Plains Women

"The first comprehensive work highlighting the diversity of women's experiences on the North American Plains; twelve essays present women's perspectives from prehistory to the present, across the northern, central, and southern plains"--Provided by publisher.

Miss Nellie Perry, first visited her brother in the Panhandle in 1888 and eventually came to live in Ochiltree County in 1916. During those years and afterward, she kept journals of her life in the Panhandle.

"Among the numerous diaries published recently as scholars probe women's history, Farnsworth's is a real find." —Sally Mitchell "The publication now of books like Martha Farnsworth's has contributed to radical revisions of women's history and reassessment of women's skills as writers." —Elizabeth Hampsten " . . . superb edition of the diary of Kansas pioneer Martha Farnsworth . . . a fact-filled, revealing account of an extraordinary-but-ordinary woman . . . " —American Quarterly " . . . the inside story of a women's life in the middle of America . . . " —Bloomsbury Review A Kansas teacher, housewife, photographer, and suffragist, Martha Farnsworth compulsively recorded her life in middle America during a period of tremendous social and cultural change.

Covering a wide range of topics, this volume presents case studies which focus on particular aspects of the female condition in Plains Indian societies, mostly concentrated on tribal groups in the northern Plains region of the United States and Canada. The focus is primarily historical, dealing with the conditions of Plains Indian women in the pre-reservation period, but also contains selections concerned with the role and status of women in the modern reservation era.

In 1906 teenage bride Julia Tuell arrived at Lame Deer, Montana, on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation with her schoolmaster husband. Seven years later the Tuells moved to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and lived among the Sioux (pr

Winner of the 2006 Caroline Bancroft History Prize "Impressively researched and highly readable, Barbara Handy-Marchello's analysis of North Dakota farm women's roles will become the standard by which other works on the subject will be judged." Paula M. Nelson, author of The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own In Women of the Northern Plains, Barbara Handy-Marchello tells the stories of the unsung heroes of North Dakota's settlement era: the farm women. As the men struggled to raise and sell wheat, the women focused on barnyard labor--raising chickens and cows and selling eggs and butter--to feed and clothe their families and maintain their households through booms and busts. Handy-Marchello details the hopes and fears, the challenges and successes of these women--from the Great Dakota Boom of the 1870s and '80s to the impending depression and drought of the 1930s. Women of the frontier willingly faced drudgery and loneliness, cramped and unconventional living quarters, the threat of prairie fires and fierce blizzards, and the isolation of homesteads located miles from the nearest neighbor. Despite these daunting realities, Dakota farm women cultivated communities among their distant neighbors, shared food and shelter with travelers, developed varied income sources, and raised large families, always keeping in sight the ultimate goal: to provide the next generation with rich, workable land. Enlivened by interviews with pioneer families as well as diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Women of the Northern Plains uncovers the significant and changing roles of Dakota farm women who were true partners to their husbands, their efforts marking the difference between success and failure for their families. Barbara Handy-Marchello is a history professor at the University of North Dakota. She has written articles on rural women and is the co-author of A History of the NDSU Seedstocks Project. She lives near Fargo, North Dakota.

Brave Hearts: Indian Women of the Plains tells the story of Plains Indian women through a series of fascinating vignettes. They are a remarkable group of women – some famous, some obscure. Some were hunters, some were warriors and, in a rare case, one was a chief; some lived extraordinary lives, while others lived more quietly in their lodges. Some were born into traditional families and knew their place in society while others were bi-racial who struggled to find their place in a world conflicted between Indian and white. Some never knew anything but the old, nomadic way of life while others lived-on to suffer through the reservation years. Others were born on the reservation but did their best in difficult times to keep to the old ways. Some never left the reservation while others ventured out into the larger world. All, in their own way, were Plains Indian women.

Although ledger art has long been considered a male art form, Women and Ledger Art calls attention to the extraordinary achievements of four contemporary female Native artists—Sharron Ahtone Harjo (Kiowa), Colleen Cutschall (Oglala Lakota), Linda Haukaas (Sicangu Lakota), and Dolores Purdy Corcoran (Caddo). The book examines these women's interpretations of their artwork and their thoughts on tribal history and contemporary life.

Briefly examines the experiences of women pioneers in the Great Plains, as this country expanded westward in the nineteenth century.

For many people who have never spent time in the state, Oklahoma conjures up a series of stereotypes: rugged cowboys, tipi-dwelling American Indians, uneducated farmers. When women are pictured at all, they seem frozen in time: as the bonneted pioneer woman stoically enduring hardship or the bedraggled, gaunt-faced mother familiar from Dust Bowl photographs. In Red Dirt Women, Susan Kates challenges these one-dimensional characterizations by exploring—and celebrating—the lives of contemporary Oklahoma women whose experiences are anything but predictable. In essays both intensely personal and universal, Red Dirt Women reveals the author’s own heartaches and joys in becoming a parent through adoption, her love of regional treasures found in “junk” stores, and her deep appreciation of Miss Dorrie, her son’s unconventional preschool teacher. Through lively profiles, interviews, and sketches, we come to know pioneer queens from the Panhandle, rodeo riders, casino gamblers, roller-derby skaters, and the “Lady of Jade”—a former “boat person” from Vietnam who now owns a successful business in Oklahoma City. As she illuminates the lives of these memorable Oklahoma women, Kates traces her own journey to Oklahoma with clarity and insight. Born and raised in Ohio, she confesses an initial apprehension about her adopted home, admitting that she felt “vulnerable on the open lands.” Yet her original unease develops into a deep affection for the landscape, history, culture, and people of Oklahoma. The women we meet in Red Dirt Women are not politicians, governors’ wives, or celebrities—they are women of all ages and backgrounds who surround us every day and who are as diverse as Oklahoma itself.