Did cowgirls get the boot from history?

Cowboys are an iconic part of American history, but what about cowgirls? In this episode, Caroline and Cristen hit the history books to discover the stories of real-life cowgirls. Tune in to learn whether cowgirls got the boot from history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House stup Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to
the podcast. And Kristen and I'm Caroline, So Caroline. Um

(00:22):
our title, our clever title for this episode. Um, Did
cal Girls Get the Boot? From History? Is a little
riff on Tom Robin's novel Do caw Girls Get the Blues?
It's also a movie starring Uma Thurman. Just long fingers, Yeah,

(00:42):
to turn it off. That's what it was, hitchhiking, that's right.
And I gotta say, I read, um, do cow Girls
Get the Blues? Way back and way back? And call
with you because I am fifty Um, I read that,
And I gotta say, aside from that very very fictional

(01:03):
account of cowgirl life, I knew very little about them.
I know very little. Also, Yeah, I have a couple
of ancestors who made it out west. Um. I mostly
know about the men, though there's not much about the women.
And that's true for people who I am not related to. Also,
So we decided to take a stab at the history

(01:25):
of cow girls, who were originally known as cowboy women,
cowboy girls or cowboy women. Some you know, smart Alarci
journalists started calling them cowgirls girls. Come see the cow girls. Um. So,
the thing is that it was kind of hard to
track down a consistent or a concise i should say,

(01:46):
history of cow girls because a lot of their work
in the West was not documented, right, and a lot
of them were just dismissed as you know, housewives and
you know they were just sticking to the kitchen. Yeah,
but we've got two ladies, one of whom you've probably
heard of before, two ladies who disproved that theory. Yeah.

(02:07):
Clamity Jane born Martha Jane Canary was one tough broad.
The skills she developed out West eventually led her to
touring with several Wild West shows, including wild Bill Hickock's
Wild West Show. And she actually claimed to have married him,
but I'm not so sure that's true. She was actually
known for exaggerating all the stories about her life. So

(02:29):
it's kind of sketchy, but it was successful because we're
talking about her now exactly what a girl? What a girl?
And she um in the eighteen seventies is play back
in the eighteen seventies, Remember, she worked as a writer
for the Pony Express, which is pretty cool. She write
fifty miles between towns carrying satchels full of postal letters. Indeed,

(02:51):
and at one point she actually saved a stage coach
full of passengers from attacking Indians. Apparently, according according to legend,
the driver of the stage coach had been killed, and
she diverted the stagecoach. She hopped on, she took the reins,
and she delivered those people of safety. That took comption.
That takes a lot of gumption. Uh. And then there

(03:13):
was cattle Kate, who was born Ellen Liddy Watson. And
I think that cattle Kate. First of all, that's such
a great nickname, but cattle Kate really embodies this um
kind of headstrong woman who is portrayed a lot in
the in the Wild West, because imagine going out to
this open frontier and I mean, you gotta make it work, yeah,

(03:38):
she I mean, she left her family behind, and even
when she met a man that she fell in love with,
she did the hell in a bonhom Carter Tim Burton thing,
and she was like, I don't want to live in
the same house. I'm gonna get my own homestead over here.
So yeah, she she got her own place. She filed
for a homestead, and you know, unfortunately that the neighboring
cattle ranchers didn't quite take to her. She ended up

(04:00):
arrested and hanged. Hanged for cattle. Yeah, but I mean,
this is a woman who bought thirty head of cattle
over the course of a year, grew that to about forty. Yeah,
she got her own ranch hands, Yeah, did her own work.
Don't mess with cattle, Kate, Well, unless you hang her. Yeah,
then that's kind of the end. That's kind of that's
kind of it. But let us also note that around

(04:21):
this time, uh the year eighteen sixty nine to be exact,
Wyoming was the first state in the US to grant
women the vote. And this point came up a few
times in our research on cow girls, trying to sort
of make this claim that really these ranch women and

(04:43):
cow girls, cowboy women girls, um were the first feminists
and the wild West was a place, wow with was
a place that really allowed, um, some gender barriers to
be broken down because you had to be out there
working alongside the men. Although the author of two book

(05:04):
called The Cowboy would disagree. Yeah, he goes ahead and
puts it out there that women were not an important
part of the West because there were so few of them.
And he said that pretty much they stuck to the
kitchen anytime a guest came over. If another man came
over besides their husband, they ran to the kitchen to
cook dinner and clean up. Yeah. I also like how

(05:25):
he acknowledges that women in the West could ride horses
pretty well, but they lacked the vitality to quote, sit
a violent buck. Yeah. And then he just starts slamming
the rodeo cowgirls all the day, saying that they were
just you know, dress and fancy. They weren't real cowgirls.
But but really, I mean, what does this guy know, Well,

(05:45):
not much, especially if he talks, not much at all,
especially if he talks to a woman, say Fox Hastings,
the red headed feminine daredevil of the Arena. Oh snap oh. Yes.
And then there was also um Ruby Roberts, who um
broke so many bones. Yeah. And organs. She broke organs.

