So Much to be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier

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Ruth Barnes Moynihan, Susan Hodge Armitage, Christiane Fischer Dichamp
U of Nebraska Press, 1998 M01 1 - 353 pages
Praise for the first edition: "Another fine addition to the history of women in the Wild West. Strong and keen, these women responded to the frontier with imagination, pleasure, courage, humor and pride. They will inspire the same in readers of this volume."-Booklist. "This is history at its best-on and between the lines. Buy it and read it."-Listener. "To the editors' great credit, they have given us writings that retain each author's idiosyncrasies, prejudices, wit, petulance, anger, confusion, and resilience."-Gateway Heritage. "This is the best collection of its kind I know."-Lillian Schlissel, author of Women's Diaries of the Overland Trails. In this new and enlarged edition the editors have built on an already strong collection with four new accounts. Colorado pioneer Augusta Tabor gives a sense of the heady days as Leadville became a major mining center. Abigail Duniway describes the challenges of life for women in the Pacific Northwest. Effie Wiltbank's short selection is a reminiscence of her grandmother's "receet" for washing clothes, a chore that epitomizes the practical skill, determination, and common sense required of so many Western women. Apolinaria Lorenzana offers a rare glimpse of the operations of the mission system while illuminating the perils of living with the acquisitive Americans. Ruth B. Moynihan is an independent historian and writer. She is the editor of Second to None: A Documentary History of American Women. Susan Armitage is a professor of history at Washington State University and series editor for the University of Nebraska Press's "Women in the West" series. Christiane Fischer Dichamp, an independent scholar, is editor of Let Them Speak forThemselves: Women in the American West, 1849-1900.
 

Contents

California Nevada and the Northwest 18001883
3
Womens work
18
We surely thought a hoodoo was over us
26
It was a great trial for me to know just how to approach them
46
Female enterprise
55
No persuits in common between us any more
67
Miningtown girlhood
92
Odors not of Araby 18
118
They go by the name of fancy women
191
Homesteaders
202
No door or window was ever locked
212
My people will never believe me again
227
Piute mother and children
232
Set and rest and rock a spell
243
Teresita Suaso
248
If you are not afraid neither am I
263

The High Plains and Rocky Mountains 18701890
137
Hunting
138
Early days in the Greeley Colony
159
To complain was never one of my traits of nature
171
Western family
182
This is desolation itself
294
Outdoor school
305
Ladies with cactus
332
Nothing seemed permanent on the desert 315
337
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About the author (1998)

Ruth B. Moynihan is an independent historian and writer. She is the editor of Second to None: A Documentary History of American Women. Susan Armitage is a professor of history at Washington State University and series editor for the University of Nebraska Press?s Women in the West series. Christiane Fischer Dichamp, an independent scholar, is editor of Let Them Speak for Themselves: Women in the American West, 1849-1900.

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