This book reveals how powerful undercurrents of sex, gender, and
culture helped shape the history of the American frontier from the
1760s to the 1850s. Looking at California under three flagsathose
of Spain, Mexico, and the United StatesaHurtado resurrects daily
life in the missions, at mining camps, on overland trails and sea
journeys, and in San Francisco. In these settings Hurtado explores
courtship, marriage, reproduction, and family life as a way to
understand how men and womenawhether Native American, Anglo
American, Hispanic, Chinese, or of mixed bloodafit into or reshaped
the roles and identities set by their race and gender.
Hurtado introduces two themes in delineating his intimate
frontiers. One was a libertine California, and some of its delights
were heartily described early in the 1850s: " Gold] dust was
plentier than pleasure, pleasure more enticing than virtue. Fortune
was the horse, youth in the saddle, dissipation the track, and
desire the spur." Not all the times were good or giddy, and in the
tragedy of a teenage domestic who died in a botched abortion or a
brutalized Indian woman we see the seamy underside of gender
relations on the frontier. The other theme explored is the reaction
of citizens who abhorred the loss of moral standards and sought to
suppress excess. Their efforts included imposing all the
stabilizing customs of whichever society dominated
Californiaaduring the Hispanic period, arranged marriages and
concern for family honor were the norm; among the Anglos, laws
regulated prostitution, missionaries railed against vices, and
"proper" women were brought in to help "civilize" the frontier.
General
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