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WELCOME!

Thanks for visiting Notes from the Frontier! This blog is for history lovers fascinated by the American West
and pioneer and Indian life on the frontier. I started this new blog in 2019 and it grew very quickly
to more than 100,000 readers! Today it has nearly 400 posts.
I spent many years of researching my just-released debut historical novel, Blood to Rubies
about Chief Joseph and his heroic struggle to save his people in 1877. (It's already bestselling and award-winning! Press the blue button below for more info.) During my research, I discovered that so much of what we'd been taught in history books and by Hollywood was just plain wrong. So I decided to start a history blog. And it's been a pure joy and a life's passion project for me.
We'll cover many topics: from "soiled doves" to slavery, firearms to freak show, home brew to homosexuality, tough men and tougher women, cowboys and Indians, childbirth and death, dreams and desperation, myths and the truth. And, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction!
It's sure to be a wild ride! So hang on to your hat and let's GIDDYUP!

SPECIAL NOTE: Go to the Directory to view more specific categories .

Here's me, author-to-be, Deborah Hufford, at 16 and the Dayton Rodeo Queen in Iowa (which was the U.S. National Rodeo of the Year that year! My childhood horse was named Sundance, and was a celebrity among all the children in my small farming town. He even carried the Iowa governor in our rodeo parade one year.

When Sundance died at the ripe old age of 30, our town newspaper ran his obituary. I was so lucky to have the best horse in the world 💙

Take a wild ride into America’s past.

The War on Wolves

Throughout human history, the wolf has always been one of Nature’s most magnificent and maligned creatures, both revered and reviled.

7 min read

The True Story of Pocahontas

Few legends in American history embody the power and poignancy that Pocahontas does.

7 min read

Parting of the Ways

By far the most traveled frontier route West was a common trail shared by Oregon-bound and California-bound settlers.

6 min read

Frontier Quilts

In frontier America, quilts were a way for women to gain immortality.

8 min read

"Every Dead Buffalo is an Indian Gone"

Once upon a time, before European whites ever set foot on the North American continent, 75-100 million buffalo roamed the land.

7 min read

The Saga of Jackson Sundown

It turns out that Angela Swedberg is one of the leading Tribally Certified Indian Artisans in the country.

6 min read

The Origin of Appaloosas

The origin of Appaloosas is....well....spotty. In fact, the history—and the DNA—of Appaloosas goes back millennia and across oceans.

7 min read

In Honor of Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph’s saga is an “unparalleled story in the annals of the Indian's resistance to the greed of the whites.

7 min read

Vanishing Americans

Edward Curtis was a famous American photographer and ethnologist who focused his work on the tribes of the American frontier.

6 min read

1800s Funeral Technology

The nature of battle casualties and the job of collecting the wounded and the dead was overwhelming.

6 min read

In Praise of Oxen

If patience is a virtue, oxen are saints.

7 min read

Stagecoach Mary

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

5 min read

Dances with Wolves - Part 2

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

6 min read

Dances with Wolves - Part 1

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

5 min read

What Pioneers Packed to Go West

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

6 min read

Wild Bill Hickok

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

4 min read

Calamity Jane

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

5 min read

Outhouses

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

4 min read

Kate Shelley

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.

3 min read

Death on the Trail

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

3 min read