and experience; they were anecdotal advice passed down from generation to generation. Sufferers of a sore throat, for example, were instructed to wear a piece of bacon sprinkled with black pepper around their neck or carry a horse chestnut to ward off rheumatism. The following is a brief overview of several of the home remedies midwife Patty used: For bowel complaint: take one teaspoonful rhubarb, one fourth carbonate soda, one tablespoon brandy, one teaspoon peppermint essence, halfteacupful warm water, take tablespoonful once an hour until it operates.   For vomiting: Six drops laudanum, the size of a pea of soda, two teaspoons of peppermint essence, four cups water, take a tablespoonful at a time until it stops it, if the first does, don’t repeat it. (Diary One 23 March 1847) Unfortunately, these remedies were not always successful, and in many instances, the best outcome was to ease the pain and suffering of a dying loved one by making them as comfortable as possible.19 Hopefully, the westward trails’ descriptions have made clear the many quotidian tasks women faced that were challenging in open spaces on the trails. Among the challenges were preparing meals and tending to the healthcare of loved ones and others. Thus, women’s presence was critical for everyone’s survival on the arduous journey. On the other hand, they also provided them many opportunities to prove themselves that were not available to women in settled areas. Sandra Myres has furthermore suggested in her book Westering Women and the Frontier Experience 1800-1915, emigrants who had traveled for many months (usually half a year from many cut-off points to the West before the completion of the Railroads) longed for stability, once settled into their new homes, they felt secure enough to begin questioning the status quo.

19

This this could perhaps be considered a holistic concept of providing comfort in health care in the home. That is, in today’s health care system in America, for instance, due to the high costs of keeping patients in the hospital, it is now more feasible to send them home to be cared for by loved ones in the comfort of their own homes—which had always been done before the development of institutional health care.

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The discussion now turns to illustrating and examining the political, economic, and social changes that affected women’s status, first by providing an interpretation of the ideological shifts as they related to the “proper” role for women in nineteenth-century American society.

3.5

Cultural Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Women’s “Proper Place” Women have in the mass never been publicly and officially regarded as individuals, with individual rights, tastes, liberties, privileges, duties, and capacities, but rather as symbols, with collective class functions, of which not the least was to embody the ideals of decorum of the existing generation, whatever these might happen to be. (Jacobi 195-96)

As Mary Putnam Jacobi’s statement implies, it is fair to say that North American women, like most women in other societies, were denied participation in many sectors of society on equal terms with men based on their sex. According to the sociologist Earl R. Babbie this was largely due to “our agreements regarding the family. A persistent American agreement has been summarized in the cliché: ‘a woman’s place is in the home’. More specifically, the woman’s place has been in the kitchen – with periodic trips to the children’s rooms, the laundry room, and the master’s bed. ” (Babbie 309) Jacobi’s own life as a professional health care giver who balanced her private life, i.e., being married with two children, serves as a role model in opposition to these clichés. She also expressed this sentiment herself: “It is so far from true that the bearing and rearing of children suffices to absorb the energies of the whole female sex, that a large surplus of feminine activity has always remained to be absorbed in other than these primitive directions” (Putnam Jacobi 168). Babbie has suggested that various stereotypical descriptions have served to keep American women in their “proper place” by depicting them as “emotional,” “flighty,” “weak,” and “irrational,” for example (ibid). However, Babbie’s descriptions and contentions regarding the clichés about women show that they seem to be based on the assumption that woman is transparent and a stable category, they overlook the differences among women, ignoring class, race, nationality, sexuality, and religion. Gerda Lerner explains this as follows:

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

‘Woman’ is too vast and diffuse to serve as a valid point of departure. Women are members of families, citizens of different regions, economic producers, just as men are, but their emphasis on these various roles is different. The economic role of men predominates in their lives, but women shift readily from one role to another at different periods in their lives. It is in this that their function is different from men and it is this which must form the basis for any conceptual framework.   In modern society, the only statement about women in general which can be made with validity concerns their political status. Therefore, the subject should be subsumed under several categories, and any inquiry, description, and generalization should be limited to a narrower field. It is useful to deal with the status of women at any given time—to distinguish their economic status, family status, and political-legal status. There must also be a consideration of class position. (Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History 10) As Lerner suggests, the assignment of roles and behaviors grounded in ideas of sexual difference is perhaps the longest-standing and most fundamental means of generating concepts of “natural” differences among people, creating hierarchies that often result in and give meaning to the terms “male” and “female,” but that should include other categories to complete and validate this premise (ibid 7). Drawing on the scholarly work of Jacques Derrida and other poststructuralists20 who have pointed to the tendency of Western culture to

20

While it not my intention in this dissertation to engage in a lengthy discussion on poststructuralism, I will, however attempt a brief conceptualization of poststructuralist ideas which received widespread recognition foremost through the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, whom have influenced the development of research studies into how underlying meaning in language systems and practices are produced (Gavey 460). To poststructuralists, not only are language and language systems important, but also the system operating through language, namely discourse (Hare-Mustin 19; Monk et al. 30; Hollway 231). The contention is that depending on where discourse is used and by whom, it will acquire different meanings: “A discourse is an abstract public sphere of words and images” (Ward 129). Thus, when analyzing discourse which -according to Kevin Durrheim- is a reflexive process that aims to provide an account of how ‘objects’ in the world are constructed, the results gained by the analysis can also take on a form of social critique when considered against a background of socially shared understandings that have become institutionalized and gained some sort of factual status (Durrheim 181). However, as Kennth J. Gergen ar-

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construct oversimplified binary constructions, feminist historian Joan Scholars have argued that the poststructuralist theories that view women as either equal to or different from men should be considered as “discourse” rather than a question to be resolved. Furthermore, gendered concepts have led scholars to question other binaries as well, such as “public and private,” both of which at times contain several overlapping and contradictory meanings that “reflect historical change in the institutional, social, and economic contexts in which they have been used”, for example: In the classical world the public sphere signified the power of citizens to debate and take part in political life whereas the sphere of the private signified lace of such power: “the realm of necessity and transitoriness remained immersed in the obscurity of the private sphere. In contrast, ... the public sphere [stood] as a realm of freedom and permanence” (Habermas qtd. in McDowell and Sharp, A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography 222). However, in early industrial capitalism the private sphere came to be represented as the area of social life in which the individual could retain some freedom of individual expression compared with the power of economic relations and state authority in the public sphere. The changing meanings of the public and private sphere are reflected in the accreditation of a variety of meanings of the words “public” and “private”. (ibid 222) Thus, according to the “separate spheres” metaphor, there is a public sphere occupied by men and a private sphere designated as women’s domain. Habermas’s views have been criticized for not recognizing and taking gender into account, thus ignoring unequal social relationships. Feminist researchers in spatial/intersectional studies have stressed that all spaces are gendered, and while they may be empowering for one gender, they may limit agency for another. Since the second wave of feminism in Western culture in the 1960s and the changes in feminist literary scholarship since then, the ideology of separate spheres has been analyzed, reinterpreted, and even contested as scholars examined and added other categories, especially concerning issues of race, gues, in The Saturated Self , for poststructuralists meaning is never factual or final since poststructuralist thought rejects the notion of an ultimate underlying reason behind meaning (Gergen 10). In other words, unlike in structuralism that seeks the “facts about texts and the deeper, underlying, hidden fundamental structures that supports the texts”- for poststructuralists there are no facts – only interpretations (Ward 86) which I have attempted to maintain in Joan Scott’s broad sense of balance in my analysis of the life writing in this research.

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

sexuality, class, region, religion. They have also questioned, “the historical determinants of ‘separate spheres’ thinking” (Davidson 443). Scholars have further examined whether these variables are “actually universal and have shifted the analytic attention to differences in gender systems across cultures, social groups, and time” (Anderson 20). Moreover, feminist scholars “have pointed to the multiplicities of women’s experiences and the importance of class and race in constructing the meaning of womanhood” (ibid). Thus, while the concept of the separate sphere offered some feminist scholars and historians a persuasive binary that explained white, middleclass, nineteenth-century American society, for others, it presented an oversimplification of the dynamics of how men and women in society truly lived and worked. Researchers now argue that, while this model may once have been helpful, classifying people’s social functions in this way has pitfalls. For this reason, more recent approaches extend binary categories to include highly marginalized members of society who do not embrace heterosexual norms, such as the LGBT communities. Even so, debates on the viability of the separate spheres concept “have been relegated to a past that we, like Jacksonian men before us, have supposedly moved beyond” (Hewitt 16). Thus, they provide an essential framework for understanding the constructs of—and attitudes towards—women’s roles in nineteenth-century American society, as they “allow us to trace the roots of our current condition, particularly the conservative resurgence of contradictions inherent in [the] dominant ideals” of several leaders currently influencing American society (ibid). Gerda Lerner has provided powerful insights based on her lifelong devotion to raising awareness of women’s contributions to feminist scholarship and firmly believes that “women have always been active participants in the building of community and of institutions” (Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History xxi). She has fought for their inclusion in history, arguing that they too had a real history worth telling “on their own terms” (ibid 148). Her premise for approaching women in historical contexts can help understand women’s historical experiences in “Gold Fever!” While inferior status and oppressive restraints were no doubt aspects of women’s historical experience, and should be so recorded, the limitation of this approach is that it makes it appear either that women were largely passive or that, at the most, they reacted to male pressure or to the restraints

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of patriarchal society. [This] fails to elicit the positive and essential way in which women have functioned in history. (ibid 147) Moreover, similar to the contention that women were not simply passive agents in the private sphere, the following excerpt from the popular magazine Godey’s Ladies Book leaves no doubt that it was in women’s nature to be active, especially concerning the concept of home: That home is her appropriate and appointed sphere of action there cannot be a shadow of doubt, for the dictates of nature are plain and imperative on this subject, and the injunctions given its Scripture no less explicit. (Godey’s Ladies Book, July 1832) As this quote illustrates, the home was characterized as a place of action and permeated with a spiritual and religious quality. The magazine has conflated notions and near-divine expectations of women’s innate qualities as creators and architects, as well as the concept of home as a sphere of action, which powerfully articulates the dynamics of the domestic sphere, as scholars such as Amy Kaplan have shown. For instance, she argues that during the age of Manifest Destiny (the 1830s-1850s), when the U.S.’s national borders were in a constant state of flux - domesticity was taken to a new level of national expansion. In other words, the domestic sphere functioned less as a separate sphere, according to Kaplan. Instead, she argues that they were “an ambiguous third realm between the national and the foreign.” This concept of a third sphere is illustrated through Sara Josepha Hale and Catherine Beecher’s narratives. They were dedicated to women’s interests in household matters mostly as they etched out the “racial underpinnings” that appear to be commonly shared in domestic and imperialist discourses (Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity” 584). The deconstruction of the separate spheres paradigm can thus reveal the “permeability of the border that separates the spheres, demonstrating that the private feminized space of the home both infused and bolstered the public male arena of the market and that the sentimental values attached to maternal influence were used to sanction women’s entry into the wider civic realm from which those same values theoretically excluded them. (ibid 581) Thus, a closer examination of the socio-political ideological shifts regarding the “proper” roles for women provides essential clues to an understanding of later institutional developments in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which women were actively engaged. The reform activities that

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

transformed their lives in the private sphere and would eventually empower them in the public sphere are revealed in their autobiographical narratives in the next chapter. However, the discussion will now turn to a conceptualization and discussion of how the concept of separate spheres led to a prescriptive behavioral codex for nineteenth-century women.

3.5.1

Apple Pie, Sex, and The Cult of True Womanhood

Motherhood was a crucible, and apple pie was a symbol of major social, cultural, and economic consequence: it was the procreator of the American middle class, the social status still claimed by the vast majority of Americans, many of whom owned a very small piece of the economic pie. (M. P. Ryan 100) Mary Ryan’s statement and symbolic application of motherhood and apple capture the quintessence of many people’s condition throughout the nineteenth century, which was marked by significant social and economic changes and resulted in the transformation of many institutions and reforms denying that everyone receives an equal share in the rapid economic developments. The development of a market economy in the middle of the nineteenth century and the beginning of industrialization transformed many institutions, especially the workplace, and how people performed their tasks. Machines replaced the production of goods needed for daily life, such as cloth for making clothing and tannery for making shoes, formerly produced by the entire family from home and sold on the market. Since colonial times, homemade goods were primarily overseen by and “in the hands of women” (Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History 16). Furthermore, a “marked shortage of women [at that time, as well as others, especially in certain regions] in an underdeveloped country” required that “each member of the community perform an economic function,” which was “regarded as a civic duty” (ibid). According to Lerner, women’s position in colonial society was a respected one, as their contributions were valuable in building their communities. Thus, they often learned many trades through apprenticeships and were employed in various occupations: They were butchers, silversmiths, gunsmiths, upholsterers. They ran mills, plantations, tan yards, shipyards, and every kind of shop, tavern, and boarding house. They were gate keepers, jail keepers, sextons, journalists, printers, “doctoresses,” apothecaries, mid-wives, nurses, and teachers.

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(Lerner, “The Lady and the Mill Girl Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges” 17) However, women’s status in society began transforming as home production moved to the factories, where many women were employed in low-paying, low-skilled work referred to as “woman’s work.” Ironically, “at the same time the genteel lady of fashion had become a model of American femininity, - the definitions of ‘woman’s proper sphere’ seemed narrower and more confined than ever” (ibid 18). Consequently, the changes of industrialization resulted in low-paying “woman’s work” that took women away from home (which was also experiencing change) and into the public space(s), and they also contributed to a growing middle class. Furthermore, between 1820 and 1845, a period Sara Evans has referred to as the Age of Association, “women and men created voluntary associations on a new scale,” offering women in particular various platforms to address their concerns by providing “a public space located between the private sphere of the home [also transforming] and public life of formal institutions” (Evans, “A Time of Division: The Power of Domesticity” 67). The kind of platforms where it was always acceptable for women to voice their concerns was in benevolent organizations and moral societies of all kinds that engaged in charitable, temperance, and missionary work. Consequently, “the separation of women and domesticity from public life also facilitated the emergence of an entrepreneurial version of republicanism” (ibid 68). Thus, women’s active participation outside traditionally defined politics, and their elevated moral authority took on new importance in the home and community, where they could provide stability. Contrary to what some believed, as they were socially marginal in the spaces of the newly established associations, “publicists insisted that women were responsible for the nation’s moral health” (Dublin 37). This attitude captures the zeitgeist, especially for evangelical women reformers. It is important to keep in mind that the accelerated economic and social transformations of industrialization and urbanization, which occurred more rapidly in some areas than others, were daunting for many; therefore, “the home and the woman who presided over it seemed to be the one stable element left, the place where traditional values could be preserved and upheld” (Lindley 55). Societal views and expectations for women to provide stable home environments, while at the same time instilling a sense of patriotism in future generations of children through maternal influence, were rooted in the

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

nationalistic rhetoric of the Revolutionary period’s Republican Womanhood/ Motherhood. Besides, it was the sacred duty of women to raise intelligent and responsible citizens for the new republic. However, the attitude was also that, for women to perform their duties effectively, they had to be intelligent and educated. Therefore, it was imperative that “education, should [be] intellectual, domestic, and religious ... and [as a consequence] would result in political benefit for the nation” (ibid 51), as well as empowering women. Modified remnants of this rhetoric dominated societal thought about gender roles from the late eighteenth century and prevailed throughout much of the nineteenth century, as the advances of industrialization and their impact, especially the conditions for women, required negotiations regarding new behavior: In a society where values changed frequently, where fortunes rose and fell with frightening rapidity, where social and economic mobility provided instability as well as hope, one thing at least remained the same—a true woman was a true woman, wherever she was found. (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 21) Hence, “the practical social and economic changes that made motherhood the key role for American women were reinforced by ideological changes” (Lindley 54). The expectations and new notions of “appropriate” female behavior at the beginning of the nineteenth century transformed into a constructed value system known as “The Cult of True Womanhood,” which the historian Barbara Welter has described in her groundbreaking and (since then) much-cited essay from 1966 with the same title.21 Also referred to as the “Cult of Domesticity,”22 the Cult of True Womanhood was a value system rooted in an ideal image of American women that stemmed from the Revolutionary period’s Republican Womanhood/Motherhood model and that transformed into a standard behavioral codex for middle-class white women between 1820-1860.23 21 22 23

She later expanded the ideas of True Womanhood contained in the article and included them in –Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. For a more in-depth discussion see Sara M. Evans “A Time of Division: The Power of Domesticity” in (Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America 95-102). This ideal excluded women of color, poor working class women, and immigrants, referring only to white women of the middle and upper classes. For this oversight, Welter has been widely criticized. Nevertheless, her research “served as a foundation for later works” (ibid) that draw on her analysis such as Gerda Lerner’s “The Lady and the Mill Girl” (1969), Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s “The Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman” (1971), Nancy Cott’s Bonds of Womanhood (1977), Mary Ryan’s Cradle of the Mid-

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According to Welter, whose analytic research “incorporated evidence from a vast array of magazines, sermons, cookbooks, gift books, and novels that circulated throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and much of the South” (ibid), the Cult’s philosophy made a dividing line between public and private life. Accordingly, men’s sphere was in public, where they dealt with affairs outside of the home, such as business or politics, a woman’s place or sphere was in the home, where she was expected to embrace qualities of piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Some believed that the women who embraced these qualities were “promised happiness and power. [And] without them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement, or wealth, all was ashes” (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 21). Obviously, in contrast to the efficacy of such an analysis, there are pitfalls to “such interpretation[s], as Carl Degler [and others] has pointed out, [namely] the tendency to confuse prescriptive literature with actual behavior [and as such the distinction] between myth and reality” (ibid 149). Similarly, as Julie Roy Jeffrey has argued in her widely cited foundational classic on women in the West, “[Although] the new ideology became the standard, it often bore slight resemblance to the actuality of individual women’s lives” (Jeffrey 7). Nonetheless, Roy has also stated the concern many women of all classes had regarding the influence the cult of domesticity would have on their lives in the wake of the societal transformations resulting from industrialization and increased travel /emigration to the West. However, these ideals began to shift in the middle of the century during the Civil War, when new responsibilities and duties challenged society. Thus, while it is valuable “to use [the cult of domesticity] ideology as a measure of the shifting status of women, it must be set against a careful analysis of social structure, economic conditions, institutional changes, and popular values” (Lerner, “The Lady and the Mill Girl Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges” 148).24

24

dle Class (1981), Nancy A. Hewitt’s Women’s Activism and Social Change (1984), and Linda Kerber’s “Separate Speres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place” (1988). However, according to Nancy A. Hewitt, Barbara Welter’s article has too long been held hostage by its descriptive power and by the shifting landscape of American and women’s history. Published just as the field was being born, it became touchstone … and standard citation. The cult of true womanhood continues to appear in textbooks and surveys of American as well as women’s history [and] is still widely cited and, at the same time, as part of a larger body of work on white northern, middle-class women, widely criticized” (Hewitt 159).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

Hence, while the Cult’s ideology provides a valuable framework for understanding nineteenth-century views on appropriate behavior for white middle-class women, some scholars have also criticized it for bias and excluding women from other backgrounds. Religious contexts and the language of the home and motherhood were often used as important rhetorical tools in promoting women’s reform activities, which are discussed later in this chapter. These rhetorical tools could also “provide extended metaphors to describe the process that took women into public space on a feminine mission” (M. P. Ryan 165).25

3.5.2

“Stepping Out of Place”26 —Expanding the Domestic Sphere

On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention, and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things. (de Tocqueville 45) As de Toqueville’s observation already in 1835 illustrates, the importance of religion for American culture can hardly be overestimated. Furthermore, the conventional understanding of nineteenth-century society was that “religion or piety was the core of [women’s] virtue, the source of her strength. [It, therefore] belonged to woman by divine right, a gift of God and Nature” (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 21-22). In this light, the discussion now turns to how many American women’s use of the Cult’s ideology, combined with the virtue of piousness, allowed them to 25

26

In the wake of the current 2020 Presidential Campaign, it has been revealed that in her acceptance speech on the nomination to the candidacy of Vice President to Joseph R. Biden Jr., Kamala Harris also employed the rhetoric of motherhood saying that she is described by many in her various roles – a senator, a Black woman, an Indian woman, a prosecutor. But her most important role, the ‘one that means the most to her and the one dearest to her heart she said is ‘momala’ – stepmother to her husband’s two children, Cole and Ella (personal notes taken while viewing the televised Acceptance Speech of California Sen. Kamala Harris to the 2020 Democratic National Convention on 19. August 2020. Lindley is referring here to the “ambiguity and tension” she sees built into the Cult’s ideology and by remarking that while “Nineteenth-century America saw both a pervasive image of true womanhood within a cult of domesticity and the flowering of women’s activities and a women’s rights movement. Women were stepping out of their place with a vengeance”. (Lindley 57)

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stretch its limits to their advantage in order to promote their interests in the public sphere. This was accomplished through an institution that “formed an uneasy bridge between the public and private sphere—religion” (Lindley 58). One reason religion was valued was that it did not take a woman away from her “proper sphere.” Unlike participation in other societies or movements, church work would not make her less domestic or submissive, less a True Woman. (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 22) Thus, “the churches, or more broadly, religious interest, gave women a respectable sphere ... for peer support and meaningful activity” (Lindley 61), as the following discussion seeks to illustrate. Catherine Beecher, who has been credited having coined the truism that “woman’s place is in the home,” did not believe that “home,” which to her meant “Christian home,” was confined to a dwelling, but connected to the “Christian neighborhood” where “women’s moral superiority and sympathy toward the less fortunate made them ideally suited to implementing various programs of social reform” (qtd. in Prescott). As mentioned earlier, inequalities resulting from the Industrial Revolution led many voluntary associations (many of which were rooted in Christian ideology) to take action to deal with the human suffering that accompanied the poverty many Americans faced. American Protestantism was also transforming fundamentally and precipitously, which affected the importance of women’s role in the church. The result was that American religion after that was considered to have been “feminized” (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 83). The significance of the feminization of religion “through its members [was] the increased prominence of women in religious organizations and the way in which new[ly] revised religions catered to this membership” (ibid 84), which Mormonism exemplifies. In the words of Barbara Welter, “[Mormonism] had certain components which made it part of the overall movement towards ‘feminization’ [since] it claimed to be acting in the name of a better life for women” (ibid 99). One of the significant components to which Welter refers (which is discussed in depth later) is the establishment of a female society known as “The Female Relief Society,” which was established in 1842 under a motto taken from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:8: “Charity never faileth.” Some scholars of religion in America have claimed that the Relief Society “paralleled in many ways the women’s church, mission, benevolent, and reform groups in mainline Christianity” (Lindley 272). Moreover, new strategical approaches by evan-

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

gelical groups in which women played a significant role began to develop in the 1820s and 1830s, resulting in reforms and revivals across the country, from the southwestern frontier to the so-called “burned-over district”27 of Western New York. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville observed the powerful socio-political impact of the churches in his writing where he says that religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of [that country’s] political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. (qtd. in Udall, “The Religion Factor in Western Settlement” 102-3) The proliferation of many of the earliest temperance and female volunteer societies established during this period were driven by an ardent evangelical passion stemming from the revivalist movement of the Second Great Awakening. The most successful of these were education societies that promoted Christian dogmas. Further, they served as a catalyst for women to take social action and increasingly to perform Christian service in the “voluntary societies which carried out the social office of the churches, by teaching Sunday school,28 distributing tracts, and working for missions” (ibid 86), which also began spreading the word of Christ especially (but not exclusively) to the West.29

27

28

29

The name refers to the central regions of New York State in the early nineteenth century where religious revivals and the founding of new religious movements of the Second Great Awakening took place at such a fast rate that some people characterized it as if the areas were on fire. The Sunday School Movement was among one of a few organizations that provided an important platform from which young Christian women could “as teachers pass along their own values of Evangelical Womanhood” and prepared them for later “religious career[s] as writer, a minister’s wife, or a missionary teacher [that] by the twentieth century […] would become a formal and paid professional role for women in the churches” (ibid 64). Around this time, efforts in transatlantic religious exchanges were made by American agencies who sent Evangelical missions to Europe in order to establish new churches. No place was too exotic, so that some missionaries went as far as Scandinavia and even proselytized in Iceland’s West fjords. At this time, Iceland was experiencing harsh weather conditions and bad crops – ideal conditions for soul searching and saving - resulting in a migration of 300 Icelandic Saints to Utah who converted to Mormonism. Most notable among the emigrants was the first Icelandic female doctress in Utah Vigdís Björnsdóttir Holt “who longed to be with the Saints in Zion [and] had the comfort of having a small Icelandic community around her” (qtd. in Newton 91).

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In addition to their missionary efforts, and perhaps even as a result, “evangelical reformers spearheaded the growth of literacy”30 by establishing “education societies” and the American Sunday School Union in 1824. Literacy was necessary to read the Bible, and therefore many voluntary societies provided education and religious instruction by establishing Sunday schools for this purpose (Butler et al. 187-9). Furthermore, the associations were widely supported by Protestant clergymen, who were significantly in favor of supporting female associations with their religious and charitable goals, which were, in a sense, a natural outgrowth of domesticity and American religious life. Thus, benevolent female associations extended the domestic sphere’s boundaries and could be considered a place of action, especially for Christian women. Amy Kaplan’s seminal article, “Manifest Domesticity,” provides further insight into how the concepts of domesticity and the home contributed to an understanding of women’s participation in empire and nation-building. Her article aims to correct scholars’ failure to connect the simultaneous “development of domestic discourse with the discourse of Manifest Destiny” by questioning “how the ideology of separate spheres in antebellum America contributed to creating an American empire by imagining the nation as a home at a time when its geopolitical borders were expanding rapidly through violent confrontations with Indians, Mexicans, and European empires” (Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity” 583). The contradictions inherent in the separate sphere ideology led to Kaplan’s assertion that the underlying “imperialistic drive behind Manifest Domesticity [served as a] blueprint for colonizing the world in the name of the ‘family state’ under the leadership of Christian women” (ibid 582). Thus far, the discussion has attempted to show that the domestic sphere—especially the importance of religion in expanding women’s sphere—cannot be emphasized enough, especially in its relation to the inseparability of women’s participation in empire and nation-building: The Christianizing, indeed, the domesticating of the West, was probably the most important religious, cultural, and political event of the first half of the nineteenth century. All the Protestant religions and Catholicism as

30

“[…] evangelism was furthered along with or through education, the most widespread and effective form of women’s missionary activity, and one that seemed eminently compatible with current American cultural and religious ideology” (Lindley 81).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

well considered it their special duty to bring God and woman westward as soon as possible. Law, order, and consumers were enhanced by the presence of churches and women. [And] the majority of American missionaries in the period before the Civil War stayed within the continent, taking the Christianizing of the Indians as their special challenge and duty. (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 91) As Welter’s contention exemplifies, women’s participation in imperial endeavors was further accomplished through missionary work, and the motives behind their efforts were manifold. However, one of “the central goal[s] of Christian missionaries was conversion, saving the souls of heathens who would otherwise be eternally damned” (Lindley 160). As mentioned above, reading the Bible was integral to practicing Christianity. Therefore, literacy and hence education were necessary to achieve the missionary efforts. Particular schools, such as boarding schools, were established to educate Native American children not only to read and write but also about the teachings of Christ and the values of white culture so that that they would assimilate into white “civilized” culture. However, in order to accomplish this, “they demanded that the Indians reject their ‘heathen’ past and embrace the Jeffersonian, pietistic, rural-American ways of life. In other words, a Native American must first “lose his or her ‘Indianess,’ in order to assimilate into white civilization” (Tong 32). The success of educating Native American children, or so it was believed, relied on removing them from the harmful influences of their Native environment. Some of the missionary teachers believed, “A little fear has to be mixed with much kindness to lead them to God” (qtd. in Peavey and Smith 121) – was a resounding maxim that perfectly fit the perspective of many missionary boarding schools. The experience of being removed from the familiar environment of home and loved ones was traumatic for many children and their parents: [Not only were] the language, the religion, the child-rearing philosophies, the gender roles themselves were frequently opposed to Native American cultural traditions and beliefs, [but] Indian boys were to learn to be farmers, regardless of whether or not that was a traditional male role in their tribal culture, and schools for Indian girls inculcated not only Christianity but a particular vision of appropriate female domesticity and the skills needed for it. (Lindley 160-61)

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On the Omaha reservation in Nebraska, for instance, missionaries attempted to follow the idea of the separate spheres by placing pupils in classes that reflected “the Euro-American version of household arts that [were] in stark contrast to traditional Omaha role expectations for the sexes” (Tong 34). For Susan La Flesche Picotte, “this early exposure to Euro-American knowledge forged her sensitivity to the chasm dividing Indian and white cultures and possibly attuned her to the choices that confronted late-nineteenth-century Native Americans” (ibid 39). Nevertheless, almost every tribe was eventually exposed to the “efforts of Christian missionaries, and at least some of the tribes’ members would embrace a form of Christianity” (ibid 163). The reasons for this seem to vary among tribes, but according to Susan’s biographer, “her family’s conversion to Christianity and her parents’ close association with the missionaries probably eased any misapprehensions Susan had about spending time away from home. [And] to some extent, this formative experience must have laid the foundation for Susan’s receptiveness to the ways of the ‘Other,’” which would serve her later in her role as a cultural broker in helping her people cope with living between two worlds (ibid 34). Another aspect of women’s organizations and associations, most of which were Christian, not only “encouraged women to be introspective” (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 102), but also taught women the skills they needed to “speak out on behalf of their families and others,” thus ultimately empowering them “to speak out on their own behalf” (M. P. Ryan 163). These skills would serve them later during the Progressive Era reform movements as a stepping stone to raising their visibility in the public sphere. Thus, “religion in its emphasis on the brotherhood of man developed in women a conscious sense of sisterhood, a quality essential for any kind of meaningful woman’s movement” (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 102). The result of their involvement in these causes was that many nineteenth-century women across the country had reason to believe that they not only had a voice but that it was heard and had an impact at the local, state, and federal levels. Thus, women expanded their domestic sphere and began “stepping out of place with a vengeance.” The discussion now moves to a brief historical overview of the transformation of medicine, the founding of medical schools, and women’s entrance into them, and it concludes with women’s organizations and the emergence of the “New Woman” in public spaces. This “New Woman” championed do-

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

mestic health care policies of “maternalistic” and “socialist” medicine, which were integrally connected to the rise of feminism, progressivism, maternalistic reform, and early suffrage laws.

3.6

The Transformation of Domestic Boundaries  and Nineteenth-Century Medicine Every Woman is a nurse. (Nightingale)31

Florence Nightingale’s well-known statement falls short of clarifying that nineteenth-century society’s expectations of women’s moral nature and the Cult of True Womanhood’s rhetoric put further demands on the expectations associated with “appropriate” behavior for women. According to scholars, these expectations limited career opportunities to professions associated with an extension of caregiving roles such as teachers, nurses, midwives, and doctors. Women were expected, for example, to assume the role of comforter and “nurs[e] the sick, particularly sick males, [which] not only made a woman feel useful and accomplished but increased her influence” (Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860” 163-164). Hannah Ropes, who served as an American Civil War nurse, expressed that, given the circumstances on the battlefield, the best she could do as a female health care giver was to “take care of the boys who needed looking after, nursing them in the absence of their own mothers, providing the tenderness and understanding which only a woman could give” (Brumgardt 30). During the research for “Gold Fever!”, I learned that women commonly practiced medicine as midwives, nurses, and as doctors not only in the nineteenth century but throughout history, dating back as far as antiquity. Indeed, “[c]aring for the sick was a universal female role” [as well as being] “the common fund of neighborliness that sustained families in illness” (Thatcher 31

Florence Nightingale, also referred to as the “Lady with the Lamp”, acquired her knowledge and gained much practical experience in healthcare and medicine while working in military hospitals in Europe and whose groundbreaking achievement in sanitation, hygiene, and especially handwashing which is illustrated by her maxim found in her Notes on Nursing: “Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face too, so much the better” (Nightingale 53). Furthermore, her emphasis on hands on experience – helped in revolutionizing medical care by turning it into a profession.

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Ulrich 61, 63). Moreover, in early American society, caring for the sick was considered part of the domestic responsibility of women, who kept “a stock of remedies on hand, [and] when illness struck [they] would call on networks of kin and community for advice and assistance” (Starr 32). According to historians, “some even practiced folk medicine with the support and approval of the general public. The ‘authority’ women had traditionally been awarded in all societies throughout history, particularly when it came to health care (which is domestic in origin), stemmed from their association with reproduction and nurturing qualities. Already Cotton Mather, for example, “defended woman’s natural affinity for healing and taught medicine to his own daughter” (More et al. 4).32 Although women’s contributions were seldom “officially” recorded, throughout history, it was usually women who gathered native herbs and prepared folk remedies, bathed and nursed the sick, and assisted other women during childbirth. As a result, health care was often considered an acceptable “profession” for women because caregiving was a domestic task women (and not men) performed for family, friends, and neighbors. Thus, I argue in “Gold Fever!” that since caregiving was a domestic task for women, health care and medicine became an acceptable profession for women. However, as the discussion shows, there were many obstacles for women, such as attending higher learning institutions in the nineteenth century, especially for those who wanted to study medicine. Nevertheless, scholars have also noted the following: We now know that women were physicians in ancient times and that their official standing in the profession was gradually rescinded across Europe through the Middle Ages and early modern period, nevertheless, women continued to function as general practitioners, as healers, as midwives, and even as licensed and unlicensed surgeons. [For instance,] one exceptional woman, Dorothea Erxleben Leporin, received a medical degree in 1754 and did carry on a general medical practice in the German city of Halle until her death in 1762. (ibid 1)33 Compared to Europe, doctors in colonial times were considered jacks of all trades who set up dentists and surgeons’ practices and sold drugs as apothecaries. Furthermore, members of one of the “learned professions” in Europe 32 33

See (Beal, O.T. and Shyrock 16ff) For more information on Dorothea Erxleben, see (Schiebinger 250-257).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

who “were drawn from the social elite, quickly lost that status in America, where most were trained, not at a university, but by apprenticeship” (ibid 4). According to sources, it has been suggested, for instance, that “on the eve of the American Revolution, there were approximately 3,500 medical practitioners in the colonies, only 400 of whom had received formal training” (ibid 5). Midwifery was an area of health care with no formal training, regulation, or licensing until the nineteenth century. Instead, midwives who came from the British Isles or Europe passed on their knowledge and skills, which they had also acquired through apprenticeships, in which observation and handson experience were part of the training. Furthermore, before institutionalizing health and social welfare, women provided health care services, especially in the absence of physicians. In the more isolated communities of early (and Western) American society, midwives were more often than not the only highly respected health care providers in the community.

3.6.1

Lay healers34 —Midwives, Nurses, and Thomsonians

Midwifery has been practiced throughout recorded history and is mentioned as early as the Old Testament Books of Genesis, 35:17, and the Book of Exodus, 1:20 (Dary 227). Interestingly, according to scholars, “although Indian history was oral before the arrival of the white man, it is known that Indians used midwives long before Europeans brought the practice to North America” (ibid 226). The meaning of the term midwife in English is rooted in the Middle English mid, “with,” and wif, “woman”—literally meaning “woman who is ‘with’” (the mother at birth). It is a cognate of the German Beifrau (Harper). Besides the Native American midwives who already practiced in their tribes, other midwives came to America from West Africa with slave ships to work on plantations in the south. They were known as “granny midwives,” and they brought traditions steeped in folklore and superstition. Many of the plantations had their own midwives and older slave women who assisted with the births of both black and white women and took care of families and children during and after the births by cooking and cleaning (Robinson 4). Moreover, societal attitudes and feelings of modesty forbade men to enter the room where a woman was in labor, because

34

The lay healers’ practices stood in contrast to the regular physicians whose therapies included bloodletting and purging, among others.

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[...] childbirth was the exclusive responsibility of midwives, who were expected to offer encouragement and reassurance to women in labor. Once the baby was born, the midwife tied off the umbilical cord, made sure the placenta was expelled, and gave after-care to the mother and child. Most births were normal and uneventful, but when a birth became difficult or the labor lengthy, the midwife just did the best she could, or she might call in a more experienced midwife for help. (Dary 229). Since very few midwives left any written records of their work, it is not certain how many practiced during this time. In addition to providing insight into the educational level and quotidian practice of many midwives during the pre-Revolutionary period, Martha Moore Ballard’s A Midwife’s Tale35 presents “the best evidence of the practical side of [her] education” and tells how “she knew how to manufacture salves, syrups, pills, teas, and ointments ... how to poultice wounds, dress burns, treat dysentery, sore throat, frostbite, measles, colic, how to cut an infant’s tongue, administer a ‘clister’ (enema), lance an abscessed breast ... and relive a toothache, as well as deliver babies” (qtd. in Thatcher Ulrich 11). According to the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “In twentieth-century terms, [all these skills combined] made Martha a physician, while practical knowledge of gargles, bandages, poultices, and clisters, as well as a willingness to give extended care, defined her a nurse” (ibid 58). Patty Bartlett Sessions, a Mormon midwife (who later became known as the “Mother of Mormon Midwifery” and who is discussed further in the analysis of her life writing) was also from Maine, but “two generations apart in lifespans” from Martha Ballard (Beecher vii). She “was a compulsive record keeper,” attested to by “more than four decades of diary entries [and a series of eight] articles based on her life [written] between 1 September 1884 and 15 November 1885” published in the Woman’s Exponent (Smart, “Introduction” 1). The Utah magazine was devoted to women’s causes and wrote that, “in her ninetieth year, and in the enjoyment of excellent health, [Patty was] able to wait upon herself, transact her own business and her own accounts [and was] in many respects ... a very remarkable woman” (qtd. in ibid). 35

Martha Ballard’s well-preserved diary was passed on to her great-greatgranddaughter, Mary Hobart who received the diary as a graduation present June 10, 1884. This is noteworthy for two reasons. The first being that Hobart graduated from the medical school founded by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and secondly the diary was received on the same date and year as The Massachusetts Medical Society, in a vote of 63 to 47 admitted women as members (Thatcher Ulrich 347).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

The feats of Martha Moore Ballard, “Mother Sessions,” Native American midwives, the granny midwives, and many other remarkable midwives whose names will never be known are indeed extraordinary considering the circumstances of their times. They practiced midwifery and medicine, performed surgeries, and manufactured elixirs for apothecaries, even though educational standards and regulations were not yet fully established during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As a result, lay practitioners using native herbs and folk remedies flourished in the countryside and towns, scorning the therapies and arcane learning of regular physicians and claiming the right to practice medicine as an inalienable liberty, comparable to religious freedom, [and] Americans developed a stubborn confidence in their own common sense. [Further,] it was believed, as a logical consequence of one’s political and religious views, that equality in private as well as in community affairs meant that one was free to judge. [In other words,] many thought that the best doctors could do was to assist the healing powers of nature. (Starr 30-31)36 The healing forces of nature were considered more trustworthy than “regular physicians, whose standard remedies included bloodletting and dosing with mineral-based drugs” (T. J. Wolfe 22), and the strong belief that “Health came from God, not from Doctors” (Thomas 85) was still prevalent at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century.37 Mary Gove Nichols has observed the following: 36

37

Since the earliest settlements in North America, emigrants had been curious and even learned from the Natives about how to survive in the environments of the New World. “Indian healing practices evolved slowly over the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, and once they arrived the Europeans gradually learned more and more of Indian medical lore” (Dary 13). It was believed that since the Native Americans did not seem to suffer from the same diseases as the Europeans, their health must have been attributed to the healing properties of what nature provided in the form of plants that were made into herbal remedies to treat simple physical conditions such as burns, broken bones, sore eyes, and dislocations” (ibid 7). As a result, Native American healers had already for a long time been “held in quite as high repute as regular white doctors” (Pickard and Buley 36). This belief has been passed down through the centuries and can be traced back to antiquity, according to Laura Spinney: “The ancient Greeks thought of disease as spiritual in origin, a punishment from the gods for any kind of misdemeanor” [Furthermore] doctors were part priests, part magicians, and it was their role to mollify the irascible divinities with prayer, spells and sacrifices” (Spinney 13).

