BiblioVault - Books about Frontier and pioneer life

Wapiti Wilderness

Margaret Murie

University Press of Colorado, 1985

For over thirty-seven years, Margaret and Olaus Murie made their home in the mountainous wilderness of the Tetons, where Olaus Murie conducted his famous studies of the American elk, the wapiti. Through these years their home was almost a nature-conservation shrine to thousands of Americans interested in the out-of-doors, in animals, in nature in general. Wapiti Wilderness, begun by Mrs. Murie as a sequel to her Two in the Far North, which told of the Muries' life and expeditions in Alaska, became a book written by both the Muries.

In alternate chapters, Olaus tells of his work as a field biologist for the old U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey and recounts stories of his studies of the elk and the other great animals of the West. And Mrs. Murie, from her side, describes their life together, on the trail, in the various camps, and nature adventures in that wilderness in all seasons. The book is replete with stories of Jackson Hole people, "pioneer poets," and the wild creatures that made their way into the Murie household. Olaus Murie's evocative pen-and-ink drawings illuminate each chapter, and four pages of photographs help complete the picture of what life was like in the wapiti wilderness.

[more]

Wealth Woman

Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold

Deb Vanasse

University of Alaska Press, 2016

With the first headlines screaming “Gold! Gold! Gold!” in 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush was on—and it almost instantly became the stuff of legend. One of the key figures in the early discoveries that set off the gold rush was the Tagish wife of prospector George Carmack, Kate Carmack, whose fascinating story is told in full here for the first time.

In Wealth Woman, Deb Vanasse recounts Kate’s life from her early years on the frontier with George, through the history-making discovery of gold, and on to her subsequent fame, when she traveled alone down the West Coast through Washington and California, telling her story and fighting for her wealth, her family, and her reputation. Recovering the lost story of a true pioneer and a fiercely independent woman, Wealth Woman brings gold rush Alaska to life in all its drama and glory.

[more]

The Wedding Dress

Stories From The Dakota Plains

Carrie Young

University of Iowa Press, 1992

These finely wrought stories unfold in the Dakotas during the struggling pioneer days and bone-dry landscape of the thirties as well as the verdant years that followed, where the nighttime plains are bathed by softly radiant harvest moons shining down from dazzling northern skies. Young's absorbing narratives begin with the pleasant sense of “Once upon a time…” anticipation, but the firmly sketched details, warm humor, and vivid characterizations reveal an unanticipated and satisfying realism.

The haunting title story is about a beautiful and tragic pioneer woman and her wedding dress; her gown takes on a life of its own and turns into an enduring symbol for the grace and compassion of homesteading women on the plains. In “Bank Night,” a hired hand working during the midst of the Depression wins $250 at the movies, careening him into a single night of notoriety that becomes a legend in its time. “The Nights of Ragna Rundhaug” tells the tale of a woman who wants only to be left alone with her white dog, Vittehund, and her crocheting but instead is propelled into a life of midwifery “because there was no one else to do it.” The babies have predilection for arriving during blizzards and always at night, when she must be transported across the dark plains by frantic husbands who have fortified themselves with strong drink and headstrong horses.

All the stories in The Wedding Dress are linked by the enigmatic Nordic characters who people them and by the skill with which Young draws them. Emotions run so deep that they are seldom able to surface; when they do the interaction is extraordinarily luminous, both for the characters themselves and for the fortunate reader. The Wedding Dress is for all readers, young and old.

[more]

Wend Your Way

A Guide To Sites Along The Iowa Mormon Trail

L. Matthew Chatterley

University of Iowa Press, 2007

The exodus of the Mormon people from Illinois across the Great Plains to the Salt Lake Valley was the most monumental movement of a people in the settlement of the American West. In 1846, the first pioneers, led by Brigham Young, crossed Iowa, and this proved to be the most difficult part of their journey. The weather, the terrain and emigrants' lack of experience and preparation tested their faith and strength, but their single-minded desire to reach a safe home in the West forged them into a strong people.

