The American Frontier you never hear about (Megan Kate Nelson, part 1)

The Western frontier is a foundational myth of the United States. Historian Megan Kate Nelson is here to complicate it with the stories of women who do not at all fit the image of the American pioneer you probably imagine. In part 1 of this two-parter conversation, she (re)introduces us to Sacajawea, the Native American woman who led the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific, and Gertrudis Barceló, an infamous gambling entrepreneur who became one of the richest people in the New Mexico territory.

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Jump to:

• (00:00) - Part 1
• (02:33) - Start of interview
• (03:00) - The imaginary of the American Frontier
• (06:57) - What is Manifest Destiny?
• (09:11) - The West before it was the American West
• (11:55) - Sacajawea's superhero origin story
• (15:03) - Sacajawea, an explorer in her own right
• (19:14) - Exploring as a postpartum mother and how Clark ended up raising Sacajawea's children
• (23:01) - How Sacajawea became a suffrage icon
• (26:47) - How   Gertrudis Barcelo made a fortune at Spanish monte
• (34:11) - The epitomy of the Western pioneer man -- in a Hispanic woman
• (38:27) - Part 2 teaser

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Creators and Guests

Host

Isabelle Roughol

Journalist & public historian

Guest

Megan Kate Nelson

I am a Colorado-born and raised, Boston-based writer, historian, and Pulitzer Prize Finalist. I am the author of "The Westerners" (2026), “Saving Yellowstone” (2022) and “The Three-Cornered War” (2020). More details at https://megankatenelson.com

What is Broad History?

The history you think you know, with women in it this time

08 Megan Kate Nelson part 1
===

[00:00:00]

Isabelle Roughol: Hello, and welcome to Broad History, a podcast about the history you think you know with women in it this time. I'm your host, Isabelle Roughol.

When you think about the American West, what images come to mind? Probably a cowboy. Maybe a family in a covered wagon moving west. Maybe a railroad baron or a Native American man on a horse. A little girl in braids running down a hill covered in wildflowers?

The imaginary of the American West is so powerful, and my guest today is here to tell a different story.

Megan Kate Nelson is a historian of the American West and the US Civil War. She taught at many prestigious universities, has written wonderful books, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her latest work, The Westerners, looks at myth-making and belonging in the American West through the lives of seven people who did not at all fit the mold of who you might think of when you think of an American pioneer.

Of course, you know how this show works by now, in our [00:01:00] case, that means looking at the life of full, complex, messy, interesting fascinating women.

Our conversation was so fascinating I could not end it, it actually went on much longer than a typical episode. So I decided to break it up into two parts. Conveniently for our purposes, if not for the American people, the Civil War is kind of a natural historical break between the two parts of the American 19th century.

So today we will look at the first half/two-thirds, pre-Civil War. On the next episode we will look at post-Civil War, Reconstruction, and those are two quite different American Wests.

If you are a member of Broad History, you can binge both episodes right away in your members' feed.

If you are not a member of Broad History, well, this is your cue.

Join today at broadhistory.com/membership, and you will get immediate access to both parts of the episode, and you will also, on an ongoing basis, get early and ad-free access to every episode of the [00:02:00] podcast, including multi-part series, which I will start releasing this summer, as well as more benefits as we grow and I'm able to provide more.

And more importantly, you will get that fuzzy, warm feeling inside that you are supporting independent publishing and podcasting. I cannot do it without you, and I am so grateful to the members who have already joined.

This week in particular, thank you and welcome to Louise.

Go to broadhistory.com/membership to sign up right now.

And then you can feast on Megan Kate Nelson's wonderful stories of the American West. Here she is.

Start of interview
---

Isabelle Roughol: Megan Kate Nelson, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Megan Kate Nelson: Thank you so much for inviting me to be on.

Isabelle Roughol: I'm very excited to have this conversation because I'm actually, I'm-- I love the American West, I mean, American history in general,~ uh,~ a bit of a soft spot for me. ~Um, and, and this, like, completely, like, changes it and, and resets it in my mind, so it's wonderful. Uh, I think ~Before we spend the next hour debunking the myth, we should probably define it first.

~Um, ~Especially for a lot of listeners who are not American: What is the frontier? What does that [00:03:00] mean?

The imaginary of the American Frontier
---

Megan Kate Nelson: Okay. Yes. So the frontier is generally kind of accepted to mean, in this context of American history, this sort of place where civilization is kind of pushing up against wilderness,~ um, you know, ~wild animals, wild people,~ uh,~ and there's a real struggle there to survive and to persevere. ~Um, ~And in some accounts, including the very famous~ uh,~ 1893 frontier thesis, which was proposed by a historian at the University of Wisconsin, the frontier is a bit of a moving target in the United States.

