Common Purposes, Worlds Apart: Mexican-American, Mormon, and Midwestern Women Homesteaders in Cochise County, Arizona

KATHERINE BENTON-COHEN

Women homesteaders were much more diverse than the "classic" image would suggest. A case study of Anglo midwestern, Mexican-American, and Mormon homesteading women in Cochise County, Arizona, reveals commonalities and differences obscured by promotional efforts to cast homesteading as the salvation of white America in the early twentieth century.
CONJURE UP THE CLASSIC image of a woman homesteader. Someone stalwart, independent, and hardy comes to mind. She is probably on the Plains somewhere, and she is almost definitely white, likely Protestant, and either native- or European-born. Even if she is part of a family group—as much scholarship has shown her to be—she still appears as an icon of female individualism in the West, evidence that the frontier offered freedom for women as well as men.1	1
Figure 1. Map of Cochise County, Arizona. Tres Alamos, Pomerene, and Kansas Settlement were among more than a dozen rural communities (not shown) created by the arrival of homesteaders to Cochise County. The opening of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1879–1880 nearly obliterated Tres Alamos, which became absorbed into Benson. Pomerene and Kansas Settlement survive as tiny communities today. Map designed by Sarah E. Hinman, Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge.
The classic single woman homesteader is a creation of western mythology, just like the lone cowboy and prospector. As historians such as Dee Garceau have shown, securing "independence" through homesteading had diverse meanings for women. Moreover, careful investigation uncovers a broader range of women than just the classic type. Recasting the historical and cultural context of homesteading reveals the racial and gendered underpinnings of women's images. Some women matched the stereotype, but many did not. A few historians, including H. Elaine Lindgren, have acknowledged the diversity of the women themselves, but this heterogeneity needs more analysis.2	2
The American Southwest—an area where historians have rarely considered homesteaders, either male or female—is a great place to look for the variety of women homesteaders.3 Mixed groups of Anglo Protestants, Mormons, and Mexican Americans homesteaded in several areas of Arizona, including the Santa Cruz River Valley outside Tucson, the town of Florence in Pinal County, and the St. Johns area in northern Arizona's Apache County.4 Other parts of the Southwest, including the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, had similarly diverse settlement patterns.5 Yet the stories of these places remain little known.	. . .