Wend Your Way: A Guide to Sites Along the Mormon Trail tells the story of this great movement through Iowa. Tracing the trail from east to west through 12 counties the guide includes:

• Mormon Trail history for each county
•Directs visitors to the 27 interpretive roadside panels that were constructed on the trail by U.S. National Park Service and Iowa Mormon Trails Association
•Reproduces the poignant illustrations that author L. Matthew Chatterley drew for these wayside exhibits
•Provides a map and directions by county to guide travelers to the route of the Mormon Trail, sites of Mormon camps and settlements and the interpretive roadside panels
•Lists other locations in southern Iowa that visitors will want to explore

[more]

Whiskey River Ranger

The Old West Life of Baz Outlaw

Bob Alexander

University of North Texas Press, 2016

The White Indian Boy

and its sequel The Return of the White Indian Boy

Elijah Nicholas Wilson and Charles A. Wilson

University of Utah Press, 1985

First published in 1910, The White Indian Boy quickly became a western classic. Readers fascinated by real-life 'cowboys and Indians' thrilled to Nick Wilson’s frontier exploits, as he recounted running away to live with the Shoshone in his early teens, riding for the Pony Express, and helping settle Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The volume was so popular that Wilson’s son Charles was compelled to write a second book, The Return of the White Indian, which picks up in 1895 where the first memoir ends, telling the adventures of Nick Wilson’s later life.
These books, published here as a single volume, are testaments to a unique time and place in American history. Because he had a heart for adventure and unusual proficiency with Native American languages, Wilson’s life became an historical canvas on which was painted both the exploration and the closing of a frontier, as he went from childhood among the Shoshone to work as an interpreter for the U.S. government on Indian reservations in Wyoming and Idaho in his later years. This volume includes new introductory material, a family tree, and a background of Indian-white relations in Jackson Hole. Packed with amazing details about life in the Old West, Wilson’s colorful escapades are once again available to a new generation of readers.

[more]

A Whole Country in Commotion

The Louisiana Purchase and the American Southwest

Patrick G. Williams

University of Arkansas Press, 2005

Bringing together the work of prominent scholars and rising stars in southern, western, and Indian history, A Whole Country in Commotion explores lesser-known aspects of one of the better-known episodes in U.S. history. While the purchase has been seen as a great boon for the United States, doubling the size of the new nation and securing American navigation on the Mississippi River, it also brought turmoil to many. Looking past the triumphal aspects of the purchase, this book examines the “negotiations among peoples, nations and empires that preceded and followed the actual transfer of territory.” Its nine essays highlight the “commotion” the purchase stirred up—among nations, among Louisiana residents and newcomers, even among those who remained east of the Mississippi. Many of these essays look at the portion of the Louisiana territory that would become Arkansas to illustrate the profound impact of the purchase on the diverse populations of the American Southwest. Others explore the woeful commotion brought to many thousands of lives as Jefferson’s “noble bargain” set the stage for the forced migration of native and African Americans from the east to the west of the Mississippi.

[more]

The Wigwam and the Cabin

The Arkansas Edition

William G. Simms

University of Arkansas Press, 2001

One of the most important volumes of short fiction published before the Civil War. The Wigwam and the Cabin represents William Gilmore Simms at his very best. It is the work that led Poe to say of Simms, ". . . in invention, in vigor, in movement, in the power of exciting interest, and in the artistical management of his themes, he has surpassed, we think, any of his countrymen." Praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic, The Wigwam and the Cabin focuses n the Southern frontier that Simms knew so well, a frontier whose vernacular, courage, humor, folklore, violence, injustice, and beauty are vividly brought to life through the strokes of his pen. "I have seen the life," Simms wrote, "—have lived it—and much of my material . . . is the planter, the squatter, the Indian, the negro—the bold and hardy pioneer, the vigorous yeomen—these are the subjects." Simms's portrayal of frontier life is the most realistic and graphic in all nineteenth-century American literature; and the Arkansas edition of The Wigwam and the Cabin, with Dr. Guilds's fine editing and informative introductin, brings back into print an invaluable contribution to the development of the short story in America.

[more]

Wisconsin My Home

Thurine Oleson; As told to her daughter Erna Oleson Xan; Introduction by Odd Lovoll

University of Wisconsin Press, 2012

Wisconsin My Home is the story of Thurine Oleson, born in Wisconsin in 1866 to parents who had emigrated from Telemarken, Norway. This much-loved book was first published in 1950 when Thurine was a spry octogenarian. In it she not only vividly recalls the pioneer life of her childhood in a Norwegian American settlement, but also tells her parents’ stories of their life in Norway and their reasons for emigration. This new edition restores the twenty-nine photographs that appeared in the original 1950 hardcover edition and includes an introduction by emigration historian Odd Lovoll.

[more]

With Blood in Their Eyes

Thomas Cobb

University of Arizona Press, 2013

Winner, Spur Award for Best Western Long Novel (Western Writers of America) and Southwest Book Award (Border Regional Library Association)

On February 10, 1918, John Power woke to the sound of bells and horses’ hooves. He was sharing a cabin near the family mine with his brother Tom and their father Jeff; hired man Tom Sisson was also nearby. Then gunfire erupted, and so began the day when the Power brothers engaged the Graham County Sheriff’s Department in the bloodiest shootout in Arizona history.