So the frontier early in US history is ~the, ~the Appalachians, and then it moves progressively west as Americans move progressively west. And they keep pushing the frontier and pushing it and pushing it until they get to the Pacific. And this is a process~ uh,~ that Frederick Jackson [00:04:00] Turner, this historian, identified as a fundamentally American process, that this is how American institutions came to be.

~Uh, ~This is the heart of America. We did not?~ Uh,~ get all of our institutions and our kind of democratic mode from Europe,~ uh,~ but instead~ uh,~ got it in this experience of Americans fighting both nature and then indigenous peoples, ultimately succeeding and establishing themselves along this frontier line.

~Um, ~So that's ~kind of ~one of the major elements of it. And then the whole idea of the frontier will probably be familiar to your listeners, even if they're not familiar so much with the United States, just because the images are so resonant and so sticky. ~Um, ~The frontier image usually involves~ uh,~ a white frontier family ~ha- ~that has come from the East in a covered wagon. ~Uh, ~They're moving progressively westward, establishing [00:05:00] themselves,~ uh,~ and settling in the West, persevering, overcoming all the challenges in their path, and,~ uh,~ creating basically Western culture ~and, ~and American culture. So it brings together all of these major ideas in American history, major narratives, Manifest Destiny, the American Dream,~ uh,~ rugged individualism...

It's extremely important?~ Uh,~ to this notion of the frontier that ~the, ~the white Americans there do it all by themselves. They have no help from anyone. ~Um, ~~And~~ they, uh, especially,~ This is embodied in the American cowboy who enters the kind of frontier myth a little bit later in the 19th century and becomes ~this, ~this major icon.

~Um, ~So those, yeah, those are the fundamentals, and I think we see them everywhere in all kinds of imagery and advertising and film and TV,~ um,~ all kinds of~ uh,~ different elements of American and then also global culture.

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah, I mean, it's an incredibly powerful image, [00:06:00] right? ~I, I mean, ~I was a little girl growing up in France, and I devoured every single volume of, I think there's eight, of "Little House on the Prairie" that I borrowed from my local library. It's just, it, the, the imaginary ~of, ~of the American West is just so powerful to everyone around the world, ~I think, ~I think to this day.

Megan Kate Nelson: Absolutely, yes. And you know, I too went through my Little House phase. I have some delightful class photos of me with my braids. I have my braids and my prairie dress, ~uh, of course, ~of course, because you know, that story hooked~ uh,~ young~ uh,~ girls, because it did have a young girl as a protagonist. And ~so, um, you know, ~that kind of drew you into this space, but still all of the Frontier imagery was there and promoted, and this vision of white American culture moving progressively westward~ um,~ in a kind of conquest ~of, ~of space and people,~ uh,~ is enduring.

What is Manifest Destiny?
---

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. And ~you, ~you dropped a phrase there that we should probably ~ex-~ [00:07:00] explain as well,~ uh,~ manifest destiny. ~Um, ~What does that mean?

Megan Kate Nelson: ~Yeah. So that is-- ~This is the conviction that many white Americans had, that it was~ uh,~ the United States' destiny to overtake the continent, to take up all of those lands and make them productive,~ uh,~ and settle all of these growing numbers of people on them. ~And,~

And officially, that term came into being in 1845 in an edit- a newspaper editorial. But the idea had been in place even at the founding of the country. ~Uh, ~Thomas Jefferson was a huge proponent of manifest destiny. This is part of the reason that he was eager to acquire~ um,~ first New Orleans and then all of Louisiana Territory,~ uh,~ because he also believed, ~you know, the, ~the US population was growing by leaps and bounds, and he and most Americans were convinced ~that ~that population needed to spread out. And given that they were all established on ~the, ~the Atlantic [00:08:00] coast, the only way to spread was westward. ~Um, ~So ~they would, ~they would make it over that first mountain chain of the Appalachians, and then they would move into the Ohio Valley and then the Mississippi River and then further on into the West, and that this was ordained by God. ~That, uh...~

~Yeah.~

Isabelle Roughol: And very much ~that, ~that east to west travel, right? ~Like sort of ~Single direction, right of the picture to left of the picture, even in the, in the paintings that you see ~of, ~of the time, right? Sticking to that, that east to west?~ Um,~ vision. ~Uh, ~which also~ um,~ presupposes or requires that all of that land to the west ~is, ~is virgin territory, is free ~of, ~of people and of anyone that matters or anyone at all, right?

Megan Kate Nelson: Exactly. And if they do exist, then it's ~you know, ~the conviction was that it would be quite easy to get rid of them. ~Uh, ~That either they would just take up~ uh,~ indigenous lands by force or that indigenous peoples would just kind of naturally vanish from the [00:09:00] landscape,~ uh,~ and keep moving westward ~kind of ~in front of that compelling, insistent, propulsive movement ~of, ~of white Americans in that one linear direction.