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Many people seem to think that all diseases are immediate visitations from the Almighty, arising from no cause but his immediate dispensation. ... Many seem to have no idea that there are established laws with respect to life and health, and that the transgression of these laws is followed by disease. In other words, disease was man’s doing, not God’s. Human beings could affect the future by manipulating the environment according to nature’s laws and by gaining conscious control of themselves. (qtd. in Morantz et al. 14)38 In the liminal space(s) between lay healing and professional medicine, midwives extended domestic care and, in addition to botanic practitioners, were considered “the most numerous group among the lay therapists” (ibid 49). The botanic practitioners emerged as an alternative movement among lay healers at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the related school of thought became known as Thomsonianism after its founder Samuel Thomson, a self-taught as a medical practitioner born in 1769 in New Hampshire.39 Thompson grew up on a poor family farm and became interested in plants and herbs. While experimenting with them, he learned through trial and error that some herbs “caused physical responses in sick people” (Steele 78). The Thomsonians’ ideology not only reflected the nineteenth-century attitude toward women’s “responsibilities of the wife and mother in preventive family hygiene” (Morantz et al. 15), but also its skepticism of doctors, while embracing the ideals of self-reliance with the slogan “Every man his own physician.” They formed a group of the most well-known homeopaths during the nineteenth century, which “had spread across the nation ... some fifteen years before the American Medical Association was founded” (ibid 24).40

38 39

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Mary Gove Nichols qtd. in Morantz et al. 498. Thompsoniasm was based on his teaching which were published in 1822 in Thompson’s New Health Guide. Thompson believed and taught that illness and disease occurred when the body lost heat. Therefore, the remedy was to restore the loss of heat by “relying on plants such as Lobelia inflata (Indian tobacco) to cause puking, cayenne pepper to heat up the body, enemas, and vapor baths” (Steele 78). The AMA (American Medical Association) was financed by a Baltimore businessman Johns Hopkins as part of an early attempt to organize medical education and establish licensing boards to ensure quality. Licensure was under the legal jurisdiction of most states of the Union during the early nineteenth century. However, between 1830 and 1850 the licensure laws were repealed resulting in a paralleled increase in the establishment of medical sects, among which Thomsonianism was included. According to Reginald Heber Fitz the spread of Thomsonianism was “the first serious blow to the

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

As already suggested earlier, women engaged the rhetoric of religion and domesticity as platforms to move into the public sphere. In his article “Steaming Saints: Mormons and the Thomsonian Movement in NineteenthCentury America,” Thomas J. Wolfe highlights “the example of the interplay between medicine and religion in the West” with the example of the “relation between Mormonism and Thomsonian medical practice,” stating that not only were both “Mormons and Thomsonians, during the early republican period from similar political, religious, and social backgrounds” (T. J. Wolfe 18), but that both Thomson’s and the LDS church leader, Joseph Smith’s attitudes toward physicians bordered on contempt of regular physicians” (ibid 21).41 Thus, Thomsonian “medical techniques, rhetoric, and ideology” were readily adopted by the Mormons (ibid 21) and became “the Church’s form of medical care” (Steele 77); Joseph Smith firmly endorsed them. In accordance with the Mormon community’s belief in the healing powers of Thomsonian medical remedies, laws were passed in 1852 in Salt Lake, making “Thomsonians the only legal medical practitioners” (ibid 78).42 Thomsonianism was successful not only among the Mormon community, but also among midwives because of [t]he movement’s conscious appeal for women’s support at a time when the regular medical profession barred women from medical schools and was attempting to monopolize obstetrical practice. Thomson campaigned vociferously for the continued employment of midwives at births rather than physicians. (ibid 20)

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regulation by the State of the practice of medicine which proved to be the more effectual agent in annulling the licensing of physicians”(qtd. in Hudson 152). The contempt toward regular physicians is reflected humorously in Mark Twain’s remark “The physician’s is the highest and worthiest of all occupations, or would be if human nature did not make superstitions and priests necessary” (qtd. in Dary 303). According to David Dary, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) “made many comments, often satirical in nature, about doctors and medicine” [and yet] while Clemens respected and trusted individual doctors, he was cynical about the profession overall [due to] what he saw as the ineffectiveness of medical treatment” (ibid 303-304). Furthermore, it should be noted that the practice of Thomsonian plant-based medicine was advocated so strongly among the Mormons as a result of their “place” in nineteenth century society – namely as an exiled self-contained community living above the fray whose survival depended on self-reliance and growing their own medicine – usually occupied by the women.

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Before the American Revolution, midwives were excluded from any form of medical training and therefore learned their trade through apprenticeships, observing more experienced midwives, or through their own personal experience. In addition, although midwives were among the best-paid female occupations, many of them, as well as other women who wanted to practice medicine, could not afford to attend formal instruction. This was especially true for “the new obstetrics” and learning to use the latest technology, such as “medical instruments to ease labor” (Dary 233). In the mid-eighteenth century, “ignorance of anatomy, physiology, and surgery put physicians, surgeons, and midwives on an equal plane in the management of parturition” (Morantz et al. 6). Thus, as long as there were no complications during a birthing, modesty kept males from the lying-in chambers. However, the transformation towards professionalizing medical practices was in progress by the end of the eighteenth century, as a “growing number of formally trained American physicians took steps to professionalize their ranks along European lines [following their return from] studying in Europe, [where] they were impressed by the guilds, societies, publications, and hospitals they found there” (ibid 5). Furthermore, American physicians who went to England, for example, observed the increasing role of British doctors in childbirth, and they brought this concept back to America, where American physicians welcomed it and could then charge higher fees for deliveries. The “new obstetrics” began working against midwives as their popularity grew, and its practitioners were increasingly accepted and even preferred “among men and women of influence because [they] stood for safety, progress, and science” (ibid). These developments served as a turning point in “the organization of the American medical profession toward the public realm, and it didn’t take long thereafter for American medical schools, hospitals, and professional societies to be established—although the change was not completed until the twentieth century” (ibid 5-6). Furthermore, in gradually moving childbirth and health care from the private into the public sphere, “in time, childbirth ceased to be viewed as natural and became defined by doctors as a disease. Moreover, the medicalization of parturition in the nineteenth century set the stage for its transferal in the twentieth century from the privacy of the home to the hospital” (ibid 6-7), where it remains today as the norm. The discovery and use of forceps and “the presence of male physicians in the lying-in chamber engendered and mirrored a transformation in the social and scientific definition of childbirth” (ibid 6). Male physicians “asserted

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

their dominance in the field by increasing the use of forceps” as well as the “routine use of anesthesia in assisted deliveries” (Dary 232). Dr. John Bright of Kentucky describes his viewpoint in 1844 in his 792-page medical guide for mothers: The forceps, vectic, perforators, and hook, as well as several other instruments are sometimes indispensably necessary in particular cases of labor, and under peculiar conditions both of mother and of child. To give a full and complete description of the case necessary for their use, and the manner of applying them, in all the circumstances in which it would be proper to use them, would occupy a small volume, and, as no midwife in this country would be capable of using them, a doctor must necessarily be sent for when the use of instruments is required. We shall, therefore, omit that part of practical midwifery. (Bright M.D. 169) Dr. Bright’s description reflects perhaps his personal viewpoint of midwives’ inferior intellectual capabilities and their inability to grasp the necessity of using new technology, let alone handle state-of-the-art medical instruments such as the forceps, which could ease labor. It may also indicate a prevalent attitude among some medical practitioners, who opposed formal training for midwives, whereas others considered it “an enigma [how] men who were born of women and cared for by women through injury and sickness still held the female inferior in the lofty fraternity of the medical profession” (Steele 202). The conflicting opinions expressed above exemplify the transformations taking place within the healthcare and medical communities, especially regarding women’s intellectual competence to have an equal place.

3.6.2

The Professionalization of Medicine

If professionalism is defined as involving not only licensing and standards but also a set of values and prescriptions for behavior that help people to balance conflicting occupational demands, we can see why this occurred. Nineteenth-century professional ideas reflected the social structure, values, and technical capabilities of the age. (Morantz-Sanchez 30-31)43

43

Sociologists have suggested that a profession “is an occupation that regulates itself through systematic, required training knowledge, and that has a service rather than profit orientation, enshrined in its code of ethics” (Starr 15).

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New discoveries in scientific methods that physicians brought back earlier from Europe made it necessary to separate the boundaries between the lay practitioners and the “members of an aspiring profession” (Starr 37). The professionalization of medicine began around the mid-nineteenth century when people became discontent with heroic therapeutics and sought alternatives to the “relatively cold-blooded” remedies that were “of little aid to the sick” (Shryock 125). A graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Angenette Hunt, believed that “there is a female side to this subject” and that “a woman’s natural abilities fitted her for health care. [Thus] with proper preparation she could exercise her talents in a new sphere” (qtd. in Morantz et al. 16).44 Many female physicians certainly believed Hunt’s assertions and thus “viewed their campaign to study and practice medicine as part of a larger effort to adapt traditional concepts of womanhood to the demands of an unstable, complex, and rapidly industrializing society,” which is exemplified by the “pioneer women doctors [who] argued that their influence should be concentrated primarily on women and children and in the domestic sphere” (Sanchez in ibid) reflecting the dominant viewpoint in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that “by virtue of their natural gifts as healers and nurturers” women belong in the medical profession (Morantz-Sanchez 4-5). Medicine was one of the first professional fields to attract women when her emancipation from home duties only, began to be agitated. Perhaps it was because ministering to the sick was long her province. In scanning the list of early Nebraska women practitioners, it is interesting to note that many of them were wives of physicians and many, also, mothers of large families, proving that a home and career are apparently compatible in this profession. (Tyler and Auerbach 174) A corresponding attitude regarding women’s propensity as healthcare providers has echoed Florence Nightingale’s proclamation that every woman is a nurse, which was an acceptable profession for women especially following the Civil War, as it was traditionally performed by women in the private sphere of the home. The terms “nurse” and “nursing the sick” evoke “maternal and domestic associations” and thus “seemed [to be] a natural female occupation ... offering respectable careers for middle-class girls” (Bynum 161-62). Furthermore, the 44

Angenette A. Hunt, “The True Physician” (Theses, Medical College of Pennsylvania Archives, 1851).

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practice of nursing also evoked the place where patients are cared for, namely hospitals. Those were already in dire need of improvement before the Civil War, but this was especially so after, when the deplorable conditions became more visible. Nightingale, who attained “iconic status” resulting from her hard work and engagement during the Crimean War, was recognized and rewarded with funding. She invested the funding to establish a plan to improve hygienic conditions in hospitals, whose crowded conditions, poor ventilation, and inadequate sewage systems were breeding grounds for infectious diseases such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid.45 In addition, she dedicated much of her time to transforming the discipline of nursing itself to reflect “her vision of nursing [as a vocational] calling, [which] transformed in a secular context to ideals of professionalism” (ibid). She further used the British government’s donations to establish the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in London in 1860, followed by a school for midwives two years later. In practice, her improvement plans translated into formal instruction using textbooks and journals, and they also included a “call for formal regulation of qualification, and specialization, as nurses began to work exclusively in operating theaters, with children or the insane, and in the wider world” (ibid). Later, while bedridden from diseases that she contracted during the Crimea War, Nightingale wrote extensively about her improvement plans and the experience she acquired on the battlefields and in hospitals. Her works, which remain in print today, are published in Notes on Hospitals and Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not.46 The visions she had regarding women’s education in the health professions began several decades earlier, when Oberlin College, founded in 1835, became the first institution of higher learning in the U.S. to accept both women and black students (Dary 233). The Boston Female Medical College, later called the New England Medical College, followed as the first medical school in the world exclusively for women. It was founded in 1848, just one year before Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from a medical school. Black45

46

Although several hundred hospitals had been built by 1870, they were more similar to charity organizations than to medical institutions as we are familiar with today (Starr 25). Taking our health care system as we understand it now with “a great array of organizations: hospitals and medical centers, public health and planning agencies, professional associations, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and so on” according to Paul Starr “these organizations did not really constitute an interdependent system even in a loose sense, before the late nineteenth century” (Starr 24-25).

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well, who had been turned down for admission to many schools, “exploited a loophole in the admissions regulations” (Bynum 147) of the Geneva College of Medicine in Geneva, upstate New York, where she was admitted. Originally, her admittance was thought to be a joke. However, she proved those who doubted her wrong. In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated at the head of her class, to the chagrin of a Boston physician whose comment is representative of many critics in the nineteenth century who were opposed to women studying at all, let alone medicine. Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair’s ambitions to study nursing and later medicine and the opposition she faced from family and close friends clearly illustrate that Blackwell was not the last woman to endure skepticism regarding her higher aspirations, which will be discussed further in chapter 4.3. Thus far, the following examples have made it quite clear that, for women to study medicine, especially during the nineteenth century and at the turn of the twentieth, they were challenged at every turn. Another example illustrates how a female student was discouraged from studying medicine by a medical professor who cautioned that “The delicate organization and predominance of the nervous system render woman peculiarly susceptible to suffer, if not to sink, under the fatigue and mental shocks which she must encounter in her professional rounds. Man, with his robust frame trained self-command, is often barely equal to the task” (qtd. in Leavitt et al. 12). Mary Putnam Jacobi’s response to the public displays of hostile opposition towards women’s ambition to study medicine and their admittance and attendance at medical schools speaks volumes: “It is perfectly evident from the records, that the opposition to women physicians has rarely been based upon any sincere conviction that women could not be instructed in medicine, but upon an intense dislike to the idea that they should be so capable” (Putnam Jacobi 196). Later, Elizabeth Blackwell studied in France and England, where she met and became friends with Florence Nightingale (Dary 235). Upon her return, Blackwell founded a clinic for poor women and children in New York City together with her sister Emily, which later became The New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children. Her courage and determination to become a physician were based on her belief that “women would prefer to consult with a woman and not a man about their health problems,” served as a role model for

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many women who followed in her footsteps (ibid 235).47 Women physicians were particularly interested in and concerned with issues that touched upon their lives as women and the welfare of their families and communities. Thus, many women physicians established numerous dispensaries for women and children that provided medical care, social services, and health education. Marie Zakrzewska, who served as the chief midwife in a hospital at the Royal Charité Hospital in Berlin before moving to the U.S. with her sister Anna, was later introduced to Blackwell. Together with Lucy Sewell, Helen Morton, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and many other women hoping to open more medical schools for women, she sent a letter and $50,000 as a down payment to open a school to Harvard University. The monetary offer was declined, but the women’s determination was rewarded when their offer was accepted by Johns Hopkins University, which opened its doors to women in 1872. However, as scholars of medicine point out, their (women’s) admission was only agreed upon due to the “need for funding from the women’s community,” and only a select few were admitted, after which “most of the women’s schools closed” including the New York Infirmary Women’s Medical College (Leavitt et al. 12). As Cornell University was now accepting women at the end of the century, Elizabeth’s sister Emily voiced her opinion for the closing by stating that “it [the New York Infirmary Women’s Medical College] has now fulfilled its purpose, and medical education may hereafter be obtained by women in New York in the same classes, under the same faculty, and with the same clinical opportunities as men.” On the other side of the country, Bethenia Owens-Adair summarizes the painful and often ridiculing steps involved for many women, including herself, who wanted to study medicine and enter the public sphere. In her paper which she read at a mother’s meeting of the Women’s Temperance Christian Union (WCTU) entitled “The Advancement of Women: Shall Girls Be Taught Self-Support? Remarkable Progress In New Occupations for Women. Public Opinion Has Changed”, she says that It seems remarkable, yet it is true, that this great change in women’s condition has been brought about within my own memory.   47

Of course not all women preferred to consult women physicians for their health problems, as already illustrated by Bethenia’s friend who could not fathom the idea. However, she was also representative of other women who felt the same way and these attitudes did not change easily across both genders.

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Less than twenty years ago a little band of brave earnest women were “rotten-egged” at Blockley Hospital in broad daylight, in the old, staid city of Philadelphia. And for what was this done? Their crime was that they were trying to fit themselves for the practice of medicine to alleviate pain and suffering, and thereby earn for themselves honorable self-support. You can can readily see that it required a brave woman, even at the recent date, to declare her intention to study medicine. I, myself, studied in secret for several years. To do so openly made a woman the subject of public ridicule, and she was regarded as deserving of severe public criticism. There was scarecely a newspaper in the land that did not delight in holding her up as a “strong-minded nuisance,” a “mannish woman” and such-like detestable expressions. How often has it been said, “No modest, or refined woman would study medicine.” The doors of all medical schools were closed against her, but slurs and opposition only strengthened her desires, and, with an irresistible will and determination, she rose up in her strength [...].   Step by step, she has broken down the bars of prejudice, and drawn aside the curtain of opposition, thus letting in the sunlight of reason which has placed her where she justly belongs, by the side of her brother man in the strenuous battle of life. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 411) In the West, the University of Michigan became the first state medical school to accept females in 1870, and in 1876, the San Francisco Medical College accepted Alice Boyle Higgins as its first female student (Dary 236). By the end of the nineteenth century, “women’s medical colleges and hospitals had been established through the courageous efforts of determined women and the leadership of several liberal-minded men” (lo Chin 3). At the turn of the twentieth century, women represented 3.6% of the medical profession and continued to increase in proportion until 1920, reaching 5%. However, “[t]hen progress came to a halt” due to a “multiplicity of factors [that] kept women at the margins” (More et al. 4). The factors involved in the declining rate of women’s entry into the medical profession in the early twentieth century included: 1. The pressure to “improve” and professionalize medical education by closing sectarian and all-women’s schools (except the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, which resisted coeducation until 1969).

3 The Cultural West as a Transformational Place of Many Spaces

2. The number of years of training required before licensure, along with the cost. 3. Most medical schools forbade their students from marrying before graduation. 4. The professionalization of medicine decisively clashed with child-rearing, which was then the exclusive domain of women. (ibid 4-5)

Furthermore, as mentioned above, the medical field itself was transforming in the first half of the twentieth century, which led to women’s declining enrollment in medical schools and practice in the field, while the attainable fields of nursing, public health, and social work became aspirational goals. Historian Regina Morantz-Sanchez has concluded that “medical professionalization itself was essentially a profoundly ‘gendered’ phenomenon structured entirely in response to the male life cycle” (Morantz-Sanchez qtd. in ibid 4-5), which made the balancing act of having a career and family at the same time challenging. By 1920, most women’s colleges closed or merged with other institutions due to declining enrollment and lack of financial resources. The women who did remain continued to face discrimination. Thus, while medical education for women had not been entirely abolished, “it survived only in token form” (Leavitt et al. 17). Furthermore, by World War I, “women’s medical schools, medical societies, hospitals, dispensaries, houses of refuge, and settlement houses—the institutional setting of the nineteenth-century ‘woman’s sphere’ in medicine—began to decline. The proportion of all physicians who were women did not exceed the modest level of 7% until 1970,” when the percentage began to climb steadily to the level it is today (More 5). New data provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) 48 shows that the majority of students enrolled in medical schools are women. David J. Skorton, M.D., who is president and CEO of the AAMC, says that while “we are delighted to see this progress, [h]owever, the modest increases in enrollment among underrepresented groups are simply not

48

The AAMC was established in 1876 at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. It was organized at the time in the nineteenth century when medical education was not yet regulated and people did not trust the regular doctors. Their main goal was, and still is, to provide services related to the improvement of medical education and research, and to manage the curricula of medical schools and teaching hospitals. It is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

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enough. We cannot accept this as the status quo and must do more to educate and train a more diverse physician workforce to care for a more diverse America” (Colleges).

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives to the Ontological History  of the 19th Century American West Give her knowledge commensurate with her natural qualifications, enable her to go forth, healing the sick and comforting the afflicted and she will bless the world (qtd. in Abram 139)

This quote of the Women’s College of Pennsylvania opening in 1850, the first medical college for women in the United States, reflects the nineteenth-century zeitgeist and belief that women were endowed as natural healers. It also reflects the hope that many women had to become healthcare providers in the nineteenth century. However, as the discussions thus far have hopefully made clear, women’s ambitions to receive a higher education, especially in medicine, were often thwarted. Thus, it is necessary to consider the historical contexts already laid out in the previous chapter to understand the underlying motivations. Women’s access to socio-political and cultural discourses is interconnected with transformative processes and societies’ ideas about how men and women are positioned within power structures that determine ways of knowing. The social context and the ways different cultures shape and organize both socio-political and personal knowledge construction is often connected to the notion that knowledge is positioned within social conditions, power structures such as organizations, and an agency to act on that given power. The historical contexts within which they carry out performative acts are socially, politically, culturally, and economically informed. It provides a productive lens to explore women’s experiences and ways of knowing that can show the richness and diversity of human cultural experience.

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The significance of how the American West’s spatial environment transforms identity and ways of knowing that is reflected in the life writings of the three healthcare-giving women and the text-oriented examination of their narratives is conceptually approached from a New Historicist perspective that provides insight into the socio-political and cultural events at the time of writing. Indeed, the complexity of gender, power, and race that informs the women’s life writings in this dissertation is essential for understanding how social identities overlap within systems of power. Therefore, it provides a productive lens to examine the dialectical history and personal transformation within the broader dynamic context of American myths in and of the West and show how their reading and writing enabled them to actively engage in public life. This approach has the advantage of making visible the connections between being placed and ways of knowing that mirror the zeitgeist and diversity of their socio-economic, political, and religious backgrounds embedded in their writing. Following Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s approach(es) to autobiographical texts,1 especially the notion that narrative practices in North American traced a different timeline in the “forgotten century for American women’s life writing,” the women’s life writing in “Gold Fever!” challenges the ideas of a unified story and a coherent self. Equally important, are the complexities of autobiographical acts/subjectivities regarding their performative nature in which the “self” is perpetually transformed through their (dis)placement in the spatial environment, experience, memory, agency, identity, gendered class, and ethnic self-construction which are taken into account. Thus, if we are to understand the multifarious ways in which they negotiated power through these gendered and racialized historical processes, it is necessary to appreciate women’s lives as they tell them. Above all, it is important to keep in mind that [w]omen’s life writings [...] are more than just the raw data that historians, sociologists, anthropologists, or economists may draw from them. They are literary texts in their own right. In each one a woman’s life is revealed, each is as worthy of sympathetic reading as any more polished biography and is perhaps even more rewarding for coming from the subject’s own pen. (Beecher viii) 1

Life Writing has expanded in the past decades to include diverse new forms of medial self-representation on a non-textual level that engage with state-of-the-art technologies, and as such, have provided fruitful new perspectives while at the same time concealing potential pitfalls in interpretating them.

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

The revival of scholarly inquiry into women’s history and historiographical interest for women physicians and healthcare providers received its impetus from Gerda Lerner. She was one of the first new historians to question women’s declining status in the healing arts in the nineteenth century in her seminal article, “The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson,” from 1969. This article’s significance for “Gold Fever!” illustrates how medical practices such as those discussed in the previous chapter reflect the socio-cultural ideologies of the nineteenth century, demonstrating the dialectic of knowledge production. In another article that appeared in the 1975 issue of Feminist Studies, Lerner challenged the traditional ways of describing women’s historical experience “as mere woolgathering” by asking: “who are the missing women from history?” (Lerner, “The Lady and the Mill Girl Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges” 5). Lerner’s question was just one of many that reflect the development of women’s history/studies that witnessed the rise of civil rights (black power) and other ethnic-based social movements such as African American, Asian American, Latina/Chicana, and Native American. These movements contributed further to the increased visibility of “other” communities of women whose histories and experiences differed from the mainstream white middleclass America. Thus, viewed within the context of the American West, the visibility of these racialized other narratives challenge the well-known white middle-class ideologies of gender and sexuality. Early feminist researchers and scholars who responded to Lerner’s question in the 1970s and 80s of the last century uncovered a wealth of material that emphasized the value of other voices that had been previously marginalized or silenced.2 Around the same time, scholars also began focusing on imperialism within and outside of the United States that required research to better explain the multiple and complex ways in which gender and race have been articulated as part of the narrative of U.S. westward exploration, expansion, and settlement, as well as of their own communities’ resistance and survival. Thus, these critical analyses of western women’s history disrupt the conventional narratives of U.S. western history by making visible how the dominant ideologies of whiteness, gender, and liberalism that informed U.S. expansion, expressed in part through Manifest Destiny and the

2

However, according to scholars, much work still needs to be done to include African American in U.S. western history.

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significance of the frontier, have been and continue to be foundational to U.S. western history as it has been largely understood, produced, and reproduced in the U.S. imagination. (Leong 621) Amy Kaplan’s seminal article “Manifest Domesticity” (already discussed in Chapter 2) addresses forms of what some scholars refer to as “sentimentalized imperialism” by identifying how discourses of domesticity throughout the nineteenth century obscured or rationalized exploitative and competitive expansionist practices. In other words, it illustrates how Euro-American white middle-class women were “empowered in relation to racialized Others in the American West” (Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity” 622). The significance of their contributions had an impact on westward expansion and imperialism through missionary work, teaching, and various socio-political reforms. Then again, as the following case studies seek to illustrate, they can serve as transformative counter-narratives to its ontological history by analyzing how the relationship between complex ideologies, institutions, and power is negotiated and transformed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In historical practice, this suggests that we cannot fully understand the gendered or racial formations of the U.S. West without understanding the process of colonization, nor can we understand colonization without understanding how gender and race, in concert with class, religion, and other factors, have been used to justify genocide, oppression, and inequalities. (Leong 626-627) Thus, the process of colonization/settler colonialism is a valuable lens through which to view the legacies of racist oppression/dispossession and the sociopolitical and cultural histories of others who do not identify with the mainstream and will be discussed further in the next section. During the past several decades, the abundance of published and unpublished life writings have been invaluable sources for scholars researching women’s quotidian activities as historical evidence, and as Beecher notes, should also be read for the knowledge we gain from each woman as individuals who “speak to the inner life of [us] the reader” (Beecher viii). The quotidian aspects reflected in the women’s life writings thus gives us an understanding of their lives and what was important to them individually and indeed as women living their lives in the nineteenth century within and outside of the dictates of the Cult of True Womanhood’s values of piousness, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Above all, their life writings illustrate how they

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

challenged and expanded its principles, especially the principles of piousness and domesticity, to write their counter-narratives to the dialectical history of the nineteenth-century West. Although they do not and can not represent all women in the nineteenth-century West, the women in the following case studies do indeed exemplify how voices and individual selves’ qualities are constructed, expressed, and revealed from unique ways of knowing. The narrative voices of Susan La Flesche Picotte M.D., Patty Bartlett Sessions, and Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair speak from the American western space as nineteenth-century women who, more or less, embraced specific principles of True Womanhood such as piety and domesticity. Their life writing takes place from the road, margins, and border(s), wherein each woman situates her transforming “I” from personal transformative experience and dialectic ways of knowing. As “Gold Fever!” argues and seeks to exemplify through their life narratives, it is not only possible to gain insight into the multicultural and transnational complexity of the nineteenth century that challenged many people during the “period of suffragist reform [which was] negotiated in [the] domestic spheres prior to the Nineteenth Amendment” (Smith and Watson, Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing 1819-1919 19), but also demonstrate how they contest the dominant ontological narrative(s) through the male gaze (my emphasis).

4.1

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte: “The First Woman Physician  Among Her People”3 It affords us much pleasure to note the graduation of an honor conferred upon a female member of the Omaha tribe of Indians. The lady in question is Dr. Susan La Flesche, who has graduated at the Women’s Medical College, Philadelphia. It appears that the Doctor had already become a favorite among her people, and now that she returns to take them scientific medicine, combined with Christianity, to replace the ‘Medicine Man’ of former days, we may feel assured of her usefulness and success among them. (“Graduation Announcement of Susan La Flesche from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, March 14, 1889”)

3

Title of a speech La Flesche gave in 1892 at her graduation Hampton, Virginia.

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This excerpt is from the commencement speech honoring Dr. Susan La Flesche4 Picotte who was the first Native American woman ever to become a medical doctor in the “113-year history of her country, thirty-one years before women could vote, [and] thirty-five years before all Indians could become citizens in their own country” (Starita 25). Indeed, a unique achievement in the nineteenth century, not only for a woman but especially for a woman of color/indigenous woman.5 As scholars have pointed out, “[s]he was a remarkable nineteenth-century woman by any standards. The fact that she overcame certain handicaps of being born on a reservation makes her achievements all the more remarkable” (Mathes, “Susan LaFlesche Picotte: Nebraska’s Indian Physician, 1865-1915” 81). In his address at Susan’s commencement, Dr. Walker, who was a principal lecturer of the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia, asks, “What must those who oppose women physicians as impossibilities or monstrosities think of such a course?” Further, he commends her achievement by saying that she “receives her fitting reward. All this without precedent. [And] will stand among her people as the first woman physician” (ibid). Indeed, Susan’s successes can be attributed to the fact that she was “a member of one of the most remarkable families in American Indian history” (Hauptman 1783). Both of her parents were well acquainted with white culture from birth. Joseph “Iron Eye” La Flesche (1822), the son of a French fur trader, married Mary Gale, daughter of John Gale, M.D., an army surgeon and one of the earliest white physicians in the trans-Mississippi

4

5

The family name La Flesche was passed down from Susan’s paternal grandfather who was a French fur trader and means “arrow” in French. Interesting to note is that in the Omaha culture, the arrow can symbolize the figurative/actual closing of a chapter, or life. Although Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American Woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, in her book America Indian Women, Marion E. Gridley writes of several early practicing Indian women physicians worth noting, such as Dr. L. Rosa Minoka Hill, a Mohawk born on the St. Regis reservation in New York, and brought up by Quakers. Like Susan, she attended the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She received the Indian Achievement Award in 1947. Also noteworthy is Dr. Lucille Johnson Marsh, a Tuscarora and daughter of Dr. Philip T. Johnson, a chief of the tribe, who practiced medicine for many years in Erie, Pennsylvania. As a pediatrician, Dr. Marsh (who then married an Oneida, Charles A. Hill and took his name), directed the Infant Welfare Clinic of the city of Miami. Furthermore, she was chief of the Children’s Bureau, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Division of Indian Health, U.S. Public Health Service at the time of her death (Gridley 166-168).

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West and a full-blood Indian mother who was descended from an Omaha chief; together they raised their children between two worlds.6 This chapter seeks to reveal how Susan received the inspiration to help her people, the Umon’ hon, or “Upstream People,” as they referred to themselves, meaning against the current, from an early age. She witnessed the difficulties they had adapting to the calamitous socio-political transformations brought on by nineteenth-century White culture. Susan was born into an affluent Omaha Indian family during a tumultuous and transitional time that marked the beginning of the end of the traditional way of life that forced many Natives Americans to (re)negotiate their lives within existing “border spaces” of the dominant white culture. The socio-political and cultural transformations of the nineteenth century disrupted many of their lives, leaving them feeling uncertain about their futures. Susan’s early childhood and youth were heavily influenced by Indian reform and assimilationist policies. The policies included educating Native Americans to live in mainstream society, which she firmly believed would/could help her people succeed in White society. Thus, her determination to help “was born of a desire to see them [the Omahas] independent, so far as she could make them, of the too frequently unskilled and oftener indifferent attention of the reservation doctor” (ibid). Therefore, once she received her medical degree, she returned to the community to serve however she could. For instance, only two years upon her return from the East, and in her capacity as a medical missionary she wrote the following 6

Susette (1854-1903) also known as “Bright Eyes” was an activist, lecturer, and leading reformer of Indian policy. Rosalie (1861-1900) was an accomplished business woman in the livestock industry. Marguerite (1862-1945) was a teacher and active in many church organizations and community projects. Susan (1865-1915) was the youngest daughter of Joseph and Mary. Among the many accomplishments discussed in this chapter, she was the first American Indian woman physician, and the first American Indian to be appointed as missionary to the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, as well as a missionary, lecturer, and crusader of public health and temperance reformer. Of the three children by Joseph’s second wife Ta-in-ne, Lucy (1865-1923) and Carey (1872-1952), only the life of Francis (1857-1932) is well documented. He was a lawyer, lecturer, the first American Indian anthropologist and his extensive research on the Omaha in cooperation with the famous anthropologist and very good friend of the La Flesche family, Alice Fletcher, earned him a membership in the Washington Academy of Science and an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Nebraska in 1926 (see Hauptman 1783; Herzog 226; Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 214).

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In need of much support and comfort, they “continued to look to the Indian past for mental and emotional guidance” (Tong xv). In her role as a “cultural broker,” Dr. La Flesche was devoted to her family and tribal community with whom she kept close ties throughout her life firmly believing that “the old ways are not devoid of values, culture, and emotional ties, and need always to be preserved” (qtd. in Enss 21). The life writings from her diary, letters to family, friends, and government agencies, as well as the many editorials she wrote and speeches she gave on behalf of her people, clearly show that she was a promoter of various causes that ranged from medical care, including anti-tuberculosis campaigns, to evangelism motivated by a devout commitment to her Presbyterian faith. They are drawn on to illustrate how she used her education as a teacher, medical doctor, and crusader for temperance and preventive health measures for Indian reforms to help her people adjust to the turn-of-the-century “Americanization” policies of the U.S. government. As an OIA (Office of Indian Affairs) physician and in her capacity as a medical missionary for the Women’s National Indian Association, and later for the Board of Home Missions of the U.S. Presbyterian Church, “Susan offered succor, both physical and spiritual, to Omahas deprived of adequate medical attention and distance from many traditional beliefs” (ibid xvi). This chapter begins with a contextualization of Native Americans as they were portrayed as one of the most popular topics in literature, drama, and informational books in the nineteenth century. The representations were misconstrued ideas and misconceptions based on myths that have been propagated throughout history. In the discussion that follows, notions about Omaha people’s spirituality and its connection to indigenous medicine is discussed to illustrate how they are intertwined on a macro and micro level. Next a discussion of settler colonialism and the devastating impact of displacement (among others) on Native Americans is best understood by them, as they were the first to settle the North American continent and already understood this “in very pervasive ways” (Basso xvi-xvii). The cross-cultural tensions ensuing from settler colonialism and resulting borderland and transcultural concepts can further offer a complex and nuanced ways of understanding how settler colonialism was negotiated within various Christian missionary and boarding schools that worked together with government agencies under the motto

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“Kill the Indian, save the man,” 7 which ultimately transformed the lives of Native Americans into a transcultural border-landscape. Lastly, the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA) while providing opportunities for indigenous women, also created opportunities for white upper and middle-class women, “true women”, to participate and enter national debates regarding Native American land rights and the socio-political power of Christian reform and its “assimiliation/acculturation” solutions to the “Indian problem”. Finally, this chapter concludes with a brief summary of Dr. La Flesche-Picotte’s legacy.

4.1.1

“From the Tepee to Civilization”8

Native peoples, and their stories and histories are not a social studies unit of an interesting sub-category. [...] We are American history. [...] Every track and trace of the American experience runs through our communities, our culture. We have been the transformers so much more than we are ever credited to have been. I am so tired of our image as the transformed-the lost, the dead, always those who are acted upon, always those who have been pushed to the edges, where we can be watched compassionately, nostalgically, seen as little more than a decorative fringe. (Susan Power, qtd. in Howe 45) As this quote suggests, misconstrued ideas and notions of indigenous peoples that have been projected through various media throughout history have had a negative impact in shaping their sense of identity and contributing to a feeling of belonging to the past. In alignment with this view, scholars have reiterated this claim that many people have no realistic or complete understanding of who Native Americans are/were at various times throughout history. Therefore, to come to terms with the (mis)perceptions, people translated their own misconstrued ideas into fact9 - the consequence(s) of which took

7 8 9

This infamous motto was coined by the founder of Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School – Captain Richard Henry Pratt in 1879. Susan’s own words summarizing her education at Hampton and the Woman’s Medical College that later “shaped the course of her life to come” (qtd. in Tong 46). The consequence(s) of this took on many controversial forms in the past and is shamefully still ongoing. Examples of this can be found in the recent discussions regarding the “dehumanizing” and contentious effects of using Native Americans as mascots for football teams. Many opponents criticize its use by arguing the harmful effects of the rhetoric and its potential of “causing depression and lower self-esteem,

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on many forms and were represented in writing, films, and played out in the multiple forms discussed earlier. Scholars in the fields of anthropology and history have struggled to discredit popular stereotypes of American Indians that misrepresent social realities and cultural processes. However misconstrued these notions were, they were undoubtedly the starting point for one (version) of many American myths, which many organizations, institutions, industries, scholars, artists, and popular culture would later elaborate on further and promote, seeking their interpretations and translations of the West. In fact, many people have relied on (mis)representations and myths from popular culture, art, and literature, taking them at face value. This phenomenon is hardly new, however. In the early nineteenth century, the Haudenosaunee scholar David Cusick and the Pequot activist William Apess criticized texts by non-Native writers for erroneously portraying Native American histories and cultures that perpetuated the categorization and stereotypes that were damaging. Newspapers, magazines, school texts, various literature such as novels and poems all contained a lot of (mis)information about indigenous appearance, intellectual capacity, morals, and character. Robert M. Bird’s novel Nick of the Woods from 1837 ranked only second in popularity to James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Bird’s dark and evil portrait of the Native American’s character had a powerful impact on the popular imagination of the times. Nineteenth-century literature also presented contrasting views of Native American women portrayed as either princesses or squaw. These stereotyped binary images understood the princess in a positive, romanticized light emulating the legacy of Pocahontas as its archetype. She was admired for her intellect, moral qualities, and help to whites. It was understood that she embraced white society with its Christian values. Thus, her motives for doing so went unquestioned. On the other hand, negative images were projected to the squaw, who was assumed to be quite the opposite of the princess. As assumed of Indians in the nineteenth century, the squaw was considered an ignorant heathen, slave, or “beast of burden” forced by their lazy men into subservience and whose status could only be raised to a position of honor through Christianization and assimilation in the superior white culture. Aside from the fact that these stereotyped images and misconstrued views had no connection to the reality of Native American lives, it also did not take especially of younger members of the communities” involved (Twitter #NotYourMascot from 08.02.20).

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into account the diversity among the various tribes, nor did it understand the common practice among many tribes of polygyny, in which two or more women share a husband. Although it is uncertain exactly how many wives Susan’s father, Chief Joseph La Flesche, had, scholars estimate the number to be approximately four. It should be noted that this practice was also common among the Omahas, but only among the leaders and not throughout the whole tribe. According to Norma Kidd Green, [t]he maintenance of status and influence came largely through making gifts and giving feasts. This entailed a great deal of labor by the women of the household and plural marriages provided the necessary hands to serve the required feasts, to care for the animal pelts and to fashion and decorate the garments and equipment which would become gifts. The system also cared for the widows and the women who were left fatherless. (Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 39) Needless to say, although Native American women had a different perception, this practice was further evidence among the whites of the reduced status of their women. The stereotyped images, thus, ignored the diversity of tribal culture and the differences that ensued as a result of contact with white culture at various times and degrees throughout North American history. Furthermore, in the nineteenth century, in conjunction with the rise of the “noble savage,” Americans also began to take note of the “vanishing redskin” and began predicting their extinction. Even those writers who admired and mythologized the Native Americans viewed them as members of “a dying race that must give way to American progress either through force or by acceptance of the true light of Christian ideals” (Black and Weidman 132). These ideas coincided with the U.S. government policies under President Andrew Jackson to remove Native Americans from their lands through dispossession and move or force them onto reservations and begin with acculturation programs to solve the “Indian problem.” As a result, there was also a growing interest in a scientific study and recording indigenous history and culture before it vanished forever. Alice Cunningham Fletcher was an ethnologist and Indian policy reformer who had worked closely together with the Omahas as a missionary teacher in her function as a U.S. government official since the 1880s. She became close friends with Susan’s half-brother Francis La Flesche, whom she

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later adopted legally.10 Francis received his law degree in Washington in 1893, where he freely moved among the scientific and intellectual community. He became the first professional Indian anthropologist employed by the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology- and wrote many books and articles (Mathes, “Susan LaFlesche Picotte: Nebraska’s Indian Physician, 1865-1915” 502). He also became Fletcher’s field assistant, informant, and interpreter. Together, their collaboration culminated in a joint work, The Omaha Tribe. Among his many other writings, he wrote about his people during this time was one on ancient rites. Before many of the Omaha elders’ memories were fading, he gained their trust to relate the details of several rituals, which to disclose to the outsiders was considered sacrilegious.11 Last, he wrote about his Presbyterian Mission Schooling in The Middle Five and a comprehensive study on the Osage tribe. The heightened interest in the nineteenth century regarding the vanishing Natives also led to further investigations into North America’s historiography. According to Joseph Bruchac, Western Abenaki, “many questions remain regarding Western historiographies, such as what is the true American past?” Alternatively, Bruchac questions, “how far back does the past go in a ‘nation of immigrants?” He offers the answer that “one group of ‘Americans’ has roots as deep as the rocks. At the very least, they go back thirty thousand years” (qtd. in Kolodny, In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery 327). In her book In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery, Annette Kolodny investigates the first known European narratives that illustrate interaction(s) with North America and Native American stories of first encounters with Europeans. Furthermore, she explores the impact of the narratives on concepts of masculinity in the literature and what happened (e.g., the impact on migration policies) following the popularity of the 1837 translations of the Icelandic Vinland sagas, which became popular in the United States and emerged from heightened interest in national history during this time. Scholars, among others, such as Foucault, have offered several reasons for this interest by stating that

10 11

Francis La Flesche was born to Joseph’s second wife Ta-In-Ne (Elizabeth) with whom he had four other children. Scholars have speculated about the timing of Joseph La Flesche death shortly following a ceremony transferring the Omaha Sacred Pole out of tribal hands to the Peabody Museum at Harvard. (Liberty 54).

