April 1, 2021 • 43 mins
Stagecoach Mary was a woman on her own in the world, who did most of her hard living after the age of 40. She lived with nuns in the daytime, drank whiskey with men in saloons at night. She was the first black woman to drive a wagon for the US postal service. Tough as she was, she was also known for the verdant lushness of her well-tended gardens.
Mary was a woman of dualities, and yet, also limitless complexities. Over time, her legend has outshined the facts of her life. This is the life and legend of Mary Fields, the toughest woman to ever call the west her home.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
They say Mary had a standing bet that she could
knock out any man with just one punch. They also
say it was a bet she never lost. She stood
six feet tall, weighed in and around two hundred pounds.
No doubt she was a formidable force, known and respected
on the frontier. She smoked, hand rolled cigars, and drank
whiskey and men's only saloons now at that time, at
the turn of the twentieth century, a saloon in Montana
(00:25):
was a social space where neither women nor black men
were allowed or welcome. But Mary, a black woman, drank there.
She sipped and spilled whiskey with the town mayor and
all the men of power and influence in the town
of Cascade, Montana. The mayor even passed a town ordinance
they gave Mary a legal exception to continue drinking with
the mayor and town fathers. Mary had a few nicknames,
(00:46):
Black Mary, shotgun Mary, stagecoach Mary, but her mama first
named her Mary Fields. As legend goes and photos confirmed,
she preferred men's coats and women's long skirts, and a
good worka day hat, typically a men's one, around the
waist of her long hem skirt. She often wore a gunbelt.
In the holster, she carried a six shooter, but the
ten gage shotgun was reportedly her preferred method of armed persuasion.
(01:12):
They say she once got in a shootout with a
pack of wolves in the snow and dark of night,
where the wolves have the advantage. Mary must outlast the
circling pack. She must be more eager to survive than
they are. She lets her shotguns sing It's smoky song
a few times. Before the night is through, Mary sees,
with dawn's coming light that she's won her showdown with
(01:33):
the wolf pack. She's survived yet another long night in
the wilderness. Okay, one thing about that story with the
wolf pack. We don't know if that happened. We know
very little for certain about long stretches of Maryfield's life. Instead,
we're left with legends, mostly because she left no diary.
(01:53):
She left us no record of her voice, her account
of events the public record is slim. She was rarely
in the news, but when she was, the stories were
typically tall tales of the West at its best. But
more typically later newspaper accounts turned out racist and sexist
caricatures of a woman who thrived in a hard world
and mixed up gender politics of the frontier. Maryfield was
(02:16):
a black woman in the West, doubly troubled by issues
of racism and sexism. Thus her story is more obscured
by time, harder define confirmation and corroboration. We will attempt
to tell her story with respect to both her legend
as well as her truth. She was a woman on
her own in the world, who did most of her
(02:36):
hard living after the age of forty to live with
nuns in the daytime, drank whiskey with men in saloons
at night. She delivered mail for the postal service, sometimes
shouldering the mail bag as she trudged through drifts of
waist deep snow in order to ensure delivery. The male
must get through tough as she was, she was also
known for the verdant lushness of her well tended gardens.
(02:58):
Mary was a woman of walities and yet also limitless complexities.
Over time, her legend has outshined the facts of her life.
We will attempt to untangle her truth from her legend
and myth. This is the life and legend of Mary Fields,
the toughest woman to ever call the West her home.
This is a home It's been a long role for us.
We take an ownership over everything else to us, realty,
(03:22):
we surrounded by our heritage, are fisked up because we're
proud to be Ammerican. I'm Zarin Burnett. Welcome to Black
Cowboys and I heart original podcast. He ask yourself what's
really in the name? Sitting on a Mustang Friday. From
the Place Buffalo Soul to the King of the Frames,
(03:44):
we a love for the Cowboy's Way. Chapter six. Mary Fields,
a k A. Stagecoach Mary. Mary didn't know what day
she was born. She'd been born in slavery. Sometimes, I'm
most likely in eighteen thirty or eighteen thirty two, it said.
Sometimes Mary celebrated her birthday twice in the same year.
(04:07):
This worked out fine, since Mary's birthday was whatever day
she said it was, and whenever she said it was,
the whole town would come out to celebrate. This was
towards the end of her life, when she become a
living legend of the dying wild West. According to an
April third, nineteen thirteen edition of the Great Falls Tribune,
mary Field has become to Cascade with the cradle of Liberty,
(04:27):
has to Philadelphia or Fanuel Hall has to Boston. She's
sort of a landmark. Of course, in her case, the
use of the word landmark has to be figurative. But
Mary Fields is truly a historic character about the business
center of Chestnut Valley. Those who came to the valley
earlier recall that Mary was there when they arrived. Those
who came later became acquainted with Mary. In the latest
generation is an owner since birth. In fact, everybody knows
(04:50):
Mary Fields. The town of Cascade was founded in eighteen
eighty seven, shortly after Mary arrived at the nearby convent.
Cascade quickly rue to be a town of eight thousand,
seven hundred and seventy five people, just in time for
the eighteen nineties Censes. By nineteen hundred, the town's population
had swelled to twenty five thousand, seven hundred, and Mary
(05:11):
happily made herself known to all the newcomers who called
Cascade home. One of her neighbors remembered her quite fondly.
He was young, then he grew up hearing stories about her.
She was locally famous. Then that boy grew up and
became one of the most famous men of the twentieth century.
Gary Cooper was raised in Montana. He grew up in Helena.
(05:32):
He spent his youth on his family's ranch not far
from Cascade. Mary Fields apparently made quite an impression on him.
The All American leading man wrote a truly loving tribute
in Ebony magazine to the woman he knew as Black Mary.
They say Black americuld whip any two men in the territory.
She wore a thirty eight Smith and West and strapped
under her apron, and they swear she couldn't miss a
(05:52):
thing within fifty paces. She was tall, weighing well over
to unter pounds that except for an apron and skirt
woarm it's closed. Black Mary's what they called her, But
her real name was Mary Fields, one of the most
picturesque characters in the history of Montana. In bold brush Strokes,
the Hollywood actor paints the most detailed portrait we have
(06:13):
of her. She was a stage coach driver, the second
female who ever drive a U. S Mail wrote, maybe
because she was a Negro, she was never bothered by injins.
I remember seeing her in Cascade when I was just
a little shaver of nine or so. Gary Cooper also
tells the best story, one that historians would find familiar.
Only he tells it with the benefit of a closeness
(06:33):
of proximity of both time and space. So we'll have
Gary Cooper guide us through this story. Of course, will
correct him whenever he's wrong. Pup, you remember that Gary
Cooper article from Ebony right now? You read that as
a boy, what do you remember about reading that? I
was nine years old. It just moved the lacquers to
tell Savania. But yeah, we subscribed Ebany, so you don't
(06:56):
miss anything. And that was one of the issues. I
saw Gary Cooper. I said, what is Garrett Cooper doing
in Ebony? I thought they were going to reveal that
he was part black. Ebony was good for that, but
then that made me read it. So that's that's when
I described stage coach. Mary, and what do you remember
(07:17):
as a boy? You know here you alre you learned
about this character. She reminded me of the women in
my family, Winen. My family could drive wagons, you know,
they would drive to the field where the people kept working.
They would drive the crops back to the ship. It
wasn't unusual to see the women dressed in the same
guard that we see stage Coach marry well and doing
(07:38):
the same work. So for me it was familiar. It
wasn't any unusual at all, not even the guns man.
You carried pistols in her apron and uh as her
vision deteriorated, she got more pistols. By the time she died.
She couldn't hard it move. I'll hit you eventually, just
(08:05):
keep talking. Gary Cooper is kind of known as like
a paragon of that laconic western white ideal of the cowboy.
But here he was singing praises of mary fields and
he understood that she was just as western as him.
Did that come through to you as a boy? Yeah?
(08:26):
That actually made me like Gary Cooper because after that
time I didn't care much about him. I liked him,
and uh I knew, but in the other movies she
was always kind of bland to me. I like Randolph
Scott her Jeffreys, you know. But then after I read that,
I had to change my view because he was bragging
(08:47):
about her. She could shoot, shoot anybody, and she could
drink alcohol. Only thing she could do bore and drink.