The West before it was the American West
---

Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm-hmm. ~And so, ~uh,~ contrary to that~ uh,~ mental image that,~ um,~ Americans in the East ~at, ~at the time, you depict ~a different, uh,~ a West that looks? ~You know, ~quite different ~from, ~from that imagination. ~Um, and so that's, ~That's what we're gonna be~ uh,~ looking at today. ~What, what does the... And, ~And we're gonna travel sort of the, the wide 19th century in America, right?

And so what does the West look like at the start of the 19th century? ~You know, ~We're about a generation after ~the, ~the American Revolution

Megan Kate Nelson: ~Yes. And this is, you know, ~This is what's interesting. It makes it a little tricky to write about because the American West was not really the American West in this moment. ~Uh, ~It was indigenous territory. It was northern Spain. ~Uh, ~In some places ~it was, ~it was still French or Spanish, ~uh, ~and it did not belong to the United States at all.

~And, ~[00:10:00] And to say the American West, of course, suggests that there is an East,~ uh, then~ that this space is ~kind of ~west of~ um,~ an American kind of central~ uh,~ politi.

And so early in the,~ you know, kind of ~late 18th century, early 19th century,~ uh,~ the West did not yet exist,~ uh,~ as we know it today. ~Um, ~But its components~ uh,~ existed. Its, its fascinating elements, especially what I'm most fascinated by, and one of the major arguments in the book, is that there's constant movement throughout the American West in all different directions. And people are moving from north to south, from west to east, from,~ uh,~ south to north,~ um,~ in addition~ uh,~ to from east to west.

And they had been doing so for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And there were already trails and roads that were connecting people together. ~Uh, ~People had very far-flung networks [00:11:00] of trade, of kinship,~ um,~ and of warfare also. ~Uh, ~That this was a space that had its own history. This was ~a, ~a kind of vast,~ uh,~ indigenous and then a little bit later ~in, ~in~ like,~ the 17th century,~ um,~ a kind of Spanish world.

And so Americans were really late arrivals. They didn't really enter the scene until the early years ~of the, ~of the 19th century. And the American West as a whole concept in and of itself, as we think of it today, did not exist until the mid-19th century. ~Um, ~But it still retained that kind of dynamism and that movement, and people did not settle in the way that we think of them settling during this period.

~Uh, ~In fact, the entire region was unsettled really until ~the, ~the late 19th century for ~a num-~ a number of reasons.

Sacajawea's superhero origin story
---

Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm. ~A- and two men who are very famous~ um,~ in American history for [00:12:00] opening up that space to the United States, again, not discovering it, it was plenty discovered by other people,~ but,~ but ~opening it, ~opening it up to~ uh,~ United States, the government and the culture of the United States,~ uh,~ were Lewis and Clark, right?

And they were guided ~uh, you know, ~helmed, directed almost, by a woman who~ uh,~ knew very much what she was doing and very much knew the land, ~um, ~Sacajawea, I'm hoping pronounce~ correc-~ correctly, ~um, ~and her life starts... It's like a superhero origin story, ~the way, ~the way that her life begins. ~Can you, ~Can you talk us through that a bit?

Megan Kate Nelson: Yes, absolutely. I wanted to start~ uh,~ the book with an Indigenous voice and a woman's voice because,~ uh,~ this rarely happens in ~kind of ~large, sweeping, popular histories of the American West. ~Uh, ~Women are almost always just erased or marginalized or not even present,~ uh,~ in a lot of those accounts.

And so I felt really strongly I wanted to do that, and Sacajawea was, you know, instantly came to mind as someone to ~kind of ~start [00:13:00] this book. And it was a little intimidating to write about her because she is so mythologized. She's probably the most famous person in the book, and the one person people may know,~ uh,~ when they start to read it.

And,~ um, she-- I--~ It was really interesting 'cause when ~I, ~I went into the research, I didn't know much more about her than that mythic history either, that I had learned in school way back in the day, that ~she just, you know, ~her life is most important when she meets Lewis and Clark, and she goes with them ~on this, uh,~ on this journey to the Pacific and back from the Missouri River. ~Um, ~But she had a whole life before that, and she had a whole life after that.

She's born in~ um,~ the northern Rocky Mountains,~ um,~ to,~ uh,~ what is now known as the Lemhi Shoshone band, which is a Northern Shoshone band. And pretty early on,~ uh,~ in her life, she is stolen from her people in a raid~ um,~ by ~the, ~the Hidatsa, who are a tribal nation who live along the upper Missouri River Valley.

So she ~you know, ~had been living with her family. They had traveled around, the Shoshone were a [00:14:00] mobile band. ~Um, and~ So her first movement through the West was eastward. So she is a, she's a war captive, ~and, ~and this was very common. The Indigenous world,~ uh,~ was full of warfare and raiding, and the captive trade was part of that~ uh,~ whole process and that whole tradition.

