THE REAL WOMEN OF THE WILD WEST

A PORTFOLIO OF BOLD AMERICAN WOMEN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to study democracy. At the end of his two-volume Democracy In America, he wrote, "if one asked me to what do I think one must principally attribute the singular prosperity and growing force of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of its women. With that spirit in mind, we present a photo essay of the strong, bold, sassy, bawdy, stubborn, bodacious, and superior women of the Old West.

Four Sisters at the Soddie

These four sisters (1.-r.), Harriet, Elizabeth, Lucie and Ruth Crisman, photographed in 1886, near Custer County, Nebraska, knew how blessed they were to have each other, as so many other women suffered the loneliness of the frontier. "It was a frontier saying that homesteading was a gamble: 'Yeah, the United States Government is betting you 160 acres of land that you can't live on it eight months!" -Edith Eudora Kohl in her homesteading memoir, Land of the Burnt Thigh Solomon Butcher, Courtesy Library of Congress

Spirit of the West

This is one of the only known photos of a Black cowgirl; she's called Nellie Brown. But there is no Nellie Brown recorded in Western history she's just as anonymous as the many Black women labeled only as "unknown!" However, they all knew something important. As one historian said, "More than anywhere else in the United States at the time, the frontier offered African Americans a chance in life!" All Images Courtesy True West Archives Unless Otherwise Noted

Arizona's Sharlot Hall

"I am not unwomanly don't you dare to think so-but God meant women to joy in his great, clean, beautiful world, and I thank Him that he lets me see some of it not through a windowpane!" Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum Library & Archives, Prescott, Arizona

Range Boss