Conclusion
Though it took her three decades and the accumulation of many life experiences on the Great Plains, Slaughter ultimately drew on hindsight and her former proximity to the "Indian question" to re-think her relation to the process of conquest and the consequences of confinement of Indians to reservations. Few other officers' wives, though intelligent and not entirely unsympathetic observers, were able to set aside their personal history to write memoirs that fairly assessed the conflict on the Plains, nor report without prejudice on the customs of Indian families they met. They defended their husbands' actions even while condemning the policies the Army carried out. Though their confusion obscures some of the meaning of their letters and memoirs, if we are to understand the legacy of racism we need to read these books and letters carefully. We won't find a consistent expression of racial hatred, nor of Christian, womanly concern for the lives of women and children. But we will find a history of the creation of social and economic racism through fear, ignorance, prejudice, and gendered constructions of feminine behavior that shaped the lives of most Army women, but did not apply to Indian women.
