Not
for the Weak
Back
East, women were often seen as frail, genteel and elegant. They wore silk and lace. Who would have thought that they could
withstand the rigors of the trail west?
But they did! The heat, unrelenting
dust, illness and death didn’t stop many.
In
1868, a petite, 18-year-old Texan wife, eight months pregnant, was left for
dead when hostile Indians attacked her cabin.
With arrows in her leg and chest, and scalped, she dragged herself a
mile and a half for help. Both she and
her unborn child survived.
In
addition to all the traditional duties and responsibilities, many women also
took on more masculine chores. They
drove the wagon, hitched and unhitched the team, loaded and unloaded the
supplies. Especially if her husband came
down sick or died along the way, a woman’s responsibility was to assume his
chores and duties. The family’s survival
depended on her leadership.
The
initially docile, genteel wife was often replaced by a strong, capable woman,
fully able to share any man’s job. Along
the way, many women discovered that she possessed great innerstrength and that
she could handle anything that came up.
A
Mrs. Stephens, living near Arizona, was left with only a hired hand when her
husband traveled to the nearest town. As
often happened, Indians attacked, but she and her hired man ably fought them
off until a band of cowboys, hearing the shots, came to their rescue. A cowboy asked her if she would like to send
a message to her husband. She wrote,
“Elias, send me some more buckshot, I’m almost out.”
Working
Women
Many
women, upon arrival at their homesteads, soon began looking around for a way to
supplement the family’s income. They
became quite enterprising. If they were
near other people, they would take in laundry or sell produce. Occasionally, women took on separate claims,
in addition to their regular responsibilities, at the urging of their husbands.
A
Mrs. Clayton (1877) had seven children to care for, plus her housework and
sewing. She also made and sold 50 pounds
of butter a week for $.48 per pound. She
cared for 150 prized chickens and helped milk 30 cows. This was a very busy woman