It was holding was a busy year for America. On
July twenty four or thereabouts, Benjamin Bonneville crosses the Rocky
Mountains leading a wagon train west. It's the first wagon
(09:08):
train to make it over the mountain range that divides
the continent. That same year, noted racist and American expansionist
Andrew Jackson wins reelection. Around that same time, Charles Carroll,
the last living man who signed the Declaration of Independence,
drops dead. A month later, a secret society is formed
at Yale University. It calls itself Skull and Bones. Eight
(09:29):
thirty two is an important year in the history of
the fight for equality in America too. It was the
first time a man had publicly advocated for the rights
of women in America. At that time, only men were
supposed to speak publicly in a forum like a public lecture,
so if anyone was going to advocate for the rights
of women in America at that time, it would have
to be a man. It could be said that the
(09:51):
same year Mary Fields was likely born, so was the
concept of feminism, at least in American public discourse. The
idea obviously pre dates man mentioning it in a public
lecture in Maine. The man's name is John Neil. It's
Independence day after a plan speaker dips out, John Neil
is asked to give a speech. Neil has no speech prepared,
(10:12):
so when Neil strides to the pulpit of the Second
Parish Church of Portland, Maine, he gathers up his words
from inside his heart and speaks to the hearts of
his listeners. He makes a reasonable case that their minds
find impossible to argue away. John Neil speaks to the
themes of the holiday, independence, liberty, equality, democracy. Neil gives
(10:34):
his extemporaneous speech, and it ultimately speaks far past America's
celebration of independence, and instead it serves as iron strong
advocacy for the rights of American women. Neil borrows a
familiar line of reasoning to make his case. American women
are being taxed but cannot vote. In other words, it's
a clear case of taxation without representation. The same slogan
(10:56):
the New Englanders, revered ancestors, once shouted to rally themselves
to a fight for the independence of the nation a
generation earlier. Was that not meant for the women of
the same nation. Are their taxes in a different But
then Neil makes another powerful appeal of oratory when he
compares women of America to slaves. The Portland's Evening Advertiser
reports on Neil's plea for the rights of women to
(11:18):
be equal to men. This subject was discussed in a
very amusing and original manner, but we suspect the fair
are well satisfied with their present influence, notwithstanding Mr Neil's
objections that men make all the laws for the other
sex and give them no voice in legislation. She also
split gender politics. She wore men's clothing, she wore women's clothing.
(11:40):
She carried a gun, she smoked hand rolled cigars, she
drank whiskey with men in bars. Do you think that
that allowed her to escape the gender dynamics and the
expectations both for a woman and for a black person
in that time, so that she became an outlier who
was free of society and civilizations expectations. I don't think
it allowed her to escape it, but I don't think
(12:00):
she gave her damn about it, so that allows her
to escape her The fact that she went about her
business anyway, and if you if you agree with her,
that was fine. If you didn't that was fine too.
Just don't don't come around me with that. You knows.
I believe her biggest accomplishment is the thing that is
(12:23):
least understood, that she lived as a free person. Well,
we may celebrate this first man to announce publicly on
American soil that women were human beings too, we must
take a second to step back and check how he
makes his case. Neil compares women in America to slaves.
Slaves always with the slavery, So then what of Mary Fields?
(12:45):
Is she doubly enslaved as a black woman. According to
America's leading feminist at the time, Mary would have been
both a literal slave and a theoretical slave. This is
the world Mary Fields is born into, which makes her
resistance and her demand to be herself all the more
remarkable in the eighteen forties. In eighteen fifties, married Fields
(13:05):
is the property of the Warner family of West Virginia.
The Warners later migrate to Ohio, taking Mary with them.
Although slavery is outlawed in Ohio, Mary remains with the
Warner household as a domestic servant. They all settle in Cleveland.
This is where Mary Field spends her twenties. In eighteen
sixty three, Abraham Lincoln issues his Emancipation Proclamation, thereby freeing
(13:27):
all people in the Confederacy from bondage. Mary Fields may
have been freed by the Warner families soon after their
arrival in Ohio, before the President's proclamation, or perhaps even
though Ohio was a free state, Mary isn't truly freed
by the Warner family until the conclusion of the Civil War.
We don't know. We do know that Mary spent some
(13:48):
time as a chambermaid on a Mississippi riverboat soon after
a free woman, gainfully employed, Yet she eventually returns to
live with the Warners in Ohio, but she doesn't stay long.
One of the Warner children, Mary Warner, is about to
start a new life when Mary Fields returns. She plans
to become a nun and enter a convent, maybe because
of the sin and debauchery she witnessed during her time
(14:10):
working on the riverboats of the Mississippi, or maybe it's
to pursue a higher calling, or perhaps for the longing
of a sisterhood. For whatever reasons of her own, Mary
Fields decides to go with her. Mary Fields is a
middle aged black woman who is single when she is freed.
(14:30):
What do you imagine life was like for a single
black woman who's middle aged in the middle of the
eighteen hundreds. How does she make her way in the world.
There's a double question, how does a single woman make
her way in the world? And then what additional obstacles
all there for single black women? They've had been slaves
and now they're free, so exactly what does that mean?
(14:53):
And then how does how does that relate to the
other women who are already free at the a they
now equal or there are these women somehow have a
higher status. Then Mary feels to her great credit walk
through the world as if those questions had no import
to her. She was She was walking through the world
(15:16):
living her life as a free person. And I think
that's the real value of her life is that it's
what she did everything but people were talking about doing.
When people were theorizing about doing, she was doing so
Nactually everybody talked bad about her, but she was doing it.
(15:39):
And it's interesting how the public perception of her is split.
There's some people who think the legend is like like
like liberty, valence, but the legend is bigger than the
story truth, so picked the legend, And then the others
who think the truth is bigger than the legend, like
Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper, who was from Montana, so he
(16:00):
was raised on the stories. But you could also be
raised on legends. But I send the belief stories over legends.
And uh, I think Mary Fields. What they admired about
her is that she was a free woman, you know,
and it was unless she was in a free black community.
She was just a big freewoman. The Ursuline Sisters is
(16:31):
a cloistered order of nuns, also known as the Company
of st Ursula. The Sisters were some of the earliest
Catholic nuns to establish an order in the New World.
The first were Spanish, next came the French. In sixteen
thirty nine, a small group of nuns and Jesuit priests
set sail from France headed to Canada. That same summer
(16:52):
they arrived in the New World. They quickly established in
Ursuline Convent in what would come to be called Quebec City.
There they began to teach native children. The arrival of
missionaries in the New World is a fraud history. Often,
the religious orders would force the indigenous communities to forsake
their tribal customs, leave behind their native ways, and instead
(17:12):
adopt the lives of quote good Christian men and women
two centuries later. For Mary Fields, employed as the groundskeeper,
the convent means security, stability, and peace of mind. She
also feels like she can be herself, which means she's
known among the nuns to be quote irascible and quote
difficult at times. She's also known to have a temper.
(17:32):
Yet despite her prickliness, Mary Fields and the nuns live
amiably and comfortably in the convent for the next fourteen years.
It's also where she meets one of her dearest friends,
a lifelong ally who looks after Mary the way that
Mary looks after others. Her name is Mother Amadeus Dunn.
On July second, six in the town of Akron, she'd
(17:55):
been born Sarah Teresa Dunn. Her parents were both Irish immigrants.
She was their fifth child. When she was ten years old,
her family moved to California to chase after what was
left of the gold rush, but they left Sarah behind
in Toledo at the Ursulin Convent. Five years later, she
entered the convent as a novitiate, and then at the
(18:15):
age of eighteen, she took her vows and became a nun.
At the age of twenty eight, she becomes Mother Amadeus. Meanwhile,
Mary Fields is forty years old. Mary Fields is certainly
not as popular with all the other nuns at the convent.
During her fourteen years living with them, there are more
than a few complaints about her demeanor. One sister, a
nun named Mary Grace Connolly, later recalls stories told to
(18:38):
her by older nuns of the convent who knew Mary
Fields and warned that quote God help anyone who walked
on the lawn. After Mary had cut in for her labors,
Mary earns fifty dollars a month in room and board.
She has her own room, surrounded by women who would
neither harass nor exploit her. She can read and write
and is a devout believer, and her labors afford her
(18:58):
her own form of freedom. She can come and go
as she pleases. It's a modest life, but it's a
vast improvement of her life as a slave. Her life
is now hers. Sadly, her simple life will once again
be uprooted by fates outside her control. In eighteen eighty four,
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Mother Amadeus leaves the Ursuline Convent and Toledo and heads
west to Montana to start missionary schools. She founds a
school and convent in Miles City, Montana, then another in Ashland, Montana.
In October of eighteen eighty four, Mother Amadeis creates a
school for girls at the St. Peter's Mission outside of
Cascade in any Aventage. Because of Mother Amadeis that Mary
(19:46):
went to Montana. The nuns went to open to school
Badian girls in eighteen eighty four. It St. Peter's Mission
whether Jesuit priest had worked among the black beats in
eighteen sixty six because of the hard living and and
it's cold, I've seen it get four five below zero myself.
Mother Abadez took pneumonia and laid down in a group
log cabin Mary Fields at the store back in Ohio
(20:08):
and lost no time and getting to a bedside of
her friend, she nursed the nun back to health and
remained in Montana and the health the missionaries the hard labor.
This story is often repeated. The idea is that Mary
Fields back in Toledo, heard that her dear friend, Mother
Amadeus was dying in the Montana wilderness, so she bought
a traveling bag and made plans to head west with
(20:28):
a group of nuns and a Jesuit priest who were
headed to Montana to join the mission. And we do
have corroboration in a nun at St. Peter's Mission in
Montana wrote, Mother almadeus scott pneumonia very bad. A Jesuit
sent a dispatch to Toledo. In a short time we
had help Reverend Mother Stanis Loss of Toledo, and Mother
(20:49):
Mary of the Angels Carol and Black Mary Fields from Toledo,
and Mother St. Thomas of Cleveland. But the story of
her acting as the nurse may not exactly be true.
