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Reviews
Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815–1915
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By Glenda Riley
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(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004. Pp. ix, 326. Illustrations, notes, index. Clothbound, $39.95; paperbound, $21.95.)
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| Glenda Riley, Alexander M. Bracken professor emeritus of history at Ball State University, has contributed substantially to the field of women's history throughout her remarkably productive career. Historically speaking, she is largely responsible for putting midwestern women on the map. In Confronting Race, Riley examines white-Indian relations and the racial prejudices of nineteenth-century, trans-Mississippi migrating women, many of whom had midwestern roots. She contends that, as a result of proscribed gender roles, white women interacted with American Indians and demonstrated changing attitudes toward them in ways that white men did not. Even so, she concludes, white women remained "solidly colonialist" in their opinions about other groups (p. 2). Riley's analysis is based primarily upon a range of women's private writings including diaries, journals, and daybooks, along with a number of public accounts, records, and cultural sources such as novels. This study speaks to the need to investigate the role of gender in the legacies of white expansionism in the West. |
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