So she moves eastward first and~ uh,~ lives with her captors initially, and then is married off to a French trader named Toussaint Charbonneau,~ uh,~ when she's still a teenager. And,~ um, you know, ~it's important to think about her as a woman in an Indigenous world who's having experiences that many women had.

~You know? Like, ~She's an exceptional person,~ um,~ and we think of her as exceptional, but she also~ uh,~ was in many ways a kind of ordinary,~ uh,~ woman living in this particular life. She~ uh,~ learned to farm. She learned to~ um,~ process buffalo hides. She,~ uh,~ learned all of these skills from other [00:15:00] women~ uh,~ in the Knife River villages in the Upper Missouri Valley.

Sacajawea, an explorer in her own right
---

Megan Kate Nelson: And by the time Lewis and Clark got there, ~you know, ~she was a married woman, she was pregnant,~ um,~ and she was,~ uh,~ if not fully integrated into Hidatsa society, she had,~ uh,~ learned the language and she had established connections there on her own. ~Um, ~~And~

But what Lewis and Clark really wanted her for is that she still had command of the Shoshone language. And Lewis and Clark didn't know very much about what they were going to encounter on this~ uh,~ journey, but they did know that at some point they were going to have to stop traveling by boat and start traveling on horseback. And they knew that the Shoshone were big horse traders in the Northern Rockies.

~So they...~ This was a very important logistical element~ uh,~ of the Corps of Discovery, and this is why initially she was valuable. Although I, upon ~you know, ~reading the Lewis and Clark diaries, it's really remarkable. They talk about her [00:16:00] more than 150 times. They call her by a number of names,~ um,~ and sometimes just describe her as a wife or ~you know, ~give her new names entirely.

~Um, ~But when they describe her, she is always doing something or saying something. And this is what we don't get from traditional accounts. ~Um, ~She is even more than a translator. She is a guide. She's ~a to-~ a topographer. She helps them to map this whole area of the West from the Upper Missouri Valley to the Pacific.

And she is a botanist. She is constantly ~kind of ~pulling roots and plants from the soil, not only to eat,~ uh,~ but also to show Lewis and Clark. She understands that they are on a botanical exploration as well, and she contributes several specimens~ uh,~ to the Lewis and Clark Expedition's collections. ~Um, ~She saves their lives multiple times.

~Um, ~I think because, ~you know... ~I think she saves them from scurvy for [00:17:00] sure because of her knowledge of the landscape. ~Uh, ~She successfully translates and helps to negotiate?~ Uh, with her,~ with the Shoshone, with her people when they get there. And then ultimately, I really do think she becomes an explorer in her own right.

~Um, ~There's a remarkable moment on, in the Pacific where they've left her behind.

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah, I love that scene. I was gonna bring it please share

Megan Kate Nelson: I know. Oh, it's so good. She, you know... They, they know they're gonna have to stay in this area over the winter. And so they leave her behind in camp,~ um,~ which is a couple miles away ~from the, ~from the ocean. And they go to the ocean, Lewis and Clark and Toussaint Charbonneau,~ um,~ and a couple other members of the corps, and they've, they come back with stories of the Pacific Ocean and the beach, and there had been a huge whale that had been beached ~on the, you know, um, ~and ~the, ~the local indigenous band was breaking it up.

They were taking it apart and using the blubber and the bones. And everyone writes about this in their [00:18:00] journals. She goes to Clark and she says, "You're gonna take me to the Pacific because I did not come all this way not to see it. I wanna see the ocean and I wanna see the big fish," you know, that they had been talking about because, I mean, it's hard for us, I think, to access this?~ Uh,~ today because, you know, we know what a whale looks like even if we've never seen a, a live whale.

But they did not. They had no idea what this looked like. This seemed just unbelievably remarkable, and then to also see the ocean for the first time. So she demands this for herself, and Clark agrees, and he takes her.

And I just-- I love this moment because I think it's really where you see her taking something for herself and valuing this experience for herself in a way that we never see [00:19:00] her. We never see her that way in other accounts. She's usually just helping Lewis and Clark and pointing the way,~ um,~ being a mother to Jean Baptiste,~ uh,~ who she had given birth to just a couple months before they left.

Exploring as a postpartum mother and how Clark ended up raising Sacajawea's children
---

Isabelle Roughol: I feel like we have to say she takes on this entire journey as a postpartum teenage mom,~ uh,~ breastfeeding an infant the entire time. ~Like, ~That is pretty impressive as well.

Megan Kate Nelson: Yes, and they both are-- they both become very ill also at separate times during,~ uh, the, ~the expedition. And of course, Lewis and Clark have all these outmoded notions of medicine. ~I mean, it's a,~ It's~ u~~~h,~~ remarkable they didn't kill her, actually, ~with their-- But, ~you know, they were trying to bleed her.

They were probably giving her something like mercury. I mean, It was just, you know, just terrible, and she m- she managed to survive. And what I think is really interesting about that, ~you know, ~every single visual depiction that we have of Sacajawea, and we-- no one sketched her or made any kind of visual representation of her during her [00:20:00] lifetime,~ um,~ so we only have guesses as to what she actually looked like.

