Santipur_overland Trail Journals Of Pioneer Women.docx

Tapti Roy 1

Overland Trail Journals of Pioneer Women: A Study of the Quest for Self The overland trails refer to the journey undertaken by about half a million people to lands in California and Oregon between 1830 and 1860. The journey stretching over a distance of two thousand miles and above from Missouri river to the West coast was taken by approximately half a million people expecting to benefit from gold deposits or cultivable lands to be found in the West. There exists a wealth of written material documenting the arduous journey, the treacherous terrain, and the difficulties faced by the men while leading their wagons, animals, and families across the trail. Till date, however, little attention has been diverted towards interpreting and understanding the ordeal of the females accompanying their male family members on the trail. In this context, the objective of the paper is to study the writings of pioneer women on the trail to interpret varied strains of experience and reflect upon the manner in which their ordeals led to substantive subjective transformation. Overland trail journals documenting the tribulations of women, otherwise called pioneer women are a record of the hardships faced during the journey through the treacherous landscapes. These experiences, both individual and collective were characterised by the loss of familiar space, intimate ties, and habitual gender roles for the women involved. The women, usually regarded as the second sex were expected to act within the confines of home as a caregiver and facilitate the administration of the inner world often under the auspices of the apparent security offered by the male members. This seemingly natural pattern was disturbed by an ostensible rise in the interest of the men towards conquering the West and the mysteries it held. The sirenic lures of the Promised Land epitomized by West was an ample boost to the boisterous and impetuous heroism seeking to tame the uncanny wilderness and thus establish a monumental discourse of the self of American men. The same adventure had multifarious connotations for women whose accounts are ridden with ambivalence towards a new world order and an unprecedented freedom of self-expression. Lillian Schlissel in her account Women’s Diaries on the Western Frontier documents the experiences of women from varied socio-economic strata and analyses them under the binary extremities of anxieties resulted by emotional and spatial deterritorialisation on one hand, and

Tapti Roy 2 freedom attained by shedding traditional roles on the other. Despite the differences in the orders, Schlissel maintains that the gender roles were aligned towards uniformity in behavior and propriety, held strongly by norms of conformity and habitual obedience. Taking into account the journals maintained by women between 1840-1860, she notes the manner in which women suffered the collateral damages of the masculine enterprise only having their gender and associated afflictions to blame. Vivid accounts of the hardships faced by the women in executing daily chores, angst caused by lifelong separation from vital female companionships shape the substance of the diary of Abigail Scott Duniway, Mollie Dorsey Sanford, or Miriam Davies. Similarly, the journals of Maria Parsons Belshaw, Cecilia McMillen Adams, Lodisa Frizzel among many others depict the shadow of lurking death, the foolhardiness of the venture raising the emotional distress of women that was further provoked in intensity by the lack of conducive avenues for self-expression. Post 1860, a deviation in the above trend was observed as can be gauged from the texts taken up for study in the paper. Not only did the women actively choose to pursue the dreams of wild West but also took it as an opportunity to explore those latent recesses of their self which were otherwise forced into dormancy under the impenetrable layers of patriarchal directives. An impeccable instance of the same would be the diary of Emily Towell documents her journey from Missouri to Idaho in 1881 when she was 52, an unlikely age for undertaking the overland trail. This memoir available only in excerpts, in a matter of fact done describes her sense of pride in the new found home and the unique freedom it entailed. The memoir of Luzena Stanley Wilson, compiled by her daughter Correnah Wilson Wright, provides a detailed account of her journey to Sacramento and final settlement during gold rush. The memoir registers her hardships among miners and the unpredictable life in the West, not just on the overland trail and thus is a reflection of her indomitable spirit and entrepreneurial flair in the face of unthinkable adversities. In her narrative, she can be found to be subverting the gender roles frequently to address livelihood constraints and fulfill the role of a caregiver as culturally expected of a female. A completely different strain can be read in the narratives of Jennie Atcheson Wriston which though referring the journey as odyssey rarely exhibits any significant difficulties faced en route thereby projecting a semblance of a rather well-planned initiative emphasizing on observing the terrain around. The narrative can be assumed to have the tone of a discovery much

Tapti Roy 3 on the lines of Stanley's Wonderful Adventures in Africa: Comprising Accurate and Graphic Accounts of the Exploration of Equatorial Africa1. Rising above the vicious cycle of household chores consuming creative force, the author was able to focus on the external geographical details and look forward to the creation of a civilized society far from familiar spatial coordinates. On similar lines is conceived the diary of Sarah Jane Osborne which offers keen insights on the geographical make-up of the lands traversed by her party but does little to comment on the activities of women involved in the journey or prioritize their contribution. The overland trail had been instrumental in moulding the individual selves of the women as is evident in the case of all the women narrators and their respective narratives. It enabled them to affect ruptures and create parallel stories of self which would have been un-realised in a familiar space seeking to perpetrate the normalizing effects of ossified ahistoric ideologies. At this juncture, the paper seeks to recall the notion of Enlightenment as proposed by Immanuel Kant. In his essay, What is Enlightenment?, he defined the notion as, “… man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] "Have courage to use your own reason!" – that is the motto of enlightenment.” Extending the concepts to include the pioneer women on the trail, it can be said that the journey (post 1860) provided ample scope for the exercise of their own creative faculties for the expression of self, thus liberating them from the limited modes erstwhile available. By diluting the gender roles the women were allowed to experience and reflect on the outward experiences that had distinguished the life of their male counterparts till date. The women were free to explore, alter the dominant modes of dress and utilize their intellect to sustain their selves in a land marked by uncertainties alone. Having taken an overview of female expression, the paper would seek to attempt a genealogical probe into the writings of women utilising Foucauldian precepts. Hence, it becomes imperative to briefly understand the rudiments of genealogical method in power relations as 1