There is some doubt. According to the historian d. Garceaux Hagen,
quote from March through December of eighteen eighty five, the
nuns reported on amadeus Is long convalescence in letters to
(21:10):
the Toledo convent. In all of this correspondence, not one
letter identified Mary Fields as Mother Amadeus's nurse. In short
Fields mythic role as a devoted nurse to the Mother
Superior is not borne out by the evidence end quote. Nonetheless,
at age fifty four, Mary arrives in the West for
(21:31):
good for her room and board. She does housework for
the nuns, and as mentioned is the primary source of
food for the convent. Mary Fields accepts no wages for
her work. Instead, she enjoys the freedom to come and
go as she pleases. In Montanas, she finally finds a
full sense of freedom, even from the slavery of wages.
(21:52):
Now pop Era converted Catholic, much like Mary Fields. As
a Catholic in America, is there any true addition to
social justice that you found particularly Catholic as opposed to
other Christian traditions as a bad a fact? Yes, uh,
but that's before I became a Catholic. When we lived
in Meadville, Consylvania, we rented a house that was owned
(22:14):
by the Catholic Church. It had been a nunnery. Off
the garage there was a like a root seller where
you had the canned goods. And then in the corner
there was like a wooden board that was just standing
up so and my dog shot behind it and disappeared.
So I moved it and signed a flashlight in there,
(22:34):
and you could see that it was a room, So
I crawled in side and stood up. It was a
big room, but the clean clay swept floor, and there
was an air shaft that ran out the side. You
could feel the presence of people. I mean you could
actually feel it. So so I told my mother about it.
She said, well, go ask father Assisi at the church.
(22:55):
So I went over and asked him, and he said, well,
you've discovered our secret. We were active in the underground.
We wrote the house was safe because men were not
allowed to go into a nunner ry. So we've had
the runaways there because the slave chasers and the men
could not go in there to look for So they say,
everybody who got there gotta got a way safely to Canada.
(23:18):
So that's what That's when I got respect for the
Catholic Church. You've never told me that story. I love them.
Oh I'm sorry. Yeah, it was great though you could
steal history. I mean you could actually feel it, and
the people you could you could feel their breath, the
people who have been in there, I mean the sweat.
It was a wonderful, wonderful experience, and they all got away.
(23:38):
Maryfield throws herself into the cultivating life. She keeps chickens,
She hunts regularly. She gardens both food and abundant flowers.
Her garden rivals Eden for its variety. The Sisters and
Meryfield fall into a rhythm of life in the wide open,
big sky wilderness of Montana. Together, the women labor to
build something permanent that eight years, the Ursuline Sisters Stone
(24:02):
comb But was completed, and Mary and the sisters moved
from the Love Cabins which had been their home. As
the convent in girls School grows more and more successful
and solvent, Mary Fields becomes an integral member. Despite her
prickly personality. It helps that Mother Amadeus has her back.
The Mother Superior doesn't let anyone mistreat her friend. Her
(24:23):
loyalty is repaid in kind by Mary. She labor is
possibly hardest of them all to make the convent a success,
to ensure the children are fed and educated, and that
the nuns never suffer from the privations of a fickle
wilderness where one bad season can mean starvation outside the convent.
Life in Montana in the late eighteen eighties is tough.
(24:45):
To ensure the convent is well supplied, Mary drives the
mule team wagon into town and back again, typically alone
except for her trustee Shotgun. Mary often spent the prairie
nights fright her way through storms and brave and great dangers.
One night, a pack of wolves frightened her teeth. The
horses upset the load, and she stayed guard all night
(25:06):
over the precious cargo the nuns needed just to exist.
A blizzard overtook her on one trip, the road was
lost from sight. Mary walked back and forth all through
the night to keep from freezing to death. Despite the
dangers outside the convent, it was Mary's temper that ultimately
upended her welcome. Mary might have lived all her days
(25:27):
working at the mission had it not been for her
terrible temper and her lack of fear of man or beast.
She was forever fighting with the hired men, and on
one occasion thought a good deal with one. I don't
remember how it turns out, but Mary was still around
when it was over. Historian Darce Hagen agrees with Gary Cooper.
She writes, quote, Mary Fields probably would have lived and
(25:50):
worked at St. Peter's until she died had it not
been for Bishop Brondel in Great Falls. When the bishop
heard rumors of fields uncouth behavior, he wanted her off
the premises. Fields drank alcohol and sometimes cursed trans aggressions
of acceptable female behavior on church grounds. End quote. The
bishop finally has a good reason to demand Mary Field
(26:11):
to be removed from the convent. When Mary Fields gets
into the aforementioned gunfight on September, a white man, a
hired hand named John Mosney, gets into a tussle with
the ever prickly caretaker. According to the contemporaneous accounts quote
John Mosney and Mary Fields touched rifles at each other,
but there was no fire. A standoff at a convent.
(26:33):
That's how Mary rolled guns fired or not. Either way,
Bishop Brondle is pissed and he wants Mary gone from
the convent. The bishop was bombarded with complaints about her
and rope that the sisters ordered them to send the
black woman away. It's a heartbreaking thing for all the
work where he had done in the ten years she's spent,
the nun service she in which seated damn. The nuns
(26:56):
all felt married a liftown home with them, but the
bishop's orders said to be ob One of the nuns
notes how the bishop's order to evict Mary Fields from
the convent troubles the heart of her friend. It is
hard for mother to dismiss this faithful servant in her
old age. But the bishop's orders are peremptory, the darkness
of obedience will be light in the next world. Another
(27:18):
nun frames the dire, albeit helpless situation, noting that she
had been overbearing and troublesome, but it was our intention
to keep her till death. Mary Fields is sixty two
years old. She's also now an unemployed black woman in Montana.
In eight after that Gary Cooper article came out, was
(27:46):
she's somebody that had her resurgence in black thought and
in in the culture. Is that she's somebody that people
talked about, the kids talk about this Mary Fields. After that,
any article came out, not that I recall, there was
some discussion on some black colleges, some of the history departments,
sociology departments, but they weren't sure how they felt about it.
(28:07):
Just nineteen fifty nine, nineteen sixty, we're going into the
new presidential administration, the optimism of the sixties, the civil
rights movement is having a really hard time, So there
was less intellectual curiosity. It was more of the act
of combat. Do you think that it was a missed
opportunity that she would have been a good civil rights figure? Oh?
(28:30):
I thought she. I think she has been a great
historical figure and and therefore for a useful as a
super rights figure. Because the great thing about her is
that everything she did she did by herself as a
free person. So she was a perfect example of what
black folks you do if you leave them the hell alone.
(28:54):
They don't they don't go and destroy it. Yet they
go and live a life. You know, they just go
off and live a life. Now. So all of the
conspiracies that was spun by the by the clan, and
all those about what we would do if we were
set free, she contradicted every single day. So I think
her story would be great as a historical checkpoint. Gary
(29:21):
Cooper would certainly agree. After Mary left the convent, she
went and lived that life in nearby Cascade, relatively new
town of just a few thousand people. Mother Emmadisk set
her up in the restaurant business and Cascade. For all
her toughness, Mary was too good hearted and carried too
much credit on her books. She would feed cheap hers
(29:41):
during the winter and they would promise to pay when
they worked in the summer. Mary went broke twice, and
Mother Amadeus gave her another start each time. In Cascade,
Mary Fields is the only black resident. She fast becomes
the subject of local talk. She's criticized for wearing men's clothes,
she's gossiped about owning a gun, and she's ostracized for
(30:02):
drinking whiskey, especially in a saloon with the men of town.
But Mary is such a good company the men of
Cascade make a special exception for her. They say Mary
had a fondness for hard liquor that was matched only
by her capacity to put it away. And it's a
historical fact that one of cascades earliest mayor's DW. Monroe,
gave special permission to let Mary drink in the saloons
(30:24):
with men, the privilege, if you want to call it.
To modern listeners, this may sound rather fun and quaint,
but it's far more than that. It flies in the
face of both rampant sexism and unremitting racism. Mary Field's
demands respect, and she gets it. This is not normally
the case for women in the West or black men.
It's unheard of for a black woman, and it occurs
(30:47):
against a backdrop of unimaginable racial violence. According to the
Leavenworth Standard, much displeasure was caused by wedding at Glendive, Montana.
Because the resident did not approve of the match Miss
Emma Wall, the writer a colored girl, and the groom
is a white man named John Or. The people tired
the groom and whitewashed the bride, rode them on rails
(31:07):
and forced them to leave town. Thus, it's important that
Mary Fields has the backing and the blessing of the
town fathers of Cascade. It not only allows her to
drink in the saloon, it likely protects her from racist
harassment and possible violence. But she also still needs steady employment.
