American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In 1895, after two years as a field matron in Oklahoma Territory, Eliza Lambe assessed her involvement with the Cheyenne and Arapaho women she knew. Field matrons, she noted, could not rely solely on the power of their positions or their status as Anglo-Americans to gain credibility with tribal women. Experience taught her that ”the first duty of a Field Matron is to gain the confidence and respect of Indian women, impress upon their minds that she is their friend and helper and not a Critic.” Lambe learned this during long hours working side-by-side with women in the Cheyenne and Arapaho communities. Doors opened in friendship, voices lifted in greeting, and tasks shared by the field matron and her Indian counterparts forged valuable cross-cultural ties. ”In every way,” she reported after two years, “I try to be a Mother, Sister, and friend to the Indian women and girls.” Mother, sister, and friend: Eliza Lambe’s self-portrait conjures powerful images of the “bonds of womanhood” from the nineteenth-century Anglo-American female world. It also, however, hints at something else. Given the context for her introspection, a federal program based on an ethnocentric contempt for Indian cultures, this commentary may be read as more than just a guide to success as a field matron. Her report, “The Field Matrons [sic] relationship to Indian women & Girls,” acknowledges that just as Eliza Lambe made an impact on the Cheyenne and Arapaho women and their world, those people and that place influenced her.