Henry Morton Stanley is known for discovering the source of the River Nile. He explored large parts of Central

Africa in search of David Livingstone. He prepared an elaborate account of the terrains he saw and mapped the regions he visited which later enabled Leopold II of Belgium to plunder the lands.

Tapti Roy 4 opposed to archaeological. Archaeological discourses should not be confused with historical accounts claiming a strong semblance to truth. Archaeological discourses bear the ratification of hegemonic structures which validates it, and in turn is validated by it. It is this foundation on which linear, teleological, socio-cultural, ethico-legal structures are build on the principles of causality, and generally consumed and naturalised under the garb of constructive ideology. Archaeological discourses favour a virgin point of origin to explain the superstructural attributes governing socio-cultural practices and seek to establish them as absolute, unshakeable modularities of peaceful mutual coexistence. An archaeological methodology would be inappropriate in the determination and evaluation of the West for the space as represented in the writings of pioneer women is an uncanny, unusual entity seeking to destabilize the known and practised tenets of civil society. Hence, a discursive approach that upholds the ahistoricity of events, here women’s quest for self through documenting their trail experience, that encompasses the interstices and the consequent grayness of the written enterprise, would be most appropriate for addressing the mode in which the women sought to speak for themselves. A genealogical methodology here can be said to be the most suitable tool as it can provide a plausible explanation for the mode chosen by the women to narrate their accounts of self construction and fortification without seeking to arrange the resultant literary outputs chronologically, thematically or on basis of literary finesse. This method, operating on the principles of simultaneity rather than schematic cancellations, proves to be all-inclusive, treating pioneer women’s writing not as a causal, predictable outcome of archaeological manoeuvres but as a function of unequal discursive practices of gender. The discourses responsible for shaping and perpetrating the patriarchal setup are loosely held on the basis of inherited differentials and extended practice. These operating through incessant cancellations and negations constrict any mode of expression that holds the germs of destabilization or dilution of the patriarchal status quo. Pioneer women’s writing in this case proposes to operate on the intersectional spaces, or undeterminable gray interstices in the discourse of the West where women assist the men in male-like jobs and simultaneously conform to their gender roles. It is for this reason that those writings are best treated as epochs with a marked ahistoricity which would prevent their amalgamation into the larger monolith of heroic Trail Writings and preserve them as slippery subaltern discourses of self-construction.

Tapti Roy 5 Prior to speaking for themselves the pioneer women were victims of the policy of representation where their male counterparts were solely responsible for speaking on their behalf in the arena of literary or artistic expression. This can be found to be true to this date in the series of Madonna of the Trails2 created by August Leimbach and the works of W.H.D. Koerner, where the former valorizing the women dehumanizes them of their sexual alignments to portray malelike noble virtues of courage and determination, and the latter, specifically in his Madonna of the Prairie portrays Molly Wingate proceeding on the arduous journey with composure and an aura of melancholy. Stripping of human values can also be observed in the nomenclatures itself where the female subject with a halo around her is expected to be an asexual, angelic entity carved out of the male rib to facilitate his quest for the transcendental sublime much on the lines of Rousseau’s portrayal of Èmile and Sophie3. In such contexts, women speaking for themselves and establishing themselves as a contrary agonotheta dei, sensual, secular subjects-in-process could be deemed as a departure of utmost import to narrative genealogy which was majorly dictated and proliferated to an excess by symbolic norms of writing. To appreciate and understand the modes of expression of pioneer women, it would be fruitful to take a detour to the Delphic principle of Gnothi sauton, literally translated as Know Thyself. This principle, a corollary of larger Epimelesthai sautau (to care, for oneself), further evolved in complexity and rigidity under Gregory of Nyssa as can be observed in his treatise On Virginity where altering the implications of Gnothi sauton, he appended the values of spiritual and physical chastity to attain the most divine ideal of spiritual immortality. Following this, it can be assumed that women being considered spiritually deficient and unclean could not have access to the privileges of knowing themselves or attaining the highest ideals of Christianity that is, an incessant quest to conquer the physical realities of self. For the women to be conceivable in the erudite texts of men as appropriate subjects, all signs of sexuality hence, had to be inevitably stripped which can explain their portrayal as urban myths of Madonnas portrayed above. It can be said here that, in due course of time, through institutionalized practices, knowledge assumed political proportions from their erstwhile democratic dimensions. This implies that acquiring and 2

A collection of twelve identical statues designed to honour the indomitable will of the American pioneer women.