(06:07):
If you can break them, she broke them. Yeah. With
the with the Rise of the Rodeo, we have the
Golden Age actually of the Rodeo, which is from nineteen
nineteen to nineteen nine, and the author Mary lou Lecompte,
who wrote cow Girls in the Rodeo, points out that
at least sixteen women participated in rodeos, wild West shows,

(06:28):
or both during the eighteen eighties. I mean, so while
we've got um the early suffrage movement going on in
the East coast, in the West, yeah, Calamitie Jane shooting,
shooting epistles, and and women riding bare back, bucking broncos.
And I mean, these weren't even women who were actively
trying to be feminist. They weren't. I mean a lot

(06:50):
of the cow girls weren't actively you know, out there
pursuing the vote, picketing, carrying signs, all of these things.
They just wanted to ride a horse. They a lot
of them were people who just went out west with
their families, struck out on their own, and you know,
started riding horses, started riding horses. Are Yeah, there's a
I think this is a great quote from Mabel Strickland,

(07:12):
who was one of the early rodeo riders, and she says,
I know you think I'm a paradox, but I belong
in the saddle, for I've been there since I was three.
I love the open dogs, horses, guns, trees, flowers. Still
I love dresses and everything that goes with them, you know,
So they're like And it was also interesting, um, to
see how this cowgirl style emerged. For instance, we have

(07:36):
the first cowgirl, Vera McGinnis, to wear pants in the
arena and do you know what? She made them out
of little boys flannel pants really and she had a
zipper on the side. She said she liked to click
her heels. And I don't blame her. I do what
it works sometimes hopefully not while wearing children's clothes or skirts. No,
none of the above. Pants. Pants, Um, and yeah, it was.

(07:59):
It was a big deal with women started wearing the pants.
They'd started wearing the bloomers. And of course we have
with the rise of Rodeo and as it becomes more sponsored,
the flash the shirts become more tasseled, sheen becomes a
little more satiny, bedazzled, a little more bedazzled. Yes, um,

(08:21):
but it's you know, as part of the whole cowgirl culture. Um.
And we cannot do this podcast, Caroline without mentioning Renee
Hafeley Shelton. Oh yeah, she was back in her day
was called the World's Greatest Lady trick rider. She performed
in an act with an Arabian horse named wait for it,

(08:43):
literally Lo Lane, where just like in the movie Wild
Hearts Can't Be Broken, starring that woman and that horse
and the guy who played Jake in sixteen Candles, Uh,
they would jump into a tank of water fifty ft
below online. It's my favorite fact because I watched Wild
Hearts as a job. I was actually on cable not

(09:06):
too long ago when I watched it again with your
name girl cour do you Oh man, I'm gonna have
to watch it again now. Um yeah, so so fact.
All these all these cool women trick writers. But then
in the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, we
have these cowgirl contests that were really rough and tumble

(09:28):
started becoming more of just sort of freely fashion spectacles.
Kind of as as things become more mainstream, rodeo becomes
more mainstream and more sponsored. Like we mentioned before, um
and Mary lou La Compto wrote cow Girls in the
Rodeo points out that um it was a major sponsor.

(09:48):
Contests were a major setback to women because it de
emphasized the athleticism, right, made it all about appearance. Yeah. Sadly,
when the Rodeo Association of a Mirror was organized, they
opposed cowgirl events right. And it didn't help that Bonnie
McCarroll was killed in nine because she couldn't free her

(10:09):
feet from her stirrups. They were hobbled beneath the horse,
and nobody really knew why she was doing it that way.
She had ridden slick before that, which means that the
stirrups from roll hobbled the opposite of hobbling your stirrups,
and uh yeah, she ended up getting trampled to death.
But even though Bonnie mccarroll's death sparked opposition to women's

(10:30):
contests and limited a lot of cowgirl competitions just to
barrel racing and things like that, not the crazy trick stunts,
it did not keep the cow girls down. In the
words of Fanny Sperry Steel, who I could be related
to because I have some Steels in my family, And yeah,
I like to think I'm related to her based on