But all of the images we have of her now depict her with Jean Baptiste, with him on her back,~ um,~ and either walking or on horseback. And- I think today we think of that as,~ like,~ just incredibly remarkable. And I think it is given the distance that she traveled. But also Indigenous women carried their kids around all the time, ~you know, ~and they were in constant movement.

They were always moving between camps for hundreds of miles, ~you know, ~according to the seasons and what they were going to hunt. And so in many ways, ~I mean, ~I think it would have struck Sacajawea as totally bizarre not to do that, right? And, and she would not have left him behind. ~That is, that is definitely, uh,~ That would not have entered her mind. ~Um, ~she would not have abandoned him.

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah, and in fact, at one point,~ um, at, ~at, after the expedition where Clark, who's taken ~a, ~a liking to the kid,~ uh,~ suggests,~ uh, you know, ~adopting him essentially ~and, ~and taking him to school, and she's like, "Mm-mm. That's, that's [00:21:00] my kid." ~Um, she does, ~She does later on~ um,~ leave him to go to school in, this is a few years later,~ um, and, ~and live with the Clark family.

~Um, ~And I'm gonna fast-forward a bit here, but unfortunately she dies quite young. ~Um, ~She dies around 25, I think. ~Um, ~and ~Lewis, uh, sorry, ~Clark has her boy, and she has just given birth to a daughter who also ends up living with Clark. ~I find that, ~I find that quite moving, right? That Clark ended up raising both her children after she passed.

Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. And that-- And, ~you know, ~we're not really sure what happened to Lisette. I think we-- there is some contention ~that, ~that she died quite young,~ um,~ which would have been k- again, ~kind of ~consonant with the time. ~I mean, ~Infant mortality was quite high. And if she did not have her mother and she? ~You know, ~was not able to breastfeed, this was gonna be,~ um,~ very difficult.

~Um, ~but yes. And this-- But this also-- I mean, part of the reason that Sacajawea left him with Clark a little later on is that he was older. And there were these practices ~where, um,~ among many tribal [00:22:00] nations that you could be adopted into other families or you, you kind of sent one of the children to go live with a relative,~ uh,~ usually an uncle,~ um, for, ~for boys to learn all sorts of skills, to learn to be a warrior.

So she definitely felt more comfortable because Jean Baptiste was older. ~Um, ~And, ~you know, ~earlier,~ um,~ she didn't feel comfortable because he wasn't done yet. She hadn't weaned him yet. So he was-- She was like, "He's way too young to go and be on his own." But she felt more comfortable with it later, and that, too, was a, an Indigenous tradition.

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. I know there's quite a few stories?~ Um, of, ~of children, actually with the next woman we're gonna be talking about,~ of, ~of, uh, children sort of being~ uh,~ raised quite communally or, like, between different families and not just by~ um,~ birth parents,~ which,~ which I think is also interesting to that sense of community that-- And rather than, ~you know, ~that rugged individualism,~ uh,~ that is the image of the West ~that, ~that we have.

Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Yes. [00:23:00] Absolutely.

How Sacajawea became a suffrage icon
---

Isabelle Roughol: ~Um, and, ~And just to, to finish ~on, ~on Sacajawea,~ um, she was, ~she was ignored, right, for most of the 19th century. ~Um, ~Her story was ~you know, ~resurrected somewhat later,~ um,~ which I find interesting because it seems like, ~you know, Clark-- ~Lewis and Clark did appreciate her and did appreciate her contribution and helped her family? ~You know, ~settle and get some land after that, right? Like, they recognized her contributions and her expertise, right?

Megan Kate Nelson: They did indeed. And they, again, they all wrote about it. ~Um, ~And Lewis and Clark and then other members of the expedition who kept diaries,~ they're,~ they're remarkably consistent actually in their accounts of her and everything that she did. ~Um, ~But it took an, a new edition of the Lewis and Clark journals that was published~ uh,~ in the 1890s,~ uh,~ to really emphasize her and what she had done.

And~ um,~ one of the other scenes along the Pacific Coast,~ uh,~ where she ~lit--~ quite literally makes her voice heard,~ uh,~ she is the one who chooses the winter [00:24:00] campsite. ~Um, ~and ~you know, ~again, that is Indigenous tradition. Women always did that. ~Um, ~She argued for it, she lobbied for it, and then the whole Corps of Discovery voted on the location of the campsite.

So she voted, and then also York, who was~ um, enslaved,~ a Black man who was enslaved by William Clark. He also voted. So there's this kind of extraordinary moment, and that moment is emphasized in these 1890s~ uh,~ journal that, that edition in the 1890s in a way that it hadn't been before. And- It's important that at this moment, American suffragists are gaining in power and really starting a campaign to get the women's vote.

