Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In part 2 of our exploration of the American frontier, Megan Kate Nelson introduces two women who belie the homesteader image conservative "trad wives" like to harken back to. Polly Bemis was a Chinese immigrant who built a life and a community in Idaho, despite intense prejudice and stringent anti-Chinese immigration policies. Ella Watson was a self-made homesteader and small rancher, a so-called cattle queen who got on the wrong side of cattle barons in Wyoming and paid the price.
Read more: How Chinese women were barred from the American dream
★ Support this podcast ★
What do you think?
Read more: How Chinese women were barred from the American dream
★ Support this podcast ★
What do you think?
Jump to:
Get the book
🇺🇸 Buy the book
🇬🇧 Shop the UK bookshop (Megan Kate Nelson's The Westerners is only available in the US)
(Affiliate bookshop.org links support Broad History and indie bookstores.)
- (00:00) - 08 Megan Kate Nelson part 2
- (01:18) - Start of interview
- (01:46) - Introducing Polly Bemis
- (03:04) - The majority-Chinese American West
- (06:55) - Polly Bemis traveled without moving
- (09:12) - Chinese women were the first targets of US anti-immigrant policy
- (09:50) - The aggressive anti-Chinese immigration policies of the United States
- (12:13) - How big government made the West for white men
- (13:43) - Ella Watson's broken American dream
- (14:25) - The cattle queens
- (23:03) - A high tolerance for risk
- (24:30) - Why correcting the Frontier myth matters today
- (27:06) - How trad wives utilise the American Frontier
- (30:21) - What moment in history should we revisit from women's perspective?
- (34:30) - Outro
Get the book
🇺🇸 Buy the book
🇬🇧 Shop the UK bookshop (Megan Kate Nelson's The Westerners is only available in the US)
(Affiliate bookshop.org links support Broad History and indie bookstores.)
Creators and Guests
What is Broad History?
The history you think you know, with women in it this time
08 Megan Kate Nelson part 2
===
[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.
This episode is part two of a two-parter conversation with historian of the American West, Megan Kate Nelson. So if you missed part one, go back in your feed to episode eight and start there.
Without further ado, we're gonna jump into the rest of the conversation. Just a quick reminder that if you want to support this show, you can sign up for membership at broadhistory.com/membership. Members have already heard the second part of this conversation because members get early and ad-free access to every episode and can binge any multi-part series on day one. This show is entirely research produced, edited, and hosted by me, and it can only happen with your support. I am so grateful to people who've already signed up for a membership.
Again, it's at broadhistory.com/membership, and there is a big series coming up this summer that you're gonna wanna be a member for, 'cause you will get to binge it on whatever road trip you're planning to be [00:01:00] on.
We're gonna jump right into the second part of the conversation with Megan Kate Nelson as we get past the American Civil War and into the later half of the 19th century. Sorry, it's a bit abrupt. I did not originally plan to cut this conversation in two, but here we are. This is my conversation with Megan Kate Nelson.
Start of interview
---
Isabelle Roughol: 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.
Introducing Polly Bemis
---
Isabelle Roughol: And so,~ you know,~ one of your characters, her life~ uh,~ really ~you know, ~travels through that is, is Polly, uh, Bemis, Bemis, who is~ um,~ a Chinese woman. ~And so she was, ~She was trafficked from- Well, sold [00:02:00] by her family, which~ uh,~ was somewhat common apparently to, to deal with extreme poverty,~ and,~ and trafficked to-- from southern China, we're in the Guangzhou, Hong Kong area, to California, and then on.
Do you wanna take it from there?
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Yes. So when she was sold-- Yeah, the-- And this was something that I had not known, that this was ~a, ~a rather common practice in~ um,~ 19th century China for very poor families~ uh,~ to sell ~their, ~their~ um,~ girl children to traders. And these girls had a num-- There were a number of options. They would either be sold as domestics,~ um,~ sometimes as prostitutes, sometimes as second wives~ um,~ to powerful people.
Isabelle Roughol: And we should emphasize slavery is abolished by now in America when this is happening to her. So there is-- there are still women being sold~ uh, and, ~and traded after Abolition.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Exactly. ~Um, ~There were indigenous women [00:03:00] being~ uh,~ sold and then also~ uh,~ Asian women, particularly Chinese women.
The majority-Chinese American West
---
Megan Kate Nelson: And the path that she followed from Hong Kong to Idaho actually was a pretty well-traveled route,~ um,~ because Chinese men had followed that route in the 1840s to work in the gold mines of California and then,~ uh,~ a little bit later in the 1860s to help to build the Central Pacific Railroad, which is the western half of the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in 1869.
