Chris Enss - Soldier, Sister, Spy, Scout: Women Soldiers and Patriots on the Western Frontier

Chris Enss is an author, scriptwriter, and comedienne who has written for television and film and performed on cruise ships and on stage. She has worked with award-winning musicians, writers, directors, and producers, and as a screenwriter for Tricor Entertainment, but her passion is for telling the stories of the men and women who shaped the history and mythology of the American West. Some of the most famous names in history, not to mention film and popular culture, populate her books. Shes written or co-written more than two dozen books for TwoDot. She lives in Grass Valley, California.

JoAnn Chartier is a former broadcast journalist and talk-show host whose writing had earned regional and national awards. She lives in Oregon.

OTHER BOOKS BY CHRIS ENSS AND JOANN CHARTIER

Love Untamed
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

A T W O D O T B O O K

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Copyright 2016 Chris Enss and JoAnn Chartier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Enss, Chris, 1961- author. | Chartier, JoAnn, author.

Title: Soldier, sister, spy, scout : women soldiers and patriots on the Western frontier / Chris Enss and JoAnn Chartier.

Other titles: Women soldiers and patriots on the Western frontier

Description: Guilford, Connecticut : TwoDot, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041791 (print) | LCCN 2015046491 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493023394 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781493023400 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Women pioneersWest (U.S.)Biography. | Women soldiersWest (U.S.)Biography. | Frontier and pioneer lifeWest (U.S.). | West (U.S.)Biography.

Classification: LCC F596 .E58 2016 (print) | LCC F596 (ebook) | DDC 920.72dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041791

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

THE AUTHORS ARE GRATEFUL FOR THE ASSISTANCE OF STAFF AT the following institutions: Nevada Historical Society; University of Nevada Reno; California State History Library; National Archives and Records Administration; Texas State Archives; Barker History Center, University of Texas, Austin; Colorado Historical Society; Michigan Historical Society; Kansas Historical Society; and Nevada County Public Library.

Special thanks to Colin MacKenzie at the Nautical Research Center, Petaluma, California; Maria Brower at the Doris Foley History Library, Nevada City, California; Suzanne Moody at the Chiricahua National Monument Visitor Center; Nancy Jennings at the Johnson County Library in Buffalo, Wyoming; Kathleen Fletcher at Klamath County Museum; Julie Parry for her input and critique of the work; Cynthia Martin for her artistic expertise and friendship; and Erin Turner and Jan Cronan for their support and skills as editors.

And especially to Becky Habblett for the lighthouse ladies: Your light still shines.

FROM THE EARLIEST DAYS OF STORYTELLING, THE COURAGEOUS MAN has been celebrated in myth and legend. Every culture develops stories about dauntless adventurers, valiant patriots, fearless warriors, and heroic leaders. These stories teach as well as entertain and set up positive role models to inspire future generations. Sometimes, these dauntless, valiant, fearless, and heroic individuals are women.

The true stories youll find in this book about women in the American West illustrate the depth of courage, the physical bravery, and the commitment to a cause that impelled them to throw off the constraints of nineteenth-century conventions and plunge into situations that many men of their era would not, and did not, face.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the US Army battled western Native American tribes over territorial rights, resources, and culture. Each side had its motives, its victories, its defeats, its victims, and its heroes. Among those heroes, on both sides, were womenwives, mothers, interpreters, laundresses, soldiers, and shamanswho willingly headed into the unknown, into a land fraught with danger and hardship. Courageous defines the character of the thousands of women who left the towns and cities of the East for the unknown dangers of the western territories. Setting up housekeeping in wild, unsettled lands, risking their lives on the journey, and bearing children under primitive conditions tested their courage daily. The stories selected for this book describe some who went two or three steps beyond the ordinary, everyday courage of women in the West.

Some of these women not only did a mans job in war, but also did it without ever revealing a then unacceptable truththat they were members of the fairer sex. Soldier, Sister, Spy, Scout: Women Soldiers and Patriots on the Western Frontier celebrates women such as Buffalo Soldier Cathy Williams, who served in the Thirty-eighth Infantry for nearly two years without revealing her gender. As a civilian in 1868, she put away her uniform and tied her hair back with a yellow ribbon to show her fellow soldiers that she was proud to be a woman. Rarely recognized for courage were devoted wives and mothers, such as Elizabeth Custer, wife of General George Custer. A slender woman of genteel breeding, Elizabeth defied convention of the day and traveled with her husband throughout the unsettled plains, living in military encampments and covered wagons, nursing troops, and enduring hardships as a military frontier wife.

The bravery and compassion of two Mexican women caught in the Mexican Wars battles at the Alamo and Goliad are included, along with the counterpoint view provided by an eighteen-year-old bride on her honeymoon journey down the Santa Fe Trail just as that war began. The little-known stories of three Native American women who faced death to save their people show that bravery was not just a male attribute. Even notorious women such as Calamity Jane exhibited an astonishing level of courage in completely unexpected settings.

To help settle the expanding boundaries of an emerging nation, all of these women endured fierce extremes of climate, rigorous overland travel, lack of food and water at times, and the constant threat of death to themselves and their loved ones. Soldier, Sister, Spy, Scout: Women Soldiers and Patriots on the Western Frontier profiles more than a dozen daring women who were unrecognized in their time. Even today some people doubt their courage.

When reading biased, untruthful, and deliberately inflammatory newspaper editorials of 1875 about Paiute heroine Sarah Winnemucca, for instance, its easy to say, That was then, this is now, and people dont belittle and demean women anymore. Today, most historians are proud of the information they can provide about these heroic women. While researching these stories, however, we were surprised to discover that a few men guarding the heritage of the past in museums and archives discounted the accomplishments of certain women weve included in this book. Sally Zanjani, in her biography of Sara Winnemucca, recounts events in a Nevada town that raucously opposed naming an elementary school for the Indian woman who tried desperately to save her people while being hunted by White and Indian alike. Once Winnemuccas story was told, however, the citizens changed their minds and proudly named the school in honor of an indefatigable warrior for peace and justice.