It is always interesting to try to guess what happened in the minds of our ancestors. Writing in the Jstor Daily web site, Erin Blakemore offers insights into the minds of many 19th century women in the US:
“What did nineteenth-century Americans know about Native Americans? For years, scholars have focused on stereotypes of indigenous Americans as brutal and sadistic—depictions that dominated press portrayals and that reverberate in culture to this day. But a look at those portrayals with an eye on gender reveals a slightly different story, writes Linda M. Clemmons—one that suggests Native American women were portrayed as equal with their white sisters.
Portrait of a young Choctaw woman, 1850 (via Wikimedia Commons)
“Clemmons draws her conclusions from the women’s magazines that proliferated during the nineteenth century. These publications often contained depictions of Native Americans that suggest “a public fascination with a people who were believed to have vanished from public scrutiny.” Through captivity narratives and domestic love stories, these magazines experimented with a stereotype of the Indian woman that countered the one assigned to men.
“Native American women were depicted as attractive, desirable, and pious. Their moral natures were celebrated in stories of their self-sacrifice and submission, and their beauty was described at length. Interestingly, that beauty was one that matched nineteenth-century beauty ideals for white women: light skin, carefully groomed hair, a thin and shapely body dressed in popular colors.”
You can read the full story at: http://bit.ly/2xWmYkq.