And after that was completed and after that work was done, a lot of these Chinese men,~ um, kind of, you know, ~migrated then to other towns in the American West. And so we see ~these, ~these rather significant large Chine- like Chinatowns in- all kinds of towns throughout the American West and in the Rocky Mountains.
And we also see mining towns that are majority Chinese at this point, which is [00:04:00] where Polly Bemis ends up. She ends up in a little town called Warren, Idaho,~ uh,~ which is a gold mining town. Gold had been discovered there in 1870. She arrives~ uh,~ in 1872. And by that time, you know, the town is 80% Chinese, which again, this is something we don't think about when we...
Any depiction of the mining West is almost always white miners. ~Um, you know, ~Most of ~the, ~the history is later in the period with fights against capitalist mining companies, things like that. But this is the very early period of what they called placer mining, which did not take a lot of money~ uh,~ or capital to engage in.
You're kinda basically scraping gold from rivers and~ um,~ mountainsides. And so you didn't have to have heavy equipment. You didn't have to have a lot of capital. So this is what attracted a lot ~of, ~of poor people across the world really to California and then to the Rocky Mountains during this period. ~Um,~
And so ~this is, ~this is where [00:05:00] she ends up, ~and,~ but she is one of the few women in this place.
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.
Yeah, hundreds
Megan Kate Nelson: and five women. ~Um, ~And...
Isabelle Roughol: and most of them,~ uh, like, ~I think one is American-born and the rest-- ~Uh, ~One is indigenous, one is US East Coast-born, and the r- and the other three are immigrants, which is quite representative, right, of
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes.
Isabelle Roughol: what America looks like.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Absolutely. ~Um, ~And we don't know much about her life between the moment she arrives and~ um,~ 1880, which is when we first see her in a census. ~Um, ~So again, thank God for court records. Thank God for census takers, exactly, ~um, uh, ~because we then know that at this point, she's living,~ uh,~ in the household of a man named Charlie Bemis, who is white, and she is helping to run his saloon and his boarding house.
And it's unclear what their relationship is, but~ um,~ a little bit later, people are referring to them as Mr. and Mrs. Bemis, even though they [00:06:00] don't-- they are not married quite yet. They don't get married until ~the, ~the 1890s. ~Um, ~But she becomes a fixture in the town. ~Um, ~~She~~ is, you know- ~As a boarding house manager, she is meeting and taking care of miners who are moving in and out of the region~ um,~ at a pretty fast rate.
~And, um,~ So she becomes someone that everyone, pretty much everyone meets~ uh,~ on their way into town or out of town. ~Uh, ~And she and Charlie just kinda build these businesses together, ~um, ~and ultimately buy land~ uh,~ a little bit further away to the south on the Salmon River, and move there ultimately,~ um,~ and live a life as kind of farmers, really subsistence farmers. Make friends with the sheep farmers across the river who begin to take care of them. They trade goods. ~The, ~The guys across the river will go and get supplies for them c- as they're getting older. ~Um,~
Polly Bemis traveled without moving
---
Megan Kate Nelson: And she's really... I mean, her, her journey was obviously the [00:07:00] longest 'cause she traveled the farthest across ~the, ~the Pacific Ocean.
~And it's, ~It's ~kind of ~easy to think of her maybe kind of standing still,~ uh,~ because she didn't really leave until later in her life. She stayed in Warren, Idaho.
Isabelle Roughol: Yeah she spends 30 years in one town before, you know, making a trip to the dentist at one point.
Megan Kate Nelson: That's right. That's right. That's right.
Isabelle Roughol: to think about,
Megan Kate Nelson: I know. It is. And, but what, one of the contentions I make in the book is that even when people stop moving, like she and, and Gertrudis Barceló is the same way.
She s- lives in Santa Fe,~ uh,~ for, ~you know, ~more than 15 years building her empire, and she doesn't really leave. She makes some trips down to Mexico. ~Um, ~but she doesn't leave all that much. But what both she and Polly Bemis have in common is that they are still kind of benefiting from and engaged in a network of, again, trade and kinship, people moving back and forth.
And the Bemis ranch was not [00:08:00] only on a trail between gold mines, but it was on the Salmon River, which was increasingly~ um,~ filled with boat traffic. And they lived at a curve in the river, and that river, I have seen it, it is big, and it is fast. And it had carved out, by the Bemis ranch, this kind of rocky beach where you can put in~ um,~ and stay.
And so people stayed with them. They would come in, and they would spend the night, and they would meet her, and they would meet Charlie. And, um, so they were not recluses. They knew exactly what was happening. ~Um, ~The farmers across the way had a radio ultimately, and they listened to the news. They knew what was happening.