So they take up Sacajawea as the first woman to vote in the United States of America, which is, you know, strikes us as kind of funny, obviously. But,~ um,~ that is one of the major reasons that she ~kind of ~bursts [00:25:00] into the American imagination. ~Um, ~Suffragists take her up. They commission~ um,~ a statue of her, a sculpture of her for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, which is the first visual image we have of her. And then, ~you know, ~attention to her just takes off, and she has become one of the most recognizable and also the most depicted women in American history. And a lot-- along with Pocahontas, is probably one of the two Indigenous women that most schoolchildren can name.

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah, I certainly heard about her, I was an exchange student in American high school.

Megan Kate Nelson: Ah.

Isabelle Roughol: In New Jersey,~ uh,~ twen- ~mm, ~25 years ago. ~Um, and, uh,~ And yes, I did. I took my AP US history, ~you know, um, ~and I learned about Manifest Destiny, and I learned about Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, absolutely. Who is, she really is ~ um,~ a figure.

~But, ~but again,~ um,~ and I think we see that with a lot of the people ~you, ~you talk about in the book who are all,~ um, you know, ~all have some level of fame in the story of the American West, they end up [00:26:00] mythologized or you don't get the full person, right? You get the cliché,~ the, the, the, ~the caricature of the person that you can depict and just have that exceptional individual that does not contradict the sort of ~you know,~ white pioneer man myth of the frontier, right?

Megan Kate Nelson: Exactly. ~Act- They,~ They become either supportive of it as a kind of wife and mother, or they become ~kind of, um, ~a sort of saucily~ uh,~ depicted antagonist, usually in the form of ~a, ~a madam of a brothel,~ uh,~ or a sex worker in her employ. And ~this, ~this happened to Sacajawea, too. There were a lot of~ uh,~ depictions of her and Clark as possibly having had an affair and all of these things.

How   Gertrudis Barcelo made a fortune at Spanish monte
---

Megan Kate Nelson: ~Um, ~but yeah, most, most white Americans could not conceive of a successful woman in the American West if she was not a prostitute, which [00:27:00] is just insane.

Isabelle Roughol: Insane. And so they're not gonna like ~our next, ~our next character

Megan Kate Nelson: No.

Isabelle Roughol: Who, whose name is gonna be even harder for me to pronounce, but I'll try. Gertrudis? Gertrudis Barceló.

Megan Kate Nelson: Bar-Barceló. Yeah.

Isabelle Roughol: So Spanish, Spanish woman, or New Spain, to become Mexican, to become I think maybe American at the end of her life.

Megan Kate Nelson: Ultimately American.

Isabelle Roughol: she, yeah, a lot of... She goes through all of the different~ uh,~ evolution of the nationalities of the land that, that she's on. ~So, um, what is,~ Who is she? What is her story?

Megan Kate Nelson: Yeah, you know, I, I really love her. She may be my favorite protagonist. I know we're not supposed to have favorites, but um, but she is my favorite. And I had actually learned her story when I was researching a previous book, "The Three-Cornered War." ~Um, ~but she died in 1852, and so she predated the American Civil War, which is what I was writing about in that moment.

So-- But I [00:28:00] always had remembered her story, and I kinda kept it in my pocket and hoped that I could write about her one day. And so when I conceived of this book project, I was like, "Okay, we're writing about Barceló." Because, yes, she is born in Sonora as a New Spanish citizen. She moves with her family northward during the Mexican Revolution,~ um,~ against New Spain, where they secure their independence~ um,~ in the early 19th century.

And she's living in Albuquerque and Santa Fe ~by the, ~by the 1820s and 1830s, and she's a Mexican citizen at that point.

And one of the important things to remember is that Spanish law and Mexican law,~ um,~ gave a lot more rights and freedoms to women than the US did. And I'm not sure about France, actually.

I haven't studied that specifically. But,~ um,~ but yeah, the-- they could own land in their own

Isabelle Roughol: This was Napoleon era, so France was horrible. Napoleon was a terrible misogynist. ~Uh,~

Megan Kate Nelson: There we go. There we go. Asked and answered.

Isabelle Roughol: You'd [00:29:00] have been better off being Spanish, I think,~ uh,~ at that point.

Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. So women could own land. They could inherit it. They could own it in their own names. They could get divorced, although divorce was rare. ~Um, ~And they could keep their own names. They could sue and be sued in court. ~Uh, and~

So Barceló ~kind of ~grew up without the kind of restrictions on her ambition that I think,~ uh,~ a lot of white American women in this moment may have had. And she got married in, in the 1820s, and her husband taught her to play this card game called Spanish monte, which is a...

It's a betting game on suits, and it's from a-- You play it with a 40-card Spanish deck. And- It-- she was just really good at it. She had ~a, ~a mathematical mind, she had a quick mind, she had a really good memory. And so she started to play, and she won some money, and then she started to deal Spanish monte. And it was a [00:30:00] very...

