Woman on the American Frontier

by William Worthington Fowler

This is a copy of the original book. In this series, we are bringing old books back into print using our own state-of-the-art techniques. Generally, these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way that the author intended. However, as we are working with old material, so occasionally there may be certain imperfections within the text. We are so pleased to ensure these classics are available again for generations to come.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Womens, American History

566 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1877

About the author

1833-1881

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I am quite aware that this book was written more than a century ago, and that the opinions and human feeling toward other races were quite different at that time, I was still rather bothered by the intense bashing of the Native American in this book. It was also fraught with a great deal of religious mush that took a lot of the enjoyment away from it. Rather than being an unbiased history, it was one man's opinion of the west. The ideas of women during the time this book was written are highlighted by the maleness of the author. These things, of themselves would not have bothered me as much as the various places where history has been re-written and/or whitewashed to emphasize the author's whiteness. Not a great book to learn about the west.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has been fascinating to read. The lives of the women that came before us and forged a way into the wilderness that we now call home is beyond imagination. I always wondered what it would be like to have been a pioneer, and the experiences of the women in this book tell it all. Stories from east coast to west coast, from the 1600's to the 1800's, this book makes you think about what women had to do and endure. It's a very long book, so many stories, I could not read it all at once. Too much to take in.

[Danielle Vandehaar · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would like to give the benefit of the doubt to the racism in the book based on the time in which it was written, but it wrapped up the book with the story of how wonderful of a man Andrew Jackson (7th President of the USA and idea-man and implementer of the Trail Of Tears which mercilessly killed innumerable Native Americans) was and all because he was raised by a good mother. Additionally it referred to escaped slaves as those “who had found in the Canadian woods a safe refuge from servitude.” Talk about glossing over the truth of the matter.

All this aside, my biggest complaint is the premise of this book is supposed to be about the amazing accomplishments of pioneer women. However, every example is set up as a back-handed compliment. It’s not that women accomplished amazing things, it’s that women accomplished these things *in spite* of their womanhood and many of these accomplishments were also framed as no more than their duty to the man in charge of them. The author couldn’t even be bothered to discover many of their names and referred to them as Mrs. N_____ Smith or Mrs. E____ Jones or sometimes just Mrs. G____. Ridiculous.