~Um, ~So they were connected. They were connected to a wider world, even though they lived in this very remote place.
Isabelle Roughol: That's what I love about, about her story. Why I find-- I think, I think her story is the more charming and the less violent part of the book. ~Is, um,~ there is such a strong sense of community,~ um, of, ~of a diverse community, right? Her friends [00:09:00] are,~ uh, you know, ~German immigrants ~and, ~and white Americans and~ um, and yeah, and, and~ the help that they get as they get older from their younger neighbors.
~It's, it's not a,~ It's not an individualistic, every man out for themselves kind of world. ~It's, ~it's very different.
Chinese women were the first targets of US anti-immigrant policy
---
Megan Kate Nelson: ~Right.~ Yes, exactly. And, ~you know, she-- once, uh, she becomes famous,~ she again, she's one of these people who becomes famous later in her life, so she has that in common with Sacajawea also. ~Um, a, ~A journalist comes down on a boat and meets her and writes a little squib about her for the magazine Field & Stream, which is a very popular kind of outdoor magazine at the time, and is totally shocked to find this older Chinese woman living in the middle of Idaho.
And the reason that she is shocked is because Chinese people have been erased by that point, which is the 1920s from all of Western history.
The aggressive anti-Chinese immigration policies of the United States
---
Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. ~And we, ~And we forget just how aggressive~ um,~ the immigration policy was against the Chinese, right? I mean, [00:10:00] it's, uh... The Chinese community, and again, I think that's something ~we, ~we quite forget when we look at American history, was ~kind of ~the first one that was really, really targeted aggressively by anti-immigration laws.
Well, were actually brought in on purpose when we needed them to do the work, right. To build the railroads, and then were really pushed out.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Yeah, and this is unfortunately a common practice in US history. It is a horrible tradition to welcome people and to celebrate immigration and then to turn back around and deport people or surveil them until you can find a reason to deport them. And one of the reasons we have the first image, photographic image of Polly Bemis is that she has to have her photograph taken~ uh,~ for a certificate that allows her to reside in the United States.
She arrived so early that she was not automatically deported,~ um,~ but she was required to fill out the certificate, and if [00:11:00] she didn't have it with her at all times, then she could be deported. And this was part of those series of immigration acts,~ um,~ the Page Act first and then the Chinese Exclusion Act, and then its kind of renewal and the passage of the Geary Act, which basically said that all Asian people in the United States would be surveilled and kept track of.
And,~ um,~ no one could come in, and if you did not have your papers, you would- Be forced out. So yes, and they were very much targeted. They were the first ones targeted~ uh,~ in these really aggressive anti-immigration~ um,~ pushes ~and, ~and pieces of legislation.
Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. And she travels the longest too in, in time, right? 'Cause she lives to be quite old, and it's fascinating to see the evolution ~of, ~of the United States,~ of,~ of technology, of... I mean, she, she starts out very much in a frontier world, and she, you know, lives to see skyscrapers and planes and radios. ~Um, ~And she lives to see women's suffrage, [00:12:00] but she is never considered an American citizen, so she can't vote.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. And Sacajawea would not have been able to vote either, ironically,~ um,~ because,~ uh,~ Native Americans were not considered citizens either.
How big government made the West for white men
---
Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm. ~And it's something that,~ uh, you know, is, is kind of, um... You, ~you don't spell it out, but you don't need to because it's, it's everywhere in the book, is how much ~you know, ~that myth of the, the self-made man in the West really is a myth because every... The success of white people in the West, and the white man especially, really is engineered by public policy, by law, by, by big government essentially, that ~you know, ~pushes everyone else out of the way and gives a lot of handouts, right, through the ~Homestead, ~Homestead Act, give you land, subsidize the railroads, ~you know, ~help you if you're a white man ~kind of ~every step of the way.
Megan Kate Nelson: Oh, yeah,~ and,~ and use the power of the US Army to make war upon indigenous peoples and force them to surrender, and then move them [00:13:00] to reservations so that you can then take their land,~ uh, and, ~and take it up for yourself. So yes, that,~ um,~ at every stage, the either state or territorial or federal government was helping white men,~ uh,~ to get this done.
~And, um,~ And yet there's this idea across the West, a very anti-federal government stance,~ um,~ which is ironic and ridiculous,~ uh,~ because the West ~you know, ~gets lots of handouts and lots of help from the federal government in all kinds of ways. ~Um, and, ~and the-- their control, kind of white control of the West was made possible, as you're saying, by federal policy.
