Women on the Frontier Unnamed Heroines   Life itself is a battle, and no grander army has ever been set in motion since the world began than that which for more than two centuries and a half has been moving across our continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, fighting its way through countless hardships and dangers, bearing the banner of civilization, and building a new republic in the wilderness. In this army woman has been too often the unnamed heroine. Let us not forget her now. Her patience, her courage, her fortitude, her tact, her presence of mind in trying hours; these are the shining virtues which we have to record. Woman as a pioneer standing beside her rougher, stronger companion—man; first on the voyage across a stormy ocean, from England to America; then at Plymouth, and Jamestown, and all the settlements first planted by Europeans on our Coast; then through the trackless wilderness, onward across the continent, till every river has been forded, and every chain of mountains has been scaled, the Peaceful Ocean has been reached, and fifty thousand cities, towns, and hamlets all over the land have been formed from those aggregations of household life where woman's work has been wrought out to its fullness.   Among all the characteristics of woman there is none more marked than the self-devotion which she displays in what she believes is a righteous cause, or where for her loved ones she sacrifices herself. In India we see her wrapped in flames and burned to ashes with the corpse of her husband. Under the Moslem her highest condition is a life-long incarceration. She patiently places her shoulders under the burden which the aboriginal lord of the American forest lays upon them. Calmly and in silence she submits to the onerous duties imposed upon her by social and religious laws. Throughout the whole heathen world she remained, in the words of an elegant French writer, "anonymous, indifferent to herself, and leaving no trace of her passage upon earth." The benign spirit of Christianity has lifted woman from the position she held under other religious systems and elevated her to a higher sphere. She is brought forward as a teacher; she displays a martyr's courage in the presence of pestilence, or ascends the deck of the mission-ship to take her part in "perils among the heathen." She endures the hardships and faces the dangers of colonial life with a new sense of her responsibility as a wife and mother. In all these capacities, whether teaching, ministering to the sick, or carrying the Gospel to the heathen, she shows the same self-devotion as in "the brave days of old;" it is this quality which peculiarly fits her to be the pioneer's companion in the new world, and by her works in that capacity she must be judged. If all true greatness should be estimated by the good it performs, it is peculiarly desirable that woman's claims to distinction should thus be estimated and awarded. In America her presence has been acknowledged, and her aid faithfully rendered from the beginning. In the era of colonial life; in the cruel wars with the aborigines; in the struggle of the Revolution; in the western march of the army of exploration and settlement, a grateful people must now recognize her services.   Home Educator   In the log-cabin there is perhaps but a single room: there is a bed, a table, blocks of wood for chairs, and a few wretched cooking utensils. Thank God! The life of the pioneer woman is not "cribbed and confined" to this hovel. The forest, the prairie, the mountain-side are free to her as the vital air, and the canopy of heaven is her familiar covering. A life out doors is a necessary part of both the moral and the physical education of her children. Riding through one of the prairies of the far West, some years since, we arrived just at dusk in front of a cabin where a mother was sitting with her four young children and teaching them lessons from the great book of nature. She had shown them the sun as it set in glory, and told them of its rising and of its going down; of the clouds and of the winds, and how God made the grass and trees, and the stars, which came trooping out before their eyes. She taught them, she said, little as yet from books. She had but a Bible, a catechism, an almanac. The Bible was the only Reader in her little school. Already she had whispered in their ears the story of Jesus' life and death, and charged their infant memories with the wise and beautiful teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. What a practical training was that which children had in that outdoor knowledge which had been useful to their mother! The chemistry of common life learned from the processes wrought out by the air and sunshine; astronomy from the great luminaries which are the clocks of the wilderness, and the science of the weather from the phenomena of the sky. There was no "cramming" in that home-school; each item of knowledge was well absorbed and assimilated, for the mother's toils made the intervals long between the lessons. So much the better for the young heart and mind, which grows, swells, and gathers force unlaced and unfettered by scholastic pedantry* and repression...   *unimaginative presentation or show of knowledge ...It  is a faculty of the female mind to penetrate with singular facility into the true character of the young. Every intelligent mother quickly, and by intuition, discerns the native bent of her child and measures his endowments. Evidences of latent talent in any particular direction are scrutinized with maternal shrewdness, and encouraged by applause and caresses. The lonelier the cabin, the more secluded the settlement, the sharper seem to grow the mother's eyes, and the more profound this intuitive faculty. It is the mother who first discerns the native bent and endowments of her child, and she too is the quickest to encourage and draw them out. How many eminent and useful men whose childhood was passed in the outlying settlements have been able to trace their success to a mother's insight into their capabilities...   ...A French traveler in the course of his wanderings through, the western wilds of our country, came to a single cabin in one of the remotest and most inaccessible of our mountain territories. The only inmates in that lonely home were a middle-aged woman and four girls, ranging from eight to fifteen. The father was a miner, who spent a large part of the time in digging or "prospecting" for precious ores, as yet with only moderate success. The matron did the work of both man and woman. The cabin was a museum of household mechanisms and implements. Independent of the clothier, the merchant, and the grocer, their dress was the furry covering of the mountain beasts; their tea was a decoction of herbs; their sugar was boiled from the sap of the maple; the necessaries of life were all of their own culture and manufacture. Yet, thanks to the unwearied toils of the good woman and her little help-meets, there was warmth, comfort, and abundance, for love and labor were inhabitants of those rocks. The girls had already been taught all that their mother knew, and she had sent out to fight their own battle, three sons, strong, brave, and versed in border-lore. "It was my mother," said the matron, "that taught me all that I know, forty years ago in the forests of Michigan, and I am trying to bring up my girls so that they shall know everything that their grandmother taught me. They could read, and write, and cypher. They were little farmers, and gardeners, and seamstresses, and housewives. Nor had their religious and moral training been neglected. The good Book lay well thumbed and dogeared on the kitchen shelf. The sound of the "church-going bell" had never been heard by those children, but every Sunday the mother gathered them about her, and they read together from the New Testament. "It is ten years," said the matron, "since I have seen a church. I remember the last time I visited San Francisco, awaking Sunday morning and hearing the sound of the bell which called us to meeting. It was sweeter than heavenly music to my ears, and I burst into tears." What a suggestion was that, pointing to the unsatisfied craving of that lonely heart for the consolation of the promises uttered by consecrated lips! Right and fitting it is that woman, God-beloved in old Jerusalem, that she, the last at the cross and the first at the sepulcher, though far from the Sabbath that smiles upon eastern homes, should keep alive in the hearts of her children the remembrance of the Saviour and of the Lord's day.   Rove wherever they may, the sons and daughters of the wilderness will find amid the stormiest lives a safe anchorage in the holy keeping of the Christian Sabbath, and in the word of God, for these are the best and surest legacies of a pious mother's precepts. A civilization in which the early lispings of childhood are of God and Christ, cannot become altogether corrupt and degenerate, for woman here is the depository and transmitter of religious faith.   Unconscious Legislator   We have said that woman is the cohesive force which holds society together. This thesis may be proved by facts which show that power in all those relations in which she stands to the other sex. In cultured circles she shapes and controls by the charms of beauty and manner. But in the lonely and rude cabin on the border her plastic power is far greater because her presence and offices are essentials without which development dwindles and progress is palsied. There, if anywhere, should be the vivified germ of the town and the state. There, if anywhere, should be the embryonic conditions which will ripen one day into a mighty civil growth. A wife's devotion, the purity of a sister's and a daughter's love, the smiles and tears and prayers of a mother—these make the sunshine which transforms the waste into a paradise, the wild into a garden, and expands the home by a law of organic growth into a well ordered community. The basis of civil law and social order is the silent compact which binds the household into one sweet purpose of a common interest, a common happiness. Woman is the unconscious legislator of the frontier. The gentle restraints of the home circle, its calm, its rest, its security form the unwritten code of which the statute book is the written exponent. The cross is emblazoned on the rude entablature above the hearth-stone of the cabin, and where woman is, there is the holy rest of the blessed sabbath. She, who is the child's instructor in the truths of revealed religion, is also the father's guide and mentor in the same ways. Faith and hope in these doctrines as cherished by woman are the sheet anchors of our unknit civilizations.   