A Sneak Peek at The Real Women of The Wild West

 May 9, 2022

   Got a few women on my mind today. A certain tennis playing army wife, for starters.

Martha Summerhays playing tennis

at Fort Apache in 1874

   An Apache grandmother who escaped slavery in Baja and walked 1,000 miles without a map to make it back to her home in the White Mountains of Arizona. Here she is crossing the Colorado River and she couldn't swim!

Diltche Crosses The Colorado

And then there are the sinners and the saints. Let's start with the first kind.

Big Nose Kate Could Light Up A Room

Bruja Wandering

Life On The Line

My Favorite Senorita

Cathouse Request: Santina Por Favor

   Of course, not everyone out west was a loose woman. There were the women from my tribe.

Sharlot Hall

   And then there are the women I'm related to.

The Wit & Wisdom of Honkytonk Sue

   And the women I admire.

Zulu Vaquera

And the Zany females with the quick wit.

Hey, Pendejo, My Eyes Are Up Here!

Not to mention the women who stole my heart.

The Girls Who Knocked Me Out

And then there were the ones who got away.

Prisoner Or Mate?

   And finally there is the whole lotta lotta.

Whole Lotta Lotta

   Of course, what does all this mean for the book, or for that matter, the world we live in?

"If I am asked how we should account for the unusual prosperity and growing strength of this nation, I would reply that they must be attributed to the superiority of their women.”

—Alexis de Tocqueville,  Democracy In America, 1835

Postscript

   French sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of broader observations that he codified in “Democracy in America” (1835), one of the most influential books of the 19th century.