Women's Roles in the American West During Westward Expansion

Introduction: Women and the Westward Movement

This paper examines women in the American West during the Westward Movement. Specifically, it discusses historic evidence supporting the position that the Westward Movement did indeed transform the traditional roles of American women, just as it transformed the American West. Women traveling west created opportunities for themselves, became active in business and politics, and built new and exciting lives. These women transformed how America looked at women — and how women looked at themselves — which was perhaps the most important transformation of all.

The Westward Movement began in the early 1800s after the explorers Lewis and Clark opened up the first trail from St. Louis, Missouri, to Oregon and proved that overland travel was possible, if difficult. Migrants began heading for Oregon and other areas of the West as early as the 1830s. In fact, the first women to cross the Continental Divide were Eliza Spalding and Narcissa Whitman, who traveled to Washington as missionaries to the Indians with their husbands in 1836 (Whitman and Spalding 67–70).

Initially, the only inhabitants of the Western United States were Native American tribes scattered throughout the region and the occasional trapper or mountain man there to trap furs for his livelihood. The West was empty, untapped, and waiting for expansion, and there were plenty of Easterners ready to travel west for new opportunities. However, after gold was discovered in California in 1848, the trip west took on new meaning. Going west could now mean riches beyond the wildest dreams, and thousands of immigrants headed west to seek their fortunes in the gold mines of California. This was the time when women began to head west in much larger numbers, and when women's roles truly began to transform. As historians Butler and Siporin assert:

"The fragile image of women, cultivated in eastern society, fell away in the West. While respiratory ailments, especially tuberculosis, stalked the East, western women and their daughters acquired a robust vigor that helped curtail the much feared 'wasting diseases'" (Butler and Siporin 112).

Women in the West began to transform themselves and their roles almost as soon as they arrived on the Western frontier. One must remember, however, that the ultimate decision to move west was almost always that of the men in the family, and women had little say in the uprooting of their homes and families. "Although historians differ about the impact of the westward journey on women's roles, most agree that the decision to move west was made by men" (Armitage and Jameson 149). When one considers how much women endured and how they transformed their lives during their treks west, it is all the more remarkable to see how clearly women reinvented themselves under such harsh and often unwanted conditions.

Loneliness and Isolation on the Frontier

Women always worked hard on the farm or in the home wherever they lived, and the West was no different. However, in the East, even in the smallest hamlets, women had other women nearby to work with and confide in. When women came west, they often discovered they were the only women for hundreds of miles, as historian Sandra Myres notes:

"Most of all, frontier women missed the company of other women. 'Give a woman a chance to talk to a sympathetic listener about the things that interest her,' one wrote, 'and she will be happy.' But often a sympathetic listener in the person of another woman was not readily available. On those frontiers where men outnumbered women by ratios of five or six to one, women often lived for months without seeing another woman" (Myres 168).

Not only did these women have to create their lives without the support of family and other women, they were also often the objects of great adulation by the mainly male settlements in the West, and they desperately missed female companionship. As Myres continues: "Another commented of her first impression of San Francisco, 'men were to be seen everywhere, nothing but men, not a woman — nor a child.' Men were fine, in their place, but they were not the same kind of companions and friends as women. 'If men was company to me like friends at home,' one wrote, 'I would never get lonesome.' These women were not isolated, but they were lonely" (Myres 168).

At home in the East, these women would have had companionship and camaraderie with other women, but in the West they often spent long hours, days, and months alone, and it changed the way they felt about themselves and about the land around them. Some women coped quite well with the loneliness because the tasks at hand were so demanding; others simply broke under the increased pressures of hard work and isolation (Myres 169). This was an early indication that women in the West were transforming their traditional roles. Women had long depended on each other for companionship and support during childbirth, and in the West they began to learn that they could not only fend for themselves, they could succeed — and this led many women to take on roles they might never have considered in the East.

When women came west, they often came alone. Their husbands may have traveled ahead to look for gold or land, and the women followed when their husbands or fiancés sent money back for them. Women were also frequently left alone on the farm, ranch, or in town as their mates went off to earn a living. Of course, some lost their mates to death, accident, or abandonment. These women battled loneliness, and when left without a mate, they also had to earn a living. Some women who had no skills or resources turned to prostitution, which was a lucrative profession in areas where men vastly outnumbered women. Nevertheless, many other women turned to entrepreneurship to support themselves and their families, and they were remarkably ingenious in the ways they did so.

Women's Economic Roles and Entrepreneurship

There were common occupations available to women such as teaching, dressmaking, and taking in laundry. However, many women in the mining towns and cities of the West had the ability to perceive unmet needs and create budding businesses to serve them. Women saw the need for decent housing for the men and opened boardinghouses where men could get a clean bed and a decent meal at an affordable price. Other women found their niche in baking; one woman wrote that she made a good living selling fruit pies while her husband was ill, often producing more than 100 pies per day at $1.50 per pie (Myres 242).

Other women became successful writers, sending stories and novels back East to publishers who ran their compelling accounts of frontier life in magazines and newspapers, and many branched into novels. As Myres observes, "The Western frontiers supported a number of successful women writers who drew on their pioneer experiences and the rich natural resources of their frontier homes for source material eagerly read by a fascinated Eastern public" (Myres 246).

Women in the West took on a wide variety of roles to support themselves and their families. Across the frontier, one could find women doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, miners, and journalists who earned a decent living while stepping well outside the traditional domestic sphere. The West rewarded adaptability, and women proved extraordinarily adaptable.

Conclusion

The women who traveled west to make new lives for their families endured terrific hardships, and many did not survive. However, many of those who did survive created new and exciting lives for themselves and changed the way women's roles were viewed forever. These strong and resilient women took care of ranches, households, boardinghouses, and businesses, all while raising families. Often they were the sole breadwinner while their husbands were away seeking their fortune in mines, cities, and distant towns. They learned how to cope with loneliness, despair, disease, and extreme weather, and how to create their own incomes and their own identities.

They taught school, opened libraries and churches, and brought Eastern civilization to the Wild West. They brought a sense of morality and decency to the men and the towns. They ran local businesses — from laundry rooms and boardinghouses to general stores. Not all women living in the West were saloon girls and prostitutes; all of them, however, brought a new sense of freedom to their lives and their communities. Women could and would do just about anything to survive, and because of that, they learned they could do anything. Once that discovery was made, there was no stopping them.

Works Cited

Armitage, Susan, and Elizabeth Jameson. The Women's West. Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

Butler, Anne M., and Ona Siporin. Uncommon Common Women: Ordinary Lives of the West. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1996.

Morris, Esther, and Carrie Chapman Catt. "Winning the Vote in the West." Women of the West. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. 75–86.

Myres, Sandra L. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800–1915. Eds. Ray Allen Billington, et al. 1st ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982.

Whitman, Narcissa, and Eliza Spalding. Where Wagons Could Go. Ed. Merrill Drury. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.