It's one of these games that you can just set up a table in an alley, and people will come and bet ~and, ~and you can make a lot of money. Because what I discovered, I was trying to figure out how she could have made so much money in her life, and so I learned to play. I lear- I learned to play and to deal Spanish monte.

~Uh, and I, ~I got a 40-card deck, and I learned to do it, and I gave my husband 20 poker chips, and I was like, "All right, let's play." And I took all of his money in six hands.

Isabelle Roughol: Well, you've got an alternative career that's open to you.~ Uh,~

Megan Kate Nelson: I know, a side hustle. A si- I know, I'm trying to figure out how to work this into my book tour. ~Like, ~Can I sell them a book and then take more of their money, um, at the, at the gambling table?

~Um, ~But yeah, so she, she started off just with ~a, ~a table of her own, and then she made so much money that she ultimately moved to Santa Fe and opened a gambling saloon.

And was the wealthiest woman in New Mexico territory when the Americans arrived in 1846. [00:31:00] And she had so much money, in fact, that she invested in currency, she invested in mules. She sent really huge wagon trains along both the Chihuahua Trail south~ uh,~ to ~Mexico, ~Mexico City, and then also on the Santa Fe Trail, which had opened in 1821,~ uh,~ to the United States.

And she was famous. She had the kind of opposite trajectory ~of, ~of Sacajawea. She was very famous in her lifetime, and many American travelers knew about her ~and, ~and sought out her saloon so they could go see this bizarre phenomenon of this woman dealing~ um,~ monte in a saloon and making so much money.

~And, um, yeah, so she was, ~She was pretty amazing. ~When, ~When people maligned her, she took them to court. When she loaned money to Anglo businessmen and they didn't pay her back, she took them to court. And this is part of the reason we know about her, is that those court records generated documents.[00:32:00]

Isabelle Roughol: Historians love, love courts. They're

Megan Kate Nelson: God bless the courts. Yes.

Isabelle Roughol: A court and a bureaucrat is what you need for history to be written.

Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Yes.

Isabelle Roughol: And she's a, she's wonderful 'cause she is, again,~ like,~ like all of your characters really, she is like this broker between the different cultures ~of, ~of the South, right? ~And like ~The Spanish and Mexican and Indigenous and then the Am- ~the, ~the United States coming in. I always hesitate to say Americans 'cause I know in that... It's, it's, uh, contentious. ~But, um, yeah, it's, um... You know, like~ Reading about her and about Sacajawea and sort of all of that first half of the 19th century, 'cause this really feels like, well, it's technically it's more like two-thirds and one-thirds, but it really feels like ~the, ~the 19th century is split ~with, you know, ~with the Civil War in the middle.

And that first, that first half or that first two-thirds, you almost,~ you,~ you get an image of, ~you know, what, ~what other America could have been, what America could have looked like ~if, ~[00:33:00] if that West ~sort of ~is the one that prevailed...

Megan Kate Nelson: mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes,~ or,~ or even if that West were one that white Americans even respected

Isabelle Roughol: Mm.

Megan Kate Nelson: and

Isabelle Roughol: And remembered.

Megan Kate Nelson: Yes, and thought about ~in a, ~in a different way, you know? ~Their...~ That they would see indigenous peoples as? ~You know, ~polities in their own right~ uh,~ to be established in the country and,~ uh,~ find a way to survive together, ~you know, ~instead of this relentless violent campaign against them.

And,~ um, you know, ~not instituting racist and misogynist laws that took power away from someone like Barceló. ~Uh, ~She did not live very long,~ um,~ after she became an American in 1848,~ uh,~ in the wake of the Mexican-American War. ~Um, ~She died in 1852, but I think she would have seen her empire fall. ~Um, ~I think ~the, ~the US officials, as much as they appreciated her salon and ~they, they.. I mean, ~they went there, and they gambled, and [00:34:00] they lost a lot of money to her. ~Um, ~But ~the, ~the restrictions on her and her property would've been such that I think,~ uh,~ she would've~ uh,~ lost a lot of her land and a lot of her property in the end. ~Um...~

The epitomy of the Western pioneer man -- in a Hispanic woman
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Isabelle Roughol: ~uh, ~And ironically, I mean, she is probably ~the, ~the character that?~ Like,~ most represents ~the, ~the pioneer, ~you know, the, ~the,~ uh,~ the iconoclast,~ the, the, the, the, ~the person that you imagine as ~like, you know, uh, ~plucky, perseverant, savvy, smart, no-nonsense, entrepreneurial. ~Uh, ~But she's a woman and she's Hispanic, and those are the only two ways in which she doesn't fit the mold because the exact same story~ uh, you know, uh, of a, ~of a white man is exactly the image of the West that you have, right?

