Woman versus the Indian

Abstract

Chapter 1 is the first of 7 chapters in Part 1 of the book, which highlights the backgrounds of the women whose experiences structure the narrative. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin’s story, along with the others in this section, is key to understanding how these women became politicized and looked to voting rights as an instrument in their struggle for broader civil and human rights. This chapter introduces us to Gertrude Simmons (later Bonnin), a member of the Yankton Sioux in South Dakota. The chapter looks at Simmons’s visit home, a suffragist speaking tour of South Dakota, and the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek—all which occurred in South Dakota in 1890—to argue that people of color were always at the heart of debates over suffrage. In large part, this was because women of color were generating important ideas about women’s rights and their place in the nation. But it was also because white suffragists constantly invoked race in their speeches, writings, and activism. It explores the federal government’s policy towards and conquest of Native nations in the American West; U.S. territories and the suffrage campaign; suffragists’ reaction to the violence at Wounded Knee; and early suffrage referendum in western states.