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the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of the modern episteme. People began to classify difference and discontinuity into taxonomies of knowledge, which were categorized into modern differentiations such as culture or nature, modern or traditional, science or mythology. [Furthermore] with the rise of exploration, there was a real fear of the unknown and a desire to chart and explain new worlds. Formal colonialism generated an added incentive to learn about what had been conquered, whether in order to manage the natives and learn about their ways so as to control them (and levy taxes), or to find out about the resources available that would boost the wealth of a colonizing power. (Sharp 30). When the first Europeans set foot in the “New World”, more than several hundred different Indian tribes existed, speaking their own unique languages, and varied cultures and traditions. Although there seems to be some uncertainty among scholars of Native American history regarding the precise number of tribes before the Europeans came, they all seem to agree on the profound impact on the demographic transformations among the nations following arrival and initial contact with the whites. Previously, scholars such as Richard Slotkin discussed Europeans’ perceptions of North America and the low esteem and knowledge level regarding how indigenous peoples viewed this arrival or the cultural/societal transformations that were already in progress in both societies at the time of arrival. However, Pekka Hämäläinen has argued that this must be considered since new archaeological studies have allowed us to see the history of North America before Europeans on its own terms rather than through the ethnocentric prism of old. Its key features—the mixed economies of hunting, gathering, and farming, the prevalence of mobility and nomadism, the fluidity of social formations—no longer appear as stunted or somehow misguided developments but as products of deliberate, creative choices. By the time the Europeans got there, North America was old. Its history was deep, varied, and in motion, evolving on multiple trajectories and registers. (Hämäläinen 6) The archaeological studies Hämäläinen mentions are now the subject of ongoing research that seeks answers rather than relying on previously invented constructs that, according to scholars, have displaced the facts in order to justify European conquest. Instead, they have argued that ignorance of the facts was based on a misconstrued interpretation of established data. An ex-

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emplary misinterpretation of this kind is based on Frederick Jackson Turner’s perceptions of the Wild West. Jackson Turner’s claims regarding the closing of the frontier forced the facts to fit his preconceived notions of American advancement of frontiersmen who tamed the wilderness and the few women who passively followed at a distance. Thus, his notions of the “Frontier-West” illustrated “a line between civilization and savagery,” where the land was seen as a wilderness of boundless treasures to be conquered.12 Euro-Americans recorded a great diversity of experiences with people from hundreds of Native American tribes at different times throughout North America’s history. As a result, and to gain a deeper understanding of Native American history and culture, contemporary scholars combine methods from anthropology and history to explore Native American people and their history called the ‘ethnohistorical principle.’ Some scholars use this method to explore the history of Indian economies, families, or women, or ordinary Indian people, while others are engaged with research into government policy, administrations, and the Indian response to these policies. Today, the field has steadily developed from the history of Indian-white warfare and frontier violence toward a deeper understanding of the socio-cultural, political, and historical events that continue to shape their lives. NonNative scholars are beginning to collaborate with Native elders, finally seeing them as the teachers and cultural treasure that they are, consultants rather than “informants” as in the past (Cohen 5). Most notable is that Native American scholars are writing their own ethnographies, as much to inform tribal members as to share with other cultures. “There have been changes for centuries,” as Kenneth Lincoln and Al Logan Slagle further explain: Indians are even more ethnically self-contained in many instances, since they have lived on separate and traditional land bases, apart from the Amer12

Emigrants fostered hopes, ideas, and antagonistic feelings about the new land, which resulted in the creation of a conflicting image. On the one hand, the West was perceived as a barbaric and primitive wilderness, and on the other, as a place of rebirth, renewal, and transformation. The resulting concepts and metaphors were initially drawn from European contexts and gradually adjusted to the American experience according to Richard Slotkin, who claims in Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1890, that due to the influence and importance of European culture on the creation of an American myth, the Europeans who settled the New World already possessed, at the time of their arrival, a mythology derived from the cultural history of their home countries which was “responsive to the psychological and social needs of their old culture” (Slotkin 15).

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ican mainstream, and they consider themselves ‘Native’ Americans, distinguished from all others. Being Indian, then, may mean adjusting the definition to the tribal reality at hand, rather than living nostalgically in a mythic past. People move from one place to another, or conversely, live in areas that change as other cultures move in. Human time, place, and culture are carried through cyclic evolutions that never stand still. (Lincoln and Slagle xxi) Indeed, the information shared by Native American scholars and those whose ancestors lived the history is valuable in providing insights into their concepts of identity, which are deeply connected to their spirituality. Together, they are reflected in their creation stories and traditions to explain their origins and place in the universe. They vary among nations and differ from Western ideas remarkably, especially their notion(s) of spirituality connected to God, or Wakonda, whom the Omaha’s worshipped, and how to live a healthy, harmonious, and balanced life will be discussed in the following.

4.1.2

Life in the “Good Road”, Spirituality, and Iron Eye’s Family There are some good things by which we live. First-The God above made this world and gave it to us to live in. Second-The white men have been sent to teach us how to live. Third-God has made the earth to yield the fruit to us. Fourth-God has given us hands with which we can work. (qtd. in Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 36)

As already mentioned, indigenous identity is inseparable from their spirituality. The above quote by Joseph La Flesche mirrors his bi-cultural understanding of Christian and holistic Native education. Scholars have observed that “Native American creation stories are not generally accorded the same degree of respect that is shown to other traditional creation stories by main-

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stream society” but are “frequently dismissed by Euro-Americans with labels like ‘myths’ or ‘legends,’ whereas Judeo-Christian-Islamic stories are given the respectable title of ‘religion.’ (Reinhardt 185). However, indigenous “religious traditions stretched as far back as at least 10,000 years, long before the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible were written [and] differed as much from each other as those of the Protestants differed from the Roman Catholics” (Butler et al. 214). It is also important to note that creation stories were important for shaping indigenous cultural identity and intimately tied to their tribe and a particular place. They were transmitted orally from generation to generation by women and the elders responsible for teaching their offspring /future generations. Thus, Susan and her siblings learned about their tribal creation story from their parents and the elders. According to The Sacred Legend, the Upstream People originated long ago from a region far to the east where there were dense woods and great bodies of water. From the very beginning, they searched for ways to survive in their surroundings which were accompanied by questions the sprung from The Sacred Legend and were vital in forming part of their cultural identity “What shall we do to help ourselves? How shall we better ourselves?” (Starita 7). The Omaha believed that they could resolve whatever challenges would be presented to them if they reflected long enough. Thus, however precarious the situations may have presented themselves and whatever solutions they came up with to counter them throughout their history, the resulting change would always be invoked by the ritual phrase, “And the people thought” (Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 36). The Sacred Legend places exceptional value on critical thinking and the power of ritual words that created Omaha reality and their life’s philosophy that healed diseases. Omaha’s sense of identity and community drew on its teaching to give them a sense of uki’te, or “Holding the people together,” as it is told in The Sacred Legend (Tong 8). These stories formed Susan’s early appreciation for the sacredness of nature’s creations (animate and inanimate) and its connectedness with everything in the universe and to the land. The La Flesche children, all of whom are mentioned in this dissertation so far as they are relevant for the discussions, also grew up with biblical stories, hymns, and prayers in both Omaha and English. For instance, they learned that Jesus, Wakondizhinge, was the son of Wakonda-which was somewhat strange to the Omaha traditional way of thinking (Herzog 226). The origin stories and legends are as “authoritative for Native Americans as written scriptures were to Christians” (Lindley 150). As with Christianity, the creation

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stories were also sacred and very important because Native Americans believe that medicine emerges with their creation stories and ritual reenactment performed by a shaman, or holy man/woman, who served as intermediaries between the natural and spiritual worlds. They believed that healing powers exist everywhere, and thus, given their skills to tap into that power, the medicine man/woman and shamans can draw medicinal strength from rock formations, rivers, valleys, mountaintops, caves, trees, clouds, animals, oceans, fire, and wind. The stories came to these intermediaries in the form of visions and dreams that gave them special powers such as medicine, including spiritual medicine that entered the world in the form of certain forces, actions, and thoughts. Thus, the ability “to cure illnesses, interpret dreams, predict the weather, influence nature, and chart the movement of animals for hunting” was also part of their powers for which they were well revered (Butler et al. 216). In response to illness, crisis, or injuries, the authoritative shaman, a medicine man/woman who was closely connected to the spirit world, performed rituals that sometimes involved the use of herbal medicines to heal the imbalances that caused the illness. According to Carol Niethammer, [s]ome early medicine women specialized only in natural curing; others used both natural and supernatural means to cure patients who came to them. The knowledge of herbal medicines was not confined exclusively to the women in the early tribes, but generally women seemed to be more familiar with various herbal potions and brews. Women who practiced medicine were usually middle-aged or older-partly because by this age a woman was no longer busy caring for small children, and partly because older women were free of the taboos associated with menstruation. (Niethammer 146) Thus, the shamans or medicine men or women “translated” and interpreted the spirit world for their people as a way of restoring the balance between the realms, which is all connected and influenced by all other things in some way. For Indian cultures, medicine is integrated into many aspects of culture, including religion. While different tribes may vary in their perceptions of and treatments for illnesses, in general, Native Americans have a different way of thinking about disease, spirituality, and the meaning of “medicine.” They believe that their health depends on rituals, prayers, ceremonies, stories, and songs. In her book The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman surgeon in the United States, explains how Navajo heal-

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ers use song for healing and for transporting the rhetoric of the Beauty Way - a symbolic blueprint embracing great power that is intricately woven into and defines their cultural identity. The songs hold the key to Navajo traditional healing principles of Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhḉ (harmony and balance) for living a holistic, healthy, and harmonious life in balance within the physical and spiritual world (Alvord 14-16). Although almost a century separates Alvord’s professional life from Susan’s, and medical technology is more advanced, both women shared the following daily reminder of continually [being] reminded of the simple truth about my life: I live between two worlds. In one of them I am a dispenser of a very technologically advanced Western style of medicine. In the other, people are healed by songs, herbs, sand painting, and ceremonies held by firelight in the deep of winter (ibid 8). Thus, the importance of traditional healing and the spiritual values inherent within them were, and still are, intricately connected to indigenous cultural identity. Today, they have increasingly been revived in Native American communities as an effort to restore the balance between traditional and western approaches to healing. Viewed through a lens of resistance to the erosion of indigenous traditional healing through centuries of contact, they can provide a broader range of options and a holistic approach to biomedicine, but it is essential that Modern physicians, who have so much technology at their disposal, must somehow find their way back to healing their primary task. We should treat our patients the same way we would treat our own relatives. We must find what has been lost as we have become so enraptured with scientific advancements: working with communities, and creating bonds of trust and harmony. We must learn how to sing. (ibid 16) Herein lies one of the most crucial differences between Native American and Western medicine, which is critical for caregivers today to understand, according to Alvord. Further, these are the precepts by which Susan lived and what made her so valuable to the Omahas – and will be discussed again later. In sum, while it can be said that, for the most part, Native American cultural values and beliefs remained outside of the mainstream white American religious and socio-political culture of the nineteenth century, many Indians embraced Christianity, [so that]

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

[b]y 1900, Christianity ranked as one of the main forms of native American religious expression. One could speak of Anishinaabeg Catholics, Lakota Episcopalians, Muskogee Baptists, Muskogee Baptists, Iroquois Quakers, Cherokee [and Omaha] Presbyterians, Munsee Moravians, Shawnee Shakers, Hopi Mennonites, Navajo Methodists, Osage Lutherans, Paiute Pentecostals, Apache Mormons, and Aleut orthodox. (Butler et al. 216) While so many Native Americans converted to Christianity throughout history, especially in the nineteenth century, they did so for various reasons, as the following discussions seek to illustrate.

4.1.2.1

The Upstream People Between Two Worlds

After a while the white men came, just as the blackbirds do, and spread over the country...it matters not where one looks now one see white people...his [the Indian’s] only chance is to become as the white man. (Fletcher and LaFlesche 638) This quote illustrates Joseph’s realization that his tribe would have to adapt to the white mainstream society to survive. Furthermore, he had been thinking about their survival in white society for many years. Convinced of the Sacred Legend’s teaching that always ended with the phrase, “And the people thought” and reflecting what to say to his people for a long time, he finally instructed them, as he did his children, his life’s philosophy: Look back on the lives of your fathers and grandfathers; then look at yourselves, and see how far you have gone ahead, and seeing this, do not stop and turn back to them, but go forward. Look ahead and you will see nothing but the white man. The future is full of the white man, and we shall be as nothing before them. Do not think that if anyone cheats you or does you wrong, that you will do the same to him. Look out for yourselves. Take care of yourselves. (qtd. in Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 37) Since the eighteenth century, the Omaha, with a population of around 1,200 people, occupied large strips of land in northeast Nebraska and northwest Iowa, where they had established permanent villages and controlled the fur trade with the French and Spanish on the Upper Missouri River. They lived in earth lodges and buffalo-hide tipis, and the village was divided into ten clans. However, contact with the Europeans resulted in a smallpox epidemic at the

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turn of the nineteenth century and reduced the tribe’s population to one-third of its members. The years between 1840 and 1848 were difficult times for the Omaha tribe as their semi-annual hunting of fur animals, a significant source of income through trading for ammunition and supplies, diminished. “The poor hunt of 1844” forced the Omaha to the brink of survival as they were constantly on the move and at which times other tribes took over their living space. The Superintendent of Indian Affairs wrote that the Omaha “have no resting place” and that they “are a poor dispirited people” on the brink of “starving and beset by diseases and enemies” (qtd. in Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 9). Moreover, although the Omaha leaders had seriously been considering selling parts of their lands to settle in a permanent place since 1842, the requests sent to Washington went unanswered. The government upheld the policy that the Indians were separate nations and made treaties with tribe after tribe, much as European countries had long signed treaties with each other. Negotiation between independent nations, however, assumes that in each nation there are definite persons who can exercise authority and speak for the whole group. Also, such negotiation is possible only when two parties understand each other through a common language or through some person who can take the ideas expressed in their one language and give the same meaning in the other language. (ibid 9-10) Thus, the negotiations depended on the skills of interpreters, who were most often mixed bloods who understood spoken English better than written English. According to Green, “in a large proportion of cases he was unfamiliar with the white man’s legal terms and phraseology,” which, meant as it often turned out, that “they signed something quite different from the actual written statement.” It should be noted that the wording was a source of misunderstanding in the treaties because they were vaguely formulated, and most indigenous people had a different understanding of and relationship to the land. Therefore, it is not surprising that “a frequent source of error was the fact that the Omaha dialect had no word which could be used as territory. [Nor], did they understand the distinctions the white men made between states and territories” (Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 10). Nevertheless, in 1854 the U.S. granted approximately 300,000 acres of land near the border to Missouri (seventy miles north of Omaha City) in exchange for the Omaha tribe signing a treaty ceding their hunting grounds north of the Platte and west of Missouri.

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

As part of the treaty agreement, some of the land was sectioned off by Presbyterian Church leaders, who then sold it and built a mission school in 1857 with the proceeds of the sale. Once they were settled, Joseph built an earth lodge somewhat further away from the reservation. He planned to build a “whole village of frame houses in order to show how the white men lived” (ibid 25). According to scholars, he completed his two-story frame house in 1857, which was “the first time a Plains Indian had built his own frame house.” By 1861, nineteen more houses had been built (ibid). Some of the Omaha who were at odds with Iron Eye’s decisions and policies spoke of “Joe’s village,” labeling his part of the reservation “The Make-Believe-White-Man’s Village” (Green, “The Make-Believe-White-Man’s Village” 242). As Alice Fletcher observed, the notion of land and property ownership was novel to the Omaha, since to them, it was “no more to be owned than was a shower of rain” (Fletcher qtd. in Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 163). Thus, while conservative members of the tribe often criticized him for paying lip service to the U.S. government and its “paper chiefs,” Chief Joseph Iron Eye converted to Christianity and moved from the traditional Omaha earth lodge into a frame house that he built and did some farming. However, he never lost sight of his identity as an Omaha and thus “refused to fully mimic the white way of life, even though they took allotments, built houses, and sent their children to school” (Milner, II 182). For the most part, Joseph made a conscious effort to ensure that his children grew up with the “traditional Omaha reverence toward the mysterious forces of nature” (Herzog 225). As a result of his nurturing guidance and encouragement, they all became successful in both worlds. As he once said, “I was always sure that my sons and daughters would live to see the time when they would have to mingle with the white people” (Fletcher and LaFlesche 634). His awareness of the dramatic socio-political transformations forced him to make difficult decisions regarding whether to take part in traditional ceremonies or forgo the ancient customs. For example, Joseph began staying home from hunting, not only due to the scarcity of the animals they relied on for their existence, but also to demonstrate to the Omahas that in order to survive, they also needed to learn other ways of earning their livelihood in the white culture. This included learning to trade using the white man’s tools and knowledge, as well as to pay attention to what the white man said and “to give careful thought to the things in ‘God’s book’” (Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 27). He encouraged them to trust the missionaries who he genuinely believed were good people wanting

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to help the Indians. He and his wife Mary Gale encouraged and supported their children’s education in the white culture because they realized that it would promote them and their future in white society. As Susan reveals in a speech held to a white audience in 1886, her parents’ motivation for encouraging their children to attend school, “they cannot speak English, but they felt the need of education and did not want us to go through what they had experienced” (la Flesche, “My Childhood and Womanhood” 78). Chief Iron Eye’s attitude clearly demonstrates his awareness that change was inevitable and that the survival of his children and the Omaha’s future depended on being educated in white society. His vision for his family and people is also exemplary of cultural translation to which the discussion now turns. Cultural translation is a concept that denotes the process of transformation—linguistic or otherwise—in a given culture, whereby those involved “emerge from their encounter changed, different at the end of the act from what they were at its beginning” (ibid 7). Thus, a translation perspective can highlight specific structures of difference: heterogeneous discursive spaces within a society, internal counter-discourse, and even the discursive forms of acts of resistance. Furthermore, the concept of translation is not only applicable between languages, as constitutive parts of cultures, but may be extended and applied as a bridge/negotiated between different cultures. As the discipline of history has become “increasingly transnational13 in its orientation, translation/transformation [can also be] understood as a specific, historical

13

Without going too much into depth here, it should however be noted that within the context of transnational orientations, different scholars of American Indian literary studies argue that “the transnational turn fundamentally seeks to unmoor intellectual work from national orientations that imagines America as a unique nation destined to achieve the enduring bliss of liberal republicanism and to serve as a model for the rest of the world’s peoples as they struggle – willingly or otherwise- to emulate the righteous path of American progress” (Bauerkemper 396-397). Joseph Bauerkemper points out that within the study of American Indian literatures a “somewhat parallel and thoroughly divergent scholarly narrative” has been unfolding and has become the “dominant paradigm of American Indian literary studies” that has “primarily consisted of a turn away from the national” (ibid 397). Whereas, other scholars such as Daniel Heath Justice, on the other hand, similarly emphasizes the socio-political and cultural diversity of the national by arguing that “a localized indigeneity is, by its very nature, also profoundly transnational” (qtd. in ibid 398). Robert Warrior says that “in effect our nationalism is born out of native transnationalism, the flow and exchange of ideas and politics across our respective nations’ borders” (ibid 399).

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

process associated with colonialism and decolonization, missionary history, and concept transfer” (Sturge and Bachmann-Medick 11).14 The concept of cultural translation did not emerge from traditional translation theory but rather from the criticism of what translation is not. It was first mentioned in the 1920s by Walter Banjamin in his seminal essay “The task of translator” in which Benjamin argues that translation has neither “to do with communication and its purpose is not to carry meaning” pointing out that “[n]either the original [text] nor the translation are fixed and enduring categories.” Benjamin’s ideas impacted and influenced deconstructionist and postcolonial theories from which the concept of cultural translation developed and was coined by one of its most prominent scholars – Homi Bhabha (Buden et al. 200).15 An example of how cultural translation can go awry with devastating outcomes is when assumptions are made regarding how the ideas expressed in one language are not the same in the other. This was often the case when Native Americans were forced to concede their lands through negotiations with the U.S. government, especially in the nineteenth century.

4.1.2.2

Borderlands and Menace of Settler Colonialism

The project of colonialism has always involved a transgression and reconstruction of borders — from the initial penetration of established bound-

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Sturge contends, moreover, that “It is certainly clear that today’s situation is much more complex and blurs the boundaries between disciplines to a far greater extent. Even the same voices within translation studies, interested in a “cultural turn” in translation studies, were naming a translational turn in cultural studies” (ibid, 3). The term “transculturation,” was coined by Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz in the 1940s to describe what happens in the contact zone. This concept involves a process of cultural transformation as in the creation of new cultures or societies that result from intercultural conflict and (ex)change. It involves discussions of politics, language, community, nation, class, and cultural identity. Moreover, it is difficult to ignore debates on the question of translation being dealt with in an interdisciplinary perspective, the implications of which are not only theoretical, but “indicate the large scale on which translational approaches pervade the various disciplines of the humanities, thereby putting into scholarly practice the first step towards a “translational turn” (Sturge and Bachmann-Medick 12). In the context of globalization, the question of translation is fundamental as a category that has the advantage of “explicitly addressing the differences and antagonisms between disciplines or schools of thought (ibid). As Chakrabarty as pointed out, “the ‘translational turn’ in the humanities finds its greatest scope at the points where disciplines make themselves pluralized and translatable within an emerging global society” (ibid, 13) which is an interesting point to consider.

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aries to the erection of new ones. The not-so-subtle sexual metaphors in the previous sentence are no Freudian slip. Historians of colonialism have noticed for many decades that imperial discourse is saturated with sexual and gendered imagery. (Jacobs, “Crossing Intimate Borders: Gender, Settler Colonialism and the Home” 165)16 Throughout the course of history, the functions and roles of the border have continuously changed and thus, can also be understood within their historical contexts because they are influenced by history, politics, power, social and cultural issues. Furthermore, from a globalized intercultural perspective, in which places are traveled by people of different socio-cultural and religious backgrounds and beliefs, cultures themselves can develop into spaces of translation, such as places of migration, paths, and zones, institutions, and anywhere else they are used to interpret and transform people’s habits and perceptions of themselves and their surroundings following the needs and expectations of a nation or society. In other words, people tend to express themselves within their individual cultural and historical spaces that are reflected explicitly in many ways. According to Homi K. Bhabha, social differences are not simply given to experience through an already authenticated cultural tradition; they are the signs of the emergence of community envisaged as a project – at once a vision and a construction – that takes you ‘beyond’ yourself in order to return, in a spirit of revision and reconstruction. (Bhabha 2) Thus, he cautions that

16

Kolodny contends that the crossing of national borders that were prompted by migratory movements, in addition to the coexistence of heterogeneous social and cultural environments, bring about encounters that produce otherness, as well as symbolic exchanges. The encounter of otherness inevitably refers to the initial “encounter” between Europeans and Native Peoples on the continent that began at the time of first cultural contact when “the peoples of pre-colonial North America repeatedly engaged in exchanges of vocabulary, stories, and oral lore as they traded with or invaded one another, or simply migrated into another group’s territory. This hybridizing process was only accelerated when, under pressure from land-hungry Euro-Americans, native peoples withdrew-or, more often were forcibly removed – from traditional territories to new areas or reservations” (Kolodny, “Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: Notes toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers” 6).

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

the representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. [Rather] the social articulation or difference, from the minority perspective is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation. (ibid) Due to its relevance for narrative inquiry, the specificity and qualities of places lived, and the impact of the experiences that influence what is told in the narratives are of key importance. As Keith H. Basso writes in his book Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache As places animate the ideas and feelings of persons who attend to them, these same ideas and feelings animate the places on which attention has been bestowed, and the movements of this process-inward toward facets of the self, outward toward aspects of the external world, alternatively both together -cannot be known in advance. When places are actively sensed, the physical landscape becomes wedded to the landscape of the mind, to the roving imagination, and where the latter may lead is anybody’s guess. (Basso 107) For those living on confiscated lands, that are border(land) spaces or transcultural contact zones, scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa have further illustrated notions of living a life in liminal spaces, on the periphery, or “Borderlands.” The author describes living such a life in the following passage(s) of Borderlands/La Frontera: I am a border woman, I grew up between two cultures, the Mexican (with a heavy Indian influence) and the Anglo (as a member of a colonized people in our own territory). I have been straddling that tejas-Mexican border, and others all my life. It’s not a comfortable territory to live in this place of contradictions (Anzaldua vii). Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D., like Anzaldúa, is aware of living “between two worlds.” In The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, Alvord’s “Navajo world starkly contrasted with the ways [she and her sisters] saw [themselves] portrayed in the outside world” on television and in the movies, as the following passage shows: My two sisters and I would sit on the living room floor watching shoot-‘emup westerns on television seeing “Indians,” who were always the “bad guys,”

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get caught by “good” cowboys and soldiers. They wore very little clothing, carried bows and arrows, and kept the “scalps” of the enemies they killed.   Navajo people are very modest and would never travel around unclothed like that. Most of all, we knew it wasn’t right to touch anyone dead, so the idea of carrying around a scalp, an actual piece of a dead person, shocked us. It never entered our minds – until much later – that they were meant to be us. (Alvord 18) The traumatic images projected on television contradicted “the ways in which we were instructed to live and the wonders of our Navajo world,” which were not aligned with “the actors [who] were rarely native people, so they didn’t look like us. Believe it or not, we never imagined that the ‘Indians’ in the movies and television shows had anything to do with us, [but] step by painful step I was learning to negotiate a path between cultures” (ibid). Arviso’s childhood memories painfully reveal how many of the people caught up within border spaces are “continually reminded of the simple truth” about their lives which, for Arviso, “was one of my earliest realizations” of the following: In my two worlds I am two different people, defined in different ways—in one by my clan and people, in the other by my education and worldly accomplishments. In one by blood, in the other by paper. In one of them I am a dispenser of a very technologically advanced Western style of medicine. In the other, people are healed by songs, herbs, sand paintings, and ceremonies held by firelight in the deep of winter. (ibid 8) Together, the experiences of bicultural people such as Arviso and Anzaldúa living their lives in border spaces can thus reveal the damaging effects of these exclusionary spaces on the cultural identities of marginalized and stereotyped groups such as Native Americans, Hispanics, Blacks, and “others.” Marie Louise Pratt elaborates on the impact of bicultural spaces in her essay “Arts of the Contact Zone” (1991), which she conceptualizes to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today. (Pratt 34) The emergent power struggles in Pratt’s contact zones often “occur across boundaries—of rank, nation, ethnic, religious, and gendered difference—that

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

are both constructed and redefined in the encounter” (Watson 20) – often resulting in policies of “inclusion, incorporation, and validation, as well as of exclusion, appropriation, and dispossession” (Minh-ha, “An Acoustic Journey” 1). Thus, the “‘borderlands’ link the study of ethnicity and immigration inextricably to the study of international relations and empire. At these borders, foreign relations do not take place outside the boundaries of America, but instead constitute American nationality” (Kaplan, “Left Alone with America: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture” 16-17). Leaning on these conceptual frames, reference(s) to borders in “Gold Fever!” further include categorical concepts of geographic, national, territorial, and symbolic references and their negotiations that allow them to be conceived as places for encounters of otherness. As such, borders are complex spatial and social phenomena that are not static but are highly dynamic. Through this lens, translating physical borders into cultural and political boundaries can have different roles and functions and manifest in various ways. They can be material or non-material and may appear in the form of a brick wall or a building structure. While a brick wall may symbolize suppression and feel limiting to their sense of freedom for some, it may represent security for others (Newman 128). Such was the case for Susan’s father, Chief Iron Eyes, who, after the tribe had been moved to the reservation, moved his family from the traditional Omaha earth lodge into a two-story house built before Susan’s birth to show that he embraced the white man’s culture. However, for Joseph, the move not only symbolized but was a massive step for him and his family toward the white man’s world. Thus, while boundaries can also be symbolic such as Joseph’s two-story house, conceptual categories of inclusion and exclusion should also be considered, such as alternative models that can reveal processes involved in unbalanced power relations in exclusionary spaces. These have emerged among Canadian and Australian historians of settler colonialism that demanded Native Americans to lose their “Indianness” in the process of “civilization.” The California Gold Rush was a catalyst that dramatically transformed the nineteenth-century American West, affecting the lives of everyone who traveled or already lived there. Following the end of the Civil War, miners were still heading west to stake their claims in gold and silver mining. The Homestead Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, made it easy for miners and their families to settle on 160 acres of “free” land. They could live on the undeveloped land for five years by paying eighteen dollars in fees. The only other requirement was building a home and making

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improvements before they could own it. The ideas behind homesteading and the impact of the reforms and practices associated with it forced indigenous people onto reservations and demanded that they “reject their heathen past and embrace the Jeffersonian, pietistic, rural-American way of life” (Tong 32). According to scholars, [t]he thrust of continental domination was gathering momentum as the stoic and agrarian age of Washington and Jefferson gave way to the pellmell mentality of the Gilded Age. Consequently, during their early reservation years the Omahas saw land losses, tribal fragmentation, patterns of forced and voluntary acculturation, the gradual demise of the buffalo hunt, and usurpation of their traditional sources of power. (ibid 24) Thus, in colonial discourse, Western concepts of abstract space have provided a rationale to fill and control so-called empty spaces that were often the home and places of indigenous people with colonizers and settlers. Settler colonialism’s devastating acts forced the La Flesche family even further towards a cultural borderland in terms of how scholars such as Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Zuval-Davis define settler colonialism as a form of imperialism that did not result in international empires, but in societies in which Europeans have settled, where their descendants have remained politically dominant over indigenous peoples, and where a heterogeneous society has developed in class, ethnic and racial terms. (Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis 3) Although focusing on Canada, this notion is also applicable to the context of the American West. Moreover, Australian anthropologist Patrick Wolfe has also developed these concepts into a powerful framework for examining indigenous societies that can be applied to understanding the impact of imperialist processes on indigenous societies worldwide. In his critical essay “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Wolfe contends that the driving force behind settler colonialism is “the logic of elimination of native societies” (P. Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” 2). Although Wolf’s argument is directed at the Australian aboriginal societies, the following is similarly applicable to First Nation peoples of North America: The primary object of settler-colonization is the land itself rather than the surplus value to be derived from mixing native labour with it. Though, in practice, Indigenous labour was indispensable to Europeans, settler-colo-

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

nization is at base a winner-take-all project whose dominant feature is not exploitation but replacement. The logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical events that might otherwise appear distinct- invasion is a structure not an event.” (P. Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology 163) In comparing the Native Americans with Black people of African ancestry, he says, “As opposed to enslaved people, whose reproduction augmented their owners’ wealth, Indigenous people obstructed settlers’ access to land, so their increase was counterproductive” (P. Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” 3). Conversely, unlike the Black people who had been brought to America against their will, Indigenous people lived their lives on the land where they had been living for many centuries before the arrival of the Europeans. Therefore, “the primary motive for elimination is not race (or religion, ethnicity, grade of civilization, etc.) but access to territory” and to establish a predominantly white society (ibid). The history of European conquest and land confiscation in what is now the United States is based on human, mainly male, dominance over the land and its resources. This idea is gendered in a patriarchal context, as feminist critic Annette Kolodny and others demonstrated in the 1970s, by which land is associated with the female. Whereby both land and woman are to be penetrated, subdued, and controlled. In addition to its Western historical association with women, the land is also linked to Native peoples. In colonial propaganda, all three – land, women, and indigenous people – are rendered passively desirable, available to be taken through seduction or force. (H. D. S. Wong 61) The concept of settler colonialism is pertinent for discussions involving cultural identities. It is from this viewpoint on transformations that the notion or idea of ‘border’ takes on a significant role, mainly as it addresses forms of what Amy Kaplan dubbed “sentimentalized imperialism” that empowered European-American white middle-class women in the project of exploitative expansionist practices in government-subsidized institutions that created removal policies that took (kidnapped) children by force and placed them in residential schools. Feminist scholars such as Ann Laura Stoler and Margaret D. Jacobs have offered multiple and complex ways to examine obscured aspects of settler colonialism within spaces, where socio-political and cultural concepts of identity (based on race, class, religion) and ‘otherness’ are negotiated. The concept of reproduction and “the sex ratio imbalance” illustrates

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further “how crucial women’s labor and household reproduction in the establishment of Anglo American hegemony in the American West was” (Hurtado 2). Stolar’s work,17 influenced Jacob’s approach to “how intimate domains figure in the making of racial categories and the management of imperial rule”(Stoler 23). Whereas Jacobs’ book, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940, compares white women’s reform agendas in Australia with the American West. Jacob’s comparative study addresses the removal of indigenous children from their families in both contexts and questions how and why women in both countries supported the harsh policies of separating (kidnapping) children from their families. Her use of “maternalism” as the key organizing idea is also reflective of one of the significant concepts inherent in the Cult of Domesticity’s prescriptive codex and in “Gold Fever!”. In their justification of indigenous child removal, “[a]uthorities blithely moved from the ‘inclusionary impulses’ of benevolent humanitarian rhetoric to the ‘exclusionary practices’ of segregating indigenous peoples and declaring them a menace” (Stoler, qtd. in ibid 48). In the same vein, Commissioner Morgan declared that [t]o leave these thousands of children to grow up in ignorance, superstition, barbarism, and even savagery, is to maintain a perpetual menace to our western civilization and to fasten upon the rapidly developing States of the West. […] To educate them is to remove this burden, this source of perplexity, this menace. (qtd. in ibid) Thus, by viewing domestic space as a contact zone and site of colonial relations, it is possible to identify how discourses of domesticity (cloaked in the rhetoric of maternalism) are expressed and how they contributed to exploitative and imperialistic expansionist practices through missionary work and other socio-political and cultural reforms. In other words, “[b]y dispossessing Indian communities of their land and means of sustaining themselves, Indians were then faced with the necessity of participating within the dominant economic system” (Jacobs, Gender & Colonialism in the American West 3). Integral to assimilating them into the dominant white culture were Christian 17

Particularly Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (2002), has been influential in shaping Jacob’s approach to the complexity of various roles women played in colonization as teachers, missionaries, and so on.

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

white women working in reform organizations such as the National Indian Association, founded in 1879, and missionaries. “In short, white women were charged with a maternalistic role in reaching [Native Americans] on these intimate frontiers” (ibid 4). Furthermore, by [b]elieving that Indigenous epistemologies were merely pagan superstition, the colonizers sought to eradicate those epistemologies by imposing ‘modern’ education and Christian evangelism. Their goal was to eliminate Indigenous cultures and bring modernity and progress to Indigenous peoples. (Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing 5) Although the menace of settler colonialism’s scars has not yet fully healed, current evidence of the devastation it has left on families can still be felt and is now under investigation. Many players were involved in the extermination, removal, and forced acculturation policies of Native Americans in the nineteenth century. The following discussion seeks to reveal the significant role white Christian middle and upper-class women played in fulfilling their expected roles as True Women. The dictates of the Cult of True Womanhood emphasized women as keepers of the hearth and home where they were considered the better teachers. Thus, acculturation would begin in [t]he homes of camp Indians [who] are to be reached mostly through our school girls, who are to be the future wives and mothers of the race, and on their advancement will depend largely the future condition of the Indian. All history has proven that as the mother is so is the home, and that a race will not rise above the home standard. (qtd. in Jacobs, “Maternal Colonialism: White Women and Indigenous Child Removal in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940” 465) Many women reformers believed that their domestic skills combined with teaching best qualified them as “social housekeepers” to establish and work in organizations associated with Indian reform, helping Native American women and their families which will be discussed in the following.

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4.1.2.3

Indian Reform: “Social Housekeepers” and the “Great White Mother” 18

Education and example, and pre-eminently, the force of Christian life and Christian faith in the heart, can do in one generation most of that which evolution takes centuries to do. (Gates, qtd. in Prucha 153)19 This comment by reformer and philanthropist Merril Gates reiterates the significant argument throughout this dissertation that religion was a central tenet of American reform policies and resonated several widespread assumptions in the nineteenth century, namely, the notion that “Euro-American greatness was a direct product of the civilizing influence of the Gospel” (Coleman 41). The years following the Civil War were considered a significant turning point in federal Indian policy. According to scholars, whereas some Americans believed that unless the Indians were converted to Christianity and educated as whites, they were damned! Others sincerely wanted “to replace policies of removal, confinement, and extermination with homes, Christianity, and even citizenship” (qtd. in Adams 154). Thus, like the organizations that sought to promote the nation’s health through reforms in the nineteenth century, so were educational institutions and missionaries that sought to promote Christian values and bring progress and civilization to indigenous tribes in North America. These organizations were often led by white upper and middle-class women who used them as platforms to benefit society and extend their roles outside of the private sphere in support of various benevolent causes, such as the founding women, who established the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA). As previous discussions in “Gold Fever!” regarding women’s involvement in various early Christian reform groups, clubs, and associations have illustrated, women’s benevolent activities /engagements taught them the skills necessary to speak before larger audiences, successfully raise funds, and chair business meetings. These skills were essential and came in handy for the activist engagements of the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA), established in the spring of 1879 by a group of women educators,

18 19

The Women’s National Indian Association used this term to describe themselves. Merrill Edwards Gates served as President of Rutgers University, and Amherst College. He was later appointed chairman and then secretary of the Board of Indian Commissioners, where he served from 1899 to 1912.

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activists, and reformers such Mary Lucinda Bonney and Amelia Stone Quinton in Philadelphia. According to historians, the WNIA “offers one of the strongest examples of women’s associational and maternalist political power in the nineteenth century” (qtd. in Adams 154).20 Their main concern and interest grew from the disturbing reports of the violation of federal treaties by the competing railroad companies and white settlers eager to grab Native American territories in the West, which provoked them to join forces and attempt to remedy the injustices. They pledged themselves to the following goals: First: The adoption, by the government of a policy towards the Indian which, founded upon principles of equity and justice, should gradually bring them under the protection of the law, as enjoyed by other races among us. Second: The founding by means of education and mission work among the Indians, their speedy civilization, Christianization and enfranchisement. (Johnson 10) They began by petitioning the U.S. government by addressing its binding obligation of treaties, granting legal status to Indians, and protecting the law, lands in severalty, and education. They were convinced that these were the necessary tools to “rescue the Indian from oppression” and believed that treaties “hindered their civilization process.” Therefore, they were vehemently opposed to the reservation system that had increased under Ulysses S. Grant’s administration. Further, they petitioned for Indian rights under the law. Many of their requests were later ratified and made into law, making them “the first major Indian reform group to organize nationally.” Their engagements did not go unnoticed, as Senator Henry L. Dawes, who authored the 1887 Dawes severalty Act, praised their ideas, saying that the new government’s Indian policy “was born of and nursed by the Women’s National Indian Association” (Mathes, “Nineteenth Century Women and Reform: The Women’s National Indian Association” 5). The following address by Governor Morris to the Women’s National Indian Association also complemented the

20

For the history of the Women’s National Indian Association, see Helen M. Wanken, “Woman’s Sphere and Indian Reform: The Women’s National Indian Association, 18751901” (Ph.D. diss, 1981.); for the early years of the Connecticut Indian Association, see Ellen Terry Johnson, Historical Sketch of the Connecticut Indian Association from 1881 to 1888.

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association on achieving their goals and reminds those present at the meeting to “carefully consider the situation of the Indian, his former treatment by the government, his original relation to the country, his property rights in the lands, his former means of obtaining a living, etc. His condition has not been improved by contact with the white people for three hundred years” (Swartwont 37-38). Therefore, he demands that [i]t is the duty of the government to first teach the Indians the simplest forms of civilized life, how to cultivate the soil, to perform the simpler forms of mechanical industries, to adapt themselves to home life rather than the tribal relation, and in this way to become self-supporting. This cannot be accomplished by force; the attempt for three hundred years has been a complete failure. The old class of Indian agents should be replaced by men capable of instructing the Indian in a better way of living; men who will adapt themselves to the Indian’s mental capacity and develop in him a love for civilized life. (ibid) However bigoted in his assertion of the Indian’s mental capacities to become civilized, Governor Morris’s address points out the simplistic adaptability of Native Americans if provided with the proper guidance to which the women of the WNIA felt called upon to oblige. Taking a “maternalist” approach, WNIA members strove to instill “the values of white Christian society” by transforming their homes, families, and economies through various projects such as the Home-Building and Loan Department and the field matron program.21 Through its appeal to “domestic ideology that made women into the moral caretakers of the nation,” the WNIA assumed a certain socio-political authority to initiate change. However, while many of the women themselves were still not recognized by nineteenth-century society as full-fledged citizens with equal rights; they wanted to “enhance[] their own political life” while at the same time “treat[ing] the Indians as children who needed to become civilized adults” (qtd. in Adams 155). Thus, while some historians have argued that the WNIA’s accomplishments offer one of the strongest examples of “women’s associational and maternalist political power in the nineteenth century,” on the one hand, they also acknowledge its limitations on the other. As Valerie Sherer

21

The field matron program was established in 1890 to promote the assimilation and Christianization of American Indian women through the introduction of values inherent in the The Cult of Domesticity.

