All the diarists mention the Indians they meet on their journey. Most of the women’s descriptions fall somewhere between thoroughly ignorant and deeply racist. This passage is one of the few I’ve read that contains even a hint of awareness of the affect the white settlers’ movement westward was having on the peoples living on those lands.
May, 1851
Crossed the Missouri at Council Bluffs, where we had been a couple of weeks making the final preparations on this outskirt of civilization
The weather has been mild, and we have walked evry day over the rolling hills around — one day found a young physician and his wife who were interested in examining the numerous skulls and human bones that were found near the surface of the ground. After much speculation the fact was elucidated that, large tribes of Indians from the middle states had been pushed off by our government to this frontier region to make room for white settlers, and had here perished in large numbers by starvation consequent upon removal from familiar hunting grounds: they had been buried in large trenches with heads to the east. Skulls were thick: of peculiar shape differing from the Anglo Saxon type.
Clarke, Harriet Talcott Buckingham, 1832-1890, Diary of Harriet Talcott Buckingham Clarke, May, 1851, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 3: 1851. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
red paper boat 