Now Thomas Cobb, author of Crazy Heart and Shavetail, has taken up the story in this powerful and meticulously researched nonfiction novel. What seems at first a simple tale of crime and pursuit takes on much greater meaning and complexity as the story traces the past lives of the main characters and interconnects them—all leading back to the deadly confrontation that begins the book. Cobb cunningly weaves the story of the Power brothers’ escape with flashbacks of the boys’ father’s life and his struggle to make a living ranching, logging, and mining in the West around the turn of the century. Deftly drawn characters and cleverly concealed motivations work seamlessly to blend a compelling family history with a desperate story of the brothers as they attempt to escape.

Grappling with themes of loyalty, masculinity, technology, and honor, this sweeping saga reveals the passion and brutality of frontier life in Arizona a hundred years ago. Richly authentic and beautifully written, With Blood in Their Eyes breathes dramatic new life into this nearly forgotten episode of the American West.

[more]

Woman in the Wilderness

Letters of Harriet Wood Wheeler, Missonary Wife, 1832-1892

Nancy Bunge

Michigan State University Press, 2010

Woman in the Wilderness is a collection of letters written between 1832 and 1892 to and by an American woman, Harriet Wood Wheeler.
Harriet's letters reveal her experiences with actors and institutions that played pivotal roles in the history of American women: the nascent literate female work force at the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts; the Ipswich Female Seminary, which was one of the first schools for women teachers; women's associations, especially in churches; and the close and enduring ties that characterized women's relationships in the late nineteenth century.
Harriet's letters also provide an intimate view of the relationships between American Indians and Euro-Americans in the Great Lakes region, where she settled with her Christian missionary husband.

[more]

A Woman's Story of Pioneer Illinois

Christiana Holmes Tillson

Southern Illinois University Press, 1995

Christiana and John Tillson moved from Massachusetts to central Illinois in 1822. Upon arriving in Montgomery County near what would soon be Hillsboro, they set up a general store and real estate business and began to raise a family.

A half century later, Christiana Tillson wrote about her early days in Illinois in a memoir published by R. R. Donnelley in 1919. In it she describes her husband’s rise to wealth through the speculative land boom during the 1820s and 1830s and his loss of fortune when the land business went bust after the Specie Circular was issued in 1836.

The Tillsons lived quite ordinary lives in extraordinary times, notes Kay J. Carr, introducing this edition. Their views and sensibilities, Carr says, might seem strange to us, but they were entirely normal to people in the early nineteenth century. Thus Tillson’s memoir provides vignettes of ordinary nineteenth-century American life.

[more]

Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840

Codes of Silence

Virginia M. Bouvier

University of Arizona Press, 2001

Studies of the Spanish conquest in the Americas traditionally have explained European-Indian encounters in terms of such factors as geography, timing, and the charisma of individual conquistadores. Yet by reconsidering this history from the perspective of gender roles and relations, we see that gender ideology was a key ingredient in the glue that held the conquest together and in turn shaped indigenous behavior toward the conquerors. This book tells the hidden story of women during the missionization of California. It shows what it was like for women to live and work on that frontier—and how race, religion, age, and ethnicity shaped female experiences. It explores the suppression of women's experiences and cultural resistance to domination, and reveals the many codes of silence regarding the use of force at the missions, the treatment of women, indigenous ceremonies, sexuality, and dreams.

Virginia Bouvier has combed a vast array of sources— including mission records, journals of explorers and missionaries, novels of chivalry, and oral histories— and has discovered that female participation in the colonization of California was greater and earlier than most historians have recognized. Viewing the conquest through the prism of gender, Bouvier gives new meaning to the settling of new lands and attempts to convert indigenous peoples. By analyzing the participation of women— both Hispanic and Indian— in the maintenance of or resistance to the mission system, Bouvier restores them to the narrative of the conquest, colonization, and evangelization of California. And by bringing these voices into the chorus of history, she creates new harmonies and dissonances that alter and enhance our understanding of both the experience and meaning of conquest.

[more]

Words Marked by a Place

Local Histories in Central Oregon

Jarold Ramsey

Oregon State University Press, 2018

Words Marked by a Place is a book of interconnected writings reflecting on the human and natural history of central Oregon. This chronological collection presents the reader with key episodes of central Oregon history, from nineteenth-century exploration to the railroading and homesteading era to the era of community-building and development that followed.

While telling these local stories, Jarold Ramsey explores alternative ways of engaging history in the act of writing, breaking new ground by discovering and exploring primary sources that bear on the region’s colorful but little-known past. Throughout the collection, he interrogates “local history” as a subject. What is local history? How is it related to mainstream academic history? What are legitimate ways of doing it? How do the details of what we call local history inform “history-at-large,” and vice-versa?