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Mathes points out, “one finds little Indian voice in the WNIA literature, making it impossible to measure individual Indian’s responses to the efforts of these women reformers” (ibid 156).22 The WNIA often chose Native American women to sponsor their education. As President of the Connecticut Association, Kinney argued on behalf of educating Native American women in the medical field, insisting that they had an inherent talent for medicine. According to her romanticized image of [t]he quiet dignity of the Indian woman, the soft, gliding step, the strict obedience, outgrowth of centuries of submission, the eye trained to observe the varying changes of the human face, the hands deft and skillful, the patient, willing feet that know no laggings, the natural reticence of speech, have marked them for ages as nature’s true physicians and nurses and now science claims them as faithful coadjutors. There seems no limit to their sphere of future usefulness, here, where civilization needs them; there, in the homes of their own people, upon the arid plain and among the sterile rocks of the far West. (Swartwont 47-48) Because of the Association’s strong belief in Native American women’s natural gifts as healers, they funded the training of nurses and their most famous protégé, Susan La Flesche, who was an “insider” of Omaha culture, had the edge over white doctors and healthcare providers. Together, the graduation of these new healthcare givers provided testimony to the Association’s success in Indian civilization, which was their main goal-namely, to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream society through Christianization. Furthermore, these female reformers were fulfilling their roles as True Women, reflecting Catharine Beecher’s “Treatise on Domestic Economy” and American Woman’s Home (1868). In their roles, they became “social housekeepers,” manifesting consciously/subconsciously nineteenth-century societal expectations of the Cult of Domesticity’s visions. As mentioned, the WNIA’s “maternalistic” approach echoed the Cult of Domesticity’s “gendered expectations” (Adams 154155). However, it should be noted that although most of the graduates returned

22

Furthermore, in a relatively recent study on the WNIA contained in a volume of evaluations edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes, of the organization’s “mixed legacy,” scholars foremost claim that whereas it “provided certain women with an outlet for political participation, the WNIA promoted a strident policy of assimilation-one that had devastating consequences for Native communities.” (ibid 155-156)

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to their homes, most were not able to apply the lessons of domesticity in meeting the challenges of their environments, which were very different from the schools’ (Trennert 289).23 Susan, who, on the other hand, was aware of her more privileged position. She emulated this spirit of domesticity and desire to help the Omaha people in their homes, where she felt that her services would/could have more impact. She wrote of her desire to “help the women in their housekeeping, teach them a few practical points about cooking and nursing, and especially about cleanliness. I feel that as a physician I can do a great deal more than as a mere teacher, for the home is the foundation of all things for the Indians, and my work I hope will be chiefly in the homes of my people” (Swartwont n.p.). Alice Cunningham Fletcher, who closely worked together with the La Flesche family, fell ill in 1883, suffering from bouts of inflammatory rheumatism during one of her extended stays at the Omaha reservation, and it was Susan who nursed her back to health. Convinced of Susan’s talents, Fletcher, who knew Sarah Thomson Kinney well, consulted her about sponsoring Susan’s medical education. Kinney, who was aware that the government paid $167 per school year for Indian students enrolled at Hampton and Carlisle, sought similar funding for Susan. Her efforts, she argued, should appeal very powerfully to the benevolent, and particularly to the hearts of women. [Further], in undertaking it, we feel that we shall be doing real missionary work, and that in helping one woman, we shall through her Christian influence, reach help, and elevate her people. (Johnson 59) Kinney’s statement makes clear her intention that by educating Susan, she was civilizing and Christianizing the entire Omaha community. Further, she appealed to the committee by commending Susan’s character by saying that, “[i]n her sweet, quiet way, we feel she would minister not only to the physical needs of those for whom she cared, but for all their deeper wants she would strive to lead them to the Great Healer” (ibid). Susan would later fondly refer to Kinney as “mother-in-chief” in her correspondence April 2, 1888, with her that confirmed Kinney’s strong faith in her abilities and in a thank you letter from November 19, 1888, she wrote to Kinney upon acceptance to medical

23

Also see analysis see K. Tsianina Lomawaima, “Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools” 227-40 for gender-based assimilation practices in missionary and boarding schools. (Trennert 289)

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school for her strong engagement in the application process and procuring the necessary funding. I was very glad to get your letter, and it made me very happy to think I had so many mothers, who were going to take care of and help me. I cannot tell you how thankful I feel to all of you, and how glad to think that through me you will be helping so many people. It has always been a desire of mine to study medicine ever since I was a small girl, for even then I saw the need of my people for a good physician. (La Flesche, Susan La Flesche to Sara Thomson Kinney: Indian Letter 149, 165) The mothers she refers to were members of the Connecticut Indian Association. Susan’s childhood dream of helping her people was prompted by a cathartic / “initiating moment” that profoundly influenced her early decision and shaped the course of her life. She visited a very sick Indian woman when she was a child. The woman had repeatedly sent for the agency doctor and was promised that he would come. However, by morning the woman had died without receiving the care promised to her. Susan recalled witnessing the woman’s agonizing pain. She bitterly commented on the doctor’s indifference and negligence of his duties that lead to the woman’s unnecessary and tragic death. Susan entered the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in October 1886 and graduated from the three-year program at the top of her class (again) in August 1889.24 She often wrote letters home describing the curriculum and saying how much she enjoyed her favorite class, anatomy, which she jokingly 24

Susan’s education began at a boarding in New Jersey where she spent two and onehalf years at Elizabeth Institute with other American Indians under the guidance of assimilationist-minded teachers. After two years of training there, she was admitted to Hampton Institute from 1884 to 1886. The principal of the school, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, had been raised by missionary parents and was the well-known mentor of Booker T. Washington. According to scholars, “Armstrong’s Hampton was run much like an army boot camp” where the students (Native Americans and black students), were indoctrinated in the Puritan work ethic, and thereby expected to rise as early as 5 a.m. and work a full 12-hour day (Hauptman 1783-1784). They were taught vocational skills in separate groups. The boys learned carpentry, blacksmithing, farming and the girls learned housekeeping skills such as cooking and sewing. Furthermore, they had to wear military uniforms and were not permitted to speak in their native tongues. In spite of this strict regiment, Susan graduated as the salutatorian of her class and made the opening address, “My Childhood and Womanhood,” for which she was presented a gold medal by Mrs. J.W. Demorest of New York. and won the Demorest

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described to her sister Rosalie in a letter, “I don’t mind it at all in any way. I am going to wield the knife tonight - not the scalping knife, though. I like my studies very much indeed and don’t mind the dissecting room at all. We laugh and talk up there just as we do anywhere” (La Flesche, Susan La Flesche to Rosalie La Flesche). However, during a semester break following the completion of her second year in medical school, her life transformed again by a devastating outbreak of measles and two epidemics of la grippe or influenza, which kept me busy. There were some very bad cases, particularly among the adults, but there were only a few deaths of babies [...]. Most of the tribe were away from home at the time and had a hard time with it, as the snow was very deep. There were no fatal cases among the adults. (La Flesche, M.D., Medical Missionary 4-5) The following summer she describes a different scenario in which the situation took a turn for the worst, before showing signs of improvement. During the month of July I had 37 patients only, for I was away for a week’s vacation. In August I had 111; in September, 130; and this month, so far, 100 cases. I have had both acute and chronic cases, the principal ones, and a majority, being in the spring and fall. There have been epidemics of ‘epidemic catarrh’ or influenza, dysentery and cholera morbus among the adults, cholera uinfantm among the infants, and malarial fevers, the last epidemic being sore eyes, or muco-purulent opthalmia or conjunctivitis. (ibid 5) She informed Mrs. Kinney of the catastrophic sanitation and public health conditions and lamented that had her people trusted the white man’s medicine (which they did not), perhaps not so many would have died (La Flesche, Susan La Flesche to Sara Thomson Kinney: Indian Letter). However, Mrs. Kinney was all too aware of the Omaha’s skepticism of western remedies since they believed that the diseases originated from the whites. For those who had survived, however, Susan reported that although “the last disease has attacked all, regardless of age; […] it is now at an end and there were not as many as there might have been, for they followed my instruction

Prize for the best results (Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 125-128).

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to use separate towels and basins to prevent contagion (La Flesche, M.D., Medical Missionary 5-6).25 Eager to continue helping her people, Susan informed Kinney of her plans to return home after graduation from medical school, saying that “I want to do so much because there is so much to be done” (ibid). After graduation, she kept her word and happily returned to the reservation in Nebraska where there was plenty of work waiting for her. Her medical education was in such high demand that she took over most of the Office of Indian affairs’ workload within several months of her arrival. She describes this in the opening lines of her “Report of The Women’s National Indian Association” in which she informs them of her delight in returning and how her medical services have served her people. OMAHA Agency, NEB., October 24, 1891. Dear Friends: It has been almost a year since I wrote you officially, and to me it has been one of the shortest and happiest, as it has been so full of work and pleasure. I wish some of you were here to enjoy the balmy October air of this beautiful Indian-summer day; the air is so pure and exhilarating it gives new life to us who are fortunate enough to breathe it.   It has been two years since I returned from the East to engage in medical work among my people. I had a good many patients the first year, but this year I have a great deal more work to do, particularly this summer and fall. (ibid 4) In addition to reminiscing of her pleasure of being back among her people, she recalls her position as the school physician and the multi-purpose work space provided for her personal and professional use at the government school. The office built for me by the Government, for the accommodation of the school children is an exceedingly nice one, and very well furnished. It is a building 20 by 14 feet, wainscoted, walls hard finished, and everything, 25

In addition to what would become her life-long combat against diseases such as tuberculosis that transformed/spread more rapidly and spinning in epidemic proportions on reservations, she also took up her father’s fight against alcohol after he had banned it on the reservation several decades earlier.

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inside and out, is well finished. It is arranged like a drug store, as there are a great many Government drugs, a counter with drawers in it for bandages, absorbent cotton, and instrument. I have one drawer full of games, and underneath the counter it is all filled with scrapbooks and picture papers, while another drawer has my writing materials in it, ready for use and needed sometimes half a dozen times a day. On rainy days usually I have a great many visitors, and the scrap-books and magazines are brought into use, and also the games, as well as during evenings, when they want to spend a pleasant hour and have no other place to go to. So you see the office is used just as much by the tribe as by my children here. (ibid 6) Susan’s description of her early work is filled with pride: “I am enjoying my work exceedingly, and feel more interest in, and more attached to my people than ever before” (ibid 7). Nevertheless, her initial delight of being home and the eagerness she displays in her newly appointed position, takes a turn for the worst as the following discussion will illustrate.

4.1.3

“If you knew the conditions...”

Already beginning in the 1700s and well into the twentieth century, Christian missionaries provided medical treatments and healthcare services to Native Americans. Federal healthcare was provided to Native Americans by physicians whom the U.S. War Department employed within the contexts of epidemics and Indian removal to reservations and treaties that negotiated that the federal government provided such care in partial payment for the ceded lands.26 An overview by Laurence F. Schmeckebier of The Office of Indian Affairs from 1927 explaining the history and activities of the organization reports that [w]ith the change from the nomadic life to the more sedentary life of the reservations the health problem of the Indian population became more acute. When the Indian led a roving life the lace of sanitation was to a large degree counteracted by the frequent changes of camp site. After he was restricted to the bounds of the reservation and settled down in one place, dirt and refuse rapidly accumulated around his habitation, the water supply was not as pure, and he was unacquainted with the proper methods of

26

“The first recognition of the need of medical attention to the Indians was an appropriation of $12,000 made May 5, 1832 […], for purchasing ‘genuine vaccine matter’ and employing physicians to administer it” (Schmeckebier 228).

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preparing many of the rations issued to him. There is also reason to believe that much of the flour and bacon issued during the early days of the reservation system were of inferior quality, if not unfit for human consumption. (Schmeckebier 227) Furthermore, he points out the inaccessibility of suitable medical services in the report, saying that it was a common characteristic of the turn-of-thecentury reservation life. The significant changes in lifestyle taking place for many Native American tribes since contact with the Euro-American did not only begin with “the introduction of the horse and firearms” but included dependency on the government to provide food. In her article, “The Nutritional Impacts of European Contact on the Omaha: A Continuing Legacy,” Christiane E. Miewald argues that after being confined to their reservation in 1855, the Omaha continued to remain largely self-sufficient in food production. During the early years of the reservation until the turn of the century, the Omaha were highly successful farmers, producing surpluses of cash and garden variety crops. (Miewald 71) Furthermore, she points out how the situation changed over time so that [t]oday, few Omaha are able to produce their own food as most of their land has either been sold or leased. The tribe’s dependency on processed, storebought foods and government commodities has increased dramatically in the last fifty years. (ibid) Miewald concludes that “associated with this dependency, is a marked increase in chronic dietary diseases such as diabetes and obesity (ibid). Thus, the sedentary lifestyle on the reservation and inferior quality of the food that no longer resembled what the Omaha and other Native American tribes were accustomed to, as well as “the number of physicians was grossly inadequate for the number of reservations, and there was little ancillary staff. A few hospitals and infirmaries were constructed, often associated with boarding schools for Indian children” (Johnston 199). More often than not, there was inadequate professional supervision of the agency physicians and the efficiency of their work depended entirely on the character of the physicians appointed. By 1880, the number of physicians employed was seventy-seven, and there were only four hospitals in the entire service. (Schmeckebier 228).

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Dr. Charles Eastman, who was among the first Native Americans to be certified as a physician, worked as an agency physician for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Indian Health Service on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the late nineteenth century.27 His description of the catastrophic conditions at the agency provides a view of the difficulties faced by medical workers. The dire circumstances he describes would also later compel Susan to write to the government and personally go before the Secretary of the Interior on behalf of her people. The doctors who were in the service in those days had an easy time of it. They scarcely ever went outside of the agency enclosure and issued their pills and compounds after the most casual inquiry. As late as 1890, when the government sent me out as physician to ten thousand Ogallala Sioux and Northern Cheyennes at Pine Ridge agency, I found my predecessor still practicing his profession through a small hole in the wall between his office and the general assembly room of the Indians. One of the first things I did was to close that hole; and I allowed no man to diagnose his own trouble or choose his pills. (Eastman 141) Moreover, to the medicine supplied by the Indian Service being “either stale or of the poorest quality,” Dr. Eastman recounts how he had to buy his own medical supplies, which included “a full set of surgical instruments” (ibid). Furthermore, he recalls that due to the “lack of hospital facilities, as well as the prejudice of the people, I did operate on several of the severely injured after the massacre at Wounded Knee” (ibid 143). In praise of natural healers, he argued that “the old time ‘medicine man’ was really better than the average white doctor in those days, for, although the treatment was largely suggestive, his herbs were harmless” (ibid). Like Eastman, Susan was pretty much on her own with many patients to attend to and responsible for travelling costs often at her own expense. Furthermore, she provided medical services round the clock to as many as 1200 patients, including Whites. As she told Sara Thomson Kinney upon her visit in 1891, “my office hours are any and all hours of day and night” (la Flesche, Susan La Flesche to Sara Thomson Kinney: Indian Letter). Susan not only delivered babies, provided medical care to the sick in her practice, but she made house calls to her patients day and night, many miles away on the reservation. In an address to the graduating class of 1892 of the Hampton 27

He is well known for caring for Indians after the Wounded Knee massacre.

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Normal and Agricultural Institute, she spoke about “My Work as Physician Among my People,” saying that many of her patient’s homes were so far away and that as the following illustrates, she regreted not being able to fully meet the demands of her patients. Her report to The Women’s National Indian Association Association Among the Omaha Indians provides glimpses into her hectic schedule and varied work among her people: I have not been able to make as many visits as I should wish, on account of having had not team here. I had to finish my own horses, buggy, harness, and feed for my horses, which made it rather hard. In a great many cases I hired a team, which made it rather expensive; in other I walked where the patients were but a mile or so away. In other cases, when the patients were very ill their friends came after me with their own teams and wagons, and in other cases still, where the patients had only some trifling ailment, they themselves came after the medicine. The latter is usually the case. I have made a great many more visits than I did the first year, and as I am able to keep my own horses now, I am able to do away with all these inconveniences.   Some times there is more work in one month than in another. Some days (only a few times, though,) there may be only half a dozen or ten in; but almost all the time it averages ten a day. Most of these come for medical treatment; some for help and advice in business matters of all kinds; others to have letters read for them, or interpreted, or to have letters written. Every one comes for a purpose. (La Flesche, M.D., Medical Missionary 5) As she explains, not only do many of her patients require medical attention, but also help in other areas of their lives. For instance, in her mediatory role of translator and cultural broker, she translated and wrote letters to government agencies on their behalf. She also interpreted for them, or negotiated various business contracts and rental agreements, as her following diary entry shows: Nov. 19th / 21st Chas. Robinson and wife came in to see about my renting a home for them. Called up Jos. Merick but he wanted too much rent for no conveniences. I advised Joseph over the phone to put in more conveniences and enlarge the house – said he wanted me to ask the office to give him permission to do so. Mr. Small said he could.  

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Called up Mr. Baiff about church windows. Went to Little Cooks with Emmet and June to settle dispute with their renter – it was left to arbitrators. […] I did interpreting. I got back at 5:15. Sam Grant said his wife was very ill and she wanted me to come over - took Dr. Reau with me and went in auto. Was dark. She was in bad shape - the baby was alright. I made examination and we told them they must be brought into hospital in a.m. They brought her over the next a.m. I was all worn out and got very sick. Went to bed as soon as I got home supperless. Furthermore, it can be inferred by her busy schedule that she is overworked and does not even have time to eat which is making her sick. A diary entry from the previous month, illustrates how little time she had to write on some days: “Many Indians in today, also yesterday. Gave some prescriptions and attended to business matters for many” (la Flesche Picotte, Susan La Flesche Picotte Diary, 1910-191. La Flesche Family Papers.). On another occasion, she noted a detailed description of her daily medical practice, and the business matters she often attended to: Nov. 1st /10 Took Miss Chopin home in the auto. Went to Fort. Office and saw Mary Mitchell. Also Mr. Small about Lawson children’s money also about Elsie Robinson Drum’s children’s trust funds + why they were not paid-Mattie Peabody Perker asked me to phone for her to Keef’s Office so I did so. Got home at 12. Arthur Ramsey wanted Mr. Keefe to look up a hired man for him. The wife to cook for them. Had dinner at 1.30. Luke White and wife wanted me tell them about their applications for pat. In fee and that she wanted to draw out of the Gov’t Office all their heirship money-I told them Agent said no-and they felt very bad and said they would complain to the Commissioner. Little Soldier asked me about some eye water so I told him how to use it. He also asked me to interpret for him to a white man who wanted to lease 120 acres of land from him. He said he wanted Mr. Keefe to make on the lease for him, so I went to the office with him-he got $4,50 an acre-for 2 yrs-from Louis Stricklett. Edith-Mitchell wanted me to see her baby who was sick-I gave it a colon irrigation and told her how to feed it-Little Cook’s wife asked me to interpret for her to Mr. Keefe about her trouble with her husband’s children. Congressman Hitchcock and Lotta came in and asked to see me. Gave a prescription to Mary Sheridan for her boy’s tooth ache and told her

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to bring him to the dentist. Went down to the train to see Nettie come home. (La Flesche Picotte, Susan La Flesche Picotte Diary, 1910-191. La Flesche Family Papers.)28 Already in her letter from November 15, 1907, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Francis E. Leupp, she explains how overworked she is and refers to her doctor’s orders to take a few months break.29 Hon. Francis E. Leupp: Dear Sir: I am an Omaha Indian and have been working as Medical Missionary among the Omahas but have broken down from overwork. Altho’ I have been here several weeks I have kept in touch with-affairs at Macy. I know what a small figure our affairs cut with-all the Department has on its hands, but I also know that if you knew the conditions and circumstances, to be remedied you would do all you could to remedy them. I had intended to do as much work this fall – the Doctor tells me I cannot do any medical work for 6 mos. And I feel that something must be done for the people [...]. (La Flesche, “‘If You Knew the Conditions...’ Letter from Susan La Flesche Picotte to Commisioner of Indian Affairs Francis E. Leupp”) In Leupp’s response a few days later, on November 20, 1907, he informs her of his regret to know that you are now laid aside by illness from active work among your people, but I hope you will be able to resume it in a few months. They never needed the kind of help which you can give more than they do now, and when you recover both you and the contemplated mission can re-inforce each other’s work most. (ibid) Although he turns down her request due to a lack of funding, he informs her of his contact with Mr. Kinney and the “Connecticut branch of that Association [who] is purposing to establish a medical mission among the Omahas and to give particular attention to tubercular diseases” (October 29, 1910).30 Like 28 29 30

Harry L. Keefe was the attorney for the Omaha tribe who often worked closely with Susan. Today, her condition would be referred to as burnout. In his historical account of the Office of Indian Affairs’ organization and activities, Schmeckebier says that increased interest in the health issues of Native Americans and the systematic organization of health care services date from the first decades of the twentieth century. By 1911, for instance, according to reports for that fiscal year,

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many of her contemporaries, Susan focused on public health and education as preventive measures to fight against diseases. The fight against tuberculosis31 was one of Susan’s major battles and a disease that often plagued the reservations. In an earlier letter to Commissioner Leupp, she pleaded with him to do something about the “white plague,” which she explained had spread rapidly among her people and “is something terrible” affecting their general living conditions. In an annual report she explains: Tuberculosis of the lungs seems to be on the increase in our tribe. In place of wild game, diseased meat is eaten in many cases and much pork. In place of the airy tent, (we have) close houses when often in one room, two families are found with doors and windows closed night and day, so we cannot wonder that scrofula is the result. (qtd. in Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 144)32 Furthermore, to make matters worse, she noted that the Omaha “have not regular Government physician and have called upon me to attend them during the last four years.” Regrettably, she says, ”on account of my health, I have not been able to attend so many cases this year as in three previous years.” In addition to being overworked, her health was deteriorating due to the degenerative illness from her childhood. To exacerbate matters, her mother’s health rapidly declined, forcing her to resign from her practice for a while. As these statements make clear, Susan was concerned that the nineteenthcentury socio-political transformation forced on Omaha’s lifestyle was literally making them sick. According to an annual report of the Winnebago and Omaha agencies, tuberculosis ranked as the most devastating disease among the tribes:

31

32

“$40,000 was appropriated to relieve distress and provided for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis, trachoma, smallpox, and other contagious and infectious diseases. [The significance being that] this was the first of a series of general appropriations of this character” (Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 229) which would later increase annually. Sadly, however, as in 1911, healthcare services to Native Americans remain below the National average even today. Tuberculoses (TB), also referred to as “consumption,” is a disease that mainly affects the lungs. It is highly contagious and spreads from one person to the next through tiny airborne droplets that are transmitted through coughing or sneezing. Scrofula is a condition caused by the same bacteria causing tuberculosis, but the symptoms are outside of the lungs in the form of inflamed lymph nodes.

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By the 1910s, this disease had caused more chronic illnesses and deaths than all other acute contagions combined. In the first twenty years of the twentieth century, tuberculosis killed 160,000 persons annually in the United States [and] remained the deadliest malady among American Indians. (Tong 182) Despite Susan’s deteriorated health condition, alcohol abuse was another major issue that dominated her agenda as a physician. Alcohol had been introduced to Native Americans through contact with the Europeans. It could be traced to the fur trade in the early nineteenth century and “became the essential in the trader’s stock; no rules or regulations could control its sale on the sparsely settled frontier” (ibid 23). However, according to scholars, the social problems intensified following the Dawes Act with its establishment of liberal land-sale and leasing policies which they explain in the following. It is common to think of an Indian reservation as a homogeneous landtenure unit controlled by the tribe, but actually reservations are a mosaic of four land tenures-fee simple, individual trust, tribal trust, and federally owned. This mosaic can be traced to the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 that authorized the president of the United States to have Indian land surveyed and allotted to individual Indians. Like homesteaders, Indians could choose their allotment, but, if they did not select land within four years after a reservation was designated for allotment, a BIA agent would select a plot on their behalf. The land, however, was held in trust by the government for twenty-five years or until the individual Indian was deemed ‘competent,’ during which time it could not be alienated or encumbered by taxes, liens, or other legal devices. [However], when the allotted land was released from trust constraints, it was withdrawn from tribal and BIA control and became private (fee-simple) land. Once released from trust status, an allotment could be and often was sold to non-Indians. (Anderson and Lueck 429) Susan’s consternation over prevailing negative attitudes of the government towards the alleged lack of competency of Native Americans and especially Omaha individuals to own land can be felt in an article she wrote that was published in the Walthill Times: We are fighting for the same principle for which the forefathers of this great American nation fought for and who considered human lives but a paltry offering when laid down at the shrine of liberty. The majority of the Omahas

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are as competent as the same number of white people. They are independent and self-reliant, and their wishes have always been respected by past administrations. (la Flesche, “Citizen Lo! Red Tape and Red Indian”) Previous to the passing of the Dawes Act, the Omaha’s had become the first Native American tribe to be awarded allotments under the Omaha Allotment Act in 1882. In her capacity as a cultural broker, Susan’s responsibility was to instruct the Omaha on their rights and duties as responsible citizens. However, she also culturally translated complex federal regulations and what the government expected of them regarding land allotment. She assisted them with letter writing, as illustrated above, when legal complications arose, which consumed much of her time. The problem was that the Omaha were often forced to lease their land(s) to whites to pay their debts, secure a loan using their land as a form of collateral, or receive credit. Francis La Flesche attributed the misfortunes, such as dispossession, that often accompanied these transactions to his people’s “lack of business training and experience” (Liberty 72). Perhaps due to her degenerative disease that was gradually causing her more pain and deafness and the ensuing realization that she would not return to her full capacity as a government physician, she concentrated her energies more in speaking out against the harmful effects of alcohol and the “alarming extent” to which some of her people on the reservation were abusing it. Eventually, she successfully attained a ruling by the Secretary of the Interior that no alcohol could be purchased “on any lot in these towns made of Omaha reservation” (Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 152).33 However, when she was offered to work as a missionary by the Presbyterian Church under the supervision of the Home Mission officials, she agreed for personal reasons, being firmly grounded in evangelization’s pietism and spirituality, but primarily through her medical education and in the hope of helping the Omaha. She often witnessed inebriated members of her tribe meet their deaths through accidents, while others lost their lives through violence. Therefore, she and other educated Omaha, along with some white people, searched for ways to combat and end these tragedies through prohibition and religion. According to Susan: “There is a class of white people here now on

33

Susan’s husband Henry died of causes associated with and due to tuberculosis and heavy drinking.

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the reservation, whose thought is to help the Indians in all ways they possibly can. Such people are a help and comfort, as the ‘lend a hand’ to all the Indians and the workers as well” (La Flesche, M.D., Medical Missionary 7). They combined forces to tackle the devastating socio-political issues related to the rapid socio-cultural and political transformation of nineteenthcentury industrialization and urbanization and displacement of Native Americans on reservations. Susan describes her medical work in the church assisting other women and their families, as part of her duties and Christian service at the Government school: About the church work: we have church service Sunday mornings, at which we assist by singing and interpreting. We have a Christian Endeavor meeting for the young people Sunday evenings, and a prayer-meeting on Wednesdays. In all these we help all we possibly can by speaking, etc.   All of us young ladies here assist some of the women with their sewing, and give what little time we can spare to it, and sometimes take turns I helping them with it. I have had more medical work among the women than I expected, which pleases me very much, and I have been called in to attend some cases where a white physician was never called before. All this shows how much they are improving in more ways than one. At some of the funerals they have Christian service over the dead, and ask for it even when they themselves are not Christians, though they usually celebrate their customs besides. Only a few years ago this Christian service was not thought of. (ibid 6-7) In sum, her work consisted of being “the teacher, the preacher, and the field worker-everything.” According to a newspaper account, “Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte gave not only spiritual and medical advice but sympathy and the help of one Indian to her own people” (qtd. in Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 150).

4.1.4

Legacy of the New “Medicine Woman,” Cultural Broker,  and Progressive Reformer

I cannot see how any credit is due me. I am only thankful that I have been called and permitted to serve. I feel blessed for that privilege. (Susan La Flesche qtd. in Finks 87)

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Susan’s outstanding work among the Upstream People spanned several decades. Although the above quote portrays her humble side, she was confidently aware of her ability as the right person to serve her people. Her destiny to become the new “Medicine Woman” and “The First Woman Physician Among Her People” was indeed foremost attributable to her extraordinary talents and skills as a medical doctor and cultural intermediary. It was also attributable to the emergence of the Women’s National Indian Association who promoted and funded her education. Indeed, her father’s progressive attitudes, promotion, and support of his children and the Omaha’s transition to the white culture played a decisive role. Moreover, her legacy can perhaps also be attributed to her famous grandfather on her mother’s side. It is well documented on the first page of the Introduction: “The First Physicians and the First Epidemic in Nebraska-Indian Contacts” in History of Medicine in Nebraska that, [e]xcept for Indian medicine men, who undoubtedly served their people for hundreds of years before the advent of the white man, the history of medicine in Nebraska can be traced back to the week of September 26, 1819. On this memorable day, United States troops came up the Missouri river on the first steamboat to disturb the waters of the “Big Muddy,” and landed near the Council Bluffs, about 16 miles north of Omaha, on the present site of Fort Calhoun.   Attached to these troops, the Sixth Infantry regiment and the New Hampshire Rifle Regiment, 2nd Battalion, which landed on October 2, came two, and possibly four medical officers-the first white physicians to set foot on Nebraska soil. One of them, Surgeon John Gale of the Rifle Regiment was destined to be forever bound up with the history of this state by reason of his marriage with Ni-ku-mi, a daughter of the Iowas. Their child, Mary grew up and married Joseph La Flesche, chief of the Omahas, and the family’s importance in the medical history of Nebraska was further enhanced when Susan La Flesche, their daughter and the grand-daughter of Surgeon John Gale, also adopted a medical career and was graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia-the only Indian woman ever to have obtained the degree of doctor of medicine. She afterwards married Henry Picotte, a half-breed Sioux. (Tyler and Auerbach 1) Susan’s confidence is further reflected in a statement she made on a job application that landed her the position as Omaha agency physician at the gov-

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ernment school: “I feel that I have an advantage in knowing the language and customs of my people, and as a physician can do a great deal to help them” (qtd. in Green, Iron Eyes Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 135). Moreover, in her capacity as a chairwoman of the Nebraska Federation of Women’s Clubs, she passionately led public health campaigns that included instructing the Omaha community how to control flies in their homes and how epidemics and infectious diseases (often introduced by white settlers) could be controlled by abstaining from the sharing of drinking cups. In a letter addressed to the president and members of the federation of the Health Department on January 10, 1911, she explains that in order to secure successful health campaigns “concerted action is necessary” and argues that Madam President and Members of the Federation: [p]roper education is dependent on proper execution, and we cannot materialize either of these essentials to success in our campaign unless the indifference of individual clubs to the vital health questions is overcome. Furthermore, she makes the following case for legislators, clubs, local boards of health, and educators on the local and state levels: I would recommend that every endeavor be made to legislate the drinking cup out of the public service on railway trains, public institutions, and schools, recommending the installation of sanitary drinking fountains, thus dealing a blow not only to the white and black plagues, but to all contagious diseases.   Enlisting the interest of each individual club is one step to success - another, seek the co-operation of the State and Local Boards of Health, the State and Local Boards of Education in pushing the Medical Inspection of Schools, and enlist the interest of the medical fraternity in all the health topics outlined above. Finally, she emphasizes the necessity and vital importance of cooperation for securing the health and survival of future generations by reiterating its benefits not only for the individual, but for all.

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Concerted action by all the clubs will most surely bring success in a work so vitally important to this and coming generation-by increasing the physical stamina of the race we are increasing the mental and moral stamina.   Most cordially,   SUSAN LA FLESCHE PICOTTE, M. D. Walthill, Neb., Jan. 10, 1911 (La Flesche Picotte, “Letter to the Health Department” 36-37) In sum, the new “medicine woman” began her career making house calls on horseback to treat patients with diseases ranging from influenza to tuberculosis, becoming one of the most significant battles she fought despite her declining health. She carried out her duties in this position several years before her marriage to Henry Picotte (half Sioux and half French) and raised their two sons in Bancroft, Nebraska. Following Henry’s death in 1905, she moved to Walthill, Nebraska, where she founded the Thurston County Medical Society, serving as a “medical missionary” (the name given by the Women’s National Indian Association) for the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. As the chair of the state health committee of the Nebraska Federation of Women’s Clubs, she worked hard to maintain her medical practice and advocate preventive strategies for preserving good health for members of her tribe (ibid 165). As a reformer, La Flesche passionately supported temperance against pede’ni (alcohol). Following in her father’s footsteps, who, after witnessing the senseless murder of a drunken member of his tribe, exclaimed, “My children, drink is bad for the red man. We need to know what we are doing, and whiskey makes us fools. We will have no more drink while Joseph lives” (qtd. in Green, Iron Eye’s Family: The Amazing Children of Joseph La Flesche 173). Her efforts were rewarded by a ruling of the Secretary of the Interior that forbade the sale of alcohol on and near the Omaha Reservation (ibid 152) Susan was a quintessential Progressive-Era reformer driven by her strong Presbyterian faith and principles of her family’s political engagements, heavily influencing her determination to help her people. In her role as a cultural broker, she often spoke out against the unfair treatment of the U.S. government regarding the Omaha struggle for land sovereignty and their rightful claims to land titles. “[S]he argued time and again that her people, given their success in attaining civilization, deserved to be shorn of the shackles of OIA paternalism [and] that she herself was living proof of what Indians could ac-

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complish under the sway of civilization” (Tong xvii).34 The Connecticut Indian Association who provided the funding for Susan’s education boasted proudly Dr. Susan La Flesche, a full-blooded Omaha, was educated in the medical school at Philadelphia by the Connecticut Association, is now the Government physician at the Omaha agency, on a salary of one thousand dollars, a member of the Medical Association of the state, and has a growing practice among the neighboring white people. (Swartwont 48) Adding to her numerous accomplishments was her position as the official Presbyterian Church missionary to the Omaha. She owned her own home and several rental properties and was able to gain support from various missionary friends to fulfill her dream of building a hospital to better serve the medical needs of her patients. As a result, the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Memorial Hospital which is located in Walthill, Nebraska, could be established as an Indian Mission Hospital with 18 beds and an outpatient department on the Omaha reservation. It was built between 1912-13, supplemented by Presbyterian funds and the money La Flesche raised. It opened just two years before her early death at the age of 50, in 1915. Today, it serves as the Susan La Flesche Picotte Community Center and is listed as a National Historic Landmark (Tyler and Auerbach 540). Unfortunately, as her illness from early childhood worsened, causing excruciating pain in the bones of her face and ears throughout most of her adult life, she could not work there for long. As her illness progressed and the pain became unbearable, she required several operations and became bedridden. Her sister Marguerite who lived nearby with her husband Walter Diddock took care of her. Around this time, the success of Marie Curie’s pioneering work in radioactivity and radiation therapy for its potential to treat cancer had become household knowledge.35 Unable to sit back and watch his sister-inlaw suffer the excruciating pain any longer, Walter contacted Curie and asked 34

35

However, Tong points out that while Susan may of whole-heartedly believed this, she also realized that “[m]any Native Americans were simply unprepared to answer the call of progress.” He adds that the socio-cultural and political issues/conflicts were too complex to resolve with simple replies to “her calls for protection and for autonomy.” (ibid) Marie Curie who was born in Poland at a time when women were not permitted to study medicine at the University of Warsaw. Therefore she moved to France in 1891, where she researched and discovered radium. She became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from a French university and the first female professor at the Sorbonne. Her

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for her help to which she obliged by sending a lead-lined box that contained a radium pellet. Hours before she passed away, the agency doctor was at her side. He placed the radium pellet in her ear, which unfortunately slipped so far into the canal, requiring many hours to retrieve. By then, Susan had become very weak and unable to fight any longer and lost her battle to bone cancer in September 1915. The obituary published in the Walthill Times, September 18, 1915, said that Dr. Picotte passed away at 1:00 o’clock this morning, after a period of many months of suffering from an incurable malady of the bones of the head and face. Despite her early beginnings in the “Make-Believe-White-Man’s Village” and her achievements as a white-trained physician, Susan never forgot her roots, often defending her bi-cultural upbringing saying that I have lived right with them for over twenty years practicing medicine, attending the sick, helping them with all their financial and domestic business, and anything that concerned their personal family life. The old ways are not devoid of values, culture, and emotional ties, and need always to be preserved. (qtd. in Enss 19, 21) She spoke her native Omaha tongue and was very familiar with tribal traditions, observing the traditional celebrations, ceremonies, and songs. Her strong ties to her roots were reaffirmed at her funeral service, reflecting the two very different cultures in which she had achieved so much success. A Presbyterian minister delivered the official eulogy, followed by an Omaha elder, who recited the closing prayer in the Omaha tribal tongue. As this chapter has sought to reveal through a few reflections of the extraordinary life of Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, the testimony of the root causes for past and present “injuries” can be found on many complex levels throughout the history of North America since early contact with Europeans. Her life and work among the Upstream People serve as a testimonial to the many Native American voices whose ongoing pleas for understanding the healing powers inherent in Indigenous narratives when given a chance to be heard. Indeed, they can offer a “counterstory” that resists the “oppressive identity [that the settler myth has assigned Indigenous people] and attempts most remarkable achievements led to her being the first woman to ever win two Nobel Prizes in two different fields – one in chemistry and one in physics.

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to replace it with one that commands respect” (Nelson qtd. in Episkenew, “Myth, Policy, and Health” 2). Métis scholar Jo-Ann Episkenew argues that, “by challenging the master narrative” of White superiority, they can also “function as medicine to help cure the colonial contagion and the myth of the colonization of the Americas” (ibid 2-3). As cultural differences have more or less become the new normal, the phenomenon of Pratt’s contact zones must continue to be renegotiated at international/national borders. The recent discovery of children’s remains buried at one of Canada’s largest Indigenous residential schools, as well as the fires that have destroyed several Catholic churches, have triggered Native American communities across the U.S. border. Voices from the Native American communities are beginning to be heard regarding the federal government’s “attempt to wipe out tribal identity, language and culture and how that past has continued to manifest itself through long-standing trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, premature deaths, mental health issues, and substance abuse.” U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and whose grandmother also suffered the consequences of the assimilation programs, made a historical announcement on June 29, 2021, at the National Congress of American Indians’ (NCAI) annual midyear conference that her department would lead (unprecedented) investigations “to address the intergenerational impact of Indian boarding schools and to promote spiritual and emotional healing in our communities [...]”. While she feels the necessity of uncovering the “unspoken traumas of the past no matter how hard it will be,” she also says that “the process will be long, difficult and painful and will not undo the heartbreak and loss endured by many families” including her own. The boarding school system was “not a singular self-contained matter,” according to Nick Martin, but “unique in their ruthless efficacy” and “the result of centuries of dispossession, slaughter, kidnapping-of genocide” (Martin 5). Sellers reminds us that [t]hough we can no longer see the piles of hacked off braids and the discarded moccasins, blankets, and clothing of indigenous children, the spirits of these truths still roam and trouble the living. We must evoke the voices of our Native ancestors through the vehicle of indigenous cultural knowledge expressed in the format of Indigenous Communal Narratives and allow what has been silenced to speak at last. It is not sufficient for only the Native people to remember the losses of the past, as they do, but we must

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collectively remember as a nation that is how we need to be healed (Krupat, For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography x).36 Finally, Patricia Nelson Limerick notes, not only was race “the key factor in dividing the people of Western America” and that contributed to significant loss of life depending on which group was targeted “to persecute and exclude,” but other factors such as “[d]ifferences in culture, in language, in religion” were used as justification to slaughter many innocent people including an entire small Mormon community known as 1838 Haun’s Mill Massacre. The hatefilled angry Missourian militia that killed unarmed Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints justified the killing because for them, this peculiar religious group “had unsettling religious, economic, and political practices, they were nonetheless prosperous, did not hold slaves, and could control elections by voting in a bloc. [In short], they were a peculiar people, seriously flawed to the Gentile point of view,” which the following poem reflects and are the subject of the next chapter (Limerick, “Racialism on the Run” 280-81). ‘Tis not for crimes that we have done That by our foes we’re driven But to the world we are unknown And our reward’s in heaven. (Pulsipher qtd. in Stegner, “The Gathering-up of Zion” 200-201) As this poem suggests, Mormon persecution and banishment from the nineteenth-century mainstream white middle-class society was due to their religious practices that were unacceptable enough to justify the murder of innocent families. Furthermore, it confirms the powerful impact of religion on people’s sense of identity and how it can inform socio-cultural and political authority and experience.

36

According to Associated Press writer Ken Miller, Ken Gover who was Secretary of Indian Affairs, several decades ago, offered apologies for the “emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual violence committed against children at the off-reservation schools.” Then in 2009, President Barack Obama “signed off on an apology of sorts.” (ibid) Obviously, a lot more works needs to be done!

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

4.2

Patty Bartlett Sessions: The Role of Mormon Women  and Medicine in Settling Salt Lake, Utah Utah is the land of marvels. She gives us, first, polygamy, which seems to be an outrage against “woman’s rights,” and then offers to the nations a “Female Suffrage Bill.” Was there ever a greater anomaly known in the history of society? (Anon. qtd. in Bradley, “The Uses of History” 1)

This chapter illustrates the founding of the “most successful homegrown alternative religious movement in American history” (Stein 270),37 known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).38 The main focus is on the role of its members’ women in medicine – most notably Mormon midwife “Doctor Patty,”39 who played a significant role in the early settlement of Utah and the founding of the Female Relief Society. Her diaries and life writings are drawn on that provide valuable glimpses into the LDS community and reveal the significance of the many activities she was involved in during her long life as a pious and devoted member of the LDS Church. She participated in female ritual healing and served as an active member of the Council of Health and later as president of the Indian Relief Society. In order to grasp women’s position in nineteenth-century Mormon society, it is essential to understand and appreciate the LDS Church’s stalwart determination to build what they considered to be the kingdom of God a self-contained utopian society “that involved significant elements of their belief system” and also contributed to their collective “Mormon” identity in which women played a significant role (Hausladen 135). According to scholars, Brigham Young’s “agenda for building the kingdom and the exigencies of frontier society contributed to wider spheres of activity and/or economic

37 38

39

According to Stephen J. Stein, “[m]issionary successes in America as well as in Europe” contributed substantially to the LDS Church’s expansion as a movement (ibid). Throughout the following descriptions will be used interchangeably to refer to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the acronym LDS, the popular name “Mormon(s)”, and Saints – as the Mormons sometimes refer to themselves. Patty Bartlett Sessions “is recognized by the Mormon Church as the “Mother of Mormon Midwifery” and went by several names including “Doctor Patty” – as she was fondly referred to by the communities she served” (Enss 64). Since she was addressed by many names, she will be referred to them interchangeably throughout as: Patty Sessions, Doctor Patty, Sessions, or simply as Patty.