Ella Watson's broken American dream
---
Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm-hmm. And, and, you know, ~and one woman shows us that, and that's gonna be our, our last one. I realize we've been talking for almost an hour. I might take you, take up a bit more of your time if you can, because she is actually my favorite, and I don't wanna... ~I mean, ~I love them all. ~Um, but I, ~but I really like Ella Watson because essentially what she builds sounds like the dream [00:14:00] to me.
~Uh, she, uh, she--~ And she's also the most like the pioneer woman of our imagination. She's the most like, you know, Laura Ingalls ~Wi- ~Wilder in, in "The Little House on the Prairie," and she just subverts ~the whole, ~the whole story as well. ~Um,~
So Ella Watson is the daughter of homesteaders and a homesteader herself. She is an immigrant, but the kind that, that the United States is okay with because she's Canadian and white.
The cattle queens
---
Isabelle Roughol: ~Um, ~And she~ um,~ escapes a violent husband ~and, ~and moves west and becomes a ~so-called, or, ~or tries to become a so-called cattle queen. And ~I want, ~I want you to explain what a cattle queen is because I did not know about them, but I love them now.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes! I know. Aren't they the best? ~Um, ~yeah, so this is-- I knew I wanted to talk about, ~you know, ~the cattle industry in the West in this period, in the 1880s and '90s, 'cause this is hugely important,~ um,~ element ~of, ~of American Western history.
And she was such an [00:15:00] interesting vantage point on that because initially, ~she, ~she even as a teenager was widely known as a very good cook. ~Um, ~And so she could always get a job, right? This was a skill. You could always get a job in someone's house or in a hotel, an inn. ~Um, ~and so this is how she ~kind of ~made her money and stockpiled her money, is that she worked first in Kansas, and then when she left her husband and filed for divorce, by the way, in Nebraska, so she moved across the state lines to do it,~ um,~ worked there at a hotel and then moved west to Rawlins, Wyoming.
And she worked for a couple of years in a hotel there as a cook and a housekeeper, and she was just kind of saving her money up~ um,~ for future plans. And she met ~a, ~a man named Jim Averell, who had already claimed land~ um,~ a bit further north in the Sweetwater Valley. And he ~had ~had this idea, he was like,~ "Well,~ I wanna build a boarding house~ uh,~ [00:16:00] for travelers. And maybe you could come and cook, and you could keep all the money from that. And,~ um,~ you could feed travelers, and then maybe you could get some land as well."
And ~this is, ~this is where the dream began. She, ~um... ~They figured out... ~They, ~they actually did file for a marriage license, but they never got married because only single women could file claims under the Homestead Act. ~So she-- ~ They, you know, were like, "Okay,~ well,~ later maybe they could get married," and but for now, they were gonna take advantage of this. And so she filed a claim on land adjacent to his,~ uh,~ that would have access to water,~ um,~ this waterway called Horse Creek. And they started ~to, ~to make their plans. She hired someone to build her a cabin.
She started buying things, uh, you know, using all that money that she had saved. And they started going, and she started looking at cattle herd. She bought some.
And this whole idea that women could be [00:17:00] ranchers, that they could run a ranch themselves was... I mean, in reality, it was an old idea. There were lots of women who ran cattle ranches,~ um,~ particularly in Spanish Mexico, and then also,~ uh,~ there were indigenous women who had huge herds of sheep.
~And, um,~ And then there were women already in Colorado who were running cattle ranches. And there was a fascination with them, sort of like there was with Barceló, that here were these businesswomen, and that they were doing something~ um,~ that was unusual. And so they were called cattle queens, and some were married, some were widows,~ uh,~ and some were single women.
And they ~kind of ~built up ranches, sold cattle in order to buy more land, then bought more cattle and more land and sort of built these big ranches. And so this was happening really from Texas to Montana.
~And so this was, ~This was ultimately her dream, and Ella Watson did in fact [00:18:00] buy her first small herd of cattle~ uh,~ in 1888 and started and applied for a brand, which is something you needed to do, which signaled your intent to become a rancher so that you could brand your cattle, and they would be known as yours.
And so if someone stole them, you could identify them. ~Um, ~But it was at this point that she came to the attention of many of the cattle barons in the neighborhood,~ um,~ particularly this really evil guy named Bothwell, and he offered to buy her land multiple times, and she refused over the next year. ~Um, ~And he was part of the Wyoming Stockers Association, which was an organization that was gaining kind of mob-like power in Wyoming during this period.
Isabelle Roughol: It made me think of, of, uh, the "Yellowstone" show quite a bit, if people watched it. Very, you know, it starts-- It looks pretty, but it's really a mafia.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes, exactly. Exactly. ~Uh, ~And they kill with [00:19:00] impunity, and they take people's stuff. ~Uh, ~they're never punished for anything, right? ~Um, and,~
And this is in fact ~what, ~what happened with Ella Watson. ~Um, ~They came to her ranch on a day that-- a morning she was away, and she returned to find them cutting,~ um,~ the fence of her corral to take her...
