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Reviews
Wild Women of the Old West
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Edited by Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain
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Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, Colorado, 2003. Photographs, index. 255 pages. $17.95 paper.
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Reviewed by Renee Laegreid
Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska
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| Wild Women of the Old West is the fourth of the Notable Westerners series highlighting outstanding individuals. Edited by well-known western historians Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain, this book examines the lives of nine "notorious" women propelled into legendary status and credited with "shaping and reshaping images of the West" (p. vii). Wild women, as defined by Riley, are "individuals who deviated from their culture's and their era's expectations of a 'proper woman'" (p. xi). There is little doubt that these women challenged gender expectations. Although they rose to fame during an era when New Women were beginning to confront societies restrictions on women — and some exhibited more challenging behavior than others — each became a legend in her own right by seizing opportunities available only on the western frontier. |
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The essays are organized into four categories of "wild" behavior: Errant Daughters, women who left home (willingly or not) to seek their fortune; Sellers of Sex, infamous prostitutes in frontier towns; Showtime Cowgirls, notorious in the sense that they performed in the public sphere; and the Almost Outlaws, women who skated on the edge of legal authority. Each essay begins with a captivating recounting of the myth, then moves on to analyze extant documents — census records, family history, marriages, newspaper clippings, and so on — to try and separate myth from the veracity of the women's lives. The essays conclude with a historiography on the myth itself — how it started, who perpetuated it, and what scholarly arguments emerged to either support or debunk it. For example, Carmen Goldthwaithe's essay on the woman behind the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" examines the life of a young mulatto woman who moved to Texas just as the future republic began its fight for independence from Mexico. Captured by Santa Anna's troops, Emily D. West was catapulted to mythic status for allegedly seducing the general in his tent, thus contributing to his defeat at the battle of San Jacinto. As fascinating as the myth is the tenacity of Texans in perpetuating the story despite any real evidence to support it. |
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Priscilla Wegars's essay on Chinese immigrant Polly Bemis is an excellent example of reading around the edges of evidence to sift fact from fiction. Wegars rebuts much of the myth surrounding Bemis's life by placing her within the larger context of Chinese culture. Anne M. Butler's essay on prostitution examines the lives of infamous Anglo and African American madams in Denver. The strength of this essay lies in its ability to take the scant information that exists on these women and create a larger context for understanding prostitution and the risks women faced in that profession. Butler's big-picture view dovetails nicely with Riley's detailed account of New Mexico prostitute and madam Sadie Orchard. |
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Candy Moulton's essay on Lucille Mulhall and M.J. Van Deventer's on Bertha Kaepernik Blancett explore the lives of cowgirl rodeo performers. Both challenged norms of the day by riding astride in public and engaging in masculine activities such as roping, shooting, and riding broncs. Yet both presented very ladylike images, dressed in the "proper" styles of the day. The lives of these women contrast sharply with those in the final essays: Lori Van Pelt's essay on Cattle Kate, "the only woman ever hanged in Wyoming," and Etulain's on Calamity Jane, who was often photographed dressed like a man (p. 155). The shocking wildness of these women's lives engendered notoriety that continues unabated. |
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There are inherent problems in trying to debunk myths about western women in an era when women were nearly invisible in the public sphere or, as with Calamity Jane, when rumors trumped truth even during their lifetime. Their stories, "rich in fable and lean on fact," lack substantial documentation (p. 197). The challenge, then, becomes one of peeking around the edges of these women's lives, reconstructing them with shards of evidence placed into a broader cultural, social, or economic context. Unfortunately, this can lead to stories with more context than real information on the women themselves — Emily Morgan and the Denver madams as cases in point. Rather than a criticism, this should be considered inspiration to continue the work seen in this collection: placing women into the historical picture of the West, broadening that picture with women's perspectives, and elevating women from the persistent misconception that they played an insignificant role in the Old West. |
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Overall, this collection provides a wonderful introduction to New Western History, particularly for general readers. It combines the best of Old West storytelling with a newfangled twist: rather than reveling in tall tales, it focuses on the real lives of the women behind them. Rather than perpetuating the myth of an all-Anglo, mostly male domain, the essays capture the ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity of nine women who embraced opportunities they found on the frontier. |
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