Cowgirls: Women of the American West by Teresa Jordan (review)

Reviews 365 a sensitive biographical introduction to Johnson’s text, but her claims for the significance of Johnson are slight and also uncritically examined. Ruoff presents The Moccasin Maker to a modern critical audience because, like Service and Campbell, Johnson portrays a romantic view of Canadian topography and relays “the experiences and emotions of two minor­ ity groups whose voices were little heard in the Canadian literature of John­ son’s own day—Indians and women.” Johnson is a member of the Canadian Métis; her father, George Johnson, was a Mohawk chief and her mother, Emily Howells Johnson, was an English-born cousin of William Dean Howells. Yet Ruoff fails to explore the valuable critical literature on this well-defined group and mixed Indian-white ancestry; nor does she probe beneath a few feminist clichés to explore the important role of women as brokers between cultures and races. (See, for example, Sylvia Van Kirk’s Many Tender Ties, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983, and Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer S. H. Brown, eds., The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America, Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press, 1985.) Johnson designs a revealing vision of self in The Moccasin Maker, and Ruoff makes that self-portrait available for our exploration. Fortunately, as always, some­ thing further lurks in this portrayal of Indians and women in the North American landscape, and surely now, one of us will find it. ELIZABETH HANSON Temple University Cowgirls: Women of the American West. By Teresa Jordan. (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1984. 301 pages, $10.95.) This is a delightful and informative book which captures not only the spirit of the West, but of those indomitable women known as cowgirls. It is a tribute to Teresa Jordan that her book remains engaging throughout, with page after page of exciting incidents illuminating the hopes, fears, trials, and triumphs of some truly heroic women. For those who have never been to a rodeo, or even a ranch, Cowgirls will still interest and absorb you. Jordan has wisely allowed these spirited women to tell their own stories and, as she explains in her Introduction, “most cowgirls are natural storytellers.” The oral histories are arranged into divisions such as “Cowgirls from the Cradle,” “Cowgirls and Their Men,” and “Cowgirls Alone.” There are also special chapters which include Jordan’s historical overview of cowgirls from the nineteenth century to the present. These women are the female counter­ parts of American cowboys: all work outdoors on ranches or in rodeos. Their lives are deeply connected with the land, and Jordan does not exaggerate when she characterizes their lives as “terribly, terribly hard.” The interviews raise 366 Western American Literature interesting issues for scholars of women’s history and the history of the West— not the least being the continued “invisibility” of these women as compared to their male counterparts. Jordan, who interviewed over one hundred cowgirls ranging in age from sixteen to ninety-eight, is a skillful interviewer. She elicits a wealth of material, not only about ranch and rodeo life, but also about the private world of these women’semotions—of satisfaction in a job well done, of joy, of sorrow. Jordan also proves to be a talented writer, as shown in her opening description of a contemporary Montana cowgirl assisting a struggling heifer to give birth. Her excellent selection of photographs further conveys the drama and the danger which is a routine part of the cowgirl’s life. KAREN S. LANGLOIS The Huntington Library Land of the Burnt Thigh. By Edith Eudora Kohl. (St. Paul: Minnesota His­ torical Society Press, 1986. 296 pages, $7.95.) Sand in My Eyes. By Seigniora Russell Laune. (Norman: University of Okla­ homa Press, 1986. 256 pages, $7.95.) Both of these books on women’s homesteading experiences, reprinted in 1986 after original publications in 1938 and 1956 respectively, provide us with detailed accounts of frontier life. The contrasts are fascinating, however, between Kohl’s account of herself as the woman of letters who does a man’s job, and Laune’s frank story of herself as a lady transported to the prairies. In Land of the Burnt Thigh, Kohl begins...