Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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Jessie (Benton) Frémont was equally involved with the institution of Indian slavery. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s the most constant demand for Indian labor was that of Indian servants—male or female, young and old. In her Monterey house a Mexican chef oversaw Indian men who did most of the cooking, aided by Indian boys who hunted for food and assisted in the preparation of meals. Jessie noticed a remarkable similarity between the average California household and the “life of our Southern people.” In California it was typical for ladies of the house to be “surrounded by domesticated Indian girls at their sewing.” At Mariposa, Mission Indians were obtained by the Frémonts and required to work at laundering and other domestic chores. Jessie bragged about “playing Missionary” to a group of local Indians, plaiting their hair, and dressing them in starched calico and clean white undergarments. She was able to civilize these dirty people and transform them into “picturesque peasants.”⁶¹

For Jessie to play missionary was in character, as she had always wanted to experience the man’s world, from her teenage days as a tomboy, through her vicarious experiences of her husband’s explorations and adventures (as described in her writings of her husband’s exploits), to her playing the role of Spanish missionaries domesticating and Christianizing their Indian subjects. Her maternalism was the counterpart to the paternalism that fostered Indian servitude, and she was as consistent in her “free soil” views as she was inconsistent on the subject of slavery. In this way she was her husband’s wife.