In this new and enlarged edition the editors have built on an already strong collection with four new accounts. Colorado pioneer Augusta Tabor gives a sense of the heady days as Leadville became a major mining center. Abigail Duniway describes the challenges of life for women in the Pacific Northwest. Effie Wiltbank s short selection is a reminiscence of her grandmother s receet for washing clothes, a chore that epitomizes the practical skill, determination, and common sense required of so many Western women. Apolinaria Lorenzana offers a rare glimpse of the operations of the mission system...

Long before Rachel Carson's fight against pesticides placed female environmental activists in the national spotlight, women were involved in American environmentalism. In Women and Nature: Saving the "Wild" West, Glenda Riley calls for a reappraisal of the roots of the American conservation movement. This thoroughly researched study of women conservationists provides a needed corrective to the male-dominated historiography of environmental studies. The early conservation movement gained much from women's widespread involvement. Florence Merriam Bailey classified the birds of New Mexico and...

With eighty men I could ride through the entire Sioux nation. The story of what has become popularly known as the Fetterman Fight, near Fort Phil Kearney in present-day Wyoming in 1866, is based entirely on this infamous declaration attributed to Capt. William J. Fetterman. Historical accounts cite this statement in support of the premise that bravado, vainglory, and contempt for the fort s commander, Col. Henry B. Carrington, compelled Fetterman to disobey direct orders from Carrington and lead his men into a perfectly executed ambush by an alliance of Plains Indians.In the aftermath of the...

The writings of the American West have long dealt with masculine ideals. Well into the twentieth century, what little attention was afforded to women typically reflected prescribed or stereotyped roles, and the work of women scholars received less attention than that of men. And yet the early twentieth century saw a host of pioneering scholars who would not be ignored, erased, or marginalized. The ten women intellectuals showcased in this volume were pioneers in the writing of Indian-centered history, ethnology, and folklore that incorporated the insights, voices, and perspectives of American...

Raised in a sheltered, puritanical household in New England, Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863-1953) followed her conscience and calling in 1885 when she traveled west and opened a school on the Great Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. Over the next six years she witnessed many of the monumental events that affected the Lakotas, including the inception of the Ghost Dance religion and the fallout from the Wounded Knee massacre in December 1890. She also fell in love with and married Charles Eastman, a Dakota doctor with whom she had six children, and went on to help edit his many popular books on...

With the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862, many states in the Midwest and the West chartered land-grant colleges following the Civil War. Because of both progressive ideologies and economic necessity, these institutions admitted women from their inception and were among the first public institutions to practice coeducation. Although female students did not feel completely accepted by their male peers and professors in the land-grant environment, many of them nonetheless successfully negotiated greater gender inclusion for themselves and their peers.
In Bright Epoch, Andrea G....

In 1881 Thomas and Elizabeth Tannatt said a final good-bye to Massachusetts and the eastern seaboard and set out in search not of land but of opportunities for social and political advancement. Facing severe limitations to their goals in the depressed and disheveled postwar East, the Tannatts went west to Walla Walla, Washington Territory, to pursue their dreams of influence and status. Domesticating the West examines the motivations of late-nineteenth-century middle-class migrants who moved west to build communities and establish themselves as leaders. The West offered new opportunities for...

Crack shot. Enigma woman. Good with ponies and pistols. A much-married woman.
What if such an unconventional woman and the press unanimously agreed that Nellie May Madison was indeed unconventional were to get away with murder? Shortly after her husband s bullet-riddled body was found in the couple s Burbank apartment, police issued an all-points bulletin for the beautiful, dark-haired widow. The ensuing drama unfolded with all the twists and turns of a noir crime novel. In this intriguing cultural history, Kathleen A. Cairns tells the tale of Nellie May Madison, the first woman on Death...

In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She...

With eighty men I could ride through the entire Sioux nation. The story of the Fetterman Fight, near Fort Phil Kearney in present-day Wyoming in 1866, is based entirely on this infamous declaration attributed to Capt. William J. Fetterman. Historical accounts cite this statement in support of the premise that bravado and contempt for the fort s commander, Col. Henry B. Carrington, compelled Fetterman to disobey direct orders from Carrington and lead his men into an ambush by an alliance of Plains Indians.In the aftermath of the incident, Carrington s superiors positioned him as solely...