Megan Kate Nelson: Exactly. Exactly. And this is what I found through most of my research, is that ~you know, ~all seven people in "The Westerners", the women and the men, exemplified a lot of what we have come to think of as that pioneer spirit, right? ~Um, ~But they undermined it in other ways.

And for the women in particular, ~in order to be... they, ~they were either [00:35:00] marginalized and then erased completely. ~You know, ~Barcelo in the years after her life, no one marked the site of ~her, ~her gambling saloon as a historic space. ~Um, ~No one really wrote about her until~ uh,~ women's historians ~kind of ~recovered her in ~the, ~the 1970s and '80s. And even now today, there, there is-- I have heard that there is now a tour you can take.

Isabelle Roughol: Oh.

Megan Kate Nelson: ~Uh, ~Yeah, I know. ~Going to... And, ~And Borough Alley still exists, the place where she had her saloon. ~Um, ~And I think that I-- whoever is leading that tour must have looked into the land records to find where her house was and then where her saloon was ~and, ~and you can take a tour of those sites. But this is a very recent phenomenon.

And, ~you know, ~she is not ~kind of ~lauded or emphasized in the greater tourist infrastructure of Santa Fe. ~Um, ~And often when people speak about her or write about her, again, she [00:36:00] is depicted ~as, ~as possibly maybe a prostitute. ~Um, ~And ~this is, ~this is a commonality ~you know, ~that women can't possibly have power unless it is in this one very narrow profession.

~Um, ~And that is ~the, ~the vision of a woman that persists ~in, ~in the pioneer myth today, Because,~ uh,~ otherwise you would have to make room for the possibility that, ~you know, ~women and in, in this region in particular, Mexican women were badasses ~and, ~and

Isabelle Roughol: And were more than, than their relationship to, to the men and to their sexuality.

Megan Kate Nelson: Exactly. Yes, and that ~they were, ~they were canny businesswomen, and they knew their rights, and they asserted themselves, and they built lives for themselves without men almost entirely.

So yeah. ~Um, ~and that ha- has seemed impossible~ um, for, ~for white American men to really embrace.

Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ~And so as we jump into ~the second, ~the second part of the 19th century, so we have, ~you know, ~the Civil [00:37:00] War for, again, for non-Americans, that's 1861 to '65 or '60 to '64, one of those. Uh, '61 to '65. Okay. ~And, um,~ And so after the Civil War... The, the thing that I think is maddening when you look at the Civil War is that it feels like it should be a victory for a freer, more liberal, more progressive America, because after all, it is the defeat of slavery, and yet everything that comes after feels more segregationist, more~ um,~ racist,~ more,~ more of all the things ~that we, ~that we don't like about American history during ~the, ~the Reconstruction Era.

And this is the terrible cliffhanger I leave you on. Join me and Megan Kate Nelson on the next episode to talk about this post-Civil War, Reconstruction Era American West, and even into the early 20th century, and see if it delivered on that promise of a freer, more liberal, more progressive America.

I'm afraid I kind of spoiled that [00:38:00] already, didn't I?

Remember, if you are a member of Broad History, you can binge that second part of the conversation right away. Sign up at broadhistory.com/membership. Again, broadhistory.com/membership. And you can listen to the rest of my conversation with Megan Kate Nelson.

If not, it will be on the feed in two weeks. We're going fortnightly. Several of you have told me you couldn't keep up with weekly releases, and you know what? Neither can I.

Part 2 teaser
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And to entice you into that membership, which is the only way that this work is possible, here is a little bit of a taster of what you're missing.

Isabelle Roughol: Five women in town?

Megan Kate Nelson: Five women in town.

Isabelle Roughol: This is crazy. I don't know how many men, but, like, hundreds and five women.

five women.

Megan Kate Nelson: This is how powerful the frontier myth is. It has always been used as a way to marginalize and erase people from a national story. It makes it much easier to take their land, to take their dignity, and to take their civil rights [00:39:00] away.

Isabelle Roughol: There are still women being sold and traded after Abolition.

Megan Kate Nelson: My mother texted me and said, "Your father has just finished that chapter, and you have broken his heart."

Isabelle Roughol: I'm, I'm with your dad. I... My heart was broken too.

Megan Kate Nelson: A journalist is totally shocked to find this older Chinese woman living in the middle of Idaho. Chinese people have been erased by that point from all of Western history.

Isabelle Roughol: It made me think of the "Yellowstone" show quite a bit, if people watched it. It looks pretty, but it's really a mafia.

Megan Kate Nelson: This push among far-right conservatives that women don't need to vote. They just need to stay home and have babies. They are using the pioneer woman to bolster that policy.

Isabelle Roughol: Every time that you complicate that story,~ um,~ it messes with their plans.

If that sounds like something you wanna hear now, go to broadhistory.com/membership.

This has been Broad History, a One Lane Bridge production, researched, produced, edited, and hosted by me, Isabelle Roughol.[00:40:00]

Talk to you next time.