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usefulness for Mormon women than existed in the dominant culture” (Iversen 55). Diseases such as diptheria, smallpox, and typhoid regularly threatened many communities in the West. These diseases presented many challenges that required health education and skills of the Saints for their survival. Since healthcare-giving was a domestic task given by women throughout history, a benevolent organization called the Relief Society was (re)established in “Deseret,”40 which advocated women’s social and healthcare-providing work in and outside of the home once settled in their utopian society. As part of the self-contained society and sustenance of the Mormon community’s health, Mormon Church leaders encouraged women to serve as midwives and nurses and supported those who wanted to study medicine. The chapter begins with a discussion of Patty Bartlett Sessions’ diaries, followed by a brief sketch of her early life and cathartic experience, transforming and determining her life course as a midwife. It continues with a contextualization of the LDS Church’s founding. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the LDS Church leaders’ call for women to study medicine and the Relief Society’s establishment.

4.2.1

“Baptized in a Sessions Bathtub”

A reader may figuratively gasp for air while trying to follow her frenetic pace. But an editor must, and a reader should, try to understand the compulsion to record such mundane events and what they say not only about her life but about a particular time and society. (Smart, “Preface” x) During her long life, “Doctor Patty” kept very accurate lists of the births she attended, as well as recording the earnings for her services. Even though she was a habitual record keeper from around 1812 onwards, some of her journal writing has been lost. According to Donna Toland Smart, however, the Woman’s Exponent 41 published a series of eight biographical sketches be40

41

The term “deseret” is found in The Book of Mormon: “And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honeybee, and thus, they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind” (Ether 2:3). The honeybee’s beehive is the state symbol of Utah and therefore nicknamed “The Beehive State”. The all-woman-managed periodical, Woman’s Exponent was one of the earliest women’s journals in the West. It began publication in 1872, shortly after receiving the

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tween 1st September 1884 and the 15th November 1885 (Smart, “Introduction” 1).42 Although many parts of her diaries have been cited in various sources,43 however, Donna Toland Smart is credited with having been the first editor to painstakingly edit Patty’s entire collection of diaries from 1846-1888. They are published in volume 2 of the Life Writing of Frontier Women series and entitled Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions. Regarding the arduous task of editing the diaries, Smart, who claims that she had been “baptized in a Sessions bathtub” (Smart, “ENCOUNTER ESSAY: What Is Patty Sessions to Me?” 132), says that when she was approached by historian and editor of the LDS Church’s history, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher to contribute to a project involving the editing and publishing of Mormon women’s diaries, she was “clueless about where the project would lead, [but that it] sounded like just plain fun [...] actually exhilarating”(ibid). Finally, after “seven years spent analyzing forty-two years’ worth of diary entries, searching out how to fill in the gaps – where she [Patty] purposely omitted information or hadn’t time to explain – has fostered an unusually intimate acquaintance, one that deepens as she reminds me how interrelated we all are” (ibid 136).44 Smart accomplished her goal of finishing the editing and having

42

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44

vote from the Utah territorial government, to represent the women of Zion. Joan Smith Iverson says that [i]t is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Woman’s Exponent and its role in providing credibility for Mormon women [since] the journal kept close contact with the nation’s leading women’s suffrage journals, […] informing women outside of Utah of the accomplishments of Mormon women and the Relief Society, and expressing Mormon women’s views to the larger society” (Iversen 61). The biographical sketches are found in eight Woman’s Exponent issues: 13 (1 September 1884): 51, 13 (15 September 1884): 63, 13 (1 November 1884): 86, 13 (15 November 1884): 94-95, 13 (1 February 1885): 134-35, 13 (1 March 1885): 150-51, 14 (1 June 1885): 2, 14 (15 November 1885): 85-86, 94-95. A few of these sources include Guardians of the Hearth by Clair Noall, Women’s Voices, compiled and edited by Kenneth W. and Audrey M. Godfrey and Jill Mulvay Derr, Covered Wagon Women, volume one, edited and compiled by Kenneth L. Holmes, as well as in other works published in various volumes by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Patty’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Susan Sessions Rugh, wrote a chapter for the book Sister Saints, Vicky Burgess-Olson, ed., published by Brigham Young University Press, 1978, in which she depicts significant aspect of her ancestress’s life. It is important to note that Patty often spelled phonetically, therefore wherever a diary entry from her diary is used throughout, original spelling and punctuation have been retained. Also, Donna Smart’s editorial methods are observed which include her editor’s voice that are italicized insertions enclosed in square brackets.

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the diaries published in time for Patty’s two hundredth birthday on February 4, 1995. However, as she explains in the Preface: The editing of Patty’s diaries may never be finished. Every reading reveals new incidents that need research and explanation, dates and data that might be checked. It will be so with Patty Bartlett Sessions, I believe, as long as her journals are examined. (Smart, “Preface” xi) Regarding the reasons for Sessions’ extensive life writings, Smart replies that “[b]eginning a diary signifies faith that one’s life is going somewhere for some reason” (Smart, “Introduction” 31). In 1846, when Patty began her diaries at the age of 51, she too was well aware that she was going somewhere, not only for one good reason but for many reasons to which the writings of her seven diaries testify. Furthermore, “[s]he had faith in God’s intervention in the affairs of the church that held her unswerving allegiance [as well as] in the spiritual powers of the women who were her counterparts. [...] She had confidence in her ability not only to endure to the end of the journey but also to use her considerable abilities to help others endure” (ibid). Patty Sessions “was compulsive about writing down everything, scribbling notes and figures on the inside covers of her diaries – sometimes even upside down. [Furthermore,] she was a workaholic who time and time again watered her garden, dried her fruit, wove her cloth, made clothes, tore rags for rugs, crocheted, knitted, washed, cleaned, and worried” (Smart, “Preface” x). Furthermore, she adds that [t]he value of the diaries of Patty Bartlett Session cannot be exaggerated. Patty told her tale while she was living it, shifting attention from one scenario to another with little or no elaborations. She was too busy to explain fully what she already knew, writing, as it were, only reminders for herself. Yet she must have had some intuitive sense that her life and activities were historically important. (Smart, “Introduction” 24) As we shall see in the following, Patty lived a very long and eventful life as a pious woman dedicated to serving the Mormon community and compulsive record keeper in which she took much pride. In addition to her quotidian activities, the significant events and encounters throughout her life fill the pages of her diaries in an economical, streamlined, and circumspect manner, revealing to the reader what was most relevant to her. Some of the recurrent themes in her life writing include land purchases on which she built homes or had schools and other institutions built that required her financial assistance.

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She often lent and donated to private persons and the Mormon Church. She was an avid record keeper of every financial transaction and the costs of delivering babies, and the provision of medical services and consultations she provided. Her handcrafting skills, such as sewing, knitting socks, and weaving, were instrumental in helping her create a lifetime source of income. In addition, she cultivated gardens and orchards from which she sold or preserved the fruits. Sometimes she kept them, sold or donated them to others less fortunate than herself. Together, these activities are very frequently mentioned throughout her life writings.

4.2.2

“Doctor” Patty: Clever Businesswoman and Mother  of Mormon Midwifery I pray...that I may enjoy the use of all my senses and live to a good old age. (Sessions 263)

Patty Bartlett Sessions’ prayers were answered. She lived a long and very productive life. She almost lived to be 100 years old! Her career spanned more than seven decades, during which time she “is credited with escorting 3,997 babies into the world,” as her detailed records reveal. “She recorded hundreds of deliveries, identifying one or both parents, the sex of the child, and the date and time of birth. She also recorded her prices and duly noted payments” (Smart, “Introduction” 8). However, she was a very frugal woman who rarely spent money on herself. She had “keen business acumen,” eagerly documenting financial transactions, which not only included the money she invested in property and livestock or donated to missions, charities, and organizations such as to the Relief Society and funding for building schoolhouses, but she also generously lent money to those in need and quite often especially to LDS Church leader Brigham Young. Furthermore, she often made brief notes that she placed somewhere between other pages for later transcription, such as the following example taken from Diary Seven: 1884-1888, where she gives a retrospective chronology of her life and financial records in staccato form/fashion. April 8 1857 Brigham called for one hundred and twe^n^ty five Dollars money. I gave all I had. August 11-1859 my house is finished and paid for material and all ^coost^ over $700=00 over sevenen hundred dollars August 23 1859 I put twenty Dollars into the perpetual emigration Fund

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Jan= 7 1860 I got P G my son to attend a sale and bid of a lot adjoining the one I live on at two hundred dollars. The next Monday I went paid the money and got the Deed Sep= ^t^ I gave Bishop Kesler five dollars cash for the missionaries Feb= 21-1861 I gave Presd=Brigham Young two hundred Dollars gold as a deposit until I call for it ^April^ March 21 1862 I got my granary built finished Cost me five hundred Dollars paid for April 15 1863 I gave him ^Presd= Young^ seventy five Dollars for the missionaries. I have put in five Dollars before ^all^ before gold and silver. And twenty five pounds dried peaches. And ten pounds dried peaches and three and a half yards of sheeting. To those that go after saints to the Missouri River. 1863 August 11 I gave two thousand three hundred an dfifty pounds of flour for the building of the new tabernacle In the following years, she records more purchases that include a “yoke of oxen to send to the states45 to bring the poor saints on” in 1864, “a farm of my son David Sessions” in 1866, and a few years later in 1868 on June 22 the relief society finished the organization Appointed me as an appriser of the property put into that society” (Sessions 344-347). It is interesting to note a page from her account book from 1846 that illustrates the dates, names, and transactions on the journey across Iowa to Winter Quarters and serves as an additional example of how “[t]he figures are very revealing of the times” [and of course] would be interesting to someone researching costs in those days” (Sessions 402).46 In addition to the major themes related to Mormonism that are reflected throughout her life writings, “[a]ccounts such as hers present evidence of [Mormon] women’s involvement in commerce, education, government, and [medicine], as well as the domestic and religious worlds” (Beecher viii). 45

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Although Utahns petitioned as early as 1849 for admission to the Union, they were only admitted as a state in 1896 after polygamy was abolished. Utah, officially became part of United States territory after the following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, on February 2, 1848 and ratified by the Senate March 10, 1848. Without going into too much detail here, I was just curious and decided to check how much a dollar was worth back in the nineteenth century and found that $2 in 1846 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $67.94 today, meaning an increase of $65.94 over 175 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.04% per year between 1846 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,297.17%. This means that today's prices are 33.97 times higher than average prices since 1846, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. See the following “$1 in 1800 → 2021 Inflation Calculator.” Official Inflation Data, Alioth Finance, 12 Feb. 2021.

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Further evidence that she intuitively knew that her life writings would not only be of historical relevance and authenticates an exemplary Christian life is made plausible by her diary entry of November 29, 1876, addressing her family and future offspring. Nov=20 1876 I here say to all my children and grand children and great grandchildren &c&c and to all other I have been punctual to my word I never have given my note to any one one Neither have I had any accounts on any Books in any Store I have kept out of debt Paid my taxes my fasts my donations. And my tithing willingly of the best I have and the Lord has blessed me and Prospered me in all I have don for which I feel very thankful. Hoping he will continue to bless me while I live both Spiritually and temporially, with all that shall be for my good and his Glory to give unto me I am now Almost eighty two years old February next ^th^4 ^th^ I drink no tea nor coffee nor spirutous liquors I don’t smoke nor take snuff nor any poisonous medicine. I use consecrated oil for my complaints. Now I say to ^you^ do as I have done and as much better as you can and the Lord will bless you as he has me Patty Sessions (Sessions 350). Returning to a previous discussion regarding reasons why so many people (men and women) so diligently engaged in life writing of all sorts on the trails, and after settling in their new homes in the West in the nineteenth century, is that they were acutely aware of the fact that they were participating in history. Thus, they felt that their experiences should be recorded (Rohrbough 300). These considerations are most clearly reflected in Patty’s accounts that not only preserved many records of important financial transactions and the many births she attended of the early pioneering Mormons but were written with the explicit intention of being passed on to her offspring and future generations. They served somewhat like a “family history, [similar to] a souvenir meant to be shared like a Bible, handed down through generations” [...] (Schlissel 11) as illustrated above. Being fully aware that her family would eventually read through her documents, she leaves instructions for her son Perrigrine on the inside of the front cover of her diary: “This Book when I Patty Sessions have done with it is to be given to Perrigrine Sessions My Son=” (Sessions 342). Following her death, it was also Perrigrine who found one of the last pieces of needlework Patty had sewn, which was located between the pages of a medical reference book W. Beach’s The Family Physician. The loose cross-stitch reads “Remember Me.” The significance of the wording on the stitching “to be re-

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membered” is also valuable in providing insights into the motives for her life writings – namely, the desire not to be forgotten. In 1848, Sessions had already been living in Utah for two years as an early member of the LDS Church, which she joined in 1834 at the age of thirtyeight. I will return to this point later and begin now with an early account of her life through her introduction of herself in her own words: I Patty Sessions Daughter of Enoch & Anna [Hall] ^Bartlett^ Was Born Feb: 4th . 1795 in the Town of Bethel, County, of Oxford, state. Maine. (ibid) She was the eldest of nine children and grew up on a farm in a tight-knit community in Maine, where she was expected to help with the daily chores. They cut and fitted their firewood. [...] They raised sheep, sheared them, spun the wool, wove the cloth and made their garments.[...] [...] They obtained their food from the soil and the forest....[...] They welcomed the traveler at their door because he broth the monotony and bore “news that was months old.[...]They made their own music [...]. The family circle was seldom idle. The women were busy spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, candle dipping, soft soap mixing, while the men fashioned shoes, ax-handles, ox yokes, brooms, baskets, wooden bowls, spoons, and such. (“Bethel Then and Now” 18) Growing up in such a dynamic environment shaped Session’s later work ethic and was instrumental. The diverse skills she acquired during her childhood and youth would later prove useful. For instance, she endured many transformative experiences, which, at times, placed her as a woman in notable roles such as the sole provider and primary source of income for her family. Furthermore, she was to become a prominent healthcare provider for the community in the new and harsh environment of the West. Years later, in Salt Lake City, Patty gratuitously pays tribute to her mother for the intense commitment to the hard work and industry learned early in life that, in retrospect, undoubtedly contributed to the source of her productive and profitable businesses. Wed 24 got my web out for banket & undergarments 28 yds I do feel thankful to my heavenly Father that he gives me health and strenth [sic] and a dispostion [sic] to work and make cloth and other things for my comfort now in the sixty ninth year of my age. And I also feel thankful that I had a

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

mother that put me to work when I was young and learned me how. (June 1863) Although Patty’s parents were strictly against her marrying at the young age of 17, she: Married. To David Sessions. June 28.th ^1812^. I bore him Eight children. Four Sons and Four. Daughters. Three of them are still living. Perrigrine [1814-1893]. Sylvia [Porter, 1818-1882]. And David [1823-1896]. I buried Four of them in Main [Sylvanus, Anna, Ann B., and Bartlett] and one ^in Nauvoo^ [Amanda]. (Sessions 342) Following their honeymoon, the newlywed couple moved in with David’s parents not far away, where Patty took care of her mother-in-law, who suffered from rheumatism that required round-the-clock care. Patty became responsible for the household chores and filled in for her midwife mother-in-law when she was bed-ridden. A particular occasion was to determine her later fate of becoming a midwife: One day a young woman was taken suddenly ill, and sent for Mother Sessions [Patty’s mother-in-law, Rachel Sevens/Stavens, b. 1767], who was in the habit of attending obstetrical cases in the vicinity, she was very feeble and had to be led, and before she had time to go any distance, another messenger came telling the young Mrs. Sessions, to run as quickly as she could. She hurried on with all speed and when she arrived it was thought the young woman was dying, Mrs. Sessions, who was entirely unskilled in affairs of this kind, but had abundant nerve force and moral courage, took the child and put the mother in bed before Mother Sessions arrived. A short time afterwards the doctor and some other help came, but all was over. The doctor examined the mother and child to see that all was right, and finding everything in a good condition, he was anxious to see the young and inexperienced woman who had so skillfully performed the work. The doctor called upon her and congratulated her upon her ability, and told her she must attend to that business, not to have any fear, for she would prosper in it, as it was a new country and there were many about to move in, it would be necessary to have more help of this kind. (qtd. in Smart, “Introduction” 6) Upon the encouragement of her mother-in-law, Patty heeded her calling to become a midwife following this cathartic/transformative experience.

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She studied under Doctor Timothy Carter, the first permanent physician in Patty’s hometown, Bethel, Maine.47 Furthermore, she learned about natural herb remedies from a Native American midwife, Molly Ockett, who is believed to have attended Patty’s birth. Nevertheless, Patty was very eager and determined to learn as much as possible by studying a rare 1840 book, Aristotle’s Works: Containing the Masterpiece, Direction for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-Bearing Women. The book contained over 320 pages of information and color illustrations of the fetus in various positions and stages of development. According to Smart, Patty’s skill in delivering babies would become critical to the well-being of fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which she joined in 1834. “I was Baptised. Into the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day. Saints In Maine. July 2^d^.1834 by Elder Daniel Bean ^As a Mormon, she received stronger confirmation of her decision to follow an obstetrical career” (Smart, “Introduction” 7). However, she first required conversion and to be baptized, which followed after attendance at a gathering where Mormon missionaries proselytized in her area.48 In July 1834, with David’s consent, Patty was baptized into the Mormon faith. She was now a member of the community of God’s chosen people practicing the true religion.

4.2.3

“A Peculiar People” or “Quintessential American Religion”?

The ancient record thus brought forth from the earth as the voice of a people speaking from the dust and translated into modern speech by the gift and power of God as attested by Divine affirmation, was first published to the world in the year 1830 as THE BOOK OF MORMON. (Joseph Smith Introduction) The LDS religion was founded and officially organized in 1830 by Joseph Smith (1805-1844) in upstate New York during the “Second Great Awakening” and fol47

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Prior to setting up his practice as the “sole-practitioner” in the Bethel area, the community had been “ministered to” by a Native American woman Molly Ockett, “who [not only] knew roots, barks, and herbs [but] conceivably, could have attended Anna Bartlett when Patty was born, and Patty may have gained some of her extensive knowledge of herbs from the area’s last Indian practitioner (Smart, “Introduction” 7). Already before the LDS Church was officially organized in 1830, devotees were sent on missions throughout the country, as well as abroad, to search for new converts.

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lowing the publishing of the Book of Mormon. Smith claimed that he had translated golden plates that “contained prophesies from God” instructing Americans to reestablish Christ’s kingdom, “convert the Indians, who constituted the remnants of the lost tribe of Israel and follow the teachings of a new American prophet – Smith – to build a new Jerusalem” (Goldberg 207).49 Some scholars designate Mormonism to be the “quintessential American religion [because] it was founded on the American frontier of the early 1800’s” (Jackson 136). Wallace Stegner referred to the Mormons as “the most systematic, organized, disciplined and successful pioneers in our history” (qtd. in Udall, The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West xix). Whereas others refer to it as a “homegrown American faith” that “became a potent symbol around which ideas about religion and the state developed and were formed” (Fluhman 18). Spencer Fluhman argues that Mormonism played a central role in significant transitions and nineteenth-century America’s way of thinking about religion, especially the court system that had been reticent in its decision of what embodied religion. “Nineteenth-century Americans were confident that Mormons embodied what religion was not” (ibid). In 1855, a Mormon minister remarked to an audience he was preaching to: “I am aware that we are a peculiar people” (qtd. in Fluhman Prologue).50 Although many of the LDS Church’s doctrines did not differ very much from most other Protestants’ - their unusual social arrangements, political and economic organization, and especially their unique marriage system that incorporated the practice of plural marriage, also known as “polygamy” in which Mormon women were actively engaged from 1870-1890, was not acceptable in nineteenth-century mainstream society.51 The unusual practice of taking more than one wife was controversial and disturbing to many people

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Proselyting increased again in many areas seeking even more converts following the publishing of the Book of Mormon. By 1844, according to sources, more than five hundred missionaries had been established in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Thus, within the first decade of its founding, “membership swelled from 6 persons to 30,00. But the opposition swelled also” (Godrey et al. 23-4). The Book of Mormon was criticized by non-Mormons claiming that it contained too many similarities to the Old Testament, whereas some said that it was an imaginative religious representation, others said that it was fraudulent. Mark Twain went so far as to call it “chloroform in print” (Butler et al. 206). Quoted in Fluhman Prologue. The Mormons actively practiced polygamy until 1890 and then exchanged this practice for statehood in 1896.

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in the nineteenth century, who targeted the LDS Church with criticisms such as being pagan, despotic, and undemocratic. To non-Mormons, it challenged traditional concepts of the institution of matrimony, as well as appearing to be exploitive and coercive. However, as feminist scholars have pointed out, the religious groups and utopian associations that emerged during the era of religious revivals opened opportunities for many Americans, especially women, by giving them a chance to redefine their “proper place” (Goldberg 209).52 During the Second Great Awakening, the predominant representation of women has thus been described by feminist scholars such as Barbara Welter in terms of the overall ‘feminization’ of religion and American culture that emerged and provided more opportunities for women within and outside of the domestic sphere. The term is used here, like the term ‘radicalization,’ to connote a series of consciousness-raising and existential factors which resulted in a new awareness of changed conditions and new roles to fit these new conditions. Feminization, then, can be defined and studied through its results – a more genteel, less rigid institution – and through its members – the increased prominence of women in religious organizations and the way in which new or revised religions catered to this membership. (Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century 83-4)53 Furthermore, Welter also discusses the positive aspects of Mormonism for women converts by saying that, “[a]lthough Mormonism was treated as a great foe of women’s rights, and even its female proponents agreed that it places the male in a dominant role, it had certain components which made it part of the overall movement towards ‘feminization’ [...] acting in the name of a better life for women” (ibid 99). As Welter mentions, the nineteenth-century prescription of separate spheres for men and women was challenged later in the century. Indeed, the roles in the domestic sphere were also extended by Mormon women “to include church and community activities as well as some

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Goldberg is also quick to point out, however, that “[n]ot all women living within America’s boundaries were beneficiaries of these new opportunities […]. Indeed, for many American Indian women, Protestant evangelism could become part of a threat to their way of life” (ibid). For an important study of Women and revivalism, which examined 200 women’s conversion narratives, (Bradley, “Seizing Sacred Space: Women’s Engagement in Early Mormonism” 57-70).

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

nontraditional trades and professions,” which will be discussed later (Godrey et al. 12). Although Mormonism was founded in upstate New York, it was not long before the LDS Church community moved its headquarters to Kirtland, Ohio which was just the beginning of many arduous journey for the Saints to which the discussion now turns.

4.2.4

Exodus: In Search of the Kingdom of Zion54

For every early Saint crossing the plains to Zion in the Valleys of the Mountains was not merely a journey but a rite of passage, the final, devoted, enduring act that brought one into the Kingdom. (Stegner, “The Way to the Kingdom” 1) In Kirtland, Ohio, where Smith continued to receive revelations from God, he established essential doctrines that shaped Mormonism’s distinct beliefs and practices. While Patty and her family were preparing to leave Maine to join the other saints in Kirtland, Smith continued receiving visions and revelations regarding new doctrines. “Some pertained to God (who was material), humans (who were gods in the making), and marriage (to be patterned after the Old Testament model of multiple wives)” (Butler et al. 207). Furthermore, the construction of the utopian city he called the city of Zion was introduced by Smith in Kirtland. The cultural impact is that “establishing this city is doctrinally considered one of several necessary preparations for the second coming of Jesus Christ,” according to Steven L. Olsen, who examines the significance of Mormon gathering places in his book (Olsen, The Mormon Ideology of Place 25). 54

According to J. Spencer Fluhman, “[t]he reliance on Hebraic themes, in particular, was critical for emerging Mormon identity. In fact, in sorting through the constituent elements of Mormon peoplehood, Charles Cohen found that the Mormons’ “kingdom” rhetoric was not merely a function of LDS history or a sociological response to conflict, but instead a theological construct in place before Smith’s church was even organized. The Book of Mormon, he contends, drew on the very themes in Hebrew scripture that had animated Quaker preaching. Mormons were to constitute a religious nation from the start. The character of the Mormon Zions flowed naturally from the logic of Smith’s found text. A holy nation defined in terms of brick-and-mortar cities rather than any Quaker vision had been. And with evangelism replacing pacifism in the Mormon formula, the LDS kingdom refused to content itself with quietistic obscurity” (Fluhman 81). For further reading on Mormon identity see (C. L. Cohen 153-58).

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Meanwhile, following their long and arduous journey, the Sessions finally arrived in Kirtland in November 1837, where they met their prophet Joseph Smith and heard him speak in the newly erected Kirtland Temple. Meeting the prophet was significant for reinforcing Patty’s faith, especially since shortly after arriving at their interim destination, Patty gave birth to a daughter, Amanda. During their stay in Kirtland, the Sessions family contracted measles, but they were on the road again, heading for Missouri after seven weeks. Upon settling into their new home in Missouri, Patty and David bought land, and while the men planted crops, Patty resumed her midwifery business. According to the sketchy notes from her earliest diary published in the Woman’s Exponent: [d]uring all this time we find sister Sessions performing daily household duties and attending obstetrical cases regularly. Very frequently one sees in her diary entries like this: ‘Rode twelve miles last night, put Sister _____ to bed, find boy, etc. – rode six miles and put Sister _____ to bed with a pair of twins, difficult case, severe labor, but the Lord blessed use and we got through all right, patient safe, etc..’ (Wells, “Patty Sessions - Biographical Sketches” 86) However, their lives were suddenly disrupted when an oppositional group dragged Joseph Smith from his home and out into the street, where they tarred and feathered him. Patty later noted only briefly, “[w]e were all driven out in the winter of 1839” (Sessions 343). Thus, unable to establish their city of Zion in Kirtland, Ohio, the Saints went to the promised land of Independence, Missouri, where “[c]onstant friction and occasional violence with their neighbors followed, after which Smith instructed the Saints to move on to Illinois. Later, when their Prophet rejoined them, the Saints purchased a town on the Mississippi River. However, before their expulsion from Missouri, the Sessions family not only suffered tragic losses such as money, livestock, and crops but also lost their little daughter Amanda. At only three years and six months old, the latter died on 15 May 1841 of croup and was buried in Nauvoo. Patty later recounts the events We were all driven out in the winter of 1839 We started Feb. 15 I brought my child, all the way ^sick^ in my arms. We arrive in Ilinois. April 2^d^.1839. Staid on Bear creek one year. Moved to Nauvoo May 2^d ^1840. My child that was born in Mosouri, ^she^ Died May 15 1841

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

In Nauvoo, Patty and Mr. Sessions (as Patty called her husband David)55 built a new home. Shortly after settling in Nauvoo, the Mormon community began to thrive and prosper economically because of the many converts gained by the missionaries in Europe.56 By 1840, the population in Nauvoo had increased to 10,000, and “[b]efore long, Smith also established a Mormon militia, declared himself king of the kingdom of God, and announced his intention to run for president of the United States” (Butler et al. 208). However, scholars have argued that “[t]he absolute authority claimed by Smith violated the sacred American right to self-determination” (Olsen 33). The persistent opposition and mob violence against the LDS Church and Mormon community ultimately pressured Smith to turn himself and his brother Hyrum into the authorities leading to their demise on 27th June 1844 when an angry mob stormed the jail and killed them both in cold blood. Within a few weeks following the assassinations, Brigham Young was chosen as the new leader of the LDS Church. The tragic event of losing their leader to an angry mob not only served to strengthen the group’s faith and determination, it “was an indication of the cohesiveness of the new Israelites, as the Mormons liked to call themselves [...] in the face of such hostility” (Jeffrey 153). The significance of the traumatic experience of the assassinations also marks the beginning of Patty’s new diary, which she begins on the 10th of February 1846 at the age of 51,

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Patty always refers to her husband David as “Mr.” Sessions which was customary of proper gentility, according to Emily Thornwell’s The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility that firmly stated that “A lady should not say, ‘my husband,’ except among intimates, in every other case she should address him by his name, calling him ‘Mr.’” (duplicated copy of 1856 original, n.p., Huntington Library, San Marino, California). Around this time, efforts were underway in transatlantic religious exchanges by American agencies that sent Evangelical missions to Europe in order to recruit members and establish new churches. For this purpose, it seemed that no place was too exotic, so that some missionaries even found themselves proselytizing in Iceland’s West fjords. At this time, Iceland was experiencing very harsh weather conditions resulting in bad crops. The combination was ideal for soul searching and saving, resulting in the migration of 300 Icelandic Saints to Utah who converted to Mormonism. Most notably, was the first Icelandic female doctress Vigdís Bjornsdóttir Holt (April 27, 1824-December 2, 1913) “who longed to be with the Saints in Zion” and have “the comfort of having a small Icelandic community around her” (Newton 91).

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and with a dedication to the person from whom she received it – namely her daughter Sylvia57 : A Day Book given to me Patty Sessions by Sylvia P Lyon this 10th day of Feb. 1846 Patty Session her book I am now fifty one years six [six is written on top of old] Feb 10 1846 City of Joseph Hancock Co Ill. (Sessions 32) Furthermore, while packing and preparing for their exodus to Utah, Patty, who is obviously struggling with the tragic loss of their leader on the one hand, and yet on the other, realizes that once again, she, along with the other Saints, must move on, writes: 1846 The sun came out dried my bed and clothes but my tears will not Feb 10th 1846 Nauvoo or City of Joseph My things are now packed ready for the west have been and put Richards ^Bird^ Wife [Emeline Crandall] to bed with a daughter [Amanda Fidelia]. In the afternoon put sister Hariet Young to bed with a son [Oscar Brigham]58 11th mad[e] me a cap and in the evening went to the [Masonic] Hall to see the scenery of the massacre of Joseph and Hyram Smith 12 this morning Br [Philo] Dib[b]le gave me a ticket to go in to ^the^ scenery any time we then bade our childre^n^ and friends good by and started for the west crossed the river about noon Mr. Sessions and I with many other Brethern (Sessions 32-3). Patty’s matter-of-fact account of the preparations and the payment of last respects honoring the martyrdom of her Church leader and his brother illustrates the complexity of the situation and the predicament she and the Latterday Saints were in. Under the tragic circumstances, what choice did they have other than to carry on with Smith’s vision to establish a new Kingdom in the West?

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Sylvia Porter Sessions was the third child born to David and Patty on the 31st July 1818 in Andover West Surplus, Oxford County, Maine. Harriet Elizabeth Cook (1824-1898) was the fourth wife of Brigham Young (1801-1877).

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

In 1846, when the Saints were banished from Nauvoo and trekked west into the unsettled regions across Iowa to their winter quarters, women took on increased responsibility for the well-being and health care of their families, as well as of others. In addition to dealing with illness, accidents, deaths, and the many births along the way, personal hygiene was challenging. Many had truly little idea of how much their lives would be transformed, or even worse, that perhaps they would never reach the new Kingdom of Zion. In 1847 following decades of banishment and narrow escape, under the new leadership of Brigham Young to build a new Mormon Zion, their long trek ended in the valley of the Salt Lake in Utah.59 “To the Mormons, this relocation fit smoothly into their providential history: God’s chosen people had once again undergone persecution and then been rewarded with a refuge and a homeland, a North American Zion” (Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West 282-3). Upon arrival at Utah’s Great Salt Lake Basin in 1846, Brigham Young exclaimed, “this is the place” (quoted in Butler et al. 209). Indeed, the Saints had now arrived in God’s country as the following excerpt from The Book of Mormon prophesized: Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall posses it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written (Ether 2:12).60 Patty wrote, “this day will be long remembered by thousands...this is the beginning of a new era with us” (Sessions 126). Thus, the Mormons immediately began building a permanent home in their new kingdom after their arrival in Utah. They were very industrious, like the symbol of the honeybee mentioned in The Book of Mormon “And they did also carry with them Deseret, which, by interpretation, is honey bee [...]” (Ether 2:3)

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However, a small group of Mormons led by Joseph Smith’s wife Emma Halle Smith and their son Joseph Smith III decided not to join the others in Utah. Instead, in 1852 they reorganized themselves as a new group called the “Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” (not Latter-day). Also see several passages in The Book of Mormon consecrating the Saints’ new kingdom: “And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise […]” (Ether 2:9), “For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands, wherefore he that doth possess shall serve God […]” (Ether 2:10).

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According to scholars, Patty’s chronicle of the Mormon exodus and final settlement in Utah has been considered an invaluable contribution to history. She not only believed that the migration was necessary, but as a pious Mormon woman, she righteously believed that she was on a divine mission to do God’s work following the priesthood patterns that gave women authority. As part of the task of the ancient Church, Smith delegated women to teach the female part of the community and “to look after the spiritual welfare and salvation of the mothers and daughters of Zion” (J. F. Smith 82). On several occasions throughout her diaries, Patty performs female ritual healing, such as in 1847, a few days before leaving Winter Quarters61 , she writes: Tuesday June 1 sister E R Snow is here the girls wash some [...] ^ we ^ had a feast in the afternoon at sister Millers then we blessed and got blessed & blesed sister Christeen by laying my hand upon her head and the Lord spoke through me to her great and marvelous things – at the close I thought I must ask a blessing at sister Kimbals hand but it came to me that I must first bless her and show Herber girl that order that duty called them to perform to get any blessings from him upon them I obeyed layed my hands upon her head although it was a great cross and the power of God came upon me I prope I spoke great and marvelous things to her she was filed to the overflowing she arose and blessed the Lord and called down a blessing on us and all that pertained to her sister Hess fell on her knees and claimed a blessing at my hands I then blessed her sister Chase claimed a blessing of sister Kimbal she blessed her with me, she spoke great things to her the power of God was poured out upon us E R Snow was there and many others thank the Lord (Sessions 83) The ministrations of the women, such as those performed by Patty and others, were of utmost importance, especially during the final stage of their exile into the “wilderness of our affliction,” and foreshadow their much-needed healthcare giving and healing skills during their exodus and arrival in the Kingdom of Zion. As one Saint referred to the situation on the trails: Sickness and death stalked the Saints as they struggled through the exposure and lack of nourishment of early spring and the ever-present disease-

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On the 5th of June, the Saints left their temporary living quarters. It had been almost a decade since they left Maine on their exodus to the new Kingdom in the West.

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bearing mosquitoes of summer, only to find they must wait out the winter on Indian lands in Iowa or Nebraska, less than halfway to Zion. [However,] [a]ccustomed to serving their families as doctor and nurse, women individually extended their care to one another and to their children and husbands, fathers and brothers, as they had through the Relief Society in Nauvoo. (Derr et al., “Tribulation Worketh Patience” 66) The prophesy of Patty’s righteous mission within the community is conveyed to her by several sister Saints during a spiritual meeting at the end of May 1847: Satturday 29 went to a meeting to Eliza Beamans with many of the sisters, sisters Young and Whitney laid their hand upon my head and predicted many things that I should be blessed with the I should live to stand in the a temple yet to be built and Joseph would be there I should see him and then I should officiate for my labours should then be done in order and they should be great and I should be blessd and by many and there I should bless many and many should be brought unto me saying your hands were the first that handled me bles me and after I had blessed them their mothers would rise up and bless me for they would be brought to me by Joseph himself for he loved little children and he would bring my little ones to me &c &c my heart was fild with joy and rejoicing (Sessions 82) In September, just several days before arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, she is elated and writes of her arrival and death of Mr Sessions, her accomplishments of building a new home, and her appointment as a counselor and then later as “Presidentes of the counsel of health.” Arived in this Valley Sept. 24^th^.1847. I drove A four ox team all the way. In the fifty third year of my age. June. 26 1850 David my son Arived here. – August 11 ^1850 Mr Sessions my husband died. After his death I bilt me a house where I now ^live^ in Salt Lake City moved into it the 3^d^of Dec 1850. Sept=17-1851 I was appointed first counselser for sister [Phoebe] Angel[l] she was Presidentes of he counsel of health (Sessions 343) Interesting to note the emotionally detached tone in which she relays David’s passing, whom she refers to simply as her “husband.” She then resumes her writing in a matter-of-fact tone, elaborating more on the building of her house and emphasizing the fact that she now “lives” in Salt Lake City. The reader is left here to interpret whether she meant that her life had just begun

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following David’s death and she could now devote her time to her medical practice and other businesses. Or perhaps she meant that her life had now begun with the Saints’ arrival at their destination? Or perhaps both? However, it was not long before she remarried, the businesswoman that she also was, tended to her finances. Dec 14-1851. I was Married to John Parry seni[or]62 March 27-1852 I was sealed to him for time When the Perpetual emigration ^Fund^ was organized I put in five Dollars. The next I put in was ten dollars more I did not make a minute of any more Then, in addition to her appointment as “Presidentes of the counsel of health,” she writes about another appointment as “Presdidents” over another benevolent society to clothe the Indians which she describes in her diary entry from March. 14. 1855. […] Much good done in both societies over which I presided The squaws were cloked the sick and the poor were visited and administered to and their wants releived Furthermore, her gratitude to God for the Saints’ safe arrival and the prophecy of delivering the first male child born in the new settlement are fulfilled. Friday 24 go 14 miles PG went back and got the ox we drove him into the cannion left him got into the valley it is a beautiful place my heart flows with gratitude to God that we have got home all safe lost nothing have been blessed with liefe and health I rejoice all the time Saturday 26 go to meeting hear the epistle read from the twelve then wen put Lorenzo Youngs wife Harriet to bed with a son [Lorenzo Dow Jr.] the first male born in this valley it was said to me more than 5 months ago that my hands should be the first to handle the first born son I the place of rest for the saints even in the city of our God I have come more than one thousand miles to do it since it was spoken (Sessions 99)63 On the second day, Patty attends the birth of the first child born in the Kingdom, just as it was revealed to her months earlier by the Sister Saints at their spiritual meeting. The formal and informal spiritual gatherings of the Sister

62 63

Parry was the first leader of the choir that became the well-known and famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Brackets inserted by Smart. Furthermore, in her notes, Smart says that the child did not survive, but died the following spring.

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Saints served to strengthen the bonds between the women, as well as expand their community involvement and hence their authority. Another aspect of Mormon women’s public visibility, to which the discussion will now turn, involved the authority given to Mormon women by the Prophet Joseph Smith in Nauvoo to maintain life and alleviate physical pain. Emmeline Wells64 , the editor of the Exponent and advocate for women, recalls that “the sisters never lost sight of this institution as it had been established, nor the promises made to them of its future greatness, by the Prophet Joseph” (Wells, “History of the Relief Society” 6). And so it was… From the moment of their arrival in Utah, the Mormons began building a permanent home and (re)establishing the Female Relief Society.

4.2.5

Benevolent Heroines: Establishment of the Female Relief Society

This Society is to get instruction thro’ the order which God has established – thro’ the medium of those appointed to lead – and I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time – this is the beginning of better days to this Society. (Joseph Smith qtd. in Derr, “The Turning of the Key” 47) The Church leaders, whose dream it was to create a utopian self-sufficient society, “looked upon the community of Latter-day Saints in a vision and behold them organized as the great family of heaven, each person performing his several duties in his line of industry, working for the good of the whole more than for individual aggrandizement [...]” (qtd. in Riley; Jeffrey 153). The realities of building a self-contained kingdom in a harsh/rugged new surroundings were undoubtedly among the decisive and contributing factors that led to the expansion of Mormon women’s sphere and thus her authority, especially in the areas of healthcare. Diseases such as diphtheria, smallpox, and typhoid regularly threatened many communities in the West. These diseases presented many challenges and required health education and skills of the 64

Emmeline Blanche Woodward Harris Whitney Wells who served as the fifth president of the Relief Society until her death in 1910, was a nineteenth-century American editor, journalist, and women’s rights advocate. Furthermore, according to Smart, Wells was probably the “unidentified author” of Patty’s biographical sketches that appeared in the eight issues of the Woman’s Exponent between 1 September 1884 and 15 November 1885 (Smart, “Introduction” 1-2).

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Saints for their survival. 65 Although it was not necessarily Brigham Young’s intention to place women in equal standing with men or make them completely independent from them, he encouraged them to enlarge their sphere and acquire education and professional training in the healing arts. Brigham Young’s “agenda for building the kingdom and the exigencies of frontier society contributed to wider spheres of activity and/or economic usefulness for Mormon women than existed in the dominant [...] culture” (Iversen 56). As I have argued throughout, the separate sphere of home, domesticity, and religion gave women an indirect power of influence. Healthcare-giving was a domestic task given by women to family, friends, and neighbors throughout history as women commonly practiced medicine as doctors, nurses, and midwives. According to Claire Noall, “[...] midwives had always been an integral part of the Mormon community”.66 They were imbued with the philosophy of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, whose goal it was to build a self-sufficient utopian society independent of gentile interference, and their preaching against ‘poisonous medicines’” (Noall 161). The poisonous medicines Noall refers to was discussed in chapter 3, where it was noted that the overall LDS church member’s skepticism with the “regular” doctors in the nineteenth century was because they commonly treated illnesses by “heroic” cures such as bloodletting, and other reputed healing measures that often proved harmful, and at times even fatal for the patients. The Mormons turned to the healing powers of Thomsonian medical remedies. They did so before the institutionalization of health and social welfare, and women also provided these services. For Mormon women, it also nourished the female

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The Relief Society responded to the challenges by drawing on women’s long standing reliance on natural remedies and answered the request of one of the church’s apostles to the presidents of the Relief Society to “obtain the medical herbs that grow here and keep them for sale at a low rate”. Cache Valley State Relief Society, Minutes, Book A, 18 June 1868, 2 August 1869, 2 August 1870 cited in (“Cache Valley State Relief Society, Minutes, Book A, 18 June 1868, 2 August 1869, 2 August 1870” 132). Regarding Patty Bartlett Sessions, “[t]ime and again, the record of births in the Journal History coincides with Mrs. Sessions’ account. It was indeed rightly that Patty was called Mother Sessions, for it was she who might truly be considered the great Mother of Mormon Midwifery” (Sessions 84).