(10:51):
this quote. You have some cowgirl blood, oh you know it?
She said. Sometimes it takes a lot of grit to
do what you want to do, but I can't see
how people can stand the monotony of doing work at
which they are not happy. Rodeo teaches you that death
is right around the corner, and then now is all
you have, so make the most of it. And then,
of course she gets a little dig in it non

(11:14):
cowgirls by saying, how can I explain to a dainty,
delicate woman what it is like to climb down into
a radio shoot onto the back of a wild horse? Fanny,
dainty and delicate, Hey, come on, sassy. But then the
cowgirls did finally get their do with the opening of

(11:34):
the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.
Which fun fact. You know who was inducted into the
National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame? Tell me, well,
two people. I'll give you two. Georgia O'Keefe painter, yes,
and Sandra Day O'Connor because apparently she grew up on

(11:56):
a ranch. I had no idea. Yeah, not technically, neither
of them were technically cowgirls, but you know, still cool not.
I like to think that she perched up on a
saddle while she was on the bench, her robes flapping
in the in the Western Winds. Um So, if you're
out in Fort Worth and you need something to do,

(12:16):
check out the National Calgirl Museum in Hall of Fame. Now,
I will go ahead and acknowledge right now that there
were so many prominent cow girls that we did not
talk about, because despite the fact that there is not
that much of it can be hard at least to
find a concise history of cowgirls and ranchwomen in the
West and women's role in the West. Um there are

(12:38):
still so many of them out there, and especially prominent
rodeo writers. So if we left someone else, please, dear listeners,
let us know with an email to Mom's seven House
Stuff Works dot com, or of course you can post
on Facebook. But we hope that you enjoyed this, this ride,
this gallop through, Gallop through history, Gallop through cowgirl history.

(13:00):
Um So, yeah, speaking of emails, while't we when we
do a couple Well, I have an email here from
Claire and this is in response to our episode on
Lucini Lex Thing, which I should point out, which I did.
I've done this on Facebook, but in case you haven't
visited the Facebook page recently, we have a correction from

(13:21):
that episode to make and it is that we Mom
and I continually referred to removing hair from the vagina.
If you were waxing a vagina would be so painful.
Vagina is actually the inner cavity, whereas we should have
been referring to the vulva. Um started to say bola

(13:42):
so preepily, Um and Claire. I also wanted to point
out that she said, I'm thinking might have overlooked something
in one of your statistics that sixteen percent of teams
who had visited a SPA had a hair removal procedure done,
And she says, yes, it's disconcerting to think about adolescence
removing their pubic care. But in sharing that statu into
the fact that eyebrow and lip waxing and threading are

(14:03):
both SPA hair removal procedures, I think most people would
agree that the idea of a fifteen year old who
waxes her eyebrows is less disturbing than that of one
who waxes her bulba. Personally, I've been getting SPA hair
removal procedures for almost ten years, and all of them
have been quite far above the waistline. And she also
wishes that we had talked about the jazz lne. But

(14:24):
that would have meant that I would have had to
have said the jazz line again creepily so many times.
What is my problem? Uh? Yeah, So thank you for
that email, Claire. Okay, we have an email from Spencer.
In response to the Baby Names podcast. She said that
she grew up with a unisex name, but one that
seems to be more unconventional for a girl. She says,

(14:47):
Spencer was the last name of my great great grandmother.
In my experience, nearly everyone who has met me seemed
surprised upon hearing my name, thinking that Spencer most surely
is a masculine name a girly girl. Through and through,
I used to not like my name when I was younger,
and always preferred my more feminine middle name, Katherine instead. However,
I learned to absolutely love my name. Even though I

(15:08):
still loved Katherine, I would never change it. It made
me laugh when I would continuously receive postcards from all
male colleges and envelopes addressed as Mr. I still get
a little thrill out of seeing the surprise on people's
faces when they meet me for the first time and
see a tall, young woman who wears pearls and high
heel instead of the boy that they were expecting. I
think it has been really empowering to me to have

(15:29):
a name that is unique. I hope girls with unisex
or master when to find names, to embrace their names
and celebrate them as part of who they are. Here
here is Spencer. I think Spencer is a cool unisex name.
I've never heard that a point. Well. Um again, if
you have an email to send our way, the addresses
mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com, and of
course you can head over to Facebook have fun over

(15:51):
There lots to do, and you can also follow us
on Twitter at Mom's Stuff. Podcast is our handle. Then, finally,
during the week you can read our blog It's stuff
Man Never told You at how stuff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff

(16:12):
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