Daughters of the Country: The Women of the Fur Traders and Mountain Men

This is the first published account of an oddly neglected aspect of American history--the racial and sexual confrontation of the Indian women and the white man on our frontiers. Mr. O'Meara traces this fascinating relationship from earliest times, showing us the Indian woman in all the roles of her obscure history; as the victim of mass rape, as slave concubine; trading-post and rendezvous prostitute, casual blanket-sharer, hospitality gift to a passing trader. We observe her, too, as the wife a' la façon du pays, cast adrift in a hostile world when her trader husband returns to civilization. An sometimes as the loved and respected wife of a distinguished, even great, man--like the Cree girl who became the Baroness Stratchona, or the Ojibway bride who was known and loved as Lady Douglas. Mr. O'Meara probes all these relationships, basing his study on the journals, memoirs, chronicles, and letters left by the men who lived among the Indians. Along the way, he uncovers such little-reported phenomena as the part played by raw sexual desire in our nation's westward expansion, and the mystical hope of "power transference" with which Indian husbands offered their wives for a night to white traders. Told with sympathy and humanity, Daughters of the Country is a warm and moving story, as well as an important historical document.--Jacket flap