It's her old friend Mother i'm a Dais, who once
again steps in to aid Mary Fields with life as
(31:30):
a single woman on the frontier. Mother em Days went
to the government, doubtless the bishop never knew about it,
and asked that Mary be given the mail route. They
gave Mary the route between Cascade and the mission itself,
and each day, never missing a one, she made her
triumphant entry into the mission seated on top of the
mail coach, dressed in a man's hat and coat and
smoked in a huge cigar. Thanks to the help of
(31:53):
Mother i'm Adis, Fields is awarded a four year quote
star route contract from the US Postal Service. She is
the second woman in the United States and the first
black woman to drive a wagon for the Postal Service.
Around five years later, she renews her contract to continue
working for the post Office as a wagon driver. This
is when she earns her nickname stagecoach Mary, and she
(32:14):
earns it for good reason. Mary could drive. She could
use a four horse lash with the dexterity that made
a man green with envy. She could also use the
six shooter with equal accuracy. There was a time when
Mary's friends claimed if a fly lighted on the ear
of one of the leaders of her four she could
use her choice of either shooting it off or picking
it off for her whip end, and that if she
was a mind to, she could break the fli's hind
(32:34):
leg with her whiplash, then shoot its eye out with
a revolver. This accuracy with whip and shooting iron, however,
is not a matter of Mary's boast. She was always
modest about her claims as to either line, but it
is a well known fact that she had an ability
in both. From three Mary Fields is pure hell on
a wagon trail. She drives her mule team like a
(32:56):
chariot from ancient times, and she's late for the war.
For seven or so years, she is a free woman,
one riding high on the seat of her wagon, tearing
through the wilderness of America, well at home beneath the
ceiling of that big blue sky that stretches over Montana.
One century is about to give way to a new one.
The twentieth century dawns with a limitless sense of promise
(33:18):
and newness. It will later be called the American Century.
At the beginning of the American Century, Mary Fields is
one of America's freest citizens. But she's not necessarily safe,
as unchecked racism continues to spread across the West with
the coming of the Easterners and their ideas of civilization.
In nineteen o four, down in Humphrey, Arkansas, a post
(33:41):
office is blown up. The reason is simple. The post
office dared to hire its second black postmaster to run
the station. Noted black educator Booker T. Washington is said
to have remarked in nineteen o six, in many parts
of the South, the white people would object seriously to
colored people handing them a letta through the post office
when but would make no objection to a colored mail
(34:03):
carryer handing them a letter at their door. Mary Fields
life serves as testimony that his statement also held true
in the West, and as life insists, things can't remain
the same for too long. Her friend and protector, mother Amadeus,
is sent away to Alaska to start a new mission
up in that even more remote wilderness. Mary Fields must
(34:26):
stay behind in Montana. In nineteen o three, Mary made
her home in Cascade. Her stagecoach days were over, and
her lifelong friend, mother Amadeus, had been sent to Alaska
to start new missions. Mary began taking in Washington soon
turned her home into a laundry and and though she
was about seventy then, one day she was having a
drink in the saloon when a man passed, whom she
(34:49):
said owed her two dollars for laundry phone him up
the street. She grabbed him by the shirt collar, knocked
him down with the fist, then returned to the saloon
and announced his loan drip bill is paid. A local
newspaper reports on Mary's later years, writing that she does
laundry work as a means of gaining a part of
(35:09):
her living, and does that as she drove a coach
and four very well. In the summertime, Mary shows that
esthetic nature still lives for she cultivates a better flowers,
and her favorite flower is the pansy. No one is
prettier pansy is than Marry Fields, and no one is
happier in having the flowers than she. Her neighbors get
much pleasure from Mary's flowers, and not a few of
them have been delighted to be presented with a pretty
(35:31):
bouquet with Mary's good wishes to boot Stagecoach Mary the
toughest woman in the West who also loves pansies. Her
truth is far more complex than we can ever know
or her neighbors understood. There's some peculiarities in some of
the coverage. Sometimes people will make you an exception in
(35:54):
order for them to be able to lack you. So
then you so you're not just a regular black person.
You're stage Coach Marriage, the baddest person anybody ever saw.
So I can be a friend with you, but that
doesn't require me to be friend with any other black people.
I'm always suspicious of that in a situation like this,
(36:15):
not everybody, but you can hear it in some of
the descriptions or they're trying to make it any accession,
even though in the context of her life it's not exceptional.
That's just the life that she lived. If you declare
only like black people and then stage coach Mary comes
in down and you like her, you gotta make her
different as opposed to changing your position. This gets back
(36:38):
to the issue of perspective and perception when it comes
to Mary's life story, and it depends on who tells it.
Said that that's why it's important to have this conversation,
because then for all the representations, this would be account
of balance. When she's an older woman, barely scal challenge
(37:00):
to anyone anymore. Mary Field becomes an unofficial mascot for
the local baseball team. Forever game she would fix a
buttonhole bouquet for the members of each team, the five
large bouquase for each of those who made home runs.
The flowers were from her own gardens. Yet she would
punch any man in the mouth who talked against her team.
(37:21):
Mary Field's position in the town of Cascade was complex,
to say the least. In nineteen twelve or two room
cabin burns down, the town of Cascade comes out to
rebuild it. When she can no longer drive her wagon
and work as the mail carrier for the town. The
new Cascade Hotel offers Mary free hot meals, and finally,
in nineteen fourteen, when Mary is next to death, the
(37:41):
mayor of Cascade, the same one who gave her special
dispensation to drink in the saloon with the men of town,
Mayor D. W. Monroe, he moves Mary into a hospital
at Great Falls. She's attended to in her final days.
As a historian, D. Garso Haagen notes, quote, the implication
of these narratives is that race was never in an issue,
that the people of Cascade transcended their color prejudice and
(38:04):
welcomed Mary Fields into their midst. In this way, Cascade
residents created a collective memory about their town as a
sheltering place. But the myth of the community embraces too
simple for the evidence suggest a profoundly ambivalent relationship between
Fields and her white contemporaries in Cascade. That's the historian's opinion.
(38:24):
But it's more complex than that, and perhaps also simpler too.
Gary Cooper was there. He may have been a boy
just nine years old, but he was there. He knew
Mary Fields, and his recollections of her, and the town
is slightly different. Mary was one of the Melton Pot pioneers, Black, white,
and yellow, came from Tennessee and places beyond the seas
(38:46):
to help conquer and tame the old Wild West. But
she died the town Mordar passed, and they buried her
at the foot of the mountains by the winding road
that leads to the Old Mission. There's an interesting aspect
of this that Mary Fields has both a racial legend
(39:07):
as a black woman in the West, but then also
as you and I would talk about an American legend
as a free person, is it possible to have those
conversations at the same time or do you kind of
have to treat her as too, not two different people,
but to see her through two different lenses because of
the duality. Absolutely are both. You can be the American legend,
(39:28):
which is the totality of your existence and for your
own people. Like Frank Sinatra was the absolute artistic hero
of Italian people, and he was an absolute artistical hero
of America. And they both had a different claim, and
they both had a legitimate claim and neither one contradict together.
(39:49):
And it's the same way with Mary. The things that
made black people proud of her were things that make
black people proud in the face of oppression. The things
that may Americans proud of her were the things that
make you that you do in the face of thrust
to your freedom. You know that you have to live
a free, principal life and do it without regard to
(40:13):
consequences for you that your principles do not change. And
that's and she was that way as an American and
as a Black person. She took no ship from white people,
so so we could all never When she's buried, a
(40:36):
priest from St. Peter's Mission performs the funeral service. The
owner of the New Cascade Hotel is one of her
paul bearers. Flowers, which were something Mary Fields was known
for growing and forgiving as gifts to those she liked
or wanted to celebrate, are in abundance. At her funeral,
Her final earthly moment is lavished with blossoms and bright colors.
In death, the town pays the respects to the woman
(40:58):
they've known as Stagecoach Mary. The West was a place
of freedom, a beacon that called to those who longed
to be free of forced servitude, and the whip free
from the civilization that once called them a slave. Mary
Fields went to Montana for reasons of her own, whether
to help an old friend back to health, or because
she wished to go west and find a new life
(41:20):
for herself. She did it her way. There, in a
town where she was the only black woman, she managed
to carve out a life for herself where she was
free to be herself how she wanted to be. She
drank with men and saloons. She got in fist fights
when she felt it was called for. She cared for
others lovingly, and they cared for her in return. And
(41:42):
when she was gone, she left a large hole in
the heart of her community. But she also left behind
a legend as big as the Montana s Guy. Mary
Fields was a survivor, a self directed woman, a true
legend of the West. Thanks for listening. Black Cowboys is
(42:03):
written by Mezaron Burnett, produced and edited by Ryan Burdock
and Michelle Lands. Our theme song is written and performed
by Demeanor. Sound design and music by Jeremy Thal. Additional
music by Alvin young Blood Heart, Greg Chidzick, and Nathan Cosey.
Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson, Marissa Brown, Jocelyn
Sears and Aaron Blakemore performances by j Charlesworth, Elizabeth Dutton
(42:28):
and Ryan Burdock. Show logo by Lucy Quintindia. Executive producers
are Jason English and Man. Guest part Ticketer Special Thanks
as always to my pop. Yeah this is a home.
