On Some White Women in the
“Great God! This is an awful place! ” were words used by Scott at the South Pole (Pound 1967), but they could have come just as well from the lips of a white woman on finding herself in the proximity of either Pole. Although some Viking woman undoubtedly preceded her onto the North American continen...
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.561.8855 http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/arctic27-3-166.pdf |
| Summary: | “Great God! This is an awful place! ” were words used by Scott at the South Pole (Pound 1967), but they could have come just as well from the lips of a white woman on finding herself in the proximity of either Pole. Although some Viking woman undoubtedly preceded her onto the North American continent, Natalya Shelekhov became the first European female in Alaska when she and her merchant husband spent four years (1783-1787) on Kodiak Island. (He later founded the Russian-American Company.) Natalya’s visit did not precipitate a female invasion, however, and Russian merchants largely kept to native “wives ” in North America (Chevigny 1942). In Canada, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Indian women likewise became the “country ” (common law) wives of fur traders and trappers of both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company; they were known as petticoat politicians because of their unofficial, though pronounced, influence on their mates ’ decisions. By the 1820’s men started bringing European women to Indian country, but by 1825 one, Captain R. P. Pelley, Governor of Red River |
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