Notes From The Frontier

If patience is a virtue, oxen are saints.

The legend was a towering, six-foot-plus black woman named “Stagecoach Mary.” And she could drink, smoke, cuss, fistfight and shoot.

Dances with Wolves was not only revolutionary for the western genre, it was a watershed for Native American actors and actresses.

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of shooting for Dances with Wolves, the magnificent 1990 award winning film.

Packing could mean the difference between life and death on the trail and varied wildly depending upon sensibilities.

If ever there was an icon that embodied the Wild West, it was Wild Bill Hickok. He lived violently and died violently.

Calamity Jane, born Martha Jane Canary, is an enigma in Western legend. Much has been written about her, much of it fictional.

The little wooden outhouse has been an architectural fixture of America since the 1700s, when it began to replace chamber pots.

In 1881, a 17-year-old Irish immigrant girl named Kate Shelley risked her own life to save the lives of 200 souls on a midnight train.

The Oregon Trail has been called a 2,000-mile-long graveyard.

The Cheyenne called Custer "Attacker at Dawn" because of the Washita Massacre of 1868.

The "oldest profession" was one of the first to go West to the frontier, following the first mountain men, loggers and prospectors.