If she wasn't gonna sell them her land, then they were gonna take her cattle,~ um,~ which she had not yet branded, I think, because she had not, she didn't have the official brand. ~Um, ~or maybe she had branded them
Isabelle Roughol: I think she had branded them.
I think if I seem I seem to recall. I read it this morning,
so
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Okay. So fresh in your
Isabelle Roughol: It's been a while since you wrote it but I read this morning.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. I
Isabelle Roughol: it this morning.
Megan Kate Nelson: Perfect. Okay. Excellent fact-check in the mor- in the moment. ~Um, ~yeah, so she had branded them, but they were gonna take them anyway. And she, ~you know, kind of, ~she didn't have a weapon, but she ha- ran at them and started yelling at them like, "You can't take... What are you doing? You're, like, stealing my cattle," which was, in fact, a crime punishable by death~ uh,~ in Wyoming. This was so serious.
Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm-hmm.~
Megan Kate Nelson: And they [00:20:00] had weapons, and so they~ um,~ pointed shotguns at her and forced her into a carriage. And they were taking her away when Jim Averell rode up. They forced him into the carriage also,~ um,~ and then they took them both~ uh,~ to an area,~ um, kind of a, ~a pretty far distance away, and they hung both of them from a tree limb.
And then returned to their ranches and began to spread a story that Ella Watson and Jim Averell ~were, ~were cattle thieves. ~Uh, ~That she was a prostitute who had,~ uh,~ who went by the name Cattle Kate, which is not true. ~Um, ~Cattle Kate was a completely different person who lived in another part of Wyoming.
~Um, ~But that she, those cattle that they, you know, they had either stolen them or she had traded sex for them. And that Jim Averell was her willing henchman, and therefore these cattle barons had decided to take the law into their own hands,~ um,~ and punish [00:21:00] the two of them by lynching, which was~ um,~ an acceptable practice for cattle thieves in Wyoming at the time.
Isabelle Roughol: The murderers are never really... I mean, there's a little bit of investigation, but they're never, they're never,~ um,~ jailed or anything. ~For,~
Megan Kate Nelson: Right. ~Yeah. The witnesses, yeah, the witnesses dec-~ They are arrested, but they pay one another's bail, which was five thousand dollars, which was a lot. ~Like, ~That was a lot of money at the time. ~Um, ~So they paid one another's bail- They got out, and ultimately the grand jury was not able to indict them because the witnesses had disappeared. ~You know, ~People,~ uh,~ had gone by the wayside. And yeah, ~so they went-- they were--~ they got off scot-free,~ uh,~ for these killings.
And so Ella Watson, though, has continued to be talked about and written about as Cattle Kate.
Isabelle Roughol: It's so frustrating 'cause not only ~they, ~they kill her when it... Really, she~ like,~ just didn't wanna sell her land. Deal. Uh, but, but also ~her, ~her reputation is maligned ~for, ~for decades. ~I mean, you know, it, it's, um... Yeah. Her... I mean, I, I, ~I loved read- hearing about her, and then [00:22:00] I was just ~so, ~so frustrated that,~ um, you know, ~she- she's tried to build something for herself that is taken away.
And poor Jim, I have to say, because I knew something bad was coming down the, down the pipeline, and I knew that her first husband was horrible,~ and,~ and by the end of the book, I'm a bit wary of, of the men out there. ~I, ~I thought Jim was gonna turn, and no, Jim is a wonderful husband. Jim is a wonderful guy,~ and,~ and unfortunately, he's killed as well.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yeah, he is. Yeah. ~And I, ~And I have to say my... So my father,~ um,~ I had sent him the advance review copy. ~So he was, ~He was reading it, and he called me ~when, ~when it became clear ~that, ~that Ella Watson, something bad was gonna happen to her, uh, he called me and he was like, "What are you gonna do to her?
What is go-" And I was like, "It's
Isabelle Roughol: This is not a novel.
Megan Kate Nelson: Not me. I didn't do it." And then when he got to the part, you know, the terrible death scene, my mother texted me and said, "Your father has just finished that chapter, and you have broken his heart."
Isabelle Roughol: [00:23:00] I'm, with your dad. I... My heart was broken too.
A high tolerance for risk
---
Megan Kate Nelson: I know. It's, it's a horrible story, and it's especially a horrible story because I think ~as, ~as we were talking about earlier, she exemplifies everything that is the pioneer ideal, right?
