Women

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.

1800's Human Hair Funeral Art

As early as the 1400s in Europe, creating hair art to memorialize the dead began, especially because epidemic and plagues took a high toll.

5 min read

What Pioneers Ate

Pioneer survival depended on harsh realities and there was little room for sentimentality in food production.

8 min read

The Incredible Saga of Sacagawea

Sacagawea is one of the most famous figures in American history. Nearly all American school children and adults recognize her name.

9 min read

Native Warrior Women

We all know the immortal names of Pocahontas and Sacagawea, native women who played important roles in the formation of our early nation.

7 min read

Footbinding & Prostitution in the 1800s

The tradition of foot-binding, also called “lotus feet,” was a thousand-year-old tradition in China that was brought to the United States.

5 min read

The True Story of Katie Elder

The truth about the real Katie Elder is far more spectacular than any Hollywood fiction.

9 min read

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Women have always worked but during the Industrial Revolution, they flocked to the cities in droves to work in factories.

7 min read

The True Story of Pocahontas

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

7 min read

Frontier Quilts

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

8 min read

Angela's Awesome Art & Her Appy, Cappy

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

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

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

Electric Corsets

In 1800s America, corsets took a strange turn toward the bizarre, even the fetishistic. The smaller the waist, the more feminine the woman.

2 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

1800's Birth Control

Life was hard on the frontier, especially for women.

3 min read

Soiled Doves

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

2 min read

Women Homesteaders

Under the Homestead Act of 1862, single women, widows, and divorced or deserted women had the right to claim 160 acres in their own name.

1 min read

My Pioneer Mother

Both my mother and my mother-in-law grew up on Iowa farms and attended one-room country schools.

2 min read