I don’t recall where I bought Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey except to say that I’m sure it was on a trip out West. I am frequently inspired to buy books like this when I travel, but unfortunately they don’t always get cracked open.
Well, for some reason, I recently took this off my bookshelf, where it had been neglected for years, and started reading—and was immediately engrossed. Despite the book’s academic tone, its stories of women crossing the continent between 1840 and 1870 are vivid and gripping.
Women–most of whom would rather have stayed back East with friends and family–usually crossed the continent at the insistence of their husbands or fathers. They often had children in tow. Pregnancy and childbirth on the trail were so commonplace that they were barely mentioned in the diaries of women and often not mentioned at all in accounts left by men.
“How these women dealt with the risks of childbirth, how they felt about the prospect of being delivered by the side of the road, in a tent or in a wagon, is untold,” writes author Lillian Schlissel. “The women must have watched the horizon anxiously in the last days of pregnancy, trying to learn if the weather would be calm or threatening, if the wagons were near or far from water, if another woman was at hand, if the road was smooth or rocky.”
The women carefully counted and noted graves they saw along the road (Schlissel found this heartbreakingly common among the accounts), cooked in primitive conditions, had to unpack and pack the wagon at each stop, slept outdoors in rain and mud. Children fell out of wagons, were run over, fell ill and died. Dust storms, mosquitoes, hail storms, sun, snow, dysentery, cholera …
One account of a river crossing, from a fragment of letter written between 1856 and ’57, haunts me.
“…a woman was standing on the bank, she said to mother, do you see that man with the red warmer on well that is my husband and while she spoke the boat struck and went down and she had to stand within call of him and see him drownd. O my heart was sore for that woman and three miles from the river we saw another women with 8 children stand beside the grave of her husband and her oldest son so sick that she could not travel …”
The women formed a sisterhood, caring for each other in childbirth, tending the sick together, helping each other maintain modesty when nature called on barren terrain by holding out long skirts to form a screen, and providing the kind of companionship for each other that only women can. Sad and lonely were the women who traveled with no others for support.
I won’t soon forget the stories I read in this book. It’s a whole different view of America’s Westward expansion.
You might also be interested in our Women’s Memoirs page on the Texas Mountain Trail website, accessible from ( http://www.texasmountaintrail.com/read ). We’ve listed some great memoirs from women settling in the mountain region of Far West Texas, and linked them to locations depicted in the books–places folks can still visit. Enjoy!
Thanks, Beth! I do love stories like these. I see you have Hallie Stillwell’s memoir, I’ll Gather My Geese” listed on there … I loved that book, and her. I got to meet her once, I feel so fortunate.
Yes, I have read Hallie Stillwell’s books. She had a fascinating life and became a very strong woman. You got to meet here? WONDERFUL! I’m sorry to say I moved to the region long after she passed, but her presence is still here in Far West Texas and it is easy to visit her old ranch and other locations depicted in the book. Love your entries in this blog, Sonia! Beth
Sophie — Don’t be surprised if this book disappears from your home during my next visit. Or maybe we can arrange a temporary swap for something I’m reading: Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush: Secret History of the Far North. I started it a while back but life got in the way so….readus interruptus. Your post reminded me to pick it up again.
I read that, too, Jenna! I bought it in Alaska. (That I remember.) In Skagway, I think.
Yes, Beth–I met her and Barton Warnock in one trip. I was new to Texas then and didn’t really understand at the time that I was meeting a couple of West Texas legends. I was traveling with my friend Kirby Warnock, who published another terrific book about the area called Texas Cowboy, his grandfather’s oral memoirs.
Kirby also has made two wonderful documentaries, one called Return to Giant, about the filming of Giant in Marfa, and another called Border Bandits, about a massacre of Mexicans in south Texas. I recommend all of these. Here’s a link to info on Border Bandits.
http://www.borderbanditsmovie.com/flash/bbm.htm
Wow. Hallie and Barton Warnock on the same trip!?!?!? Neat tip on the border bandit movie. I would love to feature this on our website, and tweet about it when they’ve loaded more content on the site! Thanks, Sonia. B
Living in Montana most of my life, I’ve often thought about the people who left the cities and traveled west. Would I have been one of them? Maybe, but seeing first hand the endless Rockies, not to mention the Native tribes, etc. NO WAY IN HELL. I would have stayed in St. Louis.
Yeah … my first glimpse of the Rockies was pretty sobering. They crossed THOSE?
That’s excellent!