Where I First Learned the Nature of Care”

Women and Violence on the Late Eighteenth-century Frontier

Bibliographic Data

ID16769237
AuthorsElizabeth J Clapp (University of Leicester, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume16
Issue1
Pages59-81
Publication date2015-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Nineteenth Century History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-4658 • E-ISSN: 1743-7903
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14664658.2015.1052261
OpenAlexW2184917833
LanguageEN
References cited28

Focusing on the white women who settled in the trans-Appalachian region during the decades surrounding the American Revolution, this article explores their reactions to the migration project; the conditions in which they lived; and their responses to the frequent Indian raids they endured. It considers the tensions which exist in the portrayal of these women in the sources – between the one-dimensional victims of contemporary newspaper accounts and the larger-than-life frontier heroines of later memoirs and oral histories. It analyzes how these disparities arose and what the sources tell us about these women's lives. It contends that far from being passive victims in encounters with Indians, white women were frequently fully prepared and willing to fight back. As a result, influenced by the violence and hardship they faced, these women crafted roles for themselves, which, while sharing similarities to those that women adopted in more settled parts of the country, were often perceived as distinctively different

Criminology · Frontier · Memoir · Newspaper · Political science · Race (biology · Sociology · White (mutation · Women of color · Women's history · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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