Rustic Hearts   The young married people, who form a considerable part of the pioneer element in our country, are simple in their habits, moderate in their aspirations, and hoard a little old-fashioned romance—unconsciously enough—in the secret nooks of their rustic hearts. They find no fault with their bare loggeries, with a shelter and a handful of furniture, they have enough." If there is the wherewithal to spread a warm supper for the "old man" when he comes in from work, the young wife forgets the long, solitary, wordless day and asks no greater happiness than preparing it by the help of such materials and utensils as would be looked at with utter contempt in the comfortable kitchens of the East. They have youth, hope, health, occupation, and amusement, and when you have added "meat, clothes, and fire," what more has England's queen? We should, however, remember that there is another large class of women who, for various reasons, have left comfortable homes in older communities, and risked their happiness and all that they have in enterprises of pioneer life in the far West. What wonder that they should sadly miss the thousand old familiar means and appliances! Some utensil or implement necessary to their husbandry is wanting or has been lost or broken, and cannot be replaced. Some comfort or luxury to which she has been used from childhood is lacking, and cannot be furnished. The multifarious materials upon which household art can employ itself are reduced to the few absolute essentials. These difficulties are felt more by the woman than the man...                     Blooms in the Wilderness   ...It is this very dearth of so many things that once made her life easy and comfortable which throws her back upon her own resources. Here again is woman's strength. Fertile in expedients, apt in device, an artisan to construct and an artist to embellish, she proceeds to supply what is lacking in her new home. She has a miraculous faculty for creating much out of little, and for transforming the coarse into the beautiful. Barrels are converted into easy chairs and wash-stands, spring beds are manufactured with rows of slender, elastic saplings; a box covered with muslin stuffed with hay serves for a lounge. By the aid of considerable personal exertion, while she adds to the list of useful and necessary articles, she also enlarges the circle of luxuries. An hour or two of extra work now and then enables her to hoard enough to buy a new looking-glass, and to make from time to time small additions to the showy part of the household. After she has transformed the rude cabin into a cozy habitation, she turns her attention to the outside surroundings. Woodbine and wild cucumber are trailed over the doors and windows; little beds of sweet-williams and marigolds line the path to the clearing's edge or across the prairie-sward to the well; and an apple or pear tree is put in here and there. In all these works, either of use or embellishment, if not done by her own hand she is at least the moving spirit. Thus over the rugged and homely features of her lot she throws something of the magic of that ideal of which the poet sings: "Nymph of our soul and brightener of our being She makes the common waters musical— Binds the rude night-winds in a silver thrall, Bids Hybla's thyme and Tempe's violet dwell Round the green marge of her moon-haunted cell." It is the thousand nameless household offices performed by woman that makes the home: it is the home which moulds the character of the children and makes the husband what he is. Who can deny the vast debt of gratitude due from the present generation of Americans to these offices of woman in refining and ameliorating the rude tone of frontier life? It may well be said that the pioneer women of America have made the wilderness bud and blossom like the rose. Under their hands even nature itself, no longer a wild, wayward mother, turns a more benign face upon her children. A land bright with flowers and bursting with fruitage testifies to the labors and influence of those who embellish the homestead and make it attractive to their husbands and children. ~WOMEN ON THE FRONTIER by William Fowler (1878) Click here to purchase May I Recommend: Pioneer Wisdom - my Yahoo group

The Queen Has Spoken
	I love peace and quiet, I hate politics and turmoil. We women are not made for governing, and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine occupations. ~~~~~~~~~~ I am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign; at least it is contre gré that they drive themselves to the work which it entails. ~ Queen Victoria

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