It's been a long role for us. We ticket ownership
over everything else to us realty. We surprinded by a
heritage our fistop because we're proud to be Ammerican. Ask
(43:01):
yourself was really in the name? Sitting on the mup
stand right in through the Plains, Buffalo Soldier, the King
of the Range. We in love with the childboy Way,
They say Mary had a standing bet that she could
knock out any man with just one punch. They also
say it was a bet she never lost. She stood
six feet tall, weighed in and around two hundred pounds.
No doubt she was a formidable force, known and respected
on the frontier. She smoked, hand rolled cigars, and drank
whiskey and men's only saloons now at that time, at
the turn of the twentieth century, a saloon in Montana
(00:25):
was a social space where neither women nor black men
were allowed or welcome. But Mary, a black woman, drank there.
She sipped and spilled whiskey with the town mayor and
all the men of power and influence in the town
of Cascade, Montana. The mayor even passed a town ordinance
they gave Mary a legal exception to continue drinking with
the mayor and town fathers. Mary had a few nicknames,
(00:46):
Black Mary, shotgun Mary, stagecoach Mary, but her mama first
named her Mary Fields. As legend goes and photos confirmed,
she preferred men's coats and women's long skirts, and a
good worka day hat, typically a men's one, around the
waist of her long hem skirt. She often wore a gunbelt.
In the holster, she carried a six shooter, but the
ten gage shotgun was reportedly her preferred method of armed persuasion.
(01:12):
They say she once got in a shootout with a
pack of wolves in the snow and dark of night,
where the wolves have the advantage. Mary must outlast the
circling pack. She must be more eager to survive than
they are. She lets her shotguns sing It's smoky song
a few times. Before the night is through, Mary sees,
with dawn's coming light that she's won her showdown with
(01:33):
the wolf pack. She's survived yet another long night in
the wilderness. Okay, one thing about that story with the
wolf pack. We don't know if that happened. We know
very little for certain about long stretches of Maryfield's life. Instead,
we're left with legends, mostly because she left no diary.
(01:53):
She left us no record of her voice, her account
of events the public record is slim. She was rarely
in the news, but when she was, the stories were
typically tall tales of the West at its best. But
more typically later newspaper accounts turned out racist and sexist
caricatures of a woman who thrived in a hard world
and mixed up gender politics of the frontier. Maryfield was
(02:16):
a black woman in the West, doubly troubled by issues
of racism and sexism. Thus her story is more obscured
by time, harder define confirmation and corroboration. We will attempt
to tell her story with respect to both her legend
as well as her truth. She was a woman on
her own in the world, who did most of her
(02:36):
hard living after the age of forty to live with
nuns in the daytime, drank whiskey with men in saloons
at night. She delivered mail for the postal service, sometimes
shouldering the mail bag as she trudged through drifts of
waist deep snow in order to ensure delivery. The male
must get through tough as she was, she was also
known for the verdant lushness of her well tended gardens.
(02:58):
Mary was a woman of walities and yet also limitless complexities.
Over time, her legend has outshined the facts of her life.
We will attempt to untangle her truth from her legend
and myth. This is the life and legend of Mary Fields,
the toughest woman to ever call the West her home.
This is a home It's been a long role for us.
We take an ownership over everything else to us, realty,
(03:22):
we surrounded by our heritage, are fisked up because we're
proud to be Ammerican. I'm Zarin Burnett. Welcome to Black
Cowboys and I heart original podcast. He ask yourself what's
really in the name? Sitting on a Mustang Friday. From
the Place Buffalo Soul to the King of the Frames,
(03:44):
we a love for the Cowboy's Way. Chapter six. Mary Fields,
a k A. Stagecoach Mary. Mary didn't know what day
she was born. She'd been born in slavery. Sometimes, I'm
most likely in eighteen thirty or eighteen thirty two, it said.
Sometimes Mary celebrated her birthday twice in the same year.
(04:07):
This worked out fine, since Mary's birthday was whatever day
she said it was, and whenever she said it was,
the whole town would come out to celebrate. This was
towards the end of her life, when she become a
living legend of the dying wild West. According to an
April third, nineteen thirteen edition of the Great Falls Tribune,
mary Field has become to Cascade with the cradle of Liberty,
(04:27):
has to Philadelphia or Fanuel Hall has to Boston. She's
sort of a landmark. Of course, in her case, the
use of the word landmark has to be figurative. But
Mary Fields is truly a historic character about the business
center of Chestnut Valley. Those who came to the valley
earlier recall that Mary was there when they arrived. Those
who came later became acquainted with Mary. In the latest
generation is an owner since birth. In fact, everybody knows
(04:50):
Mary Fields. The town of Cascade was founded in eighteen
eighty seven, shortly after Mary arrived at the nearby convent.
Cascade quickly rue to be a town of eight thousand,
seven hundred and seventy five people, just in time for
the eighteen nineties Censes. By nineteen hundred, the town's population
had swelled to twenty five thousand, seven hundred, and Mary
(05:11):
happily made herself known to all the newcomers who called
Cascade home. One of her neighbors remembered her quite fondly.
He was young, then he grew up hearing stories about her.
She was locally famous. Then that boy grew up and
became one of the most famous men of the twentieth century.
Gary Cooper was raised in Montana. He grew up in Helena.
(05:32):
He spent his youth on his family's ranch not far
from Cascade. Mary Fields apparently made quite an impression on him.
The All American leading man wrote a truly loving tribute
in Ebony magazine to the woman he knew as Black Mary.
They say Black americuld whip any two men in the territory.
She wore a thirty eight Smith and West and strapped
under her apron, and they swear she couldn't miss a
(05:52):
thing within fifty paces. She was tall, weighing well over
to unter pounds that except for an apron and skirt
woarm it's closed. Black Mary's what they called her, But
her real name was Mary Fields, one of the most
picturesque characters in the history of Montana. In bold brush Strokes,
the Hollywood actor paints the most detailed portrait we have
(06:13):
of her. She was a stage coach driver, the second
female who ever drive a U. S Mail wrote, maybe
because she was a Negro, she was never bothered by injins.
I remember seeing her in Cascade when I was just
a little shaver of nine or so. Gary Cooper also
tells the best story, one that historians would find familiar.
Only he tells it with the benefit of a closeness
(06:33):
of proximity of both time and space. So we'll have
Gary Cooper guide us through this story. Of course, will
correct him whenever he's wrong. Pup, you remember that Gary
Cooper article from Ebony right now? You read that as
a boy, what do you remember about reading that? I
was nine years old. It just moved the lacquers to
tell Savania. But yeah, we subscribed Ebany, so you don't
(06:56):
miss anything. And that was one of the issues. I
saw Gary Cooper. I said, what is Garrett Cooper doing
in Ebony? I thought they were going to reveal that
he was part black. Ebony was good for that, but
then that made me read it. So that's that's when
I described stage coach. Mary, and what do you remember
(07:17):
as a boy? You know here you alre you learned
about this character. She reminded me of the women in
my family, Winen. My family could drive wagons, you know,
they would drive to the field where the people kept working.
They would drive the crops back to the ship. It
wasn't unusual to see the women dressed in the same
guard that we see stage Coach marry well and doing
(07:38):
the same work. So for me it was familiar. It
wasn't any unusual at all, not even the guns man.
You carried pistols in her apron and uh as her
vision deteriorated, she got more pistols. By the time she died.
She couldn't hard it move. I'll hit you eventually, just
(08:05):
keep talking. Gary Cooper is kind of known as like
a paragon of that laconic western white ideal of the cowboy.
But here he was singing praises of mary fields and
he understood that she was just as western as him.
Did that come through to you as a boy? Yeah?
(08:26):
That actually made me like Gary Cooper because after that
time I didn't care much about him. I liked him,
and uh I knew, but in the other movies she
was always kind of bland to me. I like Randolph
Scott her Jeffreys, you know. But then after I read that,
I had to change my view because he was bragging
(08:47):
about her. She could shoot, shoot anybody, and she could
drink alcohol. Only thing she could do bore and drink.
