Colonizers have long tried to crush the spirit of the peoples they colonize and blunt their will to resist colonization. One of the most devastating weapons of conquest has been sexual violence. In the eyes of colonizers, the bodies of people of color are considered inherently "dirty." For instance, as European settlers of California described in the 1860s, Native people were "the dirtiest lot of human beings on earth (Rawls 1984, 195)." They wear "filthy rags, with their persons unwashed, hair uncombed and swarming with vermin (Rawls 1984, 195)." The following 1885 Proctor & Gamble ad for Ivory Soap also illustrates this equation between Indian bodies and dirt.

We were once factious, fierce and wild,
In peaceful arts unreconciled
Our blankets smeared with grease and stains
From buffalo meat and settlers' veins.
Through summer's dust and heat content
From moon to moon unwashed we went,
But IVORY SOAP came like a ray
Of light across our darkened way
And now we're civil, kind and good
And keep the laws as people should,
We wear our linen, lawn and lace
As well as folks with paler face
And now I take, where'er we go
This cake of IVORY SOAP to show
What civilized my squaw and me
And made us clean and fair to see (Lopez n.d., 119).

- See more at: http://www.incite-national.org/page/dangerous-intersections#sthash.jvM1MsAQ.dpuf