Woman on the American Frontier

Woman on the American
Frontier

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Title: Woman on the American Frontier
Author: William Worthington Fowler
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WOMAN ON THE AMERICAN FRONTIER.
A Valuable and Authentic History
OF THE HEROISM, ADVENTURES, PRIVATIONS, CAPTIVITIES,
TRIALS, AND NOBLE LIVES AND DEATHS OF THE "PIONEER
MOTHERS OF THE REPUBLIC."
By WILLIAM W. FOWLER, M.A.
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.

PREFACE.
The history of our race is the record mainly of men's achievements, in
war, in statecraft and diplomacy. If mention is made of woman it is of
queens and intriguing beauties who ruled and schemed for power and
riches, and often worked mischief and ruin by their wiles.
The story of woman's work in great migrations has been told only in
lines and passages where it ought instead to fill volumes. Here and
there incidents and anecdotes scattered through a thousand tomes give
us glimpses of the wife, the mother, or the daughter as a heroine or as
an angel of kindness and goodness, but most of her story is a blank
which never will be filled up. And yet it is precisely in her position as a
pioneer and colonizer that her influence is the most potent and her life
story most interesting.
The glory of a nation consists in its migrations and the colonies it

plants as well as in its wars of conquest. The warrior who wins a battle
deserves a laurel no more rightfully than the pioneer who leads his race
into the wilderness and builds there a new empire.
The movement which has carried our people from the Atlantic to the
Pacific Ocean and in the short space of two centuries and a half has
founded the greatest republic which the world ever saw, has already
taken its place in history as one of the grandest achievements of
humanity since the world began. It is a moral as well as a physical
triumph, and forms an epoch in the advance of civilization. In this
grand achievement, in this triumph of physical and moral endurance,
woman must be allowed her share of the honor.
It would be a truism, if we were to say that our Republic would not
have been founded without her aid. We need not enlarge on the
necessary position which she fills in human society every where. We
are to speak of her now as a soldier and laborer, a heroine and
comforter in a peculiar set of dangers and difficulties such as are met
with in our American wilderness. The crossing of a stormy ocean, the
reclamation of the soil from nature, the fighting with savage men are
mere generalities wherein some vague idea may be gained of true
pioneer life. But it is only by following woman in her wanderings and
standing beside her in the forest or in the cabin and by marking in detail
the thousand trials and perils which surround her in such a position that
we can obtain the true picture of the heroine in so many unmentioned
battles.
The recorded sum total of an observation like this would be a noble
history of human effort. It would show us the latent causes from which
have come extraordinary effects. It would teach us how much this
republic owes to its pioneer mothers, and would fill us with gratitude
and self-congratulation--gratitude for their inestimable services to our
country and to mankind, self-congratulation in