From the opening narrative concerning Lieutenant Henry Larcom Abbot’s “Railroad Survey” of the region in 1855 to the concluding account of Lieutenant Robert Cranston’s last months and dramatic death, when his “Airacobra” fighter plane crashed near Madras in 1944, Words Marked by a Place sheds new light on the ongoing story of central Oregon by illuminating forgotten corners of its past. Through both theory and example, it represents an important contribution to the history of the region and the endeavors of local historians, wherever they happen to work.

[more]

Writing Home

A Quaker Immigrant on the Ohio Frontier; the Letters of Emma Botham Alderson

Donald Ingram Ulin

Bucknell University Press, 2020

Writing Home offers readers a firsthand account of the life of Emma Alderson, an otherwise unexceptional English immigrant on the Ohio frontier in mid-nineteenth-century America, who documented the five years preceding her death with astonishing detail and insight. Her convictions as a Quaker offer unique perspectives on racism, slavery, and abolition; the impending war with Mexico; presidential elections; various religious and utopian movements; and the practices of everyday life in a young country.

Introductions and notes situate the letters in relation to their critical, biographical, literary, and historical contexts. Editor Donald Ulin discusses the relationship between Alderson’s letters and her sister Mary Howitt’s Our Cousins in Ohio (1849), a remarkable instance of transatlantic literary collaboration.

Writing Home offers an unparalleled opportunity for studying immigrant correspondence due to Alderson’s unusually well-documented literary and religious affiliations. The notes and introductions provide background on nearly all the places, individuals, and events mentioned in the letters.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

[more]

Writing the Pioneer Woman

Janet Floyd

University of Missouri Press, 2002

Focusing on a series of autobiographical texts, published and private, well known and obscure, Writing the Pioneer Woman examines the writing of domestic life on the nineteenth-century North American frontier. In an attempt to determine the meanings found in the pioneer woman's everyday writings—from records of recipes to descriptions of washing floors—Janet Floyd explores domestic details in the autobiographical writing of British and Anglo-American female emigrants.

Floyd argues that the figure of the pioneer housewife has been a significant one within general cultural debates about the home and the domestic life of women, on both sides of the Atlantic. She looks at the varied ideological work performed by this figure over the last 150 years and at what the pioneer woman signifies and has signified in national cultural debates concerning womanhood and home.

The autobiographies under discussion are not only of homemaking but also of emigration. Equally, these texts are about the enterprise of emigration, with several of them written to advise prospective emigrants. Using the insights of diaspora and migration theory, Floyd shows that these writings portray a far subtler role for the pioneer woman than is suggested by previous scholars, who often see her either as participating directly in the overall domestication of colonial space or as being strictly marginal to that process.

Written in response to the highly critical discussion of the attitudes and activities of female "civilizers" within "New" Western history and postcolonial studies, Writing the Pioneer Woman will be a valuable addition to the burgeoning discussion of the literature of domesticity.

[more]

Writing the Trail

Five Women's Frontier Narratives

Deborah Lawrence

University of Iowa Press, 2006

For a long time, the American West was mainly identified with white masculinity, but as more women’s narratives of westward expansion came to light, scholars revised purely patriarchal interpretations. Writing the Trail continues in this vein by providing a comparative literary analysis of five frontier narratives---Susan Magoffin’s Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, Sarah Royce’s A Frontier Lady, Louise Clappe’s The Shirley Letters, Eliza Farnham’s California, In-doors and Out, and Lydia Spencer Lane’s I Married a Soldier---to explore the ways in which women’s responses to the western environment differed from men’s.Throughout their very different journeys---from an eighteen-year-old bride and self-styled “wandering princess” on the Santa Fe Trail, to the mining camps of northern California, to garrison life in the Southwest---these women moved out of their traditional positions as objects of masculine culture. Initially disoriented, they soon began the complex process of assimilating to a new environment, changing views of power and authority, and making homes in wilderness conditions.Because critics tend to consider nineteenth-century women’s writings as confirmations of home and stability, they overlook aspects of women’s textualizations of themselves that are dynamic and contingent on movement through space. As the narratives in Writing the Trail illustrate, women’s frontier writings depict geographical, spiritual, and psychological movement. By tracing the journeys of Magoffin, Royce, Clappe, Farnham, and Lane, readers are exposed to the subversive strength of travel writing and come to a new understanding of gender roles on the nineteenth-century frontier.

[more]

A Wyatt Earp Anthology

Long May His Story Be Told

Roy B. Young

University of North Texas Press, 2019