The History Chicks, episode 115: “Belle Starr and Calamity Jane.” I didn’t use much of this information in my episode, but it helped set the scene in my brain, and I love these ladies.ĭIG History Podcast, “ Black Cowboys: People of Color in the West.” Written and researched by Elizabeth Garner Masarik and produced by Marissa Rhodes and Elizabeth Garner Masarik. Let’s go traveling.Īmerica's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins, HarperCollins, 2009.įrontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson, Shadow Mountain, 2016. What prompted Victorian-era ladies to journey into such wild, unknown lands? And what kind of lives did they find once they got there? What about the women who were ALREADY there-say, Native American women, or Mexican ones?Īnd the ultimate question: did these women find freedom and equality in the West, or did their era’s strict rules about a woman’s place still bind them? Grab your sunbonnet, some snake venom antidote, and your most reliable pistol. If we see a woman at all, it’s a pretty, helpless schoolteacher or that fast-talking dancer at the local brothel.īut what was life REALLY like for women on the rugged frontier?
But when we think of frontier legends, we tend to picture grizzled cowboys pointing shiny guns. In 19th-century America, the Wild West was a dream: of striking it rich, of finding fame, a fresh start, or freedom. It was a place of extremes and contradictions: full of epic landscapes and terrible hardships, independence and lawlessness and swing-door saloons.Īmericans were obsessed with the West then, and they still are.
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