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community and simply restored an ancient pattern established in Nauvoo before Smith’s death. 67 The founding of a female organization of women following the pattern and “fulness of the priesthood” was connected to celestial marriage and, therefore attainable to both men and women but “unavailable to them alone” (Derr, “The Turning of the Key” 56). This doctrine was modeled after the apostle Paul who preached: “Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord” (qtd. in ibid). Furthermore, according to Jill Mulvey Derr et al., “As the work of the priesthood quorums was to prepare men for the highest order, so was the Relief Society to school women for that same glory” (ibid). Shortly after the Relief Society was established, some members were given the title of “block teachers” and were assigned to regularly visit and look after one another. The purpose of these visits reflected the society’s benevolent cause, namely care for others’ needs (Smart, qtd. in Sessions 347). Thus, the boundaries between the private and public spheres became flexible, allowing for women to incorporate their domestic skills and perform social tasks as a “stepping stone” to advancing their visibility in the public sphere and “no doubt contributed [later]to winning female suffrage in Utah” (Sigerman, “Laborers for Liberty” 3). The Relief Society was initially organized in 1842 in Nauvoo, Illinois, by Joseph Smith for women over 18 years. It is one of the first women’s organizations in the United States. The purpose of the organization was not to be a separate entity but “an integral part of the Church [...] as a high and holy calling to serve as counterpart and companion to the men’s priesthood quorums” and that the Church “was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized” (“Nauvoo Minutes, April 28, 1842”).68 In a special ceremony, Smith “delegated to the women special keys or authority” by saying, “I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from 67

68

As noted elsewhere, Joseph Smith continued having revelations in Nauvoo while building the temple and introducing the ordinance of gathering. At the same time he further “introduced sacred temple ordinances that endowed women with spiritual power and sealed them together in marriage for time and all eternity. In this ‘new and everlasting covenant,’ parents were bound in eternal union with their children. Thus, before his death in Nauvoo, the Prophet clarified important roles for women in both church organization and divine ordinances” (Derr et al., Women of Covenant 2). “A Record of the Organization, and Proceedings of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo,” 1842-1844. Holograph. Church Archives.

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this time – this is the beginning of better days to this Society” (Smith, qtd. in Derr, “The Turning of the Key” 47). The significance of the ceremony for the women in the Relief Society was the authority that was now open to them. Smith’s wife Emma Hale Smith, who became its first president, understood the uniqueness of the Society’s mission within the context of the restoration principles her husband had been proselytizing, thereby declaring that “We are going to do something extraordinary” (qtd. cover flap in Derr et al., Women of Covenant). Following their banishment from Nauvoo and Missouri, the formal organization was interrupted.69 However, during the exodus, the Saints continued their charitable activities until they arrived in Utah when, in 1867, Brigham Young appointed Eliza R. Snow to reorganize the Relief Society. It was established in every ward and considered by some scholars as the “grass-roots base for Mormon women’s activism” and their subsequent success in obtaining early suffrage (Iversen 80). Snow “told her sisters through the 1870s and 80s that home was a mother’s first duty, but it is not all her duty” (qtd. in Godrey et al. 13). While reminding Mormon women of their familial obligation(s), Snow’s statement also strongly suggests expanding their activities. However, according to Martha Sonntag Bradley, the charitable work of the Relief Society “was in step with what other nineteenth-century American women were doing in contributing to the larger world while they carried out their own home responsibilities” (Bradley, “The Uses of History” 11). The crucial role of Mormon women in the reestablished Relief Society was to teach them the skills they would need in their sovereign new Kingdom. For this purpose, in 1869, the University of Deseret (University of Utah) was established as a coeducational college under the direction of Brigham Young, who encouraged women to extend their sphere “for the benefit of society at large” (qtd. in Arrington and Bitton 227-28). Courses for women on history, government, and parliamentary law were established, which later facilitated their promotion into positions serving on school boards and juries (Larson 12). In 1872, shortly after the Utah territorial government granted Utah women the

69

According to scholars, there is some speculation that the early Relief Society was disbanded because Smith’s wife Emma Smith had the intention of using it to contend the doctrine of polygamy. See Linda King Newell and Velien Tippetts Avery, (Newell and Avery 175ff.).

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right to vote, Young strongly urged the founding of the Woman’s Exponent,70 “reflecting his belief that a woman’s publication would have a unifying effect, enthusing the women about various industries” (Bradley, “The Uses of History” 12). However, not long after its founding, the journal that was published by and for women carrying the slogan “The Rights of Women of Zion and the Rights of Women of All Nations” began to express other ambitions such as “a desire to encourage women to speak for and to women, a sense of injustice and inequality of opportunity, [as well as] a conviction of the absolute equality of the sexes” (ibid 13).71 Brigham Young’s ongoing support of the education and training of women Saints’ to better serve the community resulted in his urging for them to travel East in the 1870s to receive formal medical training at the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. Furthermore, upon his urging, Eliza R. Snow inaugurated a medical program in 1873 that appointed two or three women from each ward throughout the Church to train in nursing, hygiene, and midwifery courses in Salt Lake City. The Relief Society’s medical training program now added a “new dimension to the volunteer societies” - namely that of “the professionalization of benevolence” that resulted in “the advent of trained midwives and nurses [who] brought professional expertise to meet [...] pressing medical needs” (Madsen, “Creating Female Community: Relief Society in Cache Valley, Utah, 1868-1900” 133). In 1882, the Mormon women’s Relief Society founded the Deseret Hospital under the direction of a woman resident physician, Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson. The hospital served as a medical school and provided nursing and obstetrics training. Thus, according to the distinguished scholar on LDS history, Leonard J. Arrington,72 “compassionate ser70

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The first issue was (not) coincidentally published on Young’s his birthday (Bradley, Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights 12-13). Furthermore, according to historian Jill Mulvay Derr, Brigham Young was also celebrated as “the most genuine, impartial and practical ‘Woman’s Rights Man’ upon the American Continent” (Derr, “Woman’s Place in Brigham Young’s World” 378). As historian Carol Madsen points out, they had an “enlarged view of human purpose” (Madsen, Remembering the Women of Zion: A Study of the Editorial Comment of the Women’s Exponent, a Mormon Woman’s Journal 102), whereas Iversen argues that [w]hile the Exponent demonstrated a woman’s consciousness, espousing many of the causes of its women’s rights counterparts, there were important, subtle differences. The Mormon women, published in the Exponent, were asserting women’s equality within the terms of their religious mission (Iversen 61). Arrington was head of the Historical Department of the LDS Church in 1972 and was influential in opening Mormon documents for historical study and thereby creating what

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vice had been transformed into an academic field in which [women] were now trained to address” (qtd. in Myres 266) the medical and health care needs of the Mormon community.73 Furthermore, according to Sandra L. Myres, “Utah undoubtedly had the highest percentage of women doctors” (ibid).74 A plausible reason for this is perhaps that Mormon women had the support of their “tight-knit religious community back home that was counting on [their] success” (Grana 23). Patty, who had been chosen and named “presidentess” upon the death of Phebe Angel, wrote much in staccato form but not in detail about the Relief Society’s activities. Furthermore, she was an active member who frequently attended or held meetings in her home well into old age. In 1887, however, acknowledging her declining health, she writes, “I don’t go to the meeting I cannot hear but little. ...I am so deaf & I am so feeble I can hardly walk there...” (Sessions 385). Through her lifelong socio-political and cultural engagement and devotion as a midwife, businesswoman, and Presidentess to several benevolent societies, Patty and the female LDS members whose passionate commitment to the Relief Society’s cause parallels the tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood’s sense of piety. Thus, they “transformed the moral authority and spiritual superiority that society granted them into social power of measurable significance” (Madsen, “Creating Female Community: Relief Society in Cache Valley, Utah, 1868-1900” 153).

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has become known among Mormon scholars as “the Arrington spring”. See Leonard J. Arrington, “The Founding of the LDS Church Historical Department, 1972,” (Arrington, “The Founding of the LDS Church Historical Department, 1972” 41-56). For instance, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, who worked for Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair as her secretary after graduating from the Philadelphia Eclectic School of Medicine in 1870, wrote a study on “mountain fever”. The significance of the study is that mountain fever had been mistaken for typhoid which Brigham Young contracted during the exodus and left him “extremely ill and weak when he finally arrived in the Great Salt Lake Basin in 1847” (Grana 2). One of the most prominent women doctors in Utah’s early history is Dr. Martha Hughes Paul Cannon, who not only graduated at the same time as Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair (whose life writings are the subject of the following case study), but while serving on the State Board of Health that “improved working conditions for women insured by legislation, she permitted her name to be put on the Democratic ticket as candidate for state senator. By the irony of fate, she defeated her own husband, running for the same office on the Republican ticket. It is said that he never forgave her for her boldness in running against him – and defeating him. With this election, she was the first woman in the United States to be elected a state senator” (Rose 30).

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4.2.6

“Remember Me” (1795 -1892)

When we view the events such as the entrance of more and more women in the field of health care and medicine, towards the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the West, “through the eyes of women in motion and action” like Patty Bartlett Sessions, “those events and the places begin to look different” (V. Scharff, Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, And The West 3).75 Thus, in the words of Smart [t]o read the diaries of Patty Sessions is to gain an exceptional insight into one human psyche and the dynamics of early Mormon women and to participate vicariously in building western society. Patty’s diaries unveil the mindset of a woman whose story underscores the historical importance of the dailiness, the ordinariness, the dullness, and the constant vitality of human endeavor. (Smart, “Introduction” 29) Patty’s recorded, spirited, and numerous notes throughout her life writings reveal a pious Mormon woman who lived a very long and productive life in the devout service to God and the Mormon community. According to the obituary with the headline, “Almost a Hundred,” published in the Deseret Evening News, Patty Bartlett Sessions purportedly passed away quietly in her home. However, the cause of death is not revealed, as it was not quite clear what the reason was: “at 6:30 o’clock this (Wednesday) morning of old age” (qtd. in Sessions 397). According to Smart, “[a]s far as we know, Patty Bartlett Sessions’s sketchy May 1888 entries were her last written words” (ibid 394). And then, as if she were just taking a small break to rest, she writes May I will begin with the Month Tuesday the first day Wednesday the 2d day Thursd the 3d Friday the 4th I have knit & the most of the time three pair of stockins this week it is now Friday the 4^th^ . (Sessions 394) In comparison, her diary entry in January of 1888, just a few months prior to the one in May, shows a more vital woman. It also illustrates how she has become tired and unable to recall events clearly within just a short period of a few months.

75

For further discussion(s) on women and mobility, see (Scharff, “Mobility, Women, and the West” 160-171) and (V. and B. C. Scharff 287-303).

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Sunday the first day of January I have read a good deal to day Mond the 2d of January I have done many thing to day rod (Tuesday the 3d the wind blows hard & cold I have knit a good deal to day beside doing many other things wednesday 4 I have knit a good deal to day cleaned snow off the house Thursday 5 fast day a deep snow fell last night we have cleaned it off the windows & doors & round the house this morning I am very tired this morning I will now try to read some I have read a good deal to day. (Sessions 392) The “Journal History” published a sketch of Patty’s life on 14. December 1892 included a list of her family legacy for which she will indeed be remembered. She lived to see her fourth generation and has left two sons, thirty-three grandchildren, one hundred and thirty-seven great grandchildren, and twenty-two great great grandchildren. Total posterity, 214. She was ever a true and faithful Latter-day Saint, diligent and persevering, her whole soul, and all she possessed being devoted to the Church and the welfare of mankind. She has gone to her grave ripe in years, loved and respected by all that knew her. (Smart qtd. in Sessions 397)

4.3

Life of Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair: “Mother of [Oregon’s] Sterilization Bill”

Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair was a well-respected member of Portland’s social and medical communities, where she served as a devoted physician, health care educator, leader in progressive and political movements, including temperance and women’s suffrage. Most notably, she was a crusader in the eugenics movement, which later earned her the title of “The Mother of Oregon’s Sterilization Bill” (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Souvenir: Dr. Owens-Adair To Her Friends 36, 60). She wholeheartedly dedicated herself to writing many articles, lectures, letters, and her autobiography entitled Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences, published in 1906. In giving this book to the public, I have a two-fold purposeFirst: A desire to assist in the preservation of the early history of Oregon, Second: Through the story of my life, and the few selections from my earliest and later writing – preserved in newspaper clippings, - I have endeavoured to show how the pioneer women labored and struggled to gain an entrance into the various avenues of industry, and to make it respectable to earn her

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

honest bread by the side of her brother, man. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. OwensAdair: Some of Her Life Experiences 4) As discussed in chapter 2, the author’s intent to relate a retrospective narrative account of his or her own life characterizes life writing. More often than not, the author wants to explain their intention for narrating their life experience, as exemplified by Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair in the first lines of the SALUTATORY to her autobiography. They illustrate her motivation for writing her life story and an awareness of her agency as an active participant and contributor to Oregon’s history. As she also suggests, she, along with many other women, had aspirations for their lives that conflicted with the constraining expectations of the nineteenth century regarding women’s place. This chapter’s focus involves various phases of Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair’s life as she presents it herself throughout her life writings. It begins with her early childhood recollections as a member of one of the first families to settle in Oregon’s rugged frontier. The harsh environment had a strong impact in shaping and strengthening Bethenia’s character, which later came in handy in overcoming personal hardships and political barriers, leading to her steadfast determination to receive an education in medicine and become involved in healthcare and later in reforming public health policies. The discussion then moves on to the socio-political events leading up to Dr. Owens-Adair’s devotion to her community as a physician and various movements. She was ardently involved in the early fitness culture that strove to improve families’ health by advocating exercise and healthy nutrition but was framed as a civic and moral duty, thus effectively enabling the mass popularization of eugenic principles. Furthermore, this chapter explores the political trajectories of women physicians, especially their significance to Progressive-Era politics and reform movements that incorporated racial and gendered public health ideologies. Their activism was often driven by a zest to leverage their status as medical professionals and propel their political careers. In fact, as the following discussions reveal, political activism shaped by maternalist health reforms also correlated with the eugenics movement and religious ideologies such as those promoted by Protestant healthcare reformers. Though only briefly mentioned at times in the literature, this connection has only recently begun to be explored in depth by scholars. As a passionate and determined lobbyist and public health educator for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Bethenia Owens-Adair urged other women to take up the temper-

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ance cause through her fervent speeches and newspaper editorials against alcohol and its abuses. Later she became well known as a “crusader” in one of the most controversial movements during the Reform Era–namely, the eugenics movement, which evolved from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The various discourses during the Reform Era intersected in ways that opened up unexpected possibilities, particularly for women doctors in the West, such as Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair, who transgressed domestic boundaries to further her feminist convictions, especially her ideas on how to improve society and remedy its ills through the science of surgery. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Owen-Adair’s advocacy and campaigns for the sterilization of the “unfit” involving the bill she drafted for this purpose which was signed into law where it remained on the books until 1983.

4.3.1

Early Life of an Oregon Pioneer “Doctress”

In truth, the Oregon pioneers were by nature molded and designed for the great work they accomplished, and which only such as they could have accomplished. That they were men and women of exceptional resources, fortitude and courage is evident. The undertaking was without precedent, and it will remain without parallel. (Fulton, qtd. in Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. OwensAdair: Some of Her Life Experiences 245, 248) In his “Address Before The Pioneer Society of Oregon,” in Astoria, U.S. senator Hon. Charles W. Fulton discusses the immigration of pioneers to the Western territory in 1843. He refers to them as heroes for their remarkable courage by commending both men and women for their contribution to Oregon’s early settlement. I come before you today to speak of the last pioneers. The immigration of 1843 may be said, I think, to have been the real substantial beginning of the permanent occupation and settlement of the Oregon country. Memorable, indeed, was that year. Memorable, also, is that year, because of the great names it saw added to Oregon’s roll-call of heroes – James W. Nesmith, Jesse Applegate, John G.Baker, Daniel Waldo, Thomas G. Naylor, Peter H. Burnett and many others who became distinguished in the early history of the Northwest. That men should willingly subject themselves to hardships and dangers such as the pioneers were compelled to face and endure, though sufficiently remarkable, is not incredible. But should you ask me who of all those heroic hosts are entitled to the highest praise and admi-

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ration, whom, above all others, we should reverence and honor for exceptional courage and fidelity, my answer would be: “The women, the pioneer women of Oregon.” History furnishes no record of more genuine heroines than were they. (ibid 242, 248-9)76 Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair was born 8th February 1840 in Missouri as the third child of 11 children to Tom and Sarah Damron Owens. At the age of 3, her family left to join others on the Oregon Trail as part of “The Great Migration of 1843“ led by Jesse Applegate, an influential Oregon pioneer settler and member of the early government of Oregon, who helped to establish the Applegate trail as an alternative safer route to Oregon. Bethenia fondly reminisces the close ties with Applegate to her and her family with whom she corresponded and remained in close contact until his death: He nursed me as a babe, and carried me on his brawny shoulders for many miles over those rough, almost endless emigrant trails. He and my father were devoted friends, and to the day of his death he was to me as true and affectionate father, his habit being always to address me as, ‘My child.’(ibid 283)77 Bethenia, who was the second daughter of Thomas and Sarah Damron Owens, describes her younger self as “very small and delicate in stature, and of a highly nervous and sensitive nature, [who] possessed a strong and vigorous constitution, and a most wonderful endurance and recuperative power” (ibid 5). She attributes these qualities not only to her mother, who was of slight build, but perfect form, with bright blue eyes, and soft brown hair [who] weighed but ninety-six pounds when she was married, at the age of sixteen. [But also to her] father, a tall, athletic Kentuckian, [who] served as sheriff of Pike county for many years, beginning as a deputy at the age 76 77

Bethenia was commissioned by the Pioneer Association to “write biographical sketches of all the Clatsop pioneer women coming to Oregon prior to 1849” (ibid 55). Throughout her life Bethenia sought Applegate’s encouragement and advice through their correspondence which she saved. A letter from April 25, 1879 illustrates the deep gratitude and high esteem she felt for him: “And who but you, my dear, honored friend and father (for you have been a father to me in the true sense of the term), […]. God knows how often I have blessed you for that encouragement […]. Your letters always encourage me. They are filled with beautiful thoughts and sentiment, which I treasure with care by copying in a blank book, with other valuables. Someday they will be utilized. They must not decay” (ibid 293-94).

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of sixteen. It was often said of him, ‘Thomas Owens is not afraid of man or devil’ (ibid 6). She is very proud of these qualities in her parents but indulges even further on her grandparent’s qualities which she describes in more detail. They all were of a sturdy pioneer stock, slave owners, and Indian fighters: My grandfather Owens was a man of exceptional financial ability. He had a large plantation in Kentucky, and owned many slaves, and many stores throughout the state. He was a grandson of Sir Thomas Owens, of Wales, of historic fame.   My grandmother Owens was of German dissent, a rather small, but executive woman, who took charge of, and ably administered the affairs of the plantation, during my grandfathers absence, which was most of the time. She was precisely the kind of woman president Roosevelt most admires,- a woman of energy, industry, and capability in managing her Home Affairs, and the mother of 12 children, all of whom grew to maturity, married, and went on giving vigorous sons and daughters to this young growing republic.   My grandfather Damron was a man of equal worth. He was a noted Indian fighter, and was employed by the government, during its wars with the Shawnees and Delawares, as a scout and spy. He performed many deeds of remarkable bravery and daring, one of which was the rescue of a mother and five children from the Indians, who captured them, at the imminent risk of his own life, in recognition of this active signal bravery the government presented him with a handsome silver-mounted rifle, worth three hundred dollars.   My grandmother Damron was my grandfathers second wife. She was of Irish descent, and noted for her great personal beauty. (ibid) According to Bethenia, her earliest recollection of events reaches as far back to when she was five years old and her brother, Josiah Parrish Owens, “named for Rev. J. L. Parrish, of missionary fame, was the pride of our home,” took his first steps (ibid). However, the close connection to her brother Flem provides a glimpse into Bethenia’s strong tom-boyish character traits and independent personality that already surfaced in her younger years. She possessed a strong sense of responsibility for her younger siblings and confidence in her abilities

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to care for them. Besides, she describes herself somewhat later “as especially rebellious and wayward, which was not infrequently” (ibid 13) and as “a veritable ‘tom-boy’ [of which she] gloried in the fact. I was small, and grew slowly, but I was tough and active, and usually led in all our pursuits of work or play” (ibid). It is noteworthy that although “[i]t was father’s custom to pat me on the head, and call me his ‘boy,’ [t]he regret of my life up to the age of thirtyfive, was that I had not been born a boy, for I realized very early in life that a girl was hampered and hemmed in on all sides simply by the accident of sex” (ibid 7). The nurturing and caregiving expectations put on Bethenia from an early age because of her sex are illustrated in the following, where she takes care of her younger siblings while her parents worked. She is entrusted at an early age with much responsibility, viewing herself as the healthcare giver of the family. The manner in which she describes her activities shows that she is still a child enjoying a carefree, happy childhood in the vast spaces of the West: I was the family nurse, and it was seldom that I had not a child in my arms, and more clinging to me. Where there is a baby every two years, there is always no end of nursing to be done, especially when the mother’s time is occupied, as it was then, every moment, from early morning till late at night, with much outdoor as well as indoor work. She seldom found time to devote to the baby, except to give it to the breast.   When the weather was fine we fairly lived out of doors, baby and all, I hauling the baby in its rude little sled, or cart, which bumped along, and from which baby was often thrown out, but seldom seriously hurt, and never killed, with the two-year-old on one hip, and a four-year-old hanging to my skirts, in order to keep up, but more often on brother Flems back, so we went, playing here, and working there, during all the pleasant weather. When it rained, we had access to the barn, where we could swing, play “hide and seek,” and slide down the hay-mow, from the top of the bottom. Many a time I have carried the children to the top, from where, with the baby in my arms, and the two next younger clinging to me, I would slide to the bottom, to their great delight. (ibid 8-9)

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Bethenia only received formal education at the beginning of puberty, at 12 years old. Along with the other children in Clatsop County,78 she was very fond of their new teacher. “My love for my handsome, kind and intelligent teacher knew no bounds. Diana [Bethenia’s sister] said I was always ‘tagging him around,’ and mother chided me for being so rude, saying, ‘You ought to know that he must get tired of you and the children sometimes’”(ibid 12). Mr. Beaufort, who boarded with Bethenia’s family, accompanied the children two miles to school every day. When I was about twelve years old, a teacher by the name of Beaufort came to teach a three months’ school in our neighborhood. School-books were extremely scarce, and sometimes whole families were taught out of one book. All the children over four years old attended the school, for children did not remain babies long when other babies came along so fast and crowded them out of the cradle. However, according to Bethenia, not everyone was as fond of her girl-crush, who taught her many things that suited her tom-boyish nature. The new teacher was a fine, handsome young man, who held himself aloof from the young people of his age, and kept his person so clean, neat and trim that the country young men disliked him. [However,] I simply worshiped my handsome teacher, who taught me how to run, to jump, to lasso, to spring up on the horse’s back, and so many other things that I appreciated. (ibid 10-11). The day of Mr. Beaufort’s departure was heartbreaking for Bethenia, who remembers that I was trying to keep back my tears. He smiled down on me with his handsome blue eyes, and said to mother: ‘I guess I’ll take this one with me.’ Mother answered, ‘All right, she is such a tom-boy I can never make a girl of her, anyway.’ [To which Mr. Beaufort responded] You are a nice little girl, and some day you will make a fine women, but you must remember and 78

Clatsop County belongs to one of 36 counties in the state of Oregon. It is located in the Northwest corner of Oregon with the seat in Astoria established in 1811 as a fur trading post and named after John Jacob Astor. It is also named after a small tribe of Chinookan-speaking Native Americans who lived there before the Europeans settled in the area. According to the U.S. census from 1850, the population was estimated at approximately 462 inhabitants.

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study your book hard, and when you get to be a woman everybody will love you,-and don’t’ forget your first teacher, will you? (ibid 14) The unforgotten and lasting impact made by Mr. Beaufort was followed by another significant recollection about a lifelong mentor and surrogate mother to Bethenia named Mrs. McCrary. She lived childless on the adjoining farm with her husband. According to Bethenia, the abiding “affection between us remained unbroken throughout her long subsequent life, of nearly fifty years, and now I can realize, looking back, that the lovely example of her beautiful life has had much to do with molding my own [...]” (ibid 15). Bethenia’s adoration reverberates in the following. She was quite a litter older than my mother, but very different from her. [...] [S]he was one of the most admirable and beautiful characters I have met with in all my life. To me she looked beautiful, and I loved her ardently. No child could have loved a mother more than I loved this pure, noble woman. It is said ‘love begets love,’ and it surely did, in this case, for she returned my love with a true mother-love. Besides the motherly love that Bethenia received from Mrs. McCrary, she was also captivated by her positivity that Bethenia desperately longed for and her mother seemed to lack, who was very busy with the farm and many children to care for. Mrs. McCrary, who did not have any children, seemed better positioned to fill this void. She possessed character traits that Bethenia valued and therefore served as an early role model for her that she strove to emulate throughout her life. Mrs. McCrary seemed always so glad to see me, and had so many pretty and pleasant things to say to me, that it was no wonder I was drawn so strongly to her. She did not visit much, and never gossiped. She was a reader, but books and papers were very scarce in those days. She always treated me as if I were a little lady of some consequence.   Sometimes she would tell me a fairy story, at the same time showing me how to knit, crochet or sew. All this time talking, and drawing me out, correcting my mistakes with such delicacy that even my super-sensitive nature was not wounded. She infused such a charm into everything she did and said that I was not only interested, but most anxious to learn. She impressed upon my mind in the most positive language just how the thing should be done, showing me by example, at the same time, always having me as-

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sist her when possible, invariably excusing my blunders, and praising my progress.   Was it any wonder that I loved that wise, good woman? I was as wax in her hands, and could I have been under her influence until I reached maturity, instead of but one year, I could, and would have escaped many of the sorrows and hardships of my life. (ibid 16-17) In the spring of 1853, Bethenia’s father moved the family to Southern Oregon, where he purchased more land for his rapidly multiplying cattle. In the fall, he bought enough lumber to build a house in the following spring. During the winter, one of Mr. Owen’s workers, Legrand Henderson Hill, paid a visit with his parents to arrange for his marriage to Bethenia. However, no details regarding the arrangements are made in her autobiography. She only writes about the preparations made a few months before, describes the wedding ceremony’s day, and mentions those present. It is also noteworthy that Bethenia is only 14 years old and a child bride who does not focus on her romantic feelings for her husband-to-be but emphasizes her physical measurements, saying that she had yet not reached full stature. However, it was not long before Bethenia noticed her husband’s “shiftlessness and temper when I object to any of his plans or suggestions” (ibid 32). The following situations illuminate the early signs of his irresponsible and erratic behavior that would later escalate. Furthermore, Legrand often seemed to make irrational decisions on a whim that put the young family in precarious financial situations, requiring emergency bail-outs from Bethnia’s father, which the following scenario(s) illustrates. On one occasion while visiting with Legrand’s parents out in California during the Gold Rush where “[a]t this time there was much gold excitement in and around Yreka. Mr. Hill went there [to the mines]” to make his fortune, ignoring Bethenia’s father’s advice to “settle down” as a cattle farmer (ibid 42). Legrand’s aunt, Mrs. Kelly, who was visiting the young couple with their new baby, George (born on April 17th , 1856), reprimanded Legrand’s unsound behavior: “Now, Legrand, you must get right to work, there’s plenty to do here, at good wages. But you must not leave this little wife of yours alone, for there are too many rough, drinking men in the place” (ibid 44). While it seems that, according to Bethenia, Mr. Hill neither drank or used tobacco, [...] as his aunt said, he simply idled away his time, doing a day’s work here and there, but never continuing at

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anything. Then, too, he had a passion for trading and speculating, always himself coming out a loser, and thus the time dragged on, until September, 1857, when who should drive up, one glad day, but my father and mother. Father had heard how things were going with us, and had come, prepared to take us back with them in case we were willing to go, but he was too discreet to let this be known till later. He and mother wanted to see the country, [...] and especially desired to see my baby.   It did not take them long to understand that we were barely living “from hand to mouth,” as it were, with most of the work coming on me, so father said: “How would you like to go back to Roseburg? It is a growing town. I have several acres in it, and if you think you would like to make the change, I will give you an acre of land, and the material for a good house, which you can put up this fall. And there will always be plenty of work at carpentering in town” (ibid 46). Shortly upon returning home to live near Bethenia’s parents, Legrand became involved again in shady business enterprises in which his father-in-law endeavored, in every way, to dissuade him from going into [the] undertaking, [...] but the more he talked the more determined Mr. Hill was to put all the little money we had into the venture, and so he moved me and my young child into a tent in a low, damp valley, near the river, [where] in addition to this ill-fortune, I was stricken down with typhoid fever. My health was poor. I had not been strong since the baby came, and I could not recover from the effects of the fever. The baby was ill and fretful, much of the time, and things were going anything but smoothly. (ibid 47-48) The situation became increasingly so unbearable that Bethenia’s parents intervened by taking her and baby George into their home upon her mother’s indignation to let him go: that any man that could not make a living with the good starts and help he has had, never will make one, and with his temper, he is liable to kill you at any time. [However,] father broke down, and shed tears, saying: “Oh, Bethenia, there has never been a divorce in my family, and I hope there never will be. I want you to go back, and try again, and do your best. After that, if you cannot possibly get along, come home.” I went back, greatly relieved, for I knew that if I had to leave, I would be protected. (ibid 50)

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Needless to say, Bethenia’s attempts to reconcile her broken marriage were futile. Shortly after returning to him again, Legrand “thought him [baby George] old enough to be trained and disciplined, and would spank him unmercifully because he cried. This I could not endure, and war would be precipitated at once. [Thus,] after a tempestuous scene of this sort [...] I put on my hat and shawl, and, [...] flew over to father’s” (ibid). Due to Hill‘s neglect and abusive behavior, she finally filed for divorce in 1859. Bethenia, having already been through so much turmoil in her young married life, summarizes the intensity of her experiences and unwavering determination to move on despite her broken heart, receive an education and make a fresh start to build a better life for her and George. And now, at eighteen years of age, I found myself, broken in spirit and health, again in my father’s house, from which, only four short years before, I had gone with such a happy heart, and such bright hopes for the future. It seemed to me now that I should never be happy or strong again. I was, indeed, surrounded with difficulties seemingly insurmountable, - a husband for whom I had lost all love and respect, a divorce, the stigma of which would cling to me all my future life, and a sickly babe of two years in my arms, all rose darkly before me. At this time, I could scarcely read or write, and four years of trials, and hardships and privations sufficient to crush a mature woman, had wrought a painful change in the fresh, blooming child who had so buoyantly taken the duties and burdens of wifehood and motherhood on her young shoulders. I realized my position fully, and resolved to meet it bravely, and do my very best.Surrounded with an atmosphere of affection and cheerfulness, with an abundance of nourishing food, my health rapidly returned, and with it came an increasing desire for education, that I might fit myself for the duties of a mother, and for the life yet before me. (ibid 52) Following her divorce from Legrand, Bethenia and George were both able to recover in the supportive and healthy environment of her parent’s home and the small community of Roseburg. However, when her father confronted her for taking on odd jobs to support herself and George, “Why can’t you be contented to stay at home with us, I am able to support you and your child?” Bethenia’s stubborn/resolute response was that “No amount of argument would shake my determination to earn my own livelihood, and that of my child, [whereupon] father bought me a sewing-machine, the first that ever

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came into that town, and so, with sewing and nursing, a year passed very profitably” (ibid 57). Her determination and supportive environment increased Bethenia’s self-esteem, which led her into other areas of employment, such as her very first (but not last) teaching job, at “the first Presbyterian churchbuilding ever erected in Oregon” (ibid 59). She worked at various jobs “even accepting washing, which was one of the most profitable occupations among the few considered proper for women in those days [and] with sewing and nursing, a year passed very profitably” (ibid 56). She later successfully ran her own millinery and dressmaking business in Rosebud. I [...] was mistress of my art, a fact which I used to the best possible advantage. The profits from the sales of that year amounted to $1,500, and the business continued to increase as long as I conducted it.   In 1870, I placed my son in the University of California, at Berkley. I had always a fondness of nursing, and had developed such a special capacity in that direction by assisting my neighbors in illness, that I was more and more besieged by the entreaties of my friends and doctors which were hard to refuse, to come to their aid in sickeness, oftentimes to the detriment of business, and now that money came easily, a desire began to grow within me for a medical education. (ibid 79) After saving up enough money for her medical studies and sending George to college, she had a transformative experience that confirmed her decision and sealed her fate to study medicine. One evening I was sent for by a friend with a very sick child. The old physician in my presence attempted to use an instrument for the relief of the little sufferer, and, in his long, bungling, and unsuccessful attempt he severely lacerated the tender flesh of the poor little girl. At last, he laid down the instrument to wipe his glasses. I picked it up, saying, “Let me try, Doctor,” and passed it instantly, with perfect ease, bringing immediate relief to the tortured child. The mother, who was standing in agony at the sight of her child’s mutilation, threw her arms around my neck, and sobbed out her thanks. Not so the doctor! He did not appreciate or approve of my interference, and he showed his displeasure at the time most emphatically. This apparently unimportant incident really decided my future course. (ibid) Shortly after this experience, she resolved “in good earnest to arrange my business affairs so that I could leave for the East in one year from that time, mean-

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time studying diligently to familiarize myself with the science of anatomy, the groundwork of my chosen profession” (ibid 80). She borrowed medical books from her friend Dr. Hamilton, including Gray’s Anatomy. After leaving Hamilton’s office, she bumped into another family friend, Hon. S. F. Chadwick, who, upon overhearing the conversation between them regarding her plans, “promptly came forward and shook my hand warmly, saying: “Go ahead. It is in you, let it come out. You will win” (ibid). Also, “The Hon. Jesse Applegate, my dear and revered friend, who had fondled me as a babe, was the one other person who ever gave me a single word of encouragement to study medicine” (ibid). In a letter from January 5th, 1874, Applegate writes: My Very Dear Friend –You are right in deciding that your mind was not given you to be frittered away in frivolity. I was right in deciding that marriage and motherhood were not intended for you by the Creator. He designed you for a higher destiny, and you will attain it. [...] Avoid love, marriage and all other entangelments and relaxations until you have attained to the high distinction to which you aspire. Fame and fortune will then await you, and there will still be time to indulge in the tenderness of your heart and the warmth of your affections. (ibid 287) The following year, Bethenia began packing and arranging her business affairs, leaving her sister to run it while she was gone. As she had already expected, her decision to study medicine was not equally accepted nor supported by everyone who knew her, especially those in her inner circle. What she did not foresee, however, was the patronizing reaction from her own family when she announced her impending departure for Philadelphia. In due time, I announced that in two weeks I would leave for Philadelphia, to enter a medical school. As I have said, I expected disapproval from my friends and relatives, but I was not prepared for the storm of opposition that followed. My family felt that they were disgraced, and even my own child was influenced and encouraged to think that I was doing him an irreparable injury, by my course. People sneered and laughed derisively. Most of my friends seemed to consider it their Christian duty to advise against and endeavor to prevent me taking this “fatal” step. That crucial fortnight was a period in my life never to be forgotten. (ibid) On that last afternoon, two friends, Mesdames Sheridan and Champaign, called to say good-bye. Mrs. C. Said: “Well, this beats all! I always did think you were a smart woman, but you must have lost your senses, and gone

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stark crazy to leave such a business as you have, and run off on such a ‘wild goose chase’ as this.” I smiled and said: “You will change your mind when I come back a physician, and charge you more than I ever have for your hats and bonnets.” Her answer came, quick and sharp: “Not much! You are a good milliner, but I’ll never have a woman doctor about me!” Choking back the tears with a desperate effort, I calmly answered: “Time will tell. People have been known to change their minds.” (ibid 81) Although she felt downtrodden, Bethenia’s hurt pride and disappointment over her family and friends’ ridicule over her decision to study medicine did not deter her. She had made up her mind and was determined to follow through with her plans, since in her mind We are told that when the decision is made, the battle is half won. I had taken the decisive step, and I would never turn back. Those cheering words of my faithful attorney, Hon. S. F. Chadwick, who so ably defended my divorce case, came back to me then as a sweet solace to my wounded spirit: “Go ahead. It is in you, let it come out. You will win!” (ibid 82) According to Bethenia, her friends Chadwick and Applegate’s reassuring and supportive words became sources of her strength throughout her life, as her choices were often met with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. How many, many times have those inspiring words cheered me on through the dark hours of life. They have helped through countless difficulties, and knotty problems, which have since confronted me. Let us never forget or neglect to speak an encouraging word when we can. It costs us so little, and is worth so much to the recipient. (ibid) Thus, as her decision had been irrevocably made, she enrolled at the Eclectic School of Medicine in Philadelphia, completing her medical degree at the top of her class in 1874. In 1880, she received her M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School. In 1881, she returned to Portland, Oregon, to set up one of the state’s first medical practices, which was quite an accomplishment for a woman in the nineteenth century. The Astorian published an article on May 12, 1885, commending doctor Owens on successfully completing her studies and opening her practice. Oregon has a daughter who has already received the highest honors in the medical profession, and is now reaping the fruits of a lucrative practice in this state. We allude to Mrs. B.A. Owens, M.D., of Portland. Mrs. Owens

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came to Oregon with her parents in 1843, begin then a mere child. She early evinced a strong desire to learn, to acquire a scientific education. [...] At that early day, and for years thereafter, the opportunities for learning were very few and far between.   [...] After a few years, being fully prepared, and having, by her industry, secured a competency, she entered the Medical University of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, where, in due time, she graduated with the honors of her class.   Mrs. Owens, therefore, is not only the first woman on this coast who has ever been admitted to such honor, but she is the first woman of the Pacific states who had the moral courage to enter a class of students in a medical college where men and women studied and practiced medicine together. (ibid 430-31) In the following years, she served Oregon’s communities specialized in treating women and children, writing articles for various newspapers and journals, and holding lectures and speeches. The unique insights gained by the extremes of her early happy childhood on the one hand and painful experience as a child bride on the other contributed to Bethenia’s development of her public career as a reformer where she was committed to promoting a holistic approach to mental and physical health in her writing and lectures by emphasizing the importance of fresh air, exercise, healthy nutrition, and supportive relationships. During her long and, at times, turbulent life, Dr. Owens-Adair became a well-known and respected member of the social and medical communities she served. She was a leader in progressive political movements, including women’s suffrage, Protestant social reform connected with temperance, and the eugenics movement, which the discussions will now turn to in the following.

4.3.2

The “Organized” New Woman and Maternalist Health Reformers

Everybody will think it was always so. They have no idea how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women in the past. (Susan B. Anthony qtd. in Lange 216)

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The statement made above is by Susan B. Anthony in 1894 illustrates her intuitive prediction of how women in the future would (and could) not realize or even visualize how the liberties and freedoms that today are taken for granted were not always that way for women only a century ago. In her book, Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Allison K. Lange points out that socio-cultural expectations of women’s place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were reflected in the imagery projected by the emerging printing technology and photography. Throughout the nineteenth century, as women honed their organizational skills by establishing many organizations and clubs at the local and national level, they also created departments staffed with professionals who managed their public images through various media.79 Pro-and anti-suffrage leaders used pictures of the campaigns, for instance, to make their arguments for and against the vote, making it one of the first coordinated visual political campaigns in American history. Thus, “while opponents relied on old tropes, suffragists coordinated the first visual campaigns to transform notions of political womanhood” (Lange 2). Nevertheless, images of the New Woman in public spaces were still rooted in traditional ideas of womanhood, and feminist reformers made use of motherhood rhetoric to champion their causes. As soon as women made their demands for the vote clear, however, opponents of women’s suffrage began arguing against it, often with sardonic images that “represented political women as power-hungry, masculine-looking activists who deserted their families to pursue fame and end traditional family values” (ibid). These images were meant to demonstrate how the women fighting for their rights neglected their “proper” place, which according to the dictates of the Cult of Domesticity, was with their families and in the private sphere of their homes, instead of the hostile public sphere of politics, which the opponents argued would transform or in the worst case destroy domestic life. Conversely, the images that were being projected “publicly often portrayed elite white men as powerful, [and] revered leaders, [while] comparable imagery of women and people of color barely existed” (ibid).80 Instead, 79

80

The WCTU established their own publishing association in 1879. They disseminated information through their newspaper, pamphlets, and an illustrated calendar. Their highly developed organization with a membership of approximately 200,000 expanded rapidly and by 1889, the WCTU boasted thirty-nine departments (McKeever 367). In other words, the vision projected in their images did not reflect the realities of all women. The consequences of “their choice not to address racial stereotypes or impos-

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women’s images as mothers fed into the idea that a woman’s perceived capabilities were inextricably tied to her role as a selfless caregiver. It is one that played a crucial role in the decade-long struggle for women’s right to vote. As Lange argues in her book, women ultimately, won support by winning over the popular press, keeping the cause in the news with dramatic public protest, and mounting propaganda campaigns that transformed dominant [visual] representations of female citizens. Put differently; visual culture can offer a way of understanding “collective and national experiences” (Fitz, “Contested Space: Washington Crossing the Delaware as a Site of American Cultural Memory” 557) while, at the same time revealing how the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century women, who were involved in the historical health reform and suffrage campaigns, perceived these experiences. Despite the gains women have made regarding the debates over femininity and motherhood, however, “to this day, the suffragists’ successful visual campaign to associate political womanhood with family values has obliged prominent women to negotiate their public images in terms of their statuses as mothers, wives, daughters, and potential mothers” (ibid 3). Evidence shows that images also have the power to influence public opinion. For instance, reformers were successful in their visual campaigns in conveying the message that women could balance domesticity and political engagement. The notion of visibility was crucial to their efforts since they first “needed to change minds about the bounds of female citizenship before they could change laws. [In order] to gain power, an individual must be visible [and] suffragists recognized that popular pictures defined notions of gender and power for a broad audience” (ibid 6). However, suffragists were not the only group of women who realized the necessity of being well-organized, being seen, and making their voices heard. Women across the U.S. had already been organizing themselves in unions and clubs throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, especially in clubs dedicated to domestic and health reforms. The organizations were very often founded on benevolence and religious piety. Likewise, the nineteenth century has been referred to by some scholars as the age of invention,

sible literacy tests forced people of color to fight for the ballot until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. [Not to mention] Native American, Puerto Rican, and Asian women [who] did not win the ballot with the Nineteenth Amendment, either” (Lange 2-3).

