Hey and happy Thursday!
So, let’s get back into Wild Women. If you missed Part I, you can check it out here. But what I hoped you took away from last week’s newsletter is that popular perceptions of the ‘Wild West’ are problematic. One of the big issues is that the ‘Wild West’ is a concept that blurs reality and mythology. The term itself romanticises this particular time and place, especially through its focus on what we might call ‘rugged masculinity.’ You know what I’m saying here … it’s very cowboys and conquerors.
What about women, though?
Where do they fit?
Well, we looked a little bit at this last week. Today, let’s do some reframing. For a start, not all women were sex workers. That’s a big one, isn’t it?
One of the reasons that this needs reframing is because we know that there were opportunities for women in the West that maybe weren’t available to them in other parts of what would become the U.S. Historian Virginia Scharff reminded us of this last week:
“In the years after the Civil War, those women found plenty of opportunities in the West that were not available in the East: everything from the right to vote to equal pay for women teachers to more liberal divorce laws … The West was the first home of women’s suffrage in the U.S., with nearly every western state or territory enfranchising women long before women won the right to vote in eastern states.”
Yes, women used these freedoms in different ways. Some women *did* do sex work – no doubts about it. But let’s have a little nosey at what some other women were getting up to and, in doing so, let’s also challenge the view that violence and criminality were exclusive to this ‘rugged masculinity.’
Laura Bullion (1876-1961)
Born in Texas to an Indigenous American father and German mother. As a teen, she worked at a brothel called Madame Fannie Porter’s. By then, she was already kicking with Butch Cassidy’s ‘Wild Bunch’ gang. They nicknamed her “Rose of the Wild Bunch” or “Della Rose.” She took part in the Great Northern train robbery of 1901 for which she spent 3.5 years in prison. When she got out, she changed her name and worked as a housekeeper and seamstress.
Mary Fields (c. 1832-1914)
Born into enslavement in Tennessee, not much is known about Mary until after the Civil War and emancipation. She worked as a housekeeper in Ohio but relocated to Montana in 1885. History remembers Mary as “Stagecoach Mary,” the first Black woman and second woman to work as a mail carrier. But I also want to highlight her work in Montana for St. Peter’s Mission where she had so many responsibilities. She freighted supplies for the mission using any vehicle she could get her hands on, she constructed and managed a hennery and garden that fed 200 people, she played the guitar, she nursed Indigenous and white girls and women at the mission when they were sick. She played the guitar, banjo AND harmonica.
Belle Starr (1848-1899)
Born in Missouri but a *notorious* outlaw of the Texas and Oklahoma territories. Her family farm was a frequent place of refuge for Jesse James and his gang, so Belle grew up around criminality. She was still young (possibly a teen) when she ran away with a guy called Jim Reed. Together, they were involved in the hold up of the Austin-San Antonio Stage in 1874. Jim died shortly after, but Belle moved to Oklahoma and married a Cherokee called Sam Starr. They hustled cattle, held up trains, robbed travellers and ranchers … you name it. In the 1880s, Belle dressed in men’s clothes to rob a post office. Sam was shot and killed in 1887 but Belle continued. Just a few months after her VERY mysterious death by shooting, the publisher of the National Police Gazette wrote a biography of Belle called ‘Belle Star, the Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James.’
There are so, so many stories like these.
Remember: it’s not our job to romanticise these women or their exploits. Neither is it our job to hold them up as symbols of female empowerment. We need to think carefully about context. But it is important to include their narratives – no matter how patchy or scant – in our wider understanding of the ‘Wild West.’
Until next time,
Kaye x