A pin celebrates the centenary of the
birth of suffragist leader Elizabeth
Cady Stanton. The agency of women
in the West gave impetus to the early
women’s suffrage movementGE
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Karen R Jones is reader in history at the University of Kent. Her
new book Calamity: The Many Lives of Calamity Jane will be published
by Ya le Universit y Press in 2020Jane, depicted by Doris Day in a 1953 musi-
cal – became known for flouting female
conventions. A child migrant to Montana
in the mineral rushes of the 1860s, Canary
made a name for herself working in
male-dominated occupations (driving
mules, travelling with the army) and, espe-
cially, for her habit of wearing men’s clothes.
An enigmatic figure who emerged as a
frontier celebrity playing in ‘Wild West’ shows
at the end of the 19th century, Calamity Jane
played on her reputation as a ‘female scout’
with aplomb, regaling journalists and saloon-
goers with tales of how she might have saved
General Custer, her routing of Native Ameri-
can outlaws of the Deadwood Stage, and her
capture of ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok’s killer with a
meat cleaver. A raconteur and storyteller who played fast and
loose with the truth for popular appeal, she ably advertised the
West as a place of grand adventuring and tall tales.
Meanwhile, her lived experience, as an itinerant, butch
woman on the margins of society, who was at home in the com-
pany and performance routines of men, speaks in important
ways to modern understandings of fluid sexual and gender
identity. Calamity Jane, though, attracted notoriety as much as
acceptance: though she garnered attention for her personifica-
tion of the ‘wild and woolly’ eccentricities of pioneer days and
her lively invocation of western spirit, she was also lambasted by
critics for her wayward and ‘unfeminine’ attributes.Different ways of being
‘Passing’ as a man brought various opportunities – work, free-
dom of movement, safe travel – for independent women in an age
of considerable gender restrictions. The West was particularly
appealing as a place to experiment with different ways of being –
politically, legally and socially permissive, with a mobile demo-
graphic and inhabited by plenty of people looking to start afresh.Take One Eyed Charley (Charlotte
Parkhurst). Orphaned in Vermont, she be-
gan dressing as a boy, sought her fortune in
the California Gold Rush in 1849, voted in
the presidential election of 1868, and be-
came a well-known west-coast stagecoach
driver. After “thirty years in disguise” (as
reported in the New York Times), her sex was
discovered only after her death in 1879.
The wearing of masculine costume, then,
could be a pragmatic recourse: a way to find
sustenance or work and claim the fruits of the
frontier. Reflecting on the common practice of
women passing as men to claim mining rights,
the Colorado Central City Weekly Register went
as far to assert that a “mania for females to ap-
pear in ma le attire has struck ”. The decision to
‘pass’ as a man was also deeply political in nature, and making
one’s way ‘in a man’s world’ an important performance of gender
liberation. As female rights campaigner Elizabeth Cady Stanton
proselytised in an 1869 article in The Revolution: “If, by conceal-
ing our sex we find that we, too, can roam up and down the earth
in safety, we shall keep our womanhood a profound secret” until
such a day when “we shall dress as we please”.
For some, adopting a manly disguise facilitated the tracking
down of errant lovers, escape from abusive relationships, or the
successful execution of criminal heists. The latter, on occasion,
backfired – as in the case of Pearl Hart, ‘the girl bandit’, whose
trademark disguise eventually abetted her capture. For others,
meanwhile, the possibility of masculine masquerade allowed
for the expression of a non-binary gender identity or the pursuit
of romantic relationships with women. This important ‘hidden
history’ of gender unorthodoxy is only now being excavated.
Long written out of the historical record, the voices of frontier
women are vividly evoked by a richly textured corpus of diaries
and period accounts, though the voices of non-white, non-literate
and nonconformist figures are still poorly represented – for exam-
ple, women with non-binary gender identities, or who enjoyed
same-sex relationships. Of course, the experiences of indigenous
women during this period are also absent from this narrative.
Horace Greeley had an up-close encounter with these varie-
gated gender dynamics. Riding a stagecoach in 1859, he shared a
carriage with a young prospector headed for the mineral fields,
full of conversation and dreams of fortune. When the argonaut
(the nickname for gold-rush hopefuls) left the train, the conduc-
tor pointed out to Greeley that the plucky young lad was, in fact,
a woman. “Go west, young man” may have been a catchy invoca-
tion, but it overlooked a large chunk of the story.Adopting a manly disguise
facilitated the tracking
down of errant lovers,
escape from abusive
relationships, or enacting
of criminal heists