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science education, and reform. Therefore, bringing science to motherhood and children’s health was seen by the Cult’s advocates as a natural extension of the ideals rooted in raising virtuous and intelligent citizens, which had transformed since the days of Republican Motherhood. Many feminist progressives, still living their lives following the Cult of True Womanhood, as true women, spoke of making motherhood a profession and making it more scientific. As a result, it was only natural that pursuing mental, moral, marital, and physical health was expanded to producing healthy children in this respect. Accordingly, true women felt that producing healthy children was considered a woman’s role and duty to improving humanity and improving motherhood’s status, which in turn improved women’s lives. These attitudes permeated and reflected the core values of these women’s organizations which were rapidly expanding throughout the country and gaining national attention. Driven by their maternal responsibilities towards their families and the communities in which they lived, “this brand of maternalist politics generated reforms specifically designed to assist working women, impoverished and widowed mothers, and their children through the establishment of widows’ pensions, campaigns to end child labor, and the establishment of pure milk stations” (More et al. 71). Also, women organized themselves around local affairs and daily concerns such as improving clean water, industrial pollution, pure food, creating playgrounds, parks, recreation centers, and improved housing, schools, and child welfare, especially child labor laws. Across the country, feminist public health care reformers campaigned fervently for hospitals and better conditions in these areas, arguing that the results of industrialization and urbanization threatened the well-being of families living in cities. Involvement in these causes gave many women a reason to believe that they had a voice, and as their voices were being heard, they felt that they could have an impact at the local, state, and federal levels. Scholars have argued that women’s organizations were linked to early suffrage. Likewise, they were also considered the vanguard of a powerful women’s domain being set up outside the home, [and that] by 1890, local chapters of mothers’ associations, female literary clubs, and temperance societies enrolled literally millions of women in a powerful set of interlocking associations like the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the National Congress of Mothers. (M. P. Ryan 163)

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In an address before the Woman‘s Congress at Portland, Oregon, on June 18, 1896, Dr. Owens-Adair let her voice be heard in the following. Woman, in all these advanced movements, has forged ahead, and taken her rightful place beside man. To what place of honorable business can you go today and not find pure women using their hands and brains in the uplifting of the human race? All over the universe today women are rising up and taking hold with hands and brains, of everything that comes within their reach and they’re demanding equal shares, equal pay, and equal rights with men. Woman’s work has ever been for the good of humanity. Woman has proved her ability to use the ballot, and to perform any official duties with as much discretion and wisdom as does man, and the time is not far distant when the ballot will be awarded her in every state in the Union. (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Pioneer Woman Doctor’s Life 418; Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 11) It is noteworthy that, at the time Owens-Adair made this statement in 1896 regarding women’s ability to use the ballot, she was referring to the women in the Territory of Wyoming who had already been granted the right to vote as of July 1890, thus becoming the first state to grant women suffrage. Four years after her address to the Woman‘s Congress at Portland, in 1900, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho followed. As the historian Katherine Kish Sklar has noted, the most critical aspect of women’s reform activities during the Progressive era was the “ability to speak for the national welfare, [through the] mobiliz[ation of] social and political power through their organizations” (Kish Sklar

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176).81 Many of these organizations also included “the extension of educational functions, pure food laws, mothers’ pensions, development of recreational facilities, labor laws, particularly for women and children, and measures directed against prostitution” (Beard 54). Thus, as the “new women” learned to speak out on behalf of their families and others, they also found the motivation and power to speak out for themselves. In an address before the Woman’s Congress at Portland, Oregon, June 18, 1896, Owens-Adair poses a rhetorical question regarding the socio-political status of women throughout history and societies’ perception of their abilities and proper place: Is there any difference between woman’s work and men’s work? Is there anything under the sun that muscle or mind can do that the new woman cannot accomplish? We have no fear that the “new woman” will not find a place in the poet’s theme, as well as in his heart. She will not cease to be the “ministering angel,” the very inspiration of life. Like the fine gold that comes from the furnace, she will come forth, clothed in all the beauty and strength of a pure womanhood, for she will have been cleansed of the dross of dependence, helplessness and prejudice of past ages. Indeed, up to the present time, what has man done that woman could not do, or has not done? (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 471-472) Attitudes towards the “woman question” and plausible explanation for establishing maternalist organizations throughout the nineteenth century can be found already in the early nineteenth century. While women’s charities and

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According to Harriet Sigerman, “African-American women as well as white women formed associations in the antebellum years. Most African-American clubs were formed in northern states, where slavery had died out or been abolished. But a few clubs for freed blacks existed in the slaveholding South as well. Most African-American clubs were educational in purpose. By 1849 more than half of Philadelphia’s AfricanAmerican population, men as well as women, belonged to one of 106 black literary organizations in the city. Other black clubs helped the African-American community by raising funds to build schools and libraries for their people. The Ohio Ladies Education Society, a club formed by black women in 1837, had a sterling record of accomplishment. By the 1840s it had opened more schools for African Americans than any other black, or white, organization in the nation. African-American women and men defied poverty and racism to organize clubs that served their communities. Their impressive club activities were even more remarkable because of the obstacles they overcame” (Sigerman, “An Unfinished Battle” 241).

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missionaries extended Christian friendships to the less fortunate, new types of organizations and associations were being established between the 1800 and 1850s when inequalities resulting from the Industrial Revolution became visible on many levels. Maternal associations that formed at this time developed programs to educate and prepare children to resist unsolicited sexual activity and consuming alcohol. One of the earliest maternalist reform organizations that based its benevolent activities on piety was The Female Moral Reform Society that was founded in New York City in 1834 that “offered nineteenth-century women the means to act on the impulses of religious perfectionism, bourgeois social control, and sympathy for the poor” (More et al. 71). Hence, the establishment and membership in one of the many organizations and clubs offered many women a way of entering the public sphere without straying from the “traditional womanly concerns,” while at the same time, “elevating the art of domesticity to a science” (Morantz-Sanchez 42-43). Women received much support from abolitionists. “They also drew inspiration from the temperance movement, crusades for better schools and healthier ways to live” (Sigerman, “An Unfinished Battle” 243). Women’s concerns regarding health reform issues reflect “not only the more general ideological transition from religion to [scientific] health but also woman’s central role in the transformation of values that prepared the reformist elements of the middle class [later] to cope with the problems of industrialization and urbanization” (Morantz et al. 14). Indeed, the transformation of medicine throughout the nineteenth century increasingly provided women with opportunities as “part of the liberal campaign to rationalize the professions for the larger social good” in areas of “preventive medicine.” The argument was that women had an innate “ability to work with women and children” (Morantz-Sanchez 281). President Theodore Roosevelt later supported this claim by stating that “Women physicians must be at the forefront of reform programs” (qtd. in ibid). By the late nineteenth century, and especially in the early twentieth century, women physicians were engaged in what some scholars refer to as “maternalist medicine” (More 11). Whereas other scholars refer to women physicians’ engagement in the diverse health reform programs as “social medicine,” in which they claimed specific spaces as their area of expertise,” such as the establishment of various public health institutions, hospitals, nurseries, and settlement housing (ibid 281). Ultimately, the efforts of female reformers resulted in 1912 in the establishment of the U.S. Children’s Bureau (More et al. 71). Perhaps, it was not coincidental then, too that the outcome of their ded-

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icated involvement contributed to “the founding of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (1890), the National Association of Colored Women (1896), the Women’s Education and Industrial Union (1893), and the revitalization of the woman suffrage movements” later in the century. Altogether, women successfully extended the “domestic morality of the nineteenth century’s ‘separate sphere’ for women into the nation’s public life” (ibid). Similarly, women physicians “participated enthusiastically in shaping public health policy [in addition to participating] in the birth control movement, eugenics, and the establishment of sex clinics” (Morantz-Sanchez xvi).82 In fact, the maternal discourse of various organizations promoting families’ health and speaking out against alcohol abuse was increasingly linked to the interaction with eugenic discourses in response to the “woman question” that increasingly looked to the emerging sciences in support of their causes. Their agenda provided support for healthcare givers for various scientific reforms based on Galton’s work, as we will see later. Dr. Owens-Adair was passionately involved in various domestic and health reform movements in her home state, Oregon. She was frequently invited to hold talks on health matters and submit articles to journals and newspapers such as the Astorian, the local newspaper for Clatsop County in Oregon. As a health reform educator, she advocated physical exercise for women and firmly believed that it was the “sacred duty” of parents to ensure their children’s moral, mental, and physical well-being. Her attitude is reflected in the following address delivered at the Temperance Centennial anniversary, which is cloaked in pious maternal rhetoric and tainted with eugenic undertones: God created in us this desire and love for children, and when we look into the faces of our children, we are constantly reminded of our great responsibility to them, and the desire comes to us to live well for their sakes, so that we may train them up to become good and useful men and women. Every year we value our children more and more, and we are constantly striving to improve them by every means in our power. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 389)

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Several scholars such as Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Margaret Jacobs, and Ann Laura Stolar, however, have suggested that once women physicians were enfranchised, their campaign efforts on public health policies were not as altruistic as they may have appeared at the outset but were instead used to advance their own careers.

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Thus, in order to ensure that parents fulfilled their obligation to raise children to be good citizens, Dr. Owens-Adair encouraged couples, even before marriage, to “receive suitable instructions concerning that holy and most important duty of this life, [namely] the giving to the world children with pure, healthy minds and bodies” (ibid 332). Her argument for the advocacy of such instruction was that “with such children, the labor of instruction would be a source of pleasure, while disease and crime would soon become the exception, instead of as now, the rule” (ibid). It is worth noting that other progressives also reflected the concern Bethenia had about disease and crime that she addresses in her instruction to expecting parents. In 1912, for example, Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead cautioned: We are confronted today by problems in a measure unknown a generation ago. Instead of the sturdy Irish and Swedish immigrants of the 70’s, we have the underfed, undereducated and nervously irritable Italians, narrow chested neurotic Jews, and half-famished Russians whose suppressed energy may rise in anarchy as soon as it feels the unrestrained freedom of our country. From the children of such parents we must raise a nation strong in mind and body. (Hurd-Mead qtd. in Morantz-Sanchez 293) Both Dr. Owens-Adair and Hurd-Mead‘s statements mirror the growing fears held by many Americans in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. American society had already become increasingly polarized between the incredibly wealthy robber barons and the dwindling middle-class that followed in the aftermath of the Civil War. During this time, many Americans assumed that what was wrong with society was the fault of others–especially certain groups who had been forced to leave their home countries like the Roman Catholics from Southern Europe and Eastern European Jews. In her opinion of the influx of immigrants, Owens-Adair says, “it is lamentable that our immigration laws are so lax, allowing so many worthless persons to prey upon us, bringing only discord and dissension” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 39). A widely held belief was that certain immigrants were thought to live in poverty-stricken conditions, which led to disappointment and ultimately resulted in their involvement in various degenerate behaviors due to excessive illicit drug and alcohol consumption. One particular female organization that felt called upon to take action was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). It was a religious woman’s organization whose primary goal was to combat the influence of alcohol on families.

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In sum, this chapter has illustrated how women’s involvement in many groups outside of the domestic sphere contributed to their visibility and new image in the public sphere. They accomplished this by organizing all kinds of maternalist benevolent and health reform groups that addressed a wide range of domestic concerns by employing “maternal” and religious rhetoric that made visible the nineteenth century’s socio-political inequalities. Thus, through effectively organized mass persuasion, women were about to launch another organization that would become the most successful women’s group known up to that time, namely, the WCTU.

4.3.3

Protestant Social Reformers: WCTU Crusaders on a Mission

Many intellectual streams converged in late-nineteenth-century North America, in a cultural milieu dominated by protestant theologies, biological theories, and multi-disciplinary efforts at social reform. (Durst ix) The American Revolution set the stage for women’s first significant involvement in various associations outside the home in the succeeding decades after that. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, there had been “an explosion of reform efforts” which “stemmed from broadly evangelical groups” who “sought to combat evils like slavery, prostitution, alcoholism, and poverty” and who “concentrated on evangelizing the American West” (Butler et al. 187189).83 Among the reform efforts was the campaign against alcoholism, one of the earliest and largest reform movements that many women were involved in. Many factors played a role in women’s interest in the temperance movement, which had roots going back as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century when the first feminist organizations that promoted missionary and charity work began in the New England areas of upstate New York (1808) and 83

Thus, women already had experience with various Christian organizations connected to temperance work before the establishment of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). A few examples include missionary societies and charities dating back to 1760, such as The Society of Friends, in 1780 The Conference of the Methodist Church, and the Universalists in 1800, whom all opposed alcohol use. “Colonial Quakers and Baptists, however, gave women more direct roles in their denominations and presaged the rise of women’s religious activity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America” (Butler et al. 125).

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Massachusetts (1813) and Ohio. In these areas, too, in the 1830s and 1840s, many women became involved in evangelical revivalism known as the Second Great Awakening. The revivalists emphasis on conversion and commitment gave women and men a special mission to serve God and the opportunity to participate in a “culture of honor” (ibid 188). Besides, “[t]he same strategies used in evangelism” – the spreading of the gospel per se – were also used to spread the gospel of reform. As Nancy A. Hardesty has noted, “[j]ust as women learned in Finney‘s meeting to pray for their unregenerate neighbors by name, so they were not afraid to kneel in front of New York City brothels or Hillsboro, Ohio, saloons and pray for their sinful neighbors by name” (Hardesty xi). The Finney Revivals had converts sign a pledge never to drink wine or spirits. Thus, temperance was viewed as a natural extension of Christian life which, according to Butler et al., “left important legacies [and] a new role for women” (Butler et al. 181). Although females had always composed a majority of church members, in the years of the awakening they seized the opportunity to speak out as well as up. Dorothy Ripley, an evangelical firebrand from England, earned the distinction of being the first woman to preach in the House of Representatives in 1806 and was probably the first woman to speak in Congress at all. (ibid) Consequently, scholars claim that “of all the women’s groups that flourished before 1850, temperance associations created the most direct path to women’s organized political activity” (Zollinger Giele 45). The following discussion illustrates how women used their domestic roles and their involvement in religious groups that later contributed to establishing the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU) in the temperance cause to promote social and reform changes, especially as powerful advocates of the ballot for women. One prominent example is Susan B. Anthony, whose life as a member of the Quaker community was also strongly influenced by the Great Awakening. Her grandmother and aunts, for instance, were well-known leaders in the Quaker church, and therefore, she was used to hearing women speak openly. Her early activist involvement began with her holding speeches at anti-slavery conven-

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tions.84 However, she soon turned her cause to fight for women’s rights (Sigerman, “An Unfinished Battle” 245). One of Anthony’s many campaign journeys took her to Oregon in 1871, where she met Owens-Adair, one of the meeting organizers. Their meeting is reflected in an adulating letter Bethenia writes to Anthony on March 28, 1905, inviting Anthony, who, in the meantime, has achieved national celebrity status, to speak again in Oregon. Furthermore, since their first meeting, Bethenia is no longer working as a milliner but has followed her vocational calling to study medicine. As she writes to Anthony, she does so as a respected physician and devoted temperance educator and campaigner in the Oregon community whose work has been published in the media and whose lectures have been delivered in churches to large audiences. I feel, however, that my best work has been done through the press. I have written very many essays and communications (far too many for me to enumerate here), which have been published in the Oregonian and our Prohibition Star. Aside from my professional duties, almost all my time is devoted to our temperance work in the way of communications through the press: and the calls upon me in this direction, I assure you, are many. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 465) She closes by inserting a newspaper clipping that reveals the success, and the support of professional men, of her “heroic reform campaigns” published in Oregon. North Yakima, Wash., March 28, 1905.   My Dear Beloved Miss Anthony: I see by today’s Oregonian that you may come to our great Lewis and Clark Centennial, and my heart responded with a strong throb of pleasure at the thought of again seeing you.   Can you recall me, my friend, among your many thousand special friends? Yes, I think you will, when I remind you that I am that little Roseburg 84

The first national antislavery convention was held in 1837 in New York. It was attended by early prominent feminists such as Lucy Stone, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Scholars have noted that not only was women’s participation in the abolitionist movement a “respectable cause to free the slaves, [but] it was only one more step to mount another struggle to free themselves from male domination” (Archer 5).

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milliner to whom you wrote November 15, 1871, by the advice of Mrs. Duniway, to secure you a lecture room and audience, how I engaged the largest of the three churches then in town, and, through posting bills, and houseto-house work, got out a good audience.   Those were days that tried women’s souls. I was then taking your little paper, the Revolution, and after had f[sic] had read it I would send it to a lady in the country, who was a leader in her community.   The next time I saw you was at the Woman’s Congress in Portland, Oregon. I called on you at Mrs. Duniway’s, and you asked me: “Who is this?” I said: “Think a moment.” You looked keenly at me and exclaimed: “Yes, you are the Roseburg milliner, but not a milliner now, but an M.D.’”   Now, my dear and honored friend, do come to see and delight us with your presence. Oregon needs you. Our whole broad state is your home. Friends and physicians of your own making will stand proudly by your side and ascribe to you praise.   I enclose a clipping from the Portland Oregonian, which I believe you will indorse. I have received many congratulatory commendations for my “heroic” letter. One old M.D. wrote that he “had for many years rested in the belief that God’s reserved force to reform the world is woman,” and that he is “glad to have read the public enunciation of such views from a woman.” And I must tell you, my dear friend, that I have waited twenty-five years to give public expression to my views on this subject, and now seemed the first fitting time for it.   And now, my dear friend, I bid you adieu, with the earnest hope that I may have the extreme pleasure of taking you by the hand at our great convention this summer.   Sincerely and fraternally yours, Dr. B.A. Owens-Adair. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 518-520)

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Bethenia’s closing remarks and signature as a physician written in bold letters reveal her agency as a professional. She no longer views herself as the “little” milliner looking up to Anthony, but having achieved much of her own success, considers her with reverence and as an esteemed friend and equal. The paths of temperance campaigners and women’s rights advocates crossed, according to Sigerman, when [m]en’s addiction to alcohol had a profound impact on women. Wives became impoverished and were physically abused by drunken husbands who had squandered their families’ money on alcohol. Temperance societies not only preached abstinence, they supported legislation to ban alcohol altogether or to prohibit the consumption of alcohol in certain days of the week. They also lobbied for laws to protect a wife’s property and wages from a husband who would spend her earnings on alcohol. [...] Other women took more direct action: Wielding axes and hatchets, they marched to the saloons in their communities and attacked the buildings. In Marion, Illinois, nine women went on trial for destroying a saloon – and were defended by a lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. (Sigerman, “An Unfinished Battle” 245246) Further West, Owens-Adair wrote an indignant letter to the Oregonian editor in response to the recently published article on the “Anti-Saloon Movement” in Portland and what she witnessed [...] on my way home from the Congregational Church, where I had listened to a beautiful and impressive sermon on “Manhood and Manliness” by Rev. Dr. Clapp, I passed by two saloons on the same block, one with the side and the other with the front door standing wide open, with streams of men pouring in and out. And this, too, in the face of a well-known Sunday law. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 458) Besides, she questions how it is possible to enforce prohibitive laws when the Republican and Democratic parties are so much at odds over their political interests in the alcohol industry that neither has control of the situation, leading to prohibitionary laws not being enforced as promised. I ask how could we expect it to be a success in all those localities where there is either a Republican or a Democratic party holding the reins of state? Are not both controlled by the saloon power? One party rides into the White House on a barrel of whisky, while the other reaches that distin-

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guished place of honor astride a keg of beer. Is it strange England should have called us a nation of drunkards? And this accursed beverage continues to flow unceasingly throughout each administration unless the occupant of the presidential chair is blessed with a wife who possesses sufficient firmness of character and Christian fortitude to say: “Wine shall not disgrace the table of the White House while I preside as its mistress.” (ibid) In a conversation with a prominent Republican politician, who claims that they had kept their campaign promises towards the WCTU, Owen-Adair replies to his questions, “Why are you prohibitionists working against your own interests? With, “we [the WCTU] are not fighting [a political] party, but whisky” and we also know that you never have enforced, and never intend to enforce the laws which you enacted” (ibid 459-460). On another occasion, however, in defense of the national WCTU endorsement of the Prohibition Party, she compares the deplorable situation in Portland with similar conditions across the country. Think of it! The mayor of Portland said the other day: “There are today, in our city, at least 500 alcoholized men, so far gone that they ought to be sent to a home for the cure of inebriates.” My friends, this is truly a lamentable condition, and yet we are no worse off than other cities of like size. It is only natural that we should be shocked by what occurs about us. I realize that it is not known by all men, that the annual drink bill of our people footed up, for the year 1885, to the enormous sum of $800,000,000.   We are asked: “Is it likely that this great national curse can be strangled by the Prohibition party?” I answer that there is practically but one way of accomplishing any great reform in our country, and that leads through the ballot-box. Right here, let me tell you that up to this time, there never has been any fair trial of the workings of prohibition [...] for what have been termed prohibitory laws in these states, have been passed by one or the other of the old parties, and have not been strictly enforced by their officials, who are not in sympathy with the movement, and are too much controlled by the whisky element. Owens-Adair’s solution and for her the only way out of the national quagmire is through women’s enfranchisement and stricter enforcement of the current prohibitory laws, which seem unlikely because of the alcohol industry’s strong

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lobby this time that also contributed to a rift between the Democratic and Republican parties in the matter. However, she provides a glimpse of the minor strides achieved by the third party in several states: The National Union endorsed the third party by 251 votes against 33. Remember that these women came from all over our land, and represented a phalanx of over two hundred thousand homes. Such support cannot be easily appreciated while women do not actually vote, yet they do wield a powerful influence.The truth of this may be shown by the gain of the third party in the last two years. In New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, Minnesota, Nebraska and Missouri, the Prohibition vote of ’86 was three times as great as in ‘84: while Texas cast 30.000, as against 3,554 in ’84, and Arkansas did even better. (ibid 417-418) Furthermore, although she is aware of the struggles ahead for women fighting the cause against alcohol as well as their empowerment, she is optimistic about the influence and power that the movement will have in the future, as people come to their senses about the detrimental/annihilating effects of alcohol abuse on people’s health and their families. Like the many temperance societies forming across the U.S., the WCTU, in which Dr. Owens-Adair was a very active member, made it their mission to address and remedy societal ills associated with alcohol and substance abuse by holding rallies and establishing education programs in schools.85 The movement evolved further by increasingly focusing on the detrimental effects of alcohol and negligent behaviors associated with its abuse on the individual’s health and its negative impact on society. As one of the most important women’s groups in the nineteenth century, the WCTU served as a bridge from charitable, missionary, and benevolent missions to taking political action, thereby combining the cult’s element of piety to engage women in the public sphere. As discussed elsewhere, there was a strong correlation between religious reform and medical reform whereby medical and religious reformers often shared common causes. This 85

Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts was one of the very first to prohibit alcohol in 1630. However, the prohibition movement only began in the late eighteenth century with the founding of the first American temperance society in Connecticut in 1789. Soon thereafter other temperance societies were established to combat “the growing popularity of rum, whiskey, and other distilled spirits. The groups based their beliefs about alcohol moderation and abstinence on the ideas of Dr. Benjamin Rush, [who] was one of the first Americans to propose that alcohol addiction is a disease that can only be treated by abstaining completely” (ibid).

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perspective is reflected in “Gold Fever!” by expanding its scope within the Cult of True Womanhood framework, where women engaged the rhetoric of both platforms to move into the public sphere and campaign about concerns rooted in domesticity. Since domestic reform movements were often connected to reforming public health issues in the name of God, the WCTU represented one of the most powerful women’s groups set up outside the home. Thus, viewed through the Cult of Domesticity lens, it was considered a religious and moral duty of the True Woman to take up the temperance cause. The power of their cause was “camouflaged in domestic and maternal rhetoric” (M. P. Ryan 16) and was employed by “[v]irtually every female activist [...] and virtually every male politician appealed to motherhood” (Ladd-Taylor 43, 60). The WCTU was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1874 by Frances Willard and Annie Turner Wittenmyer.86 Willard oversaw (what would eventually become) nineteen departments, “each one devoted to achieving a specific social-reform goal, ranging from child-labor laws to international peace, and from arbitration to social purity” (Parker 5-6). Their reform agenda did not focus on a single issue but was subdivided into five areas: “Preventive, Educational, Evangelistic, Social and Legislative.” The reason for these particular areas of focus on alcohol abuse, according to Elizabeth Gordon WCTU, was that “A scientific age required study of this subject in its correlations; and Frances Willard’s plan allied the WCTU with all other moral forces” (Gordon 35). Furthermore, it was led under the rubric “home protection” and its motto “Do Everything” to protect women and children. Educational measures through the already established Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction in Schools and Colleges were only one of many of its kind. Founded in 1881, the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction’s primary goal was to persuade legislatures across the country of the necessity for mandatory scientific temperance education. According to Owens-Adair, “the temperance people have been getting laws made in many states requiring all the public schools to teach these things to every child that attends them” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 393). The way they worked was that the parents would bring their children to meetings organized for religious and cautionary instruction that warned against alcohol consumption and unsolicited sexual activity.

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By the end of the nineteenth century, the WCTU had become one of the largest women’s organizations in the U.S, with approximately 200,00 members.

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

In her address to the youth group “Bands of Hope” in the centennial commemoration of temperance, Bethenia tells the group that it is necessary that you should learn a good deal about yourselves, that you may understand how you should live, what you should eat and drink, in order that you may grow up strong and healthy men and women. So, [...] in addition to your other studies, all you children will begin to learn about yourselves, and what you should, and should not, eat and drink. You will also learn about alcohol, tobacco and opium, Then you will learn that they are poisons, and should never be used, except for medicinal purposes, and as medicines. (ibid) Furthermore, she reminds them of her intention “to see our country free from the awful curses of whiskey and tobacco” (ibid 391) and reminds them of their duty to remain strong when faced with the temptation to try alcohol and tobacco. My dear children, you cannot yet realize how strongly you will be tempted to use these slow poisons, and do many other wrong things, when you go out in the world. Then your power to resist these temptations – to say “No,” will depend very much on your own teachings, just such instructions as you are all now receiving from your parents, your band, and your Sunday-school teachers. Perhaps some of you may break your pledges (though I hope you never will), but many of you will faithfully keep them, and will look back, when you are grown, with pride and gratitude to these blessed teachers, and thank God that through their influence you were saved from man’s two greatest foes on earth, whiskey and tobacco. (ibid 394) Thus, the WCTU was effective in “translat[ing] it relatively conventional maternalist concern for youths into sympathy with the Progressive child-study and hygiene movements and with the field of psychology” (Parker 9). Moreover, the WCTU’s activities were driven by the premise that all reform was inter-connected and that social problems could not be separated. They considered the use/abuse of illicit drugs and alcohol consumption a symptom of underlying social problems that were on the rise, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century as much of the industrialized world was transforming from rural to urban societies. Various migrations, such as African Americans from the rural south to northern cities and new immigrants from Europe settling in the cities, contributed to racism, over-

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crowding, and unhygienic living conditions. The spread of infections and diseases was often challenging to control. As the following discussion seeks to reveal, the interconnection between alcohol consumption and abuse, heredity, and degeneration were used by these reformers who based their campaigns on the scientific writings of Francis Galton, which later culminated into the social purity Journal of Heredity that was funded by the WCTU in the 1880s. Dr. Owens-Adair was firmly convinced of the connection between alcohol consumption and abuse, heredity, and degeneration, especially among specific groups of people. Hence, it is fitting to refer to the WCTU reformers as crusaders on a mission because of the types of public health measures such as those employed by the social purity activists within the WCTU and others such as eugenic societies and organizations that used eugenics as a tool to reduce social and health problems by promoting the health of children and families. The organizations that received significant popular support at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century used various discourses to legitimize their cause, which was they then abused. They claimed eugenics as a science within the broader context of public health and scientific reform linking eugenics with better health and improved quality of life for future generations. The following discussion addresses how the alcohol problem is depicted/framed by the WCTU regarding causes and effects on the individual and society and the consequences for everyone. Also, suggestions by reformers for potential solutions that involved the emerging sciences will be discussed.

4.3.3.1

Temperance Reflections on Hereditary Science and Eugenics

Every inebriate is either a potential criminal, a burden upon public funds, a danger to himself or others, or a cause of distress, terror, scandal, or nuisance, to his family and to those with whom he associates. (Branthwaite, qtd. in Flacks 37) This assertion by Dr. R. W. Branthwaite at a conference in 1909, captures the zeitgeist and mindset of nineteenth-century temperance reformers such as Cora Frances Stoddard (1872-1936), a contemporary of Owens-Adair, who later became president of the WCTU of Nebraska and temperance educator and authored educational materials on the physiological and social effects of alcohol. Her writing mirrors Owens-Adair‘s own firm conviction of the correlation between heredity and alcoholism. She claimed that “[h]ereditary effects

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in man, and, therefore, racial deterioration, can follow either from single intoxications or from chronic alcoholism. (Stoddard qtd. in Durst 113). In the nineteenth century, the emerging scientific studies on heredity and eugenics, prevalent in the social and biological sciences, offered explanations and solutions to many social reformers such as Owens-Adair, who sought answers to the causes and potential cures of alcohol abuse in the sciences. The following discussions will focus on the nineteenth-century views of the correlation between heredity and degeneration and the misappropriation of eugenics for political and social causes, especially by women reformers such as Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair, who employed eugenics and the discourse of heredity to reach her goals as part of social reform.87 Owens-Adair’s involvement as a passionate campaigner for temperance and whole-hearted lobbyist activities for the WCTU came more than anything else from her experience as a doctor seeing families destroyed by alcoholism and its long-lasting negative experience of witnessing alcohol abuse in her childhood. Reminiscent of her painful early experience, she writes: “My early life was crushed by this common curse of humanity, alcohol. It robbed my home and childhood of every vestige of beauty and sunshine” (Dr. OwensAdair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 438-439). Bethenia’s disdain for alcohol, which she considered “the curse of our country,” was attributed to habit, in her opinion. On May 5, 1885, she delivered an instructive address for the Prohibition meeting at Oregon‘s Liberty Hall in Astoria that foreshadows the arguments she would later present to justify her eugenicist agenda based on heredity and degeneration. The speech, entitled “Habit in Forming Character,” appeared in the ASTORIAN May 12, 1885, and outlined the importance of habit as “a prime factor in temperance reform” (ibid 374). One of her arguments was that habit was either a behavior that was passed on from generation to generation or learned (ibid 335), and in her words, habit was like a “two-edged sword, it will cut both ways, and curse or bless us, as we direct it for good or evil” (ibid 338). Moreover, she argues that [j]ust so with alcohol, opium and other narcotics when the habit is once formed it becomes master and he the slave. Gradually but surely it gains possessions, crowding out the finer sensibilities, weakening the will power,

87

See also Michael Freeden, “Eugenics and Progressive Thought: A Study in Ideological Affinity” and Donald Pickens, Eugenics and the Progressives.

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and destroys all that is beautiful, noble and refining in manhood or womanhood. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 324) Furthermore, she believed that there was a connection between the pre-disposition of alcoholics to the disease and its harmful effects on future offspring and that both were inherited. She believed that “‘Like begets like’ from which there is no escaping” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 9), arguing that “the worst evil which alcohol brings upon humanity is the curse which the inebriate parent entails upon his innocent offspring” and strongly appealed “this law of heredity demands our most earnest consideration” (ibid 3). In order to grasp why Owens-Adair felt it pertinent to consider laws of heredity in connection with temperance, it is necessary to contextualize her use of the concept of heredity, which she claims in an 1884 letter to the Oregonian had not been known to lexicographers until its frequent use by “modern writers on physiology and kindred sciences” and only recently been supplemented “to the last edition of Webster,” where she cites the definition: “Heredity–The transmission of the physical qualities of parents to their offspring, the biological law by which living beings tend to repeat themselves in their descendants” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 12), as well as understand the nineteenth-century connections between degeneration theory, which combined moralist preaching and genetic research on the one hand, and in parallel presenting alcoholism as a social problem, on the other. Degeneration theory was developed by a French psychiatrist and medical jurist, Bénédict Augustin Morel. Morel was highly respected in the scientific community, whose writings significantly influenced theory formation in nineteenth and twentieth-century psychiatry. While working as superintendent of an asylum in Normandy, he meticulously recorded the family histories of his disabled patients and published his findings in Treatise on Degeneration (1857)–just two years before Darwin’s Origin of the Species. The findings included pictures of patients who showed physical, mental, and moral characteristics indicative of degeneration. A major fear among degenerationists was the decline of society. They believed that poor environments caused degenerate heredity. Morel claimed that there was a correlation between “increasing levels of degeneration and the frequency of madness in modern societies,” which he argued was passed on from generation to generation. The root cause,

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he says, was attributed mainly to intoxication (alcohol abuse), which lead to “congenital” and “acquired” defects that could be “observed in the phenotype of the next generation” (Schwarz and Brückner). For economists and progressives, “race determined the standard of living, and the standard determined the wage. Thus were immigration restriction and labor legislation, especially minimum wages, justified for their eugenic effects” (Leonard 215). Sociologist Richard L. Dugdale believed that good and conducive environments could transform degenerates into worthy citizens within three generations. The inheritance of acquired environmental characteristics was challenged in the 1880s by German scientist August Weissman, whose germ plasm theory of disease, which provided a rational basis for disease prevention and therapy, convinced most scientists that changes in body tissue called the soma had little or no effect on reproductive tissue called the germ plasm (Ehrenreich and English 80). Dr. Owens-Adair believed that degeneracy was the “result of something utterly lacking in the mental or moral make-up of an individual and not something to be cured by prayer, by any method of medical treatment, system of education, by segregation, or by giving them wholesome and normal environs” (Human Sterilization 19). Sarah W. Tracy notes in her study of the social construction of alcoholism as a disease in this period that “Aberrant behavior such as chronic drunkenness was often explained through recourse to vague somatic causes such as neurasthenia and hereditary degeneration, but overindulgence, overwork, poverty, and disappointment remained oft cited causes of alcoholism” (Tracy xii). Often “Temperance and social reform advocates selectively adopted degeneration language from both religion and science” to promote their efforts/cause (Durst 116). Furthermore, “public health campaigns targeted marginalized groups, as eugenics and germ theory came together in a toxic mix” (Spinney 99). Leila Zenderland gives an explanation for this. She argues that “[w]hile at first glance it might seem that eugenics would have been anathema to evangelicals such as predominated the WCTU, [however] eugenic ideals were popular among American charity societies, anti-vice initiatives, and women’s clubs” (Durst 116; Zenderland 512-515). The WCTU regularly sponsored “heredity meetings” where some members warned, in biblical language, against the heritable effects of sexual misconduct” (ibid). They also gave information about the predisposition to criminal behavior. In her position as an appointed Superintendent of Heredity to the WCTU, Owens-Adair addressed temperance educators at a WCTU convention in 1885

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cloaked in religious and scientific rhetoric. Owens-Adair commends temperance educators by stating that “[t]hrough our Mother‘s meetings, Hygiene and Heredity are being taught most thoroughly and properly. Until now we have learned that the law of transmission is one of God’s great laws,” [and thus she urges that] “we must protect our nation from insanity, epilepsy, and the varied train of abnormalities that follow in their wake (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 387-388). [These] “mental defects which are transmissible” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 42-43).88 Ultimately, she demands that answers “must be found in the study of heredity, eugenics and sterilization as a remedial cure” (ibid 10). Furthermore, in her position as a public health educator instance, she champions a holistic approach to the mind-body connection that governs living healthily and reminds parents of their Christian duties to ensure that their offspring’s adherence to nature’s laws includes fresh air and plenty of exercise in addition to wholesome nutrition. By wholesome nutrition, Owens-Adair implies nourishment such as food eaten and what a person fills their mind with. Hygiene is the science of Health. It embraces the laws of health which relate to the individual, the family, the sexes, the community.   It pertains to the care of the mind as well as the body. It teaches the condition of health and the cause of disease. It instructs us how to secure the one and avoid the other.   Obedience to its laws gives us healthy bodies, vigorous and active minds, with strong and forcible will power, which is the balance wheel or controlling power of the complex mechanism of every human being.   The mind, like the body, should receive pure and wholesome nourishment. Nothing is more detrimental to the young than impure associates and trashy literature, such as dime novels. Parents should bring up their children judiciously, in obedience to nature’s 88

It is noteworthy how she defines and uses the terms heredity (already discussed) and hygiene, both of which she often repeats elsewhere in her writings. Together, they mirror the zeitgeist, reveal her stance, and foreshadow her justification which she engages later for drafting her famous “Human Sterilization Bill.”

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laws, allowing them plenty of exercise in the pure open air and sunshine, should feed them upon plain nourishing food [...]. (ibid 316, 318) According to Owens-Adair, for those who “could be made to feel and understand the truth of this declaration, how pure in thought, word and deed would be the next generation” (ibid 318). The rhetoric used by Owens-Adair to optimize physical and mental health and hygiene through scientific guidance is expressed in an article she wrote for the Astorian, “How to Be Strong and Well: Physical Culture.” Editor Astorian: In compliance with your request to furnish an article occasionally, I submit the following paper, prepared and delivered before the Mother’s meeting, held yesterday in this city: This is an age of education and reform, as well as of invention, and it is but fitting that the development and beaufiying of our physical being, our bodies, should receive due attention. Today, converts to physical cultures are numerous, and the idea is fast spreading. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. OwensAdair: Some of Her Life Experiences 401) Moreover, an understanding of how she and other healthcare reformers/professionals and various organizations used it to promote public health reveals how the rhetoric of early fitness culture, striving to improve people’s wellbeing, was negotiated with and popularized eugenic principles. According to some scholars, “Progressive Era eugenics was popular to the point of faddishness; it was supported by leading figures in the newly emerging science of genetics; it appealed to an extraordinary range of political ideologies, not just progressives; and it survived the Nazis” (Leonard 216). The negative consequence, for those deviating from the prescriptive health instruction, is met with Owens-Adair’s self-righteous warning: “Be not deceived for ‘whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap,’ should be indelibly daguerreotyped upon every intelligent brain” (ibid). Here, the seeds of degeneracy are sown, according to Owens-Adair, and her own attitude is clear what contributes to good health and hygiene. Further, one’s failure to follow her prescription of good hygiene will result in sickness [which] is the penalty of wrong doing, either by ourselves or by our ancestors, and in many cases should make us ashamed and truly penitent. The most devout Christian will have the night-mare [...]. [Hence], his spiritual agonies will not save him in the future unless he adds to his faith,

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knowledge. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 316) Owens-Adair had in the past prepared and delivered many of the same lectures and noted that “until now we have learned that the law of transmission is one of God’s great laws.” She informs the public that “[t]oday, if there is a heinous crime or tragedy committed, every newspaper of any note in the land begins at once to ferret out the cause, through the channels of heredity. This subject is being brought efficiently into every household, through some of the various channels” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 387). Thus, she urges, “[t]hrough the knowledge of this law, we can and must protect our nation from insanity, epilepsy, and the varied train of abnormalities that follow in their wake” (ibid 387-388). Owens-Adair not only firmly believed that there was a strong correlation between alcohol abuse and degenerate/criminal behavior but took her argument a step further by claiming that “the country‘s insane asylums, poor-houses, and penitentiaries are filled with those poor unfortunates” of whom “at least threefourths can be referred directly or indirectly to alcohol.” She felt that it was her Christian duty to warn the public of the increasing moral and financial burden on society. Furthermore, she contends that The rapid increase of insanity and vicious elements is simply appalling, the penitentiaries, Insane asylums, reform schools and homes for all kinds of defections have not only become a burden to our Commonwealth but a menace as well and if allowed to proceed where will it end? The public should inform itself more fully upon the amazing fertility of the degenerates. They procreate at an alarming rate. Statistics show that they increase much more rapidly than normal people. We spend millions providing a proper environment for these unfortunates and do not lift our hands to get at the cause and stop the propagation of their kind. (ibid 16-17) The manner in which she develops her argument in favor of putting an end to what she refers to as an appalling and burdensome social situation is further reflected in her publications of various newspaper clippings and speeches that she collected for the purpose of making them known to the public because they show the trend of thought in Oregon-how people have gradually been educated to treat the subject of sterilization as a scientific question which must be settled. To some it is a social problem and to others it is a religious one. The taxpayer’s burden has reached the point that a straw

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will break the camel’s back; and a great proportion of our taxes go to the maintenance of the institutions for the defective and degenerate. The remedy for this serious situation is to stop the procreation of the unfit. (ibid 174) Indeed, by now, it hopefully becomes evident in which direction Owens-Adair is heading with her eugenicist-tainted speeches, lectures, and writings on the subject thus far: And now I am going to say what will shock you, which is that every person admitted into an insane asylum should be so dealt with as to preclude reproduction. Therefore, I sanction that, and I will go farther by including every criminal that goes through the penitentiary doors. The knowledge of the sources of degeneracy and the proper application for its prevention, means not only the life of our nation, but that of the world as well. (ibid 42-43).