She makes her way. ~She, um, you know, ~She does strike out. ~This is, ~This is something that all of ~the, ~the Westerners in the book share too. They have a kind of high tolerance for risk. They, they do leave. They do kind of set out,~ um,~ either with family or sometimes by themselves, and they are helped along the way.
I mean, Ella Watson does take advantage of the Homestead Act. ~Um, ~And Rollins is ~a, you know, ~on the Transcontinental Railroad, so she's able to make money because of all of that infrastructure. ~Um, ~But, ~you know, ~she goes and she has this vision and she saves and ~she, ~she takes advantage ~of a, ~of a, ~you know, ~a land law and starts to build a life and to build this ranch for herself and does everything the right way.
She doesn't do anything [00:24:00] illegal ~Uh, ~and she's punished for it.
Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. It is, it is a reminder also of the, of the violence,~ um,~ that is inherent as well to
to the frontier.
~Um,~ It's not all little girls running through ~the, uh,~ the wildflowers in the prairie.
Megan Kate Nelson: I know. That's right. That's right.
Isabelle Roughol: Which,~ um,~ which, ~you know, ~would have to be a whole other episode. But,~ uh, yeah, life,~ life even ~of, ~of these typical pioneer families ~was, ~was extremely difficult ~and, ~and violent and deadly. Not a lot of those little girls survived. ~Um,~
Megan Kate Nelson: Yeah.
Why correcting the Frontier myth matters today
---
Isabelle Roughol: ~I did wanna, ~I did wanna ask you,~ uh,~ we've gone through the whole, ~you know, ~the whole century, the whole 19th century. ~Um, ~Why does telling these stories matter today? ~Like, ~What, what pushed you ~to, ~to write this?
Megan Kate Nelson: Yeah. ~Well, one of the-- I mean, ~One of the things was I was just ~kind of ~interested ~in, ~in how we develop and ~kind of ~claim regional identities. You know, who, who is allowed to say that they're Westerners, and who feels like that identity can belong to them, right?
Isabelle Roughol: 'Cause you are a Westerner, I should say. You're from Colorado.[00:25:00]
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Yes. I'm from Colorado, but, ~you know, ~I was asking people along the way, and one of my friends who is biracial and has lived her entire life in the West did say, ~you know, ~"I don't think of myself as a Westerner because I never thought that that identity belonged to me."
Isabelle Roughol: Mm-hmm.
Megan Kate Nelson: And ~that, ~that was a pivotal moment where I was like, "Okay, that is, is interesting and also worth investigating." ~Um, ~But I did. I started this book,~ um,~ during the Biden administration, and I finished it during the second Trump administration. And already in Trump two, we were starting to get lots of frontier imagery.
~Um, the--~ His inaugural and then also,~ um,~ earlier, his RNC speech was trading in a lot of frontier imagery of the pioneer and ~the, ~the rancher and ~kind of ~picking up and taking off and moving West from the East, and all of that kind of the frontier myth, the pioneer [00:26:00] myth,~ uh,~ was coming through in politics.
And then we started to see these deportation actions. We started to see ICE recruitment posters,~ uh,~ that were using Western imagery. And I just kind of had this moment where I said, You know, "here we are again." This is how powerful the frontier myth is. It It has always been used as a way to marginalize and erase people from a national story.
And the reason,~ um,~ people do that is that national narratives are really important, right? They create a sense of belonging. And when you erase people from them, ~it takes it eas-~ it makes it much easier to take their land, to take their dignity, and to take their civil rights away. If you think of them as un-American, if you think of them as anti-American, as kind of standing in the way of this white American vision of the pioneer.
~Um, ~And ~those, ~those [00:27:00] images have gotten even stronger,~ um,~ both in politics and then also in American culture.
How trad wives utilise the American Frontier
---
Megan Kate Nelson: I mean, what is the tradwife phenomenon?
Isabelle Roughol: I was gonna ask, I wanna talk about the tradwife, 'cause it's such an homestead imagery, right?
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes, it is. And many-- I mean, not all tradwives are in the American West, but probably the most famous one,~ um,~ Ballerina Farm,~ uh,~ Hannah Neeleman, is in Utah and has a ranch, has a dairy farm. And, ~you know, ~the imagery there is all,~ uh, you know, ~a woman in a floaty white dress and cowboy boots, ~you know, ~taking care of the ranch and ~her, ~her husband and her eight children.
And it is a vision of the Western woman as solely the wife and mother. She doesn't need rights. She doesn't need the vote,~ uh,~ because here she is, ~you know, ~living this beautiful life on the Front Range. And this has become a [00:28:00] major image within ~the, ~the kind of far-right conservative movement in the United States.
