![]() ![]() ![]() Ranch woman and photojournalist Evelyn Cameron wrote about her transition to buckaroo life in Montana and Wyoming in the 1880s. ‘A True Girl of the West’, Del Rio, Texas, 1906. The work of settling the new frontier was leading many women to abandon (or at least some of the time) the constricting, traditional mode of dress. One early pioneer woman advised against observing customary attire and riding style while traveling to the West: “Sidesaddles should be discarded, women should wear hunting frocks, loose pantaloons, men’s hats, and shoes, and ride the came as men,” she wrote. Their skirts kept them from riding like men, and in any case, it was not considered “ladylike” to do so. In those days, women rarely wore pants, and when riding horses, they sat sidesaddle. One new freedom for women that grew out of the pioneering way of life involved a change in wardrobe. Pioneer Nannie Alderson, who settled in Montana, believed that “the new country offered greater personal liberty than the old.” Some of these women homesteaders learned to master the skills of riding horses, roping cattle and other animals, and shooting a gun when necessary. Wives, widows, mothers, and daughters on farms and ranches were helping to settle the western plains. Many began to take on chores formerly done only by men. While back east most women lived within society’s traditional rules, pioneer women had to adapt to survive the harsh circumstances of their journey and new surroundings.Ī woman and her horse hurdle a convertible at a California rodeo. Though men by far outnumbered women in the early years, by 1870, there were 172,00 women over the age of twenty out west, compared to 385,00 men. The Homestead Act of 1860 mandated that 160 acres could be claimed in the west by men as well as women as long as they were twenty-one and unmarried. For nearly thirty years, from the 1840s to the late 1860s, the largest migration in the history of the country took place. Some wagon trains eventually went even farther, to California, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington.Īfter the Civil War, more and more people sought new lives in the West. They moved from crowded eastern cities to settle in western states such as Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Most traveled with their families on covered wagons, beginning in the 1840s. Harriet, Elizabeth, Lucie, and Ruth Chrisman at their sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1886.īefore anyone ever heard the word “cowgirl,” there were women who ventured west. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |