Women and Gender in the American West

Notes

 Joan M. Jensen and Darlis A. Miller,The Gentle Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West . We will use the following terms in distinguishing among various ethnic groups of women: Native Americans or Indian; Hispanic, Mexicana, or Chicana depending on the context; Afro-American or black; Asian-American; and Euro-American.We have included only published material in this survey. . The recent bibliography by Sheryll and Gene Patterson-Black,WesternWomen (Crawford, Neb., ) is the most complete available.There is no bibliography on Native American women in the West, but Beatrice Medicine,“The Role of Women in Native American Societies: A Bibliography,” Indian Historian,VIII (), –, contains a preliminary listing. For Chicanas, see Robert Cabello-Arandona, Juan Gómez-Quinoñes, and Patricia Herrera Duran, The Chicana: A Comprehensive Study (Los Angles, ). For black women,see Lenwood G.Davis,The BlackWomen inAmerican Society:A Selected Annotated Bibliography (Boston, ).There is no published bibliography on Asian women,but seeVernaAbe et al.,AsianAmericanWomen (PaloAlto,); Asian Women (Berkeley, ; and Emma Gee et al., Counterpoints (Asian American Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, ). RodmanW.Paul and RichardW. Etulain,comps.,The Frontier and theAmerican West (Arlington Heights, Ill., ) has a useful section on “Women, the Family, and Women’s Rights in the West,” –. . Fredrick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,”in The Frontier in American History (NewYork,),pp.–.Some writers prior to  attempted to emphasize women’s contributions on the frontier. See Elizabeth F. Ellet, Pioneer Women of the West (New York, ); William W. Fowler, Woman on the American Frontier (; reprinted, Detroit, Notes  Notes to pages iii‒ ).Among the earliest attempts in the twentieth century to write histories of women in theWest are NancyWilson Ross,Westward theWomen (New York, ) and William Forrest Sprague, Women and the West:A Short Social History (Boston,).See also Mattie LloydWooten,ed.,WomenTell the Story of the Southwest (San Antonio, ).Among the first to question the application of Turner’s thesis to women’s experiences was David M. Potter in “American Women and the American Character,” a lecture presented at Stetson University in . In his lecture, Potter asked significant questions about male and female work roles in American society. See Don E. Fehrenbacher,ed.,History andAmerican Society:Essays of David M.Potter (New York, ), –. For a recent account, see Julie Roy Jeffrey, Frontier Women:TheTrans-MississippiWest, – (NewYork, ). . Ray Allen Billington, America’s Frontier Heritage (NewYork, ), . . Ibid. . Walter Rundell, Jr.,“Concepts of the ‘Frontier’ and the ‘West,’” Arizona and the West, I (), –; Arrell Morgan Gibson, The West in the Life of the Nation (Lexington, Mass., ), ix, –. . Dee Brown, The Gentle Tamers:Women of the Old Wild West (Lincoln, , reprinted );Dorothy Gray,Women of theWest (Millbrae,Calif.,).Some historians are beginning to include Hawaii and Alaska in their definitions of the AmericanWest.Although most histories of these areas place little emphasis on women and their contributions, two authors—Gavan Daws and Ted Hinckley—include scattered references to women missionaries and wives of missionaries. See Gavan Daws, Shoal ofTime:A History of the Hawaiian Islands (New York, ) and Ted C. Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska (Palo Alto, ). For an interesting account of one woman’s life in central Alaska during the first four decades of the twentieth century,see Jo AnneWold,This Old House:The Story of Clara Rust (Anchorage, ). . See,for example,Lynn I.Perrigo,TheAmerican Southwest:Its People and Cultures (NewYork, ), –, , , , , –, –. . T.A. Larson,“Women’s Role in the American West,” Montana,The Magazine ofWestern History, XXIV (Summer ), . . Gibson, TheWest in the Life of the Nation, . Many textbooks are male-oriented and have only scattered references to women. See, for instance, Robert Athearn and Robert Riegel, America Moves West (th ed., New York, ); Thomas D. Clark, Frontier America (New York, ); Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion (th ed., New York, ); LeRoy Hafen, W. Eugene Hollon, and Carl C. Rister, Western America (rd ed., Englewood Cliffs, ). Texts by John Hawgood, America’s Western Frontiers (New York, ) and RobertV. Hine, The American West:An Interpretive History (Boston, ) are slightly better than others and include in their indices the activities and names of several women. Specialized studies of the West which are frequently used in college classrooms are also male-oriented and depict women in traditional roles. See particularly two books by Everett Dick, The Sod House Frontier  Notes to pages ‒ (Lincoln, ) and Vanguards of the Frontier (; reprinted, Lincoln, ). . Larson,“Women’s...