~Uh, ~and we see it as~ um,~ part and parcel ~of, ~of attempts to take women's rights away in terms of abortion rights, in terms of divorce rights. ~Um, ~And this push among far-right conservatives that women, you know, they don't need to go to college. They don't need~ uh, the, you know, ~the 19th Amendment. ~We-- ~They don't need to vote. They just need to stay home and have babies.
And they are using the pioneer woman, the kind of classic image of the pioneer woman,~ um,~ to bolster that policy.
Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm-hmm. ~This is something we're-- ~This show, ~This show is not very old. It's only a couple months old, but it's ~something that... It's a theme, ~a theme that keeps coming back ~to, ~to the various conversations that I'm having, which is that this idea that,~ um,~ you know,~ by,~ by re,~ um,~ unearthing, ~you know, ~women's history, rediscovering women's history or discovering it, period, and complicating it and nuancing it,~ um,~ it, it gives us movement.[00:29:00]
I think there is this idea that, ~you know, ~women, it's always been that way. There's, there's the idea that women's lives are very static, right? That, that, ~you know, we're, ~we're ~the, ~the wives and the mothers, and it's a very domestic life. ~Um, and, ~and, ~you know, ~there is, I think,~ a,~ a particular political project that is very invested in the idea of things have always been that way for women in particular.
And every time that you complicate that story,~ um, it~ messes with their plans.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Yeah. In the way that Ella Watson was messing with the cattle baron's plans.
Isabelle Roughol: And she paid for it, unfortunately. Hopefully that's not, or that's not the fate for
Megan Kate Nelson: I know.
Isabelle Roughol: the rest of us.
Megan Kate Nelson: ~I mean, ~We are paying for it. Yeah, women in the United States are paying for it,~ um,~ already, even if they don't feel it, like personally themselves. ~Like the, the, um,~ The backtracking on rights has been a shocking development, but it's very real.
Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. ~T- ~absolutely.~ I, um,~ I went to university in Missouri. ~I was, ~I [00:30:00] was a m- I was a Missouri,~ uh,~ woman,~ uh,~ 10, 20, a little bit less than 20 years ago. ~Um, it was a very-- I mean, it was, ~It was always a conservative state, but it's a very different place now. I don't think it would be a safe place for me now in the way that it was 20 years ago.
~Um, ~For one thing, you can't get an abortion in the state anymore.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. You have to cross state lines or, you know,
Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. So,
Megan Kate Nelson: dramatically. Yeah.
What moment in history should we revisit from women's perspective?
---
Isabelle Roughol: ~Um,~ Well, on that note, I think, I think is where we're gonna end our conversation, but ~I, ~I wanna ask you~ uh,~ my traditional, newly traditional final question,~ uh,~ which is, what is a moment in history that you think we should look at again from the perspective of women?
And optionally,~ uh,~ is there someone y-you would recommend that we have on the show to talk about that?
Megan Kate Nelson: Okay. ~Um, ~This may just be because this is my next project, so I'm
Isabelle Roughol: Oh, so I'll have you back then.
Megan Kate Nelson: In it. Uh, well, no, I mean, it could be me or it could be, ~um... I mean, ~there are women doing this work. ~Um, I-- The,~ My next book is telling the story of a Kiowa and Comanche raid on a biracial ranching community in North Texas [00:31:00] during the American Civil War.
And so I'm trying, because one of the major figures who's taken as a captive in that raid is this woman,~ um,~ Eliza Fitzpatrick, who is a cattle queen. ~Um, ~Yes. And,~ um,~ she has a ranch, and I still have to figure out... ~You know, ~I've got some tax records, so I know ~kind of ~her property level. She was not a, you know, huge ranch owner, but she was ~a, ~a ranch owner.
And in trying to do research on her, it has struck me just how little we know about women~ um, in this particular, ~in this particular context that has become so important to imagining Texas and the West, is the kind of... The cowboy has taken over as this icon. And so we don't know anything,~ uh,~ really, a- about women who were in fact ranchers,~ um,~ or who ran cattle, who~ like,~ took them up the Chisholm Trail in the~ like,~ very famous, ~you know, ~[00:32:00] Lonesome Dove type ~of, ~of situation.
~Um, ~But we don't know anything about them. Like the study of?~ Um,~ women and especially Black women, because~ uh,~ Eliza Fitzpatrick, it's unclear her racial status, but her first husband was Black, and her children are biracial.
Isabelle Roughol: Okay. That would've been pretty rare and dangerous for a white woman to marry a Black man, right?