It was holding was a busy year for America. On
July twenty four or thereabouts, Benjamin Bonneville crosses the Rocky
Mountains leading a wagon train west. It's the first wagon
(09:08):
train to make it over the mountain range that divides
the continent. That same year, noted racist and American expansionist
Andrew Jackson wins reelection. Around that same time, Charles Carroll,
the last living man who signed the Declaration of Independence,
drops dead. A month later, a secret society is formed
at Yale University. It calls itself Skull and Bones. Eight
(09:29):
thirty two is an important year in the history of
the fight for equality in America too. It was the
first time a man had publicly advocated for the rights
of women in America. At that time, only men were
supposed to speak publicly in a forum like a public lecture,
so if anyone was going to advocate for the rights
of women in America at that time, it would have
to be a man. It could be said that the
(09:51):
same year Mary Fields was likely born, so was the
concept of feminism, at least in American public discourse. The
idea obviously pre dates man mentioning it in a public
lecture in Maine. The man's name is John Neil. It's
Independence day after a plan speaker dips out, John Neil
is asked to give a speech. Neil has no speech prepared,
(10:12):
so when Neil strides to the pulpit of the Second
Parish Church of Portland, Maine, he gathers up his words
from inside his heart and speaks to the hearts of
his listeners. He makes a reasonable case that their minds
find impossible to argue away. John Neil speaks to the
themes of the holiday, independence, liberty, equality, democracy. Neil gives
(10:34):
his extemporaneous speech, and it ultimately speaks far past America's
celebration of independence, and instead it serves as iron strong
advocacy for the rights of American women. Neil borrows a
familiar line of reasoning to make his case. American women
are being taxed but cannot vote. In other words, it's
a clear case of taxation without representation. The same slogan
(10:56):
the New Englanders, revered ancestors, once shouted to rally themselves
to a fight for the independence of the nation a
generation earlier. Was that not meant for the women of
the same nation. Are their taxes in a different But
then Neil makes another powerful appeal of oratory when he
compares women of America to slaves. The Portland's Evening Advertiser
reports on Neil's plea for the rights of women to
(11:18):
be equal to men. This subject was discussed in a
very amusing and original manner, but we suspect the fair
are well satisfied with their present influence, notwithstanding Mr Neil's
objections that men make all the laws for the other
sex and give them no voice in legislation. She also
split gender politics. She wore men's clothing, she wore women's clothing.
(11:40):
She carried a gun, she smoked hand rolled cigars, she
drank whiskey with men in bars. Do you think that
that allowed her to escape the gender dynamics and the
expectations both for a woman and for a black person
in that time, so that she became an outlier who
was free of society and civilizations expectations. I don't think
it allowed her to escape it, but I don't think
(12:00):
she gave her damn about it, so that allows her
to escape her The fact that she went about her
business anyway, and if you if you agree with her,
that was fine. If you didn't that was fine too.
Just don't don't come around me with that. You knows.
I believe her biggest accomplishment is the thing that is
(12:23):
least understood, that she lived as a free person. Well,
we may celebrate this first man to announce publicly on
American soil that women were human beings too, we must
take a second to step back and check how he
makes his case. Neil compares women in America to slaves.
Slaves always with the slavery, So then what of Mary Fields?
(12:45):
Is she doubly enslaved as a black woman. According to
America's leading feminist at the time, Mary would have been
both a literal slave and a theoretical slave. This is
the world Mary Fields is born into, which makes her
resistance and her demand to be herself all the more
remarkable in the eighteen forties. In eighteen fifties, married Fields
(13:05):
is the property of the Warner family of West Virginia.
The Warners later migrate to Ohio, taking Mary with them.
Although slavery is outlawed in Ohio, Mary remains with the
Warner household as a domestic servant. They all settle in Cleveland.
This is where Mary Field spends her twenties. In eighteen
sixty three, Abraham Lincoln issues his Emancipation Proclamation, thereby freeing
(13:27):
all people in the Confederacy from bondage. Mary Fields may
have been freed by the Warner families soon after their
arrival in Ohio, before the President's proclamation, or perhaps even
though Ohio was a free state, Mary isn't truly freed
by the Warner family until the conclusion of the Civil War.
We don't know. We do know that Mary spent some
(13:48):
time as a chambermaid on a Mississippi riverboat soon after
a free woman, gainfully employed, Yet she eventually returns to
live with the Warners in Ohio, but she doesn't stay long.
One of the Warner children, Mary Warner, is about to
start a new life when Mary Fields returns. She plans
to become a nun and enter a convent, maybe because
of the sin and debauchery she witnessed during her time
(14:10):
working on the riverboats of the Mississippi, or maybe it's
to pursue a higher calling, or perhaps for the longing
of a sisterhood. For whatever reasons of her own, Mary
Fields decides to go with her. Mary Fields is a
middle aged black woman who is single when she is freed.
(14:30):
What do you imagine life was like for a single
black woman who's middle aged in the middle of the
eighteen hundreds. How does she make her way in the world.
There's a double question, how does a single woman make
her way in the world? And then what additional obstacles
all there for single black women? They've had been slaves
and now they're free, so exactly what does that mean?
(14:53):
And then how does how does that relate to the
other women who are already free at the a they
now equal or there are these women somehow have a
higher status. Then Mary feels to her great credit walk
through the world as if those questions had no import
to her. She was She was walking through the world
(15:16):
living her life as a free person. And I think
that's the real value of her life is that it's
what she did everything but people were talking about doing.
When people were theorizing about doing, she was doing so
Nactually everybody talked bad about her, but she was doing it.
(15:39):
And it's interesting how the public perception of her is split.
There's some people who think the legend is like like
like liberty, valence, but the legend is bigger than the
story truth, so picked the legend, And then the others
who think the truth is bigger than the legend, like
Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper, who was from Montana, so he
(16:00):
was raised on the stories. But you could also be
raised on legends. But I send the belief stories over legends.
And uh, I think Mary Fields. What they admired about
her is that she was a free woman, you know,
and it was unless she was in a free black community.
She was just a big freewoman. The Ursuline Sisters is
(16:31):
a cloistered order of nuns, also known as the Company
of st Ursula. The Sisters were some of the earliest
Catholic nuns to establish an order in the New World.
The first were Spanish, next came the French. In sixteen
thirty nine, a small group of nuns and Jesuit priests
set sail from France headed to Canada. That same summer
(16:52):
they arrived in the New World. They quickly established in
Ursuline Convent in what would come to be called Quebec City.
There they began to teach native children. The arrival of
missionaries in the New World is a fraud history. Often,
the religious orders would force the indigenous communities to forsake
their tribal customs, leave behind their native ways, and instead
(17:12):
adopt the lives of quote good Christian men and women
two centuries later. For Mary Fields, employed as the groundskeeper,
the convent means security, stability, and peace of mind. She
also feels like she can be herself, which means she's
known among the nuns to be quote irascible and quote
difficult at times. She's also known to have a temper.
(17:32):
Yet despite her prickliness, Mary Fields and the nuns live
amiably and comfortably in the convent for the next fourteen years.
It's also where she meets one of her dearest friends,
a lifelong ally who looks after Mary the way that
Mary looks after others. Her name is Mother Amadeus Dunn.
On July second, six in the town of Akron, she'd
(17:55):
been born Sarah Teresa Dunn. Her parents were both Irish immigrants.
She was their fifth child. When she was ten years old,
her family moved to California to chase after what was
left of the gold rush, but they left Sarah behind
in Toledo at the Ursulin Convent. Five years later, she
entered the convent as a novitiate, and then at the
(18:15):
age of eighteen, she took her vows and became a nun.
At the age of twenty eight, she becomes Mother Amadeus. Meanwhile,
Mary Fields is forty years old. Mary Fields is certainly
not as popular with all the other nuns at the convent.
During her fourteen years living with them, there are more
than a few complaints about her demeanor. One sister, a
nun named Mary Grace Connolly, later recalls stories told to
(18:38):
her by older nuns of the convent who knew Mary
Fields and warned that quote God help anyone who walked
on the lawn. After Mary had cut in for her labors,
Mary earns fifty dollars a month in room and board.
She has her own room, surrounded by women who would
neither harass nor exploit her. She can read and write
and is a devout believer, and her labors afford her
(18:58):
her own form of freedom. She can come and go
as she pleases. It's a modest life, but it's a
vast improvement of her life as a slave. Her life
is now hers. Sadly, her simple life will once again
be uprooted by fates outside her control. In eighteen eighty four,
(19:24):
Mother Amadeus leaves the Ursuline Convent and Toledo and heads
west to Montana to start missionary schools. She founds a
school and convent in Miles City, Montana, then another in Ashland, Montana.
In October of eighteen eighty four, Mother Amadeis creates a
school for girls at the St. Peter's Mission outside of
Cascade in any Aventage. Because of Mother Amadeis that Mary
(19:46):
went to Montana. The nuns went to open to school
Badian girls in eighteen eighty four. It St. Peter's Mission
whether Jesuit priest had worked among the black beats in
eighteen sixty six because of the hard living and and
it's cold, I've seen it get four five below zero myself.
Mother Abadez took pneumonia and laid down in a group
log cabin Mary Fields at the store back in Ohio
(20:08):
and lost no time and getting to a bedside of
her friend, she nursed the nun back to health and
remained in Montana and the health the missionaries the hard labor.
This story is often repeated. The idea is that Mary
Fields back in Toledo, heard that her dear friend, Mother
Amadeus was dying in the Montana wilderness, so she bought
a traveling bag and made plans to head west with
(20:28):
a group of nuns and a Jesuit priest who were
headed to Montana to join the mission. And we do
have corroboration in a nun at St. Peter's Mission in
Montana wrote, Mother almadeus scott pneumonia very bad. A Jesuit
sent a dispatch to Toledo. In a short time we
had help Reverend Mother Stanis Loss of Toledo, and Mother
(20:49):
Mary of the Angels Carol and Black Mary Fields from Toledo,
and Mother St. Thomas of Cleveland. But the story of
her acting as the nurse may not exactly be true.
