NEW WOMEN IN THE OLD WEST: From Settlers to Suffragists

The image of Annie "Get Your Gun" Oakley symbolises the capable, athletic, self-sufficient woman of the west, and the legend is based on the true story of an uneducated servant girl who beat a professional sharpshooter in a contest. With an eye to profit the professional married her and hired her out to Buffalo Bill's Circus, where she was paid an equal wage to the male stars. Oakley maintained a demure image in private and never publicly endorsed the "votes for women" movement that was sweeping the west of America well ahead of the demand for women's suffrage that arose on the east coast. The popular 19th century doctrine of "women's proper sphere", separate from that of men, was challenged in the west by a number of factors, including the independence of Native American women, the prominence of women in the abolitionist movement, and the need for women to go west and run farm-based domestic businesses for male settlers. The suffrage movement, as the author acknowledges, was not a straightforward march of progress but was a messy and fragmented phenomenon with a range of ideological views on women's roles. During the Civil War of the 1860s two important laws were passed, one allowing women to claim free land in the west alongside male homesteaders and secondly the creation of a hundred tuition-free colleges where women could get an education. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory women became the first in Euro-American history to be enfranchised, closely followed by Mormon Utah ? half a century ahead of the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920 which in theory gave all American women the vote. This book recounts the stories of countless independent women, for instance Ellen Smith who lost her husband and one of her children on the Oregon Trail, but nevertheless continued to claim her land and establish her homestead. 277pp, photos.