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. And
Isabelle Roughol: for the man.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. And so ~I, ~I would like to know... And again,~ I,~ I think we need to know more about?~ Um,~ Black women and Indigenous women, also Mexican women in this context,~ uh,~ in this particular job,~ um,~ because it has become so mythic and iconic.
Isabelle Roughol: Cause I remember reading about Black cowboys~ um,~ a bit. Again, quite recent scholarship, but I haven't read about women cowboys, cowgirls.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. ~And, ~and especially Black women. ~I mean, if you think of, ~I mean, it was just 2024 when Beyoncé put out Cowboy [00:33:00] Carter.
Isabelle Roughol: Mm-hmm.
Megan Kate Nelson: ~uh,~
Isabelle Roughol: And people were mad.
Megan Kate Nelson: So mad. And part of it is that she is Black. Part of it is that she's a woman. And ~you know, the, ~the dominant image is her sitting on that horse,~ uh,~ with an American flag, a white horse with an American flag in her kind of cowboy gear.
~ ~and
Isabelle Roughol: She knows what she's doing.
Megan Kate Nelson: She does know what she's doing. And she's evoking, ~you know, this, ~this very real history of Black cowboys in Texas. But again, yeah, we don't know anything about Black cowgirls
All right. Well, find out and come back and tell us.
I know. I
Isabelle Roughol: that's the That's the joy ~of, ~of doing women's history, right? We get to, ~you know, ~uncover things that we don't know about yet, and rather than revisit, ~you know, ~the 12th biography of Lincoln or Washington. I mean, no offense, they're fascinating, But, like, let's, let's mix it up.
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes. Yes. ~Let's, ~Let's think about something new. ~And, and who is taking part in it. Um, someone had asked me, I was giving a talk, um, on the Westerners, and somebody asked, um, about, I think it was maybe like cowboy songs, like songwriters, and said like, "Well, what do you, you know, what do you suggest that I do to kind of-- to do exactly as you're saying, to kind of diversify this field?"~
~Because most, most of the scholarship is on white male cowboy singers. And so part of it was, well, let's look at women. Like, are women performing these songs? Are they writing lyrics? Like, what are they doing? But then also, is there this kind of tradition among, in Indigenous communities, in Mexican communities, you know?~
~Like, are, are there musical elements to this culture, which is not something that I've ever studied, um, that can show us that particular phenomenon from a side we haven't considered, from multiple angles we haven't considered before?~
Isabelle Roughol: ~Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There's, there's plenty to uncover~
Megan Kate Nelson: ~Oh, yeah.~
Isabelle Roughol: Thank you so much for this [00:34:00] conversation, Megan. ~It was, ~It was fascinating. ~Uh, well, ~Well past the 45 minutes they
Megan Kate Nelson: Yes.
Isabelle Roughol: are, but that's the sign, that's the sign of a great episode. ~We might, ~We might make
it a two-parter.
Megan Kate Nelson: ~Well, ~I may have to come back because you know they are rebooting "Little House on the Prairie."
Isabelle Roughol: Are they?
Megan Kate Nelson: They are. So we might have to watch and then reconvene.
Isabelle Roughol: Okay, you're on. That sounds great. That sounds great. Thank you so much.
Megan Kate Nelson: Thank you, Isabelle. This was wonderful.
Outro
---
Isabelle Roughol: This was Megan Kate Nelson. Her book is called "The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier". It is available as always in the Broad History book shop, both in the US and the UK.
That is another way that you can support this show and get yourself a great book. I really recommend reading it. Not only have we barely scratched the surface of these four women's lives in the last two episodes, but there are also three men in the book who are just as interesting. We have [00:35:00] Jim Beckwourth, who was a biracial fur trader who also lived among indigenous population and just had a incredible life.
There is Ovando Hollister, who was a gold miner, a soldier, and a newspaperman. You know I'm gonna love that part of the story. And he was a Quaker as well. And we have Little Wolf, a Northern Cheyenne chief who led his people to, you know, a semblance of security and a future in the dwindling space that was left to indigenous people in the American West.
I also really recommend the book because it reads like a novel. Megan is a superb writer, and I could not put it down.
We're gonna stay in the United States. I am preparing a series on the American Revolution, the women in the American Revolution for the semi-quincentennial this summer.
I've mentioned it a few times. So we're gonna take a few weeks off in the feed to leave me space to prepare this sort of multi-episode documentary series, which I'm really excited to be able to deliver, but takes quite a bit of [00:36:00] work. If you would like to support this work and help me buy more time to do it, you can sign up for membership at broadhistory.com/membership, and all members will get binge access to the series when it comes out this summer.
Until then, this has been Broad History, a One Lane Bridge production, researched, produced, edited, and hosted by me, Isabelle Roughol. I'll talk to you soon.