Margaret Carrington,
Elizabeth Custer,
Alice Baldwin

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1831-1870.
Ab-Sa-Ra-Ka, Home of the
Crows: Experience of an
Officer’s Wife (1868).
First wife of Colonel Henry
Carrington.
Accompanied husband with two sons to Wyoming.
Book surrounds and defends husband’s role in the Fetterman Massacre of
1866 around Fort Phil
Kearny.

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1842-1933.
Boots and Saddles (1885).
Married General George
Custer in 1864.
“Very little has been written regarding the domestic life of an army family, and yet I cannot believe that it is
without interest.”
Posts in Kansas and
Dakota.
Husband Custer’s Last
Stand of 1876 naturally also important.

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 Naturally depended on the class and status of women on the frontier based on their husband’s roles on the frontier: comparsion between those ‘roughing it’ (e.g.
Lydia Lane) and those describing a ‘more leisurely experience’, such as Custer.
 ‘Sensible but feminine.’
(Georgi-
Findlay, 1996)
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Fashion consciousness seemed to slightly disappear when based on the frontier, despite expectations of ‘femininity’ being upheld.
Baldwin: “Feminine vanity and tastes are much the same the
world over.” 1868 - Navajo tribeswomen at Fort Wingate,
New Mexico.

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Self-control: “[My husband] would not like anyone to know that I had lost my pluck... I knew well how difficult it is to have ladies on the march, and how many obstacles the general had surmounted to arrange for my coming. Drilling myself to be as little trouble as I could. I had really learned, by many a selfinflicted lesson, never to be too cold or too hot, and rarely allowed a thought of hunger if we were where
no supplies could be had”, Custer.
 Feminine self-representation has here a functional centrality.
 Carrington also explores this balance between protest and conformity, what Georgi-Findlay paraphrases as a ‘salutary exercise in domesticity and submissions’.
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Avoiding hysteria: “I had read...that women had hysteria and...were bathed in tears... I felt that I was not at all romantic, because in the midst of my solitude I bethought me of eating a piece of pie
– which I did!”, Baldwin.
 parodying the hysterical woman, maintaining optimism and a sense of humour key to monotonous life for many women on the frontier, or in Baldwin’s case, being separated from their husbands on a frequent and prolonged basis.
 Baldwin later admits her own hysterical moments, where she would weep and become so frustrated by army marriage.
See examples of hysterical wives in
Butruille’s Women’s Voices from the
Western Frontier (pp. 197-201)

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Changing roles: “...a woman had a choice field in Absaraka for the exercise of many industrial pursuits, and fortunate were those who in earlier days had been advised that other rooms than the parlour have their use, and other fingering than that of the piano must be
employed in roasting and boiling.”,
Carrington.
A role of power: Carrington’s use of the pronoun ‘we’ in her narrative suggests a prominent role in the planning and execution of military endeavours.
Carrington seems clued up on army expeditions and this knowledge allows her a more dominant role on the frontier than perhaps other officer’s wives, such as Baldwin, who remained away from the frontier and separate and disassociated from their husband's military careers.
 Importance of housekeeping: In
Boots and Saddles Custer introduces her main themes to the reader as answers to the ‘innumerable questions...asked about our occupations, amusements and mode
of housekeeping’. In comparison to
Carrington, Custer seems a more reserved and passive housewife, which may depend on their respective husbands’ roles in the army and the women’s prior knowledge of warfare.

 Fetterman Massacre, 1886: worst
US military defeat during the Red
Cloud Wars. 700 soldiers and 300 civilians were under Henry
Carrington’s command.
Carrington was blamed for being too passive in his attacks on Indian-held territories, a reputation which both his first wife, Margaret, and second wife, Frances, were keen to dismiss and rectify.
 Custer’s Last Stand, 1876: George
Custer’s wife was also keen to defend his memory and reputation.
In Custer was embodied a dutiful, innocent man, whose murdering of
Indians was not intended maliciously, but rather out of duty to his family and country. This is the portrayal Elizabeth wanted to publicise to the world.