There is some doubt. According to the historian d. Garceaux Hagen,
quote from March through December of eighteen eighty five, the
nuns reported on amadeus Is long convalescence in letters to
(21:10):
the Toledo convent. In all of this correspondence, not one
letter identified Mary Fields as Mother Amadeus's nurse. In short
Fields mythic role as a devoted nurse to the Mother
Superior is not borne out by the evidence end quote. Nonetheless,
at age fifty four, Mary arrives in the West for
(21:31):
good for her room and board. She does housework for
the nuns, and as mentioned is the primary source of
food for the convent. Mary Fields accepts no wages for
her work. Instead, she enjoys the freedom to come and
go as she pleases. In Montanas, she finally finds a
full sense of freedom, even from the slavery of wages.
(21:52):
Now pop Era converted Catholic, much like Mary Fields. As
a Catholic in America, is there any true addition to
social justice that you found particularly Catholic as opposed to
other Christian traditions as a bad a fact? Yes, uh,
but that's before I became a Catholic. When we lived
in Meadville, Consylvania, we rented a house that was owned
(22:14):
by the Catholic Church. It had been a nunnery. Off
the garage there was a like a root seller where
you had the canned goods. And then in the corner
there was like a wooden board that was just standing
up so and my dog shot behind it and disappeared.
So I moved it and signed a flashlight in there,
(22:34):
and you could see that it was a room, So
I crawled in side and stood up. It was a
big room, but the clean clay swept floor, and there
was an air shaft that ran out the side. You
could feel the presence of people. I mean you could
actually feel it. So so I told my mother about it.
She said, well, go ask father Assisi at the church.
(22:55):
So I went over and asked him, and he said, well,
you've discovered our secret. We were active in the underground.
We wrote the house was safe because men were not
allowed to go into a nunner ry. So we've had
the runaways there because the slave chasers and the men
could not go in there to look for So they say,
everybody who got there gotta got a way safely to Canada.
(23:18):
So that's what That's when I got respect for the
Catholic Church. You've never told me that story. I love them.
Oh I'm sorry. Yeah, it was great though you could
steal history. I mean you could actually feel it, and
the people you could you could feel their breath, the
people who have been in there, I mean the sweat.
It was a wonderful, wonderful experience, and they all got away.
(23:38):
Maryfield throws herself into the cultivating life. She keeps chickens,
She hunts regularly. She gardens both food and abundant flowers.
Her garden rivals Eden for its variety. The Sisters and
Meryfield fall into a rhythm of life in the wide open,
big sky wilderness of Montana. Together, the women labor to
build something permanent that eight years, the Ursuline Sisters Stone
(24:02):
comb But was completed, and Mary and the sisters moved
from the Love Cabins which had been their home. As
the convent in girls School grows more and more successful
and solvent, Mary Fields becomes an integral member. Despite her
prickly personality. It helps that Mother Amadeus has her back.
The Mother Superior doesn't let anyone mistreat her friend. Her
(24:23):
loyalty is repaid in kind by Mary. She labor is
possibly hardest of them all to make the convent a success,
to ensure the children are fed and educated, and that
the nuns never suffer from the privations of a fickle
wilderness where one bad season can mean starvation outside the convent.
Life in Montana in the late eighteen eighties is tough.
(24:45):
To ensure the convent is well supplied, Mary drives the
mule team wagon into town and back again, typically alone
except for her trustee Shotgun. Mary often spent the prairie
nights fright her way through storms and brave and great dangers.
One night, a pack of wolves frightened her teeth. The
horses upset the load, and she stayed guard all night
(25:06):
over the precious cargo the nuns needed just to exist.
A blizzard overtook her on one trip, the road was
lost from sight. Mary walked back and forth all through
the night to keep from freezing to death. Despite the
dangers outside the convent, it was Mary's temper that ultimately
upended her welcome. Mary might have lived all her days
(25:27):
working at the mission had it not been for her
terrible temper and her lack of fear of man or beast.
She was forever fighting with the hired men, and on
one occasion thought a good deal with one. I don't
remember how it turns out, but Mary was still around
when it was over. Historian Darce Hagen agrees with Gary Cooper.
She writes, quote, Mary Fields probably would have lived and
(25:50):
worked at St. Peter's until she died had it not
been for Bishop Brondel in Great Falls. When the bishop
heard rumors of fields uncouth behavior, he wanted her off
the premises. Fields drank alcohol and sometimes cursed trans aggressions
of acceptable female behavior on church grounds. End quote. The
bishop finally has a good reason to demand Mary Field
(26:11):
to be removed from the convent. When Mary Fields gets
into the aforementioned gunfight on September, a white man, a
hired hand named John Mosney, gets into a tussle with
the ever prickly caretaker. According to the contemporaneous accounts quote
John Mosney and Mary Fields touched rifles at each other,
but there was no fire. A standoff at a convent.
(26:33):
That's how Mary rolled guns fired or not. Either way,
Bishop Brondle is pissed and he wants Mary gone from
the convent. The bishop was bombarded with complaints about her
and rope that the sisters ordered them to send the
black woman away. It's a heartbreaking thing for all the
work where he had done in the ten years she's spent,
the nun service she in which seated damn. The nuns
(26:56):
all felt married a liftown home with them, but the
bishop's orders said to be ob One of the nuns
notes how the bishop's order to evict Mary Fields from
the convent troubles the heart of her friend. It is
hard for mother to dismiss this faithful servant in her
old age. But the bishop's orders are peremptory, the darkness
of obedience will be light in the next world. Another
(27:18):
nun frames the dire, albeit helpless situation, noting that she
had been overbearing and troublesome, but it was our intention
to keep her till death. Mary Fields is sixty two
years old. She's also now an unemployed black woman in Montana.
In eight after that Gary Cooper article came out, was
(27:46):
she's somebody that had her resurgence in black thought and
in in the culture. Is that she's somebody that people
talked about, the kids talk about this Mary Fields. After that,
any article came out, not that I recall, there was
some discussion on some black colleges, some of the history departments,
sociology departments, but they weren't sure how they felt about it.
(28:07):
Just nineteen fifty nine, nineteen sixty, we're going into the
new presidential administration, the optimism of the sixties, the civil
rights movement is having a really hard time, So there
was less intellectual curiosity. It was more of the act
of combat. Do you think that it was a missed
opportunity that she would have been a good civil rights figure? Oh?
(28:30):
I thought she. I think she has been a great
historical figure and and therefore for a useful as a
super rights figure. Because the great thing about her is
that everything she did she did by herself as a
free person. So she was a perfect example of what
black folks you do if you leave them the hell alone.
(28:54):
They don't they don't go and destroy it. Yet they
go and live a life. You know, they just go
off and live a life. Now. So all of the
conspiracies that was spun by the by the clan, and
all those about what we would do if we were
set free, she contradicted every single day. So I think
her story would be great as a historical checkpoint. Gary
(29:21):
Cooper would certainly agree. After Mary left the convent, she
went and lived that life in nearby Cascade, relatively new
town of just a few thousand people. Mother Emmadisk set
her up in the restaurant business and Cascade. For all
her toughness, Mary was too good hearted and carried too
much credit on her books. She would feed cheap hers
(29:41):
during the winter and they would promise to pay when
they worked in the summer. Mary went broke twice, and
Mother Amadeus gave her another start each time. In Cascade,
Mary Fields is the only black resident. She fast becomes
the subject of local talk. She's criticized for wearing men's clothes,
she's gossiped about owning a gun, and she's ostracized for
(30:02):
drinking whiskey, especially in a saloon with the men of town.
But Mary is such a good company the men of
Cascade make a special exception for her. They say Mary
had a fondness for hard liquor that was matched only
by her capacity to put it away. And it's a
historical fact that one of cascades earliest mayor's DW. Monroe,
gave special permission to let Mary drink in the saloons
(30:24):
with men, the privilege, if you want to call it.
To modern listeners, this may sound rather fun and quaint,
but it's far more than that. It flies in the
face of both rampant sexism and unremitting racism. Mary Field's
demands respect, and she gets it. This is not normally
the case for women in the West or black men.
It's unheard of for a black woman, and it occurs
(30:47):
against a backdrop of unimaginable racial violence. According to the
Leavenworth Standard, much displeasure was caused by wedding at Glendive, Montana.
Because the resident did not approve of the match Miss
Emma Wall, the writer a colored girl, and the groom
is a white man named John Or. The people tired
the groom and whitewashed the bride, rode them on rails
(31:07):
and forced them to leave town. Thus, it's important that
Mary Fields has the backing and the blessing of the
town fathers of Cascade. It not only allows her to
drink in the saloon, it likely protects her from racist
harassment and possible violence. But she also still needs steady employment.
It's her old friend Mother i'm a Dais, who once
again steps in to aid Mary Fields with life as
(31:30):
a single woman on the frontier. Mother em Days went
to the government, doubtless the bishop never knew about it,
and asked that Mary be given the mail route. They
gave Mary the route between Cascade and the mission itself,
and each day, never missing a one, she made her
triumphant entry into the mission seated on top of the
mail coach, dressed in a man's hat and coat and
smoked in a huge cigar. Thanks to the help of
(31:53):
Mother i'm Adis, Fields is awarded a four year quote
star route contract from the US Postal Service. She is
the second woman in the United States and the first
black woman to drive a wagon for the Postal Service.