These statues were commissioned by the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution. 3

They are the principal characters from Rousseau’s pioneering work Emile, or On Education. The work has been

criticised for the author’s regressive stand on females.

Tapti Roy 6 dissemination of knowledge were regulated by extra-cognitive forces from panoptic institutions operating on a hegemonic basis through the alleyways of rigid class stratifications. Women being directly uninvolved in the basic economic, or political productive machinery of vested interests were conveniently excluded from the intricacies of standardised knowledge across cultures. Such barriers, in fact, are absent in the conception of human as entailed under Epimelesthai sautau which thus becomes the most appropriate mode of self expression for the pioneer women and thus was frequently resorted to in the shape of familiar literary modes. It has to be remembered here that the governing principle of the Graeco-Roman times was the same Epimelesthai sautou which had assumed vital importance as adherence to it was supposed to create responsible citizens for Greek city states endowed with the requisite knowledge to conduct life as an Art. Epimelesthai sautau can be interpreted as an informed inquiry into the soul in which one is expected to introspect and enrich his soul through syllogisms, logic, reasoning, and above all philosophy, not necessarily institutional. This precept, in extension would also have helped pioneer women in general to elevate themselves from the status of subordinate mute subjects and explore the facets of their self on purely ontological terms unfettered by norms of commodified institutional knowledge. Under rigid and non-accommodative structures restricting self-expression, Epimelesthai sautou thus becomes a valuable method for the quest of self for the women. This principle encouraged pioneer women to assimilate new forms of knowledge, irrespective of institutional concerns, by shedding any barriers on the path of the realization of self. This unlearning or discarrying of the barriers of lethargy, general opinions, enforced behavioral patterns propelled them as an individual towards the deeper recesses of their own self. It encouraged “the movement by which the soul turns towards itself … a movement by which its gaze is attracted towards light, towards reality, towards the divine elements, towards the essence, towards the supercelestial world where the essences are visible” (Foucault), thus making the woman an Epimeleia heautou or an individual concerned with caring for herself. This is necessary as the women allowing an author to speak for her will be subsumed in the heteroglossia of other’s discourses, leading to an irrevocable distortion of self. Pioneer women desiring to write for consolidation of self should not be read as an attempt directed towards the creation of alternate hegemonic discourse, but should be seen as an epoch

Tapti Roy 7 comprised of interconnected epistemes. These epistemes instituted the possibility of existence of conditions of a coexistent body of knowledge, otherwise silently practised and till date sporadically expressed in prevalent linguistic modes. To sum up, it can be said that, through writing, pioneer women renounced the historical residues spelling restraint over their self and its creative expression. Considering the transience of power structures, it can be safely concluded that except inheritance and prolonged practice there was little to validate the contemporary models of power. Since, such power structures were motivated through ideologies; it was possible to float new ontic sets through the onset of epochs. Hence, an epoch that proliferated pioneer women’s writing proved to be an empowering factor that recast them as political subjects endowed with a capacity for critiquing the workings of institutions that appear neutral and independent.

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Works Cited Belshaw, Maria Parsons and George Belshaw. Crossing the Plains to Oregon in 1853: The Oregon Diaries of Maria Parsons Belshaw and George Belshaw. Ed. Michael L Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 2000. Pdf file. Duniway, Abigail Scott. “Abigail Scott Duniway Diary”. 1852. Oregon Digital. Web. 09 Feb. 2019. Foucault, Michel. “The Culture of the Self”. UC Berkeley, 1983. Openculture. Web. 09 Feb. 2019. Frizzell, Lodisa. Across the Plains to California in 1852. Ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits. New York: The New York Public Library, 1915. Pdf file. Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment?”. File last modified on 28 Jun. 2016. Pdf file. Moore W. and H. A. Wilson, trans. “St Gregory of Nyssa On Virginity”. Web. 09 Feb. 2019. < https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/virginity.asp> Osborne, Sarah Jane. “Travel in America”. File last modified on 9 Feb. 2019. Microsoft Word file. Sanford, Mollie Dorsey. Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories 1857-1866. Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 1959. Pdf file. Schlissel ,Lillian. “Women’s Diaries on the Western Frontier”. Journals@KU. Web. 09 Feb. 2019. Tate, Michael L. Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails. Norman: Oklahoma UP, 2006. Pdf file. Towell, Emily. “Missouri to Idaho, 1881”. Trail Dust XVII.3(2005). Web. 09 Feb. 2019. Wright, Correnah Wilson. “Luzena Stanley Wilson, '49er: Memories Recalled Years later for her Daughter Correnah Wilson Wright”. 1937. Library of Congress. Pdf file. Wriston, Jennie Atcheson. “A Pioneer’s Odyssey”. File last modified on 25 May. 2014. Microsoft Word file.