Margaret Carrington, Ab-Sa-Ra-Ka:
 Women’s freedoms in the West and enjoyment and appreciation of western natural landscapes depend for Carrington greatly on the men and their guns  Buffalo Bill.
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Carrington’s military knowledge and interesting insights into army operations allow us to see her interpretation of controlling western territories as a way of protecting (white) women from
(Indian) attacks.
 link to Fetterman defeat and the precarious US hold on western territories? How does this implicate women?

Alice Baldwin’s meeting with
Navajo tribeswomen, 1868:
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“...each and every one was treated likewise. Each assisted in adorning the other, and such an array of giggling...squaws had never before been seen in
all the history of Fort Wingate [New Mexico].”
 does a shared gender ease pre-existing racial tensions?
Baldwin’s meeting with Crow Indians in Montana,
1877:
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“They [the tribeswomen] were filled with wonder as to my attire, and urged by their innocent, and...feminine curiosity, I consented to undress
and let them see for themselves.”
 ‘savage’ people are not necessarily unkind.
 tribeswomen were puzzled as to how Baldwin could wear so many layers of clothing. This was also expressed by white female dress reformers in the service of women’s rights at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.

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Military threat: “[The Sioux peoples should be forced to] accept the challenge of the white man for the future possession of their stolen
dwelling-place.”
 Carrington delegitimizes Sioux claims over territories during conflict over the Black Hills in
South Dakota / Wyoming.
 western territory has to be consolidated in order for wives of officers to adapt safely to western life.
 compare with Frances
Carrington, who is more sympathetic to the Sioux, linking their resilience and pride in fighting to the heroic ‘American soldier of our early history’.
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Sexual threat: Carrington’s
‘humanitarian mission of pacification’ at various points is expressly linked to the mission of securing white women’s safety.
Conventions of the captivity narrative are reinforced by Custer in her drawing attention to the abduction and rape of white women by Native American men.
Custer deems Native American society to be disrespectful to women’s contemporary societal roles, which only confirms their supposed ‘barbaric’ nature.

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In the East: tales from the western frontier written by
Carrington gave eastern audiences a national perspective on racial relations.
 Ab-Sa-Ra-Ka was one of very few women’s narratives to be published before the
1880s. Groundbreaking?
Male travel-narrative form?
Baldwin’s memoirs of life away from the frontier did not excite eastern audience’s exoticism to the same extent.
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In the West: Boots and
Saddles by Custer set a precendent of women’s writing on the west, which according to Georgi-Findlay,
‘led the way for other women’s reminiscences of frontier life
in the late nineteenth century’.
 a new type of history born?
 Popularity of Custer’s accounts from the western frontier stimulated other women to present their memoirs of army life to the public, most prominently in the East.

 Alice Baldwin (1929): her memoirs were only published before her death as an appendix to her husband’s publications.
 However, dual authorship was publicised by this point in history.
 Had women’s movements in the early 20 th century stimulated a final acknowledgement of female authorship?
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Margaret Carrington
(1868): husband Henry
Carrington contributed in part to Ab-Sa-Ra-Ka.
 problems surrounding sole female authorship.
 was 1868 too premature a time to publish women’s works with sole authorship?
 Henry Carrington however depended on
Margaret’s work.

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How do white women authors’ ideas on race and gender contradict and / or support each other when discussing
Native American men and women?
Is Elizabeth Custer’s popularity and power within army discussions dependent solely on her husband’s role and / or legend?
Was there really a market for narratives of women who, like
Alice Baldwin, were not positioned at the frontier close to their husbands?
To what extent was the popularity of female authorship decisive at the time of publication?
Did the American West open a new chapter for women’s roles in society? Or did the army simply restrict women’s freedoms in comparison to the East?

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