Around five years later, she renews her contract to continue
working for the post Office as a wagon driver. This
is when she earns her nickname stagecoach Mary, and she
(32:14):
earns it for good reason. Mary could drive. She could
use a four horse lash with the dexterity that made
a man green with envy. She could also use the
six shooter with equal accuracy. There was a time when
Mary's friends claimed if a fly lighted on the ear
of one of the leaders of her four she could
use her choice of either shooting it off or picking
it off for her whip end, and that if she
was a mind to, she could break the fli's hind
(32:34):
leg with her whiplash, then shoot its eye out with
a revolver. This accuracy with whip and shooting iron, however,
is not a matter of Mary's boast. She was always
modest about her claims as to either line, but it
is a well known fact that she had an ability
in both. From three Mary Fields is pure hell on
a wagon trail. She drives her mule team like a
(32:56):
chariot from ancient times, and she's late for the war.
For seven or so years, she is a free woman,
one riding high on the seat of her wagon, tearing
through the wilderness of America, well at home beneath the
ceiling of that big blue sky that stretches over Montana.
One century is about to give way to a new one.
The twentieth century dawns with a limitless sense of promise
(33:18):
and newness. It will later be called the American Century.
At the beginning of the American Century, Mary Fields is
one of America's freest citizens. But she's not necessarily safe,
as unchecked racism continues to spread across the West with
the coming of the Easterners and their ideas of civilization.
In nineteen o four, down in Humphrey, Arkansas, a post
(33:41):
office is blown up. The reason is simple. The post
office dared to hire its second black postmaster to run
the station. Noted black educator Booker T. Washington is said
to have remarked in nineteen o six, in many parts
of the South, the white people would object seriously to
colored people handing them a letta through the post office
when but would make no objection to a colored mail
(34:03):
carryer handing them a letter at their door. Mary Fields
life serves as testimony that his statement also held true
in the West, and as life insists, things can't remain
the same for too long. Her friend and protector, mother Amadeus,
is sent away to Alaska to start a new mission
up in that even more remote wilderness. Mary Fields must
(34:26):
stay behind in Montana. In nineteen o three, Mary made
her home in Cascade. Her stagecoach days were over, and
her lifelong friend, mother Amadeus, had been sent to Alaska
to start new missions. Mary began taking in Washington soon
turned her home into a laundry and and though she
was about seventy then, one day she was having a
drink in the saloon when a man passed, whom she
(34:49):
said owed her two dollars for laundry phone him up
the street. She grabbed him by the shirt collar, knocked
him down with the fist, then returned to the saloon
and announced his loan drip bill is paid. A local
newspaper reports on Mary's later years, writing that she does
laundry work as a means of gaining a part of
(35:09):
her living, and does that as she drove a coach
and four very well. In the summertime, Mary shows that
esthetic nature still lives for she cultivates a better flowers,
and her favorite flower is the pansy. No one is
prettier pansy is than Marry Fields, and no one is
happier in having the flowers than she. Her neighbors get
much pleasure from Mary's flowers, and not a few of
them have been delighted to be presented with a pretty
(35:31):
bouquet with Mary's good wishes to boot Stagecoach Mary the
toughest woman in the West who also loves pansies. Her
truth is far more complex than we can ever know
or her neighbors understood. There's some peculiarities in some of
the coverage. Sometimes people will make you an exception in
(35:54):
order for them to be able to lack you. So
then you so you're not just a regular black person.
You're stage Coach Marriage, the baddest person anybody ever saw.
So I can be a friend with you, but that
doesn't require me to be friend with any other black people.
I'm always suspicious of that in a situation like this,
(36:15):
not everybody, but you can hear it in some of
the descriptions or they're trying to make it any accession,
even though in the context of her life it's not exceptional.
That's just the life that she lived. If you declare
only like black people and then stage coach Mary comes
in down and you like her, you gotta make her
different as opposed to changing your position. This gets back
(36:38):
to the issue of perspective and perception when it comes
to Mary's life story, and it depends on who tells it.
Said that that's why it's important to have this conversation,
because then for all the representations, this would be account
of balance. When she's an older woman, barely scal challenge
(37:00):
to anyone anymore. Mary Field becomes an unofficial mascot for
the local baseball team. Forever game she would fix a
buttonhole bouquet for the members of each team, the five
large bouquase for each of those who made home runs.
The flowers were from her own gardens. Yet she would
punch any man in the mouth who talked against her team.
(37:21):
Mary Field's position in the town of Cascade was complex,
to say the least. In nineteen twelve or two room
cabin burns down, the town of Cascade comes out to
rebuild it. When she can no longer drive her wagon
and work as the mail carrier for the town. The
new Cascade Hotel offers Mary free hot meals, and finally,
in nineteen fourteen, when Mary is next to death, the
(37:41):
mayor of Cascade, the same one who gave her special
dispensation to drink in the saloon with the men of town,
Mayor D. W. Monroe, he moves Mary into a hospital
at Great Falls. She's attended to in her final days.
As a historian, D. Garso Haagen notes, quote, the implication
of these narratives is that race was never in an issue,
that the people of Cascade transcended their color prejudice and
(38:04):
welcomed Mary Fields into their midst. In this way, Cascade
residents created a collective memory about their town as a
sheltering place. But the myth of the community embraces too
simple for the evidence suggest a profoundly ambivalent relationship between
Fields and her white contemporaries in Cascade. That's the historian's opinion.
(38:24):
But it's more complex than that, and perhaps also simpler too.
Gary Cooper was there. He may have been a boy
just nine years old, but he was there. He knew
Mary Fields, and his recollections of her, and the town
is slightly different. Mary was one of the Melton Pot pioneers, Black, white,
and yellow, came from Tennessee and places beyond the seas
(38:46):
to help conquer and tame the old Wild West. But
she died the town Mordar passed, and they buried her
at the foot of the mountains by the winding road
that leads to the Old Mission. There's an interesting aspect
of this that Mary Fields has both a racial legend
(39:07):
as a black woman in the West, but then also
as you and I would talk about an American legend
as a free person, is it possible to have those
conversations at the same time or do you kind of
have to treat her as too, not two different people,
but to see her through two different lenses because of
the duality. Absolutely are both. You can be the American legend,
(39:28):
which is the totality of your existence and for your
own people. Like Frank Sinatra was the absolute artistic hero
of Italian people, and he was an absolute artistical hero
of America. And they both had a different claim, and
they both had a legitimate claim and neither one contradict together.
(39:49):
And it's the same way with Mary. The things that
made black people proud of her were things that make
black people proud in the face of oppression. The things
that may Americans proud of her were the things that
make you that you do in the face of thrust
to your freedom. You know that you have to live
a free, principal life and do it without regard to
(40:13):
consequences for you that your principles do not change. And
that's and she was that way as an American and
as a Black person. She took no ship from white people,
so so we could all never When she's buried, a
(40:36):
priest from St. Peter's Mission performs the funeral service. The
owner of the New Cascade Hotel is one of her
paul bearers. Flowers, which were something Mary Fields was known
for growing and forgiving as gifts to those she liked
or wanted to celebrate, are in abundance. At her funeral,
Her final earthly moment is lavished with blossoms and bright colors.
In death, the town pays the respects to the woman
(40:58):
they've known as Stagecoach Mary. The West was a place
of freedom, a beacon that called to those who longed
to be free of forced servitude, and the whip free
from the civilization that once called them a slave. Mary
Fields went to Montana for reasons of her own, whether
to help an old friend back to health, or because
she wished to go west and find a new life
(41:20):
for herself. She did it her way. There, in a
town where she was the only black woman, she managed
to carve out a life for herself where she was
free to be herself how she wanted to be. She
drank with men and saloons. She got in fist fights
when she felt it was called for. She cared for
others lovingly, and they cared for her in return. And
(41:42):
when she was gone, she left a large hole in
the heart of her community. But she also left behind
a legend as big as the Montana s Guy. Mary
Fields was a survivor, a self directed woman, a true
legend of the West. Thanks for listening. Black Cowboys is
(42:03):
written by Mezaron Burnett, produced and edited by Ryan Burdock
and Michelle Lands. Our theme song is written and performed
by Demeanor. Sound design and music by Jeremy Thal. Additional
music by Alvin young Blood Heart, Greg Chidzick, and Nathan Cosey.
Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson, Marissa Brown, Jocelyn
Sears and Aaron Blakemore performances by j Charlesworth, Elizabeth Dutton
(42:28):
and Ryan Burdock. Show logo by Lucy Quintindia. Executive producers
are Jason English and Man. Guest part Ticketer Special Thanks
as always to my pop. Yeah this is a home.
It's been a long role for us. We ticket ownership
over everything else to us realty. We surprinded by a
heritage our fistop because we're proud to be Ammerican. Ask
(43:01):
yourself was really in the name? Sitting on the mup
stand right in through the Plains, Buffalo Soldier, the King
of the Range. We in love with the childboy Way,
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