4.3.3.2

Eugenic Epistemologies: “Yea I Have A Goodly [sic] Heritage”

The practice of segregating people considered “unfit” to produce healthy offspring dates back to antiquity. The Old Testament describes the Amalekites as a supposedly depraved group that God condemned to death. As the following seeks to understand, the practice of categorizing certain groups in the eugenic era served the justification of rendering them as either fit to reproduce or, if necessary, to make sure that their genes were not passed on to future generations. Thus, concerns about environmental influences that might damage heredity - leading to ill health, early death, insanity, and defective offspring – were considerations among early scientists, leading to degeneracy theory (already discussed) and maintained a strong following until the late nineteenth century. The founder of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, was a respected British “Jack of all traits”-scholar (statistician, polymath, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, explorer of the topics, geographer, inventor, meteorologist), and cousin of Charles Darwin. He is said to have been the first to study the effects of selective human mating. He coined the term ‘eugenics’ in 1883. The main idea behind this term which derived from Greek, meaning “good births” or “well-born,” was (and unfortunately still is) that by selectively breeding individuals with “desired” traits, society could be ridden of “undesired traits.” The English eugenics movement, championed by Galton, promoted eugenics through selective breeding for positive traits and is referred to as positive

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eugenics. In contrast, the eugenics movement in the U.S. quickly focused on eliminating negative traits or “undesirable” traits and is termed negative eugenics. In other words, “positive eugenics” is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged, for example, the reproduction of the intelligent, the healthy, and the successful, whereas “negative eugenics” is aimed to eliminate, through sterilization or segregation, those deemed physically, mentally, or morally “undesirable.” Some historians offer several explanations for the rise of eugenic ideology during the 20th century, deeply embedded in American popular culture. Among these explanations is that the Biological Sciences, which included creating new agricultural products, medical advances, and the increasing popularity of evolutionary science, were prevalent at this time. Strong links between agricultural organizations such as the American Breeders Association and the eugenics movement and the role of the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work in the popularization of eugenics have also been noted. Such groups were very active in the eugenics section of the American Breeders Association (ABA), which devoted itself to focusing on presumed genetic differences between human races and popularizing themes such as selective breeding of superior stock, the biological threat of “inferior types,” and the necessity for recording and controlling human heredity (Panel et al.). On the other hand, reformers saw the rise of eugenics as a way to involve science, biology, and genetics in service of healthy human reproduction and outcomes and thereby to improve the health and quality of all children being born. The argument was that every child had the right to be born healthy – reiterating the plea throughout her life that “Every child should be a wanted child” (qtd. in Sanger 211).89 However, according to her grandson, Alexander Sanger, “the downfall of eugenics came when reformers began to use it as a program of social control, promoting government intervention and coercion in human reproduction” (ibid). Eugenicists employed various strategies to limit the offspring of parents they considered or defined as lower-quality citizens. One of the most common ways of doing this was through family planning and education, which increased during the 1920s and 30s. It was held that “good stock needed education and good health care to have a healthy environment to thrive and repro89

Margaret Sanger is a well-known birth control activist who opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. which later evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

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duce healthy children” (Lagerwey 67). In order to meet these demands, many state fairs sponsored what was known as fitter family contests in which families would fill out surveys, and eugenicists judged the surveys and awarded medals to the families they considered most fit. Fitter family contests were very popular in the Midwest and western states that included Oregon. These contests also encouraged family planning by instructing men and women to choose their mates wisely by examining heredity traits, by claiming that in doing so, the outcomes would result in fitter and sound children. However, not everyone supported these contests. Margaret Sanger, who is often closely associated with both birth control and eugenics, for instance, critically remarked that “we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of the “fit” and the “unfit.” Moreover, she questioned, “Who is to decide this question?” Nevertheless, in her opinion, which is somewhat contradictory, she states that “the undeniably feebleminded should indeed not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind” (qtd. in Sanger 215). Moreover, according to Sanger’s grandson, although his grandmother shared the opinion of many regarding immigration by keeping the doors closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded idiots, morons, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924. (ibid 216) Unlike Owens-Adair, Sanger’s grandmother, Margaret did not endorse the sterilization of criminals. Her grandson says that “putting aside the fact that she was a criminal herself, having been arrested and jailed multiple time, and could be classified a repeat offender and thereby subject to sterilization” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 215-216), he quotes her as having stated: As for the sterilization of criminals, not merely must we know much more of heredity and genetics in general, but also acquire more certainty of the justice of our laws and the honesty of their administration before we can make rulings of fitness or unfitness merely upon the basis of a respect for law. The fact that a man is for the purposes of society classed as a criminal tells me little as to his value of his offspring. (ibid) Sanger’s persuasiveness was undoubtedly shared by many. However, Dr. Owens-Adair, on the other hand, leaves no doubt regarding her firm belief

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that “If I had the power, I would see to it that not one of this class should ever be permitted to curse the world with offspring” (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Pioneer Woman Doctor’s Life 457). Owen-Adair justifies her arguments with eugenic rhetoric and by claiming scientific justification that the hereditary inheritance of certain negative traits such as “mental defects and criminal tendencies are transmissible and has been forcibly established by a great quantity of statistical evidence proving this fact.” The evidence that she refers to is of certain fictitious families (already mentioned) and which she goes into much detail in her writing; “the genealogies of many different families, good and bad, among the most familiar, are the ‘Jukes’ and the ‘Kallikaks’ (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 13). The Jukes was a fictitious name of an actual family that was the focus of a nineteenth-century sociological study of the inheritance of feeble-mindedness and its correlation with degeneracy. The Kallikaks, on the other hand, was also a fictitious name of a real family whereby one branch of feebleminded descendants were primarily social degenerates, and another branch had descendants of average intelligence and were mostly successful. She describes these families in more detail and gives examples of case studies related to these families in her discussion of the pros and cons of sterilization as a social remedy in her book Human Sterilization: It’s Social and Legislative Aspects. Criticism arose among critics claiming links between birth control advocates and eugenicists. However, in practice, eugenicists often opposed birth control, arguing that the people most likely to use it were members of the middle and upper classes, and these were the very people that were encouraged to reproduce. Also, it is interesting to note that increasing numbers of women were graduating from colleges around this time, delaying childbearing, and having fewer babies. President Theodore Roosevelt attacked this trend by referring to its practice as “race suicide,” calling it decadent and saying that it was a sign of moral decline. He went so far as to say that the women and men who avoided having children committed crimes against the race. Most eugenicists, however, favored sterilization of the “feeble-minded” in place of birth control and advocated marriage laws to prohibit dysgenic marriages, or in other words, marriages that might produce inferior offspring – which included restrictions on marriage between blacks and whites. Before 1920, almost one-half of the states prohibited marriage between imbeciles, people with epilepsy, paupers, drunkards, criminals, and the feeble-minded. A diverse range of vocabulary was used at the time to classify

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persons of low intelligence: for example, feeble-minded, moron, imbecile, and idiot. Such people were deemed “unfit,” which became the code word among eugenicists for people who should not be allowed to reproduce. It should be kept in mind that the terms described here that were used by eugenicists to describe human life, which they deemed in some way inferior, are very offensive and are neither based on scientific facts nor do they have any scientific meaning today. However, they reflect the political and social prejudices of the time. As such, they are valuable in understanding how the eugenics movement in the U.S. developed its policies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries - the majority of which have been completely discredited.

4.3.3.3

Science of Surgery: A Cure for “The Greatest Curse of the Race”?

My BOOK is named Human Sterilization. What is it? Simply a remedy for degeneracy. Heredity, to my belief, is the directing force of all life. The purity of this source makes for good, impurity makes for evil. Environment may add polish, improvement; it cannot change the hereditary tendencies of the human being, the animal or the plant. But it may influence for the better or worse. Eugenics is the science of the improvement of the human race, of which Heredity is the determining factor. My life‘s desire is to improve the human race by cutting off the vicious sources of degeneracy by the greatest humane remedy known today – Sterilization (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects Introduction) This quote at the beginning of Owens-Adair’s book Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects precisely sums her supremacist attitude and understanding towards the science of eugenics and firm belief of its efficacy in protecting society from the malicious origins of degeneracy that through sterilization could or would improve the human race. While she, along with the numerous avid supporters of eugenics, may have been motivated by unethical, racist, and prejudiced biases to segregate and sterilize citizens (with or without consent), anyone whom they deemed undesirable, inferior, criminal, or defective in some way or other, there is no record of any American official publicly calling for either euthanasia or genocide based on its eugenic “scientific” principles. Furthermore, Dr. Owens-Adair makes clear her personal attitude towards taking another person’s life in order to succeed with her plans for dealing with defective/inferior humans in a letter from March 11, 1905, to the editors of a newspaper in which she wrote:

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I have been much interested always in the problem of race improvement, and especially of late in the discussion in your invaluable paper, on the humanity, or inhumanity of sparing, or cutting off at birth, the lives of physical and mental defectives. However strongly I might believe that the death at birth, of all such would be the best for them and humanity, I could never accept the solemn responsibility of taking a human life, and I am persuaded that it is a power not to be safely properly entrusted to any private human judgment. (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Pioneer Woman Doctor’s Life 455) Nevertheless, her contemplations regarding the ethical responsibility of terminating the lives of degenerates did not prevent her from contemplating other options, as she and other twentieth-century reformers wanted to counterbalance the perceived threats of “the greatest curse of the race that conies (courses) through our vicious and criminal classes,” as she argues [...] to my mind this is the element that should be dealt with – not by chloroform or strangulation, but by the science of surgery, for if their power to reproduce themselves were rendered null, a tremendous important step in advance would have been taken, not only without injury to life, but often with positive benefit to the victims themselves (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Pioneer Woman Doctor’s Life 456). Thus, she sees herself contributing to society’s betterment with her remedial cure and doing the victim a favor by performing the surgery. In 1907 – the same year Indiana‘s Sterilization Law was passed, becoming the first state to pass such a law, Dr. Owens-Adair drafted and introduced the Human Sterilization Bill of Oregon and presented it to the Oregon state legislature, where she appeared for the first time in 1905 and continued to do so until she succeeded. When her attempts in 1907, 1909, and 1911 to pass the sterilization bill failed, Owens-Adair began a public relations campaign, traveling around Oregon and Washington to draw public support. In defense of her proposed bill, she declares in the Introduction that the answers to the most significant problems faced by society are to be found in degeneracy, contending that “we must understand and live the life that God intended we should” (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 10). By recognizing that “the most essential things of life are love and purity of body and mind. The first step toward purification of our nation is to eradicate disease and degeneracy” (ibid). Furthermore, she commends the “thousands of good men and women who are trying to find how to protect the unborn children that

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are to perpetuate our name and our country and perhaps that of the world” (ibid 11). She includes herself among those good women who offer a solution in the form of presenting the present volume to the public it is with the desire to show the trend of thought since 1907, especially in Oregon, along the lines of degeneracy, its causes, its effects, and its cure. There must be found in the study of heredity, eugenics and sterilization as a remedial cure. Thus, in line with Progressive-Era reform initiatives that claimed they could eliminate unwanted human traits by overseeing that degenerates (people with disabilities and criminal tendencies) were kept from being born. By following her suggestions in the proposed Bill, she evokes the reader’s sense of patriotic duty to the nation and the duty to the unborn children. “ We may call this the New Patriotism-beautiful thought! Let us be loyal. By the protection of our unborn children through purification we can become the greatest country in the world” (ibid). She concludes in the very last lines on the last page of the pamphlet: “This is not an unclean subject. It is God’s plan for the creation of human life, the highest and noblest of all creations” (ibid 60). In January 1913, Owens-Adair found the necessary support to push her bill through the Oregon House of Representatives, targeting so-called criminals, prostitutes, epileptics, insane and feeble-minded persons.90 It was presented by Owens-Adair’s political ally Representative L.G. Lewelling. However, House Bill 69, known as the Lewelling Sterilization Bill, immediately found opposition in the Oregon State Senate, where several prominent Oregonians had gathered to protest, because they found the bill poorly worded, giving broad powers to the state to sterilize citizens, regardless of the recommendations of medical, religious, and legal authorities (Largent 197-200). Owens-Adair, aware of public opposition to her sterilization bill, spent the next several years working on the bill that would contain more checks and balances. By 1917, the Oregon legislature had produced a sterilization bill with new safeguards, including a review board, and the bill finally passed. Overjoyed with the results, Owens-Adair writes

90

Historians and many other scholars from other fields have conducted studies linking feeble-mindedness to prostitution and other criminal behaviors. See James W. Trent, Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind, Nicole Hahn Rafter, Creating Born Criminals, Susan K. Cahn, Sexual Reckonings.

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On Feb. 19, 1921, I sat trembling, listening to the arguments pro and con and trying to count the votes on my fingers. When it was over, I knew I had won. I staggered into the Governor’s office. He met me with a smile and gave me a soft seat. (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Souvenir: Dr. Owens-Adair To Her Friends 60) From the time of its passing until it was repealed, more than 2,500 people received forced sterilization in Oregon’s prisons and mental health institutions. The last recorded forced sterilization in Oregon occurred in 1981 and 1983. The Oregon State Senate repealed the law in 1983, and for public-relations reasons, the State Eugenics Board was renamed the Board of Social Protection. An end was finally brought to the unspeakable suffering imposed upon those who were targeted and their families. In 2002, Governor John Kitzhaber formally apologized to everyone the state had mutilated under the law. In its nascent stages, eugenics had often been advanced as a progressivist program of reform and a measure for improving societies’ ills. By applying knowledge from evolutionary biology and genetics to human reproduction, eugenics advocates attempted to direct human evolution to create a safer, saner, and more productive society. Eugenicists aimed to replace the ineffectiveness of natural selection with a more rational and controlled reproduction process because they firmly believed that they could eliminate whomever they considered “unfit” citizens and do away with undesirable traits from the population. Unfortunately, supporters of the eugenic movement justified their actions with arguments that they were benefiting future generations. But at what cost? Indeed, many scholars would certainly agree with David Noble, who has noted that the price was a very high one to pay and one that came “at the expense of individual human rights,” which he adds was in and of itself a “paradox of progressive thought, as progressives sought a balance in the competing ideals of individual rights and collective reform” (qtd. in Largent 189). Degeneration was the core concept of the eugenics movement and served as a scientific reflection on heredity among social reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While eugenics was popular, it was “flawed science” and was rejected on scientific grounds. According to scholars, eugenicists effectively lobbied for social legislation to keep racial and ethnic groups separate, restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and sterilize people considered “genetically unfit.” Furthermore, they contend that elements of the American eugenics movement were models for

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

the Nazis, whose radical adaptation of eugenics culminated in the Holocaust. They argue that “the hereditary and social attitudes that supported popular eugenics have remained in the public consciousness to this day” (Panel et al.).91 In this regard, discussing matters concerned with eugenics and its historicity in 2021 is very much contemporary. The science of eugenics and eugenic episteme has expanded its scope in current bioethical discussions, including genetic diagnosis and prenatal screening, assisted suicide, and life support. More recently, “in the wake of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, the idea of editing our genes to make us immune to virus attacks began to seem less appalling and a bit more appealing” (Isaacson 335). In his recent book, history professor at Tulane, Walter Isaacson, argues that the development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for COVID-19 will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. [Moreover] as we are entering a life-science revolution, we will have to wrestle with deep moral and spiritual questions regarding the ethics of “our new evolutionhacking powers to safely edit genes to make our children less susceptible to HIV or coronaviruses. (ibid front-back flap, 336) Reflecting on the latest research in genetic engineering, he says that for the first time in the evolution of life on this planet, a species has developed the capacity to edit its own genetic makeup. That offers the potential of wondrous benefits, including the elimination of many deadly diseases and debilitating abnormalities. And it will someday offer both the promise and the peril of allowing us, or some of us, to boost our bodies and enhance our babies to have better muscles, minds, memory, and moods. (ibid)92

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Selden concludes this statement by cautioning that “if we are not to repeat the errors of the past, we will need to examine modern eugenic visions with intellectual rigor.” (ibid) Epigenetic research is another area involved in the current bioethical discussions that suggest that trauma can be passed down as far as three generations and possibly result in biological changes that affect the longevity and wellbeing of individuals.

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While these scientific advances have the potential to make people less susceptible to coronaviruses and other diseases, however, he rightly cautions on the controversial side of germline gene editing.93 In summary, the discussions of Americans still wanting to promote “good births” have been ongoing for more than a century. The countless ethical discussions have taken on many forms and are apparent in the many scientific developments the last few decades. Newgenics is the name given to modern eugenic practices that have emerged in light of new technological developments, referring to ideas and practices that appeal to scientific advances and genetic knowledge with the aim of improving mankind and curing or eliminating genetically-based illness. Common examples of newgenics practices included pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and selective abortion after prenatal testing. Indeed, it is natural that parents want to have healthy children, yet with increasing proficiency in biotechnology and interventions regarding infertility, the discourse has shifted in the scientific, legal, political, ethical, and religious communities. The various diagnostic prenatal tests that insecure parents can have performed to determine if their children will be “wellborn” include reproductive technologies, amniocentesis, biochemical markers screening, ultrasonography, molecular testing, and cloning, to name a few. The test using such tools enables medical specialists to inform parents in advance of abnormalities or potential abnormalities while the fetus is still in the womb. The legal consequence of making available such information to some of the parents of babies born with defects, or abnormalities, has culminated in the rise of “wrongful birth” lawsuits against medical professionals. Many of these parents have argued before the courts that had they been given such information in advance; they would have terminated the pregnancy and, in doing so, avoided much suffering. Such lawsuits have received much attention, and it would appear that in such legal actions is the assumption that it would be better for some severely disabled people had they not been born, rather than to live an existence of suffering, not to mention the emotional and financial suffering to those who are charged with their care. These complex bioethical debates and discussions are very controversial, and although very important, go beyond this dissertation’s scope. However, because of the fears that biotechnological advances may head toward alternative forms of 93

Germ line editing is a process where changes are made to the DNA of human eggs or sperm or early-stage embryos so that every cell in the developing fetus and future descendants of the resulting child will carry the edited trait.

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

eugenics, scholars specializing in biotechnologies and various related fields continue to ruminate these complex issues in the future will undoubtedly increase (Whitney and Rosenbaum 169, 173-88, 189-96). The emerging discussions and ethical debates in these areas have resulted in new discourse and questions in the last decades. Laura Doyle’s extensive essay from 2004, “The Long Arm of Eugenics,” for instance, rhetorically begins with the following questions: “Are you fit? A fit parent? A fit body? A fit citizen? And what does it mean if you are not? If the language of ‘fitness’ seems colloquial, if this sequence of questions feels predictable, if a ‘no’ answer seems socially unacceptable, you are feeling the reach of eugenics” (Doyle 520).94

4.3.4

“End of the Last Chapter”

I never was born to be controlled by the light of any one’s opinion, simply because that person happened to be a man [...]. I can never give up my freedom, my individuality; I will not be subjected to whims and fancies. Gold and luxuries do not tempt me. I do not covet an aimless, or fashionable life, made up of dress, parties, dinners, gossip, and little nothings. Such a life would soon bleach my hair, adorn my face with wrinkles, and transform me into a hysterical old woman,-not a very beautiful picture. (Dr. OwensAdair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 296) Dr. Owens-Adair’s life presented her with many unique challenges, from her early life as one of the first families to settle in Oregon and her early marriage at the age of 14, followed by her ambition to develop her public career as a medical doctor, reformer, and eugenic crusader that would ultimately earn her the title - “Mother of [Oregon’s] Sterilization Bill” (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Souvenir: Dr. Owens-Adair To Her Friends 36, 60).

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For the skeptics of the connection to the questions she poses, Doyle recommends the “side by side” reading of the following works that “make visible the ubiquity of eugenic assumptions in the US, where it was first applied institutionally, better than it did in Nazi Germany [because] it happened to emerge a mere hundred years after its constitutional founding”(ibid) : Katrina Irving’s Immigrant Mothers: Narratives of Race and Maternity, 1890-1925; Allison Berg’s Mothering the Race: Women’s Narratives of Reproduction, 1890-1930; Wendy Kline’s Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom; and Nancy Ordover’s American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism.

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Nevertheless, as determined as she was, she did have her moments of doubt: “Had I but taken the advice of my dear old friend [Jesse Applegate] not to talk politics, woman suffrage and kindred subjects, I might have saved myself worlds of trouble and fountains of tears” (ibid 292). This statement’s full context refers to a letter from Bethenia’s life-long friend and mentor, Jesse Applegate, who whole-heartedly endorsed her decision from the very beginning to pursue her ambitions in the medical field. As your purpose is to raise yourself not only to a higher place in your profession, but also to a higher sphere in human society, a word or two of advice from an old and sincere friend must not give offense. [...] Even as a subject of conversation avoid politics generally, and woman’s rights especially as you would the plague. In your own person and pursuits you give the highest proof of the equality of the human intellect, and an exemplar as to the branches of human knowledge to which that of the female should be directed. In the broad and as yet unexplored fields of science there is plenty of room for all minds to act without jostling each other, and to labor in the fields of knowledge in which the dress of flesh which Nature has placed upon them is not an incumbrance. (ibid 292) The irony of his endorsement, however, is that while Applegate apparently firmly believes that women’s place (especially Bethenia’s) is to be in a higher sphere in society (namely outside of the private sphere of the home and in the public sphere), he also advises her to stay clear of politics and women’s rights, which, according to her nature, she consciously did/could not as her life writings testify. She was very strong-minded and lived her life according to her beliefs. Looking back, she reflects that she had always followed my conscience and have thereby many times shocked the sensitive nerves of my friends and the public as well (Dr. Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects 10) with my impetuous and willful nature. It seemed impossible for me not to battle for what I considered to be right and to denounce that which I believed to be wrong. And thus, through my life I have acted in accordance with my nature, and doubtless will to the end of the last chapter. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 293)95

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Her life’s last chapter was written in Clatsop, Oregon, on September 11, 1926.

4 Women’s Transformative Counter-Narratives

Thus, she lived her life consciously and with an awareness that she contributed to the history of Oregon for which she wanted to be remembered. For this reason, she compiled a short pamphlet, A Souvenir: Dr. Owens-Adair To Her Friends – Christmas 1922. It contained letters and telegrams she had received throughout the years, which she wrote as a love token, or souvenir, for my friends, that I may not be forgotten [and] when time has shortened my memory, what could bring me more pleasure than to read and re-read those beautiful and priceless letters, [...] enabling me to live over and over again my past life. (Dr. Owens-Adair, A Souvenir: Dr. Owens-Adair To Her Friends 8) One of the letters saved by Owens-Adair from December 14, 1921, is from her friend and “Minister of the Church of God,” Mrs. M. Sutliff. The letter reflects earlier discussions regarding the obstacles women who wanted to study medicine faced and, in another discussion, the common causes shared between medical and religious reformers, revealing further how Owens-Adair wanted the world to remember her. Very Dear Doctor: Your life has been such an inspiration to me in a social and business way, to attempt to tell with pen would be impossible. Starting at the very first round of the ladder of life, and round by round to the very pinnacle of success-this at the time of your entering the medical profession was no easy task, as women were not considered their fathers’ or brothers’ equals and few universities willing to open their doors to women. Yet with a great mind and will to succeed, success has crowned your efforts and today your name is one that will never be forgotten as long as this world shall stand as the mother of the sterilization bill in Oregon. And we will, not only as a state but as a nation, hold sacred the memory of Dr. Owens-Adair for the light given us through her writings. Doctor, there is no question in my mind but the greatest hindrance to spiritual life and successful work in evangelism is along this line. Doctor, I believe, from the viewpoint of religious education, it is of vital importance that all public speakers should stand for the full gospel, and demand better laws to protect our coming generation. And in the annals of history may your name have its place as the woman, as the successful physician, that dared to stand opposition and criticism for a bill which, through your untiring efforts, has become a law, which will bring a class of men and women

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to take their place in the coming generation which any state or nation may be proud of-and our moral degenerates will not be known. (ibid 36) Indeed, Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair is worth remembering as a foremother in science whose significant engagement (however controversial) exemplifies the complexities of beliefs and practices of the transformation of women’s lives, healthcare, and medicine in the nineteenth-century American West. In her own words, Owens-Adair proudly comments at a banquet held by the American Medical Association at the Hotel Portland on July 12, 1905, recognizing women physicians for the first time in history in which I behold the full fruition of all our labors, is the happiest of my life. I thank God that I have been spared to see this day, when women are acknowledged before the world as the equal of men in medicine and surgery; and above all, that my own Oregon is in the forefront of this grand forward movement. It is another instance of the West setting the pace and establishing precedents for the rest of the country to follow. We may expect, hereafter, to see such recognition a regular thing. (Dr. Owens-Adair, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences 531-532)96

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A further testimony to the rewards of her decades-long engagement in the battles against tobacco and alcohol; she found it worth noting that, “A most remarkable feature of this banquet was the absence of wines and cigars” (ibid 531).

5 Blazing their Paths into the Future

American women’s history is all about leaving home- crossing oceans and continents or getting jobs and living on their own. [It] is about our national heroines [who] were [passionate] crusaders like Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Sojourner Truth, Dorothea Dix, [Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte and Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair]. [It] is about the fight for freedom. Still, it is less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women’s role that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders. We’re not often taught their stories. But, we all stand on their shoulders. (Collins xiii-xiv) And indeed women did – make history! On August 26, 2020, the United States celebrated the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which extended the franchise to American women. After the narrow defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the significant increase of women elected to seats in Congress during (and ever since) the 2018 midterm elections, it has become clear, however, that political equality has yet to be satisfactorily resolved. The incidents of 2020 brought to light the dire need for social-political and cultural negotiation as symptoms of systemic and institutional racism were exposed in many institutions through the absence of a fair representation of Native Americans, African Americans, and other marginalized groups, such as the LGBTQ communities. In November 2020, Americans decided that it was time to change things around. Although we were not yet ready to elect a woman to the highest office of the presidency, Americans showed an eagerness for change and for establishing precedents of “firsts” with their stalwart support of Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris - a Black woman with a Southeast Asian immigrant background, to the office of Vice President. Many more “firsts” have followed since Harris swore office on January 20, 2021. Among them is President

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Biden’s selection of Michael S. Regen, the first Black man to serve as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Brenda Mallory to serve as the first Black chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. From the Laguna tribe in New Mexico, Representative Deb Haaland was chosen as the first Native American to serve as interior secretary, followed by an unprecedented record number of Native American women elected to the House of Representatives. According to the Washington Post, (then) President-elect Joe Biden’s “historic pick marks a turning point for the U.S. government’s relationship with the nation’s Indigenous peoples” - thereby returning the voice to a community that had been silenced for so long. In response to her nomination, Haaland’s tweeted response reflected her indigenous reverence and concern for the land: “A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land” (Juliet Eilperin, Dino Grandoni). Regarding Biden’s choice and qualifications of the candidates, Bob Bullard told reporters in an interview: All three nominees will play a central role in realizing his [Biden’s] promise to combat climate change, embrace green energy and address environmental racism. They have been fighting for justice. Now they are in a position to make a change and make policy. That, to me, has the potential to be transformative. President Joe Biden commented on his newly appointed multicultural cabinet members: “This brilliant, tested, trailblazing team [...] share my belief that we have no time to waste [...] to protect our air and drinking water, and deliver justice to communities that have long shouldered the burdens of environmental harms” (ibid).1 1

Fawn Sharp, Quinault president of the National Congress of American Indians, said the administration’s first week demonstrated that the needs of tribal nations are a priority. “I am both excited and encouraged that the Biden Administration is taking so many meaningful and significant steps towards Tribal Nations' priority issues -- respect for sovereignty, racial equity, urgent action on climate change, protection of sacred sites and ancestral ecosystems, and the commitment to meaningful Tribal consultation,” she said. “There's immense work still to be done, but we celebrate that the first steps President Biden has taken towards truth and reconciliation with Tribal Nations are so responsive to our needs and aligned with our values and principles. [Furthermore], Since Day One, the Biden administration has gone full speed on taking presidential actions that affect tribal nations” (Bennett-Begaye).

5 Blazing their Paths into the Future

Another first— according to a senior reporter for the American Medical Association (AMA)2 , Sara Berg, is that all of the physicians serving as chairs of the AMA’s seven councils in the 2020–2021 term are women. These are all elected positions. These councils shape doctors’ futures. Now they are all led by women. [Thus] women in medicine are creating change, blazing their own path in a historically male-dominated profession. However, Berg adds that “with the COVID-19 pandemic deepening the longstanding inequities and crises in the health care system, the need for women’s leadership has never been more urgent. Fortunately, the AMA’s leadership has helped fulfill that need with three consecutive female presidents—including the first Black woman to hold the office. (Berg) While the celebrations of women’s visibility in the public sphere continue to unfold, the accomplishment of over one hundred years of women’s suffrage and the milestones of firsts in many venues are ongoing, and it also marks a century since the last major pandemic outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1918. Once again, women are visible at the front lines as healthcare providers – this time around, they are combating another pandemic3 – referred to in racist Trumpian terms as the “Chinese Flu.”4 According to the 2019 analysis of 104 countries conducted by the WHO, women comprise 70% of healthcare workers worldwide. According to the report, many are in nursing roles, leaving them at higher levels of exposure and risk to illnesses and diseases than doctors. In

2 3

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The American Medical Association (AMA) It was recognized as a pandemic by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, health expert from Ethiopia and the World Health Organization’s Director-General in his opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 on March 11, 2020. In his speech he assured that “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock” but cautioned that “we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, (…). Thus, he concluded that “we have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear” (“Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic”) – retrieved 27. March 2020. The outbreak of the virus was first identified in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. Due to the location of the first identified outbreak, former president Trump blamed the Chinese people and named it the “Chinese Flu”. Scientifically speaking, the coronavirus or COVID 19, is highly contagious virus and is spread via respiratory droplets that may spread when people cough or sneeze in close proximity of one another.

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addition, they are much more involved in patients’ care as they work in closer proximity to them. The research questions and the assertions made throughout “Gold Fever!” have revealed that women have always been at the front lines as caregivers providing health care to their communities throughout history. However, for the many women heading West in the nineteenth century, the opportunities to extend their healthcare-providing services, which began on the trails, proved invaluable later for expanding their domestic sphere once they were settled in their new homes. On the arduous journey along many different routes, women were heavily relied upon to provide care for their families and friends. The experiences they acquired along the way were to extend their social roles in the settlements and newly built urban cities in the West. Once settled, they began questioning the status quo and demanded entry to higher education institutions, especially in medicine. As Morantz-Sanchez reminds us: Women physicians came of age professionally at a time when the organization of medical education and the delivery of medical care was undergoing significant transformation. In the last third of the nineteenth century, in response to bacteriological discoveries and technological innovations that ushered in dramatic advances, the practice of medicine became a science. (Morantz-Sanchez 144) They formed many different women’s clubs and benevolent societies, such as those discussed throughout this dissertation: The Female Relief Society and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which ultimately served as a bridge to charitable missionary, and benevolent mission to political action. As I have argued, there was a strong correlation between religious reform and medical reform, whereby medical and religious reformers often shared common causes. This perspective is reflected in “Gold Fever!” by expanding its scope within the Cult of True Womanhood framework, where women engaged the rhetoric of both platforms to move into the public sphere and campaign about concerns rooted in domesticity. In other words, domestic reform movements were often connected to reforming public health issues in the name of God. Thus, as women increasingly became involved in community building and campaigning for improved conditions, they could illustrate that they had expanded the definition of “woman’s place” beyond societal expectations and the informal powers of moral persuasion. They believed they deserved recognition through suffrage. Once they were enfranchised, however, health-

5 Blazing their Paths into the Future

care providers and women doctors in the West combined their maternalist ideologies, professional medical expertise, and political power to lobby the government and campaign to improve public health. Conversely, as the discussions in Chapter 4 also revealed, women physicians and reformers in the West, such as Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair, began their political careers attempting to improve the public health of families by combining their maternalist ideologies and medical knowledge. However, what appeared altruistic in their movements included elements that reinforced white supremacy and pathologized race and sexuality. They accomplished this partly by developing public health policies and domestic reform projects whose mission was for some groups to Christianize Native Americans and immigrants through teaching, on the one hand, and missionary work, on the other, under settler colonialism that preserved racial and class hierarchies through domesticity. Women physicians took part in this work of “imperial intimacy” in a very particular and specialized way. By claiming that women doctors were both moral guides and medical experts, they could promote public health policies designed to segregate by race or gender and exclude those deemed “unfit” under the auspices of benevolent yet rational maternalist concerns. Medical-maternalist reformers accomplished their goals by engaging maternalist rhetoric to advance their political and professional careers by increasing their power and visibility in the public sphere by consistently insisting that suffrage would also benefit the lives of families and represent the possibility of a new womanhood. In closing, I would like to reiterate this dissertation’s principal argument, which is the counter-argument to what some feminist scholars often maintain in the literature regarding the oppressive ideals rooted in the Cult of Domesticity. Contrary to holding women back from realizing their potential outside of the private sphere, “Gold Fever!” argues throughout that, by focusing on specific aspects of the cult’s prescriptive behavioral expectations, such as piety and domesticity; it becomes evident how these aspects ultimately served women as an indirect and influential power to achieve their goals outside of the private sphere. They accomplished this by strengthening the female community in the spheres of the home, caring for family, religion, and the female associations that flourished at this time. Thus, the ideals ingrained in the cult’s philosophy can be viewed as a construct that elevated women through domestic spaces. Furthermore, the visibility they gained by moving outside the “proper place” nineteenth-century society envisioned for them allowed them to serve as role models for future generations:

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Throughout the century, these [societal nurturers and health care giving] women [physicians] were thus not only stepping out of their place by expansion taking on some “male” roles in the service of an appropriately female concern, [but]they were also bringing some of their own “female” values of personal concern, neighborly charity, and nurturing into the public sphere, which, they believed, needed more of those values. In a sense, they were bringing a part of woman’s culture with them as they moved into an expanded sphere, thereby affirming elements of their “woman’s place” as broadly significant and desirable for the society as a whole. (Lindley 66) By the end of the nineteenth century, a more significant percentage of Western women were employed in professional careers such as medicine and other healthcare providing positions than Eastern women, who were enfranchised later than women in the West.5 The 1970 special issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly was published, marking women’s Centennial suffrage in Utah. Historian Leonard A. Arrington praised a long list of Utah’s women who were among the nation’s first in many industries, most notably midwives and women doctors, stating that it was appropriate that they be recognized. Utah’s women were the first in the nation to exercise the right of suffrage in voting for the city, county, and territorial offers. Utah women were among the first to serve as jurors, mayors, and state legislators. Utah women played a prominent role in the livestock industry, in communications, and in the creation of literary symbols. In the last half of the nineteenth century, Utah probably possessed the largest number of midwives and women doctors in the United States. Utah women founded the first “permanent” magazine for women west of the Mississippi River, pioneered the operation of telegraph offices, and led out in the efforts to improve the social and economic status of the Indians. (Arrington, “Women as a Force in the History of Utah” 4) 5

According to “an 1890 Census Report on Occupations, 14 percent of the female work force in the West were in professional service of some kind, compared to only 8 percent in the country as a whole claiming 10 percent of the female doctors” (T.A. Larson qtd. in Peavey and Smith 119). Speculations abound as to the reason(s) for this phenomenon. However, an argument that speaks in favor of women entering various professions in larger numbers in the western territories, is the fact that in the West they “were not denied entrance to the region’s colleges and universities” as they were in the East. The University of Deseret in Salt Lake City (later the University of Utah), for instance, like all other territorial and state universities, was a co-educational institution from the day of its opening (ibid 120).

5 Blazing their Paths into the Future

Volney Steele, M.D., a male physician whose father was a pioneer doctor in the West, had the following to say regarding western women’s capacity and earlier acceptance to the medical profession than women from the east. [O]ne of the reasons that most women were licensed so readily, especially in the West, was that they were generally extremely qualified. Handicapped by their sex in the masculine world, women had to have a lot on the ball to graduate in the first place, and many of them had at least some postgraduate training. In some fields, such as pathology and radiology, women were the first to specialize. (Steele 333-334) Furthermore, women’s impact on nation-building on equal terms with men was often commended in the rhetoric of Theodore Roosevelt, who sentimentally “evoked that mythic memory of the frontier woman as a lesson for modern women to consider as a means to achieve some level of cultural equality” (Dorsey 423). However, throughout “Gold Fever!” I have also noted that not all women ascribed to the Cult of True Womanhood. Many women did not have equal access to making their voices heard. President Biden conceded this inequality by saying: “We’ve never fully lived up to the founding principles of this nation [...]. It’s long past time to confront deep racial inequities and systemic racism and fulfill the promise of America for all” (#BlackHistoryMonth Twitter accessed 2.2.2021). In other words, Biden is saying that despite our advancements, gender discrimination6 is still not as widely prohibited as discrimination based on race and ethnicity. Thus, while the Fourteenth Amendment may have helped many, it did not include all Americans. In a sense, they reflect Kimberlé Crenshaw’s statement in an interview with TIME magazine in which she discusses the term “intersectionality” she coined more than thirty years ago and what it means to her today, when she said that “all inequality is not created equal” (Steinmetz). In other words, the experience of discrimination will be felt differently by a white woman than by a Black or an Indigenous woman, for example. Indeed, her statement reflects the complexity of gender, power, and race that inform the women’s life writings in this dissertation and is essential for understanding how social identities overlap within systems

6

While this dissertation has not been about a treatise on the continued need for an Equal Rights Amendment, it needs to be reminded that without it, the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the equality of women, as well as the laws protecting women’s rights could still be amended or even repealed.

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of power. Therefore, I would like to suggest a productive place to begin this confrontation. First, we need to acknowledge the necessity to conduct more research to bring to the fore many “other” voices that were not included in “Gold Fever!” whose unique struggles need to be recognized for their contributions to our national narrative. The first African- American woman to receive a nursing degree in 1864 from the New England Female Medical College in Boston, Rebecca Lee, was perhaps the first to be publicly acknowledged. However, the archives still contain many more African-American women who “had always ministered to their people’s medical needs. In slavery, they nursed sick or injured slaves and served as midwives and wet nurses to other enslaved women and white mistresses. In freedom, they continued to care for ailing members of their communities, using herbs and potions in their treatments” (Sigerman, “Laborers for Liberty” 321). Their lives and experiences need to be studied further to show the challenges and success of overcoming them. As William Loren Katz notes in his book The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States: “The African American experience holds a different lens up to an old tale. It is a missing piece of a larger truth which may not make everyone happy [...]” (Katz xvii). Thus, while it may not make everyone happy, the issues surrounding gender and race clearly pose different experiences and questions that require answers, as well as the awareness and willingness to add their stories to the existing myths and, in more recent times, to “tell the story of an African American woman who got up to speak about discrimination in medicine” (Leavitt et al. 17).7 Finally, I would like to borrow Albert L. Hurtado’s poignant words that reflect the intention and scope of “Gold Fever!” The history of women is key to understanding the evolution of the western region in the last several centuries, and women’s history must be understood in all of its particularity, conflict, and complexity. Explaining that history in an evenhanded way while including women of all backgrounds is 7

The reference here is made to a contemporary woman physician, Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble who was the first and only tenured black woman at a medical school.She is a physician, scholar, and activist, as well as an internationally recognized expert on the history of American medicine, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, public health ethics, and bioethics. She is the author of several widely acclaimed publications on the history of race and racism in American medicine and bioethics.

5 Blazing their Paths into the Future

a difficult challenge because it involves multiple points of view possessed by peoples who were often at odds with each other and whose aims were often in conflict with twenty-first-century ideas about rights and justice. The American West that we see from that road will be unsettling and disturbing. [However], it will also be a more complete and [more accurate] reconstruction of the past. (Hurtado 5) Thus, the reading of the life writings of Susan La Flesche, M.D., “Doctor” Patty Sessions, and Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair have shown that women contributed to place-making and transformation of healthcare in the West throughout the nineteenth century. But also how these places have transformed their lives and legacies and have blazed paths for future generations. Although their stories have historically gone unacknowledged, women heading West in the nineteenth century and those who were already there have made and continue to make Western history by demonstrating that “Yes we can!”8 Let us learn from their courage and resolve to confront the socio-political, gender, and racial inequalities of their time(s) to ensure that everyone in the future benefits from the paths they have blazed.

8

Barack Obama’s well-known 2008 presidential campaign slogan (originally the theme of his speech following his second-place finish in the 2008 New Hampshire primary), is as follows: “Yes, we can seize our future. And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words – yes, we can”

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