Women and the Winning of the West
The popular version of the lone wagon train, forging its way west, in constant danger of losing the faintly marked trail, its occupants trembling in fear of imminent Indian massacre, is just a Hollywood concoction, says historian Sandra Myres, who has been researching the role of women in settling the American west. She has unearthed vivid accounts of the trail west and of homesteading at the journey's end. The journals, diaries and letters she has read help dispel some long-cherished myths about the American frontier.
Forget the image of the lone wagon train silhouetted against the horizon. The fact was that after the California Gold Rush in 1849, isolated travel was not even a possibility. "You couldn't get lost if you wanted to, because you couldn't get out of sight of another wagon train," explains Myres, professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington.
"The country was so level that we could see the long trains of white-topped wagons for many miles," ob~ served a pioneer woman, Margaret Frink. "It appeared to me that none of the population had been left behind," she wrote in her Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold Seekers, published in 1897:
It seemed to me that I have never seen so many human beings in all my life before. And, when we drew nearer to the vast multitude, and saw them in all manner of vehicles and conveyances, on horseback and on foot... I thought, in my excitement, if one-tenth of these teams and these people get ahead of us, there would be nothing left for us in California worth picking up.
Another favorite Hollywood image--the wagon train forming a circle at dusk--bears little resemblance to reality. The wagons might have made a circle, but if so it was to enclose livestock which might 0therwise wander off and become fair game for rustlers. So the protective stockade of wagons was for the benefit of Cows, horses and pigs. Men, women and children naturally preferred to sleep in tents well outside the circle.
In the movies, we know the Indians are going to descend on the settlers as soon as the sun goes down. Hollywood was only preserving misconceptions of the American Indian that had long-flourished in popular literature and imagination. The 19th-century pioneers themselves were steeped in simplistic views--many of which still persist today. Nineteenth-century fiction depicted either the good Indian--the noble savage of James Feni-more Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales--or the bad Indian. In Robert Bird's Neck of the Wood, for in- stance, Indians are bloodthirsty and treacherous; the heroic settlers ultimately vanquish them.
Settlers on their way west, however, were more likely to meet Indians who descended on the wagons in order to exploit the possibilities for trade the transcontinental travelers offered. Pioneer women found the Indians extremely helpful in identifying and preparing indigenous food and herbs. "You can't find an Indian attack for anything,' says Myres ruefully after reading more than 500 women's journals.
Marauding Indians did occasionally harass the rare party of isolated travelers, but whites and Indians generally regarded each other with a curiosity tinged with mutual apprehension. Pioneer women were keen observers of Indian customs and ceremonies, often recording them in minute detail, very much as a modern anthropologist would. Indian women too were watching their counterparts; some of these accounts have also been pre- served in English transcriptions made by interpreters, at times via sign language.
"The 19th century tended to be an age of journals, thank God," says Myres. The virtues of keeping a journal were instilled in young women by their teachers and the flood of ladies' magazines that kept them up-to-date on the latest eastern styles. It was one's duty to keep up a journal which could be read by friends and relations b

A. a Hollywood myth
B. very accurate in most of the details
C. accurate in regard to the Indians
D. helpful for creating heroes