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Women's Place on the American Frontier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Margaret Walsh
Margaret Walsh
Affiliation:
Margaret Walsh is Senior Lecturer in American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, England.
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Extract

Women's traditional place on the American frontier has been as invisible helpmate or at best as some shadowy figure who appeared occasionally when describing pioneer homes and lifestyles. Until recently, historians followed the individualistic and linear progression of Frederick Jackson Turner westward across the continent and found no need to discuss the activities of both sexes. Euro-American men were fully capable of explaining the frontier, both as authors and as subjects. But the American frontier is no longer one-dimensional. Increasing numbers of female historians have insisted on not only placing women in the midst of established pioneering ventures, but have widened western horizons to discuss different pioneers and new economic and social roles for women of all ethnic and racial groups. Women's place on the frontier has now become so central that it is impossible to make any sense of new settlement patterns without examining the experiences of both men and women and their relationships to each other.

Type
State of the Art
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , August 1995 , pp. 241 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

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2 Hough, Emerson, The Passing of the Frontier: A Chronicle of the Old West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918), 93Google Scholar; Paxson, Frederic L., History of the American Frontier, 1763–1893, Students' Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924), 114–5Google Scholar; Clark, Dan E., The West in American History (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1937), 308–311, 13Google Scholar; Billington, Ray A., Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (New York: Macmillan, 1st ed. 1949)Google Scholar.

3 For a discussion of frontier women as stereotypes images and symbols see Stoeltje, Beverly J., “‘A Helpmate for Man Indeed’: The Image of the Frontier Woman,” Journal of American Folklore, 88, no. 347 (1975), 25–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jensen, Joan M. and Miller, Darlis A., “ The Gentle Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West,” Pacific Historical Review, 49 (05 1980), 178–184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Most Western State and regional historical journals such as Ohio History, Minnesota History, Annals of Iowa, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Montana, the Magazine of History, Great Plains Quarterly, Journal of the West and Western Historical Quarterly, have published increasing numbers of pieces on or by pioneering women in the past twenty-five years.

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9 There are many articles and sections of books which examine women's contributions to pioneer farming in the Trans-Mississippi West. See, for example, Riley, , The Female Frontier, 42–101Google Scholar; Myres, , Westering, 141–66Google Scholar; Stratton, Joanna L., Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 57–76Google Scholar; Bauman, Paula M., “Single Women Homesteaders in Wyoming, 1880–1930,” Annals of Wyoming, 58 (Spring 1986), 39–49Google Scholar; Harris, Katherine, “Homesteaders in Northeastern Colorado, 1873–1920: Sex Roles and Women's Experience” in Armitage, and Jameson, , The Women's West, 165–78Google Scholar and Webb, Anne, “Forgotten Persephones: Women Farmers on the Frontier,” Minnesota History, 50 (Winter 1986), 134–48Google Scholar. Western historians rarely address the Cis-Mississippi frontier region, but useful information on female participation in farming can be found in Faragher, John M., Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 96–109Google Scholar and Craig, Lee A., To Sow One Acre More: Childbearing and Farm Productivity in the Antebellum North (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

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11 General books on frontier women often have an introductory chapter which examines women's place in the light of recent work in women's history as well as the traditional images of western women. See, for example, Jeffrey, , Frontier Women, 3–24Google Scholar, Myres, , Westering Women, 1–11Google Scholar and Riley, , The Female Frontier, 1–13Google Scholar. For an observant review essay which addresses the issue of women's place see Petrick, Paula, “Gentle Tamers In Transition: Women in the Trans-Mississippi West,” Feminist Studies, 11, No. 3 (1985), 677–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Butler, Anne S., Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Paula Petrick, No Step Backwards; Jeffrey, Julie R., Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Peterson, Susan C., “Religious Communities of Women in the West: The Presentation Sister's Adaptation to the Northern Plains Frontier,” Journal of the West, 21 (04 1982), 65–70Google Scholar; Myres, Sandra L., “Army Women's Narratives as Documents of Social History. Some Examples from the Western Frontier, 1840–1990,” New Mexico Historical Review, 65, no. 2 (1990), 175–98Google Scholar; Stallard, Patricia Y., Glittering Misery: Dependents of the Indian Fighting Army (Fort Collins: The Old Army Press, 1978, repr. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Kirk, Sylvia Van, Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670–1870 (Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer, 1980)Google Scholar.

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16 A recent example of engendered rural history is Conzen, Kathleen Neils, “ A Saga of Families” in The Oxford History of the American West eds. Milner, Clyde A. II, O'Connor, Carol A. and Sandweiss, Martha A. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 315–57Google Scholar.

17 Faragher, , Sugar Creek, 96–109Google Scholar; Craig, To Sow One Acre More.

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20 Issues of gender are discussed in Scharff, Virginia, “Gender and Western History: Is Anybody Home on the Range?” Montana the Magazine of Western History, 41 (Spring 1991)Google Scholar and Johnson, Susan Lee, “‘A memory sweet to soldiers’: The Significance of Gender in the History of the American West,” Western Historical Quarterly, 24 (11 1993), 495–517CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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26 Pascoe, Peggy, “Western Women at the Cultural Crossroads” in Trails eds., Limerick, , Milner, and Rankin, , 40–58Google Scholar. She is neither the first nor the only historian calling for a multicultural approach to western women. See also Jensen and Miller, “The Gentle Tamers Revisited,” 173–213 and Jameson, Elizabeth, “Toward A Multicultural History of Women in the Western United States,” Signs, 13, no. 4 (1988), 761–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Two examples of multicultural women's history are Du Bois, Ellen C. and Ruiz, Vicki L. (eds.), Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History (New York: Routledge, 1st ed., 1990, 2nd ed., 1994)Google Scholar and Amott, Teresa L. and Matthaei, Julie A., Gender and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the United States (Boston: South End Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

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30 Much of this path-breaking work has been done on the Canadian fur trading frontier. See Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties; Brown, Jennifer S. H., Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Peterson, Jacqueline and Brown, Jennifer S. H. (eds.), New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1985)Google Scholar. Faragher, John M. discusses the Rocky Mountain West in “The Custom of the Country: Cross-Cultural Marriage in the Far Western Fur Trade” in Western Women, Their Land, Their Lives, eds. Schlissel, Lillian, Ruiz, Vicki L. and Monk, Janice (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 199–215Google Scholar.

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35 de Graaf, Lawrence B., “Race, Sex and Region: Black Women in the American West, 1850–1920,” Pacific Historical Review, 49 (05 1980), 285–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riley, Glenda, “American Daughters: Black Women in the West,” Montana, The Magazine of Western History, 38, no. 2 (1988), 14–27Google Scholar.