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Womens Responses to the Great Plains Landscape

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Womens Responses to the Great Plains Landscape University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1988 "There is Some Splendid Scenery" Womens Responses to the Great Plains Landscape Julie Roy Jeffrey Goucher College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Jeffrey, Julie Roy, ""There is Some Splendid Scenery" Womens Responses to the Great Plains Landscape" (1988). Great Plains Quarterly. 376. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/376 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. "THERE IS SOME SPLENDID SCENERY" WOMEN'S RESPONSES TO THE GREAT PLAINS LANDSCAPE JULIE ROY JEFFREY During the decades of exploration and set­ noticed, some Americans seemed "insensible tlement of the trans-Mississippi West, travelers to the wonders of inanimate nature" because and emigrants encountered a new kind of "their eyes ... [are] fixed upon another sight landscape on the Great Plains. Aside from . draining swamps, turning the course of dramatic geological formations like Court­ rivers, peopling solitudes, and subduing na­ house Rock, this landscape lacked many of the ture. 1 visual qualities conventionally associated with Many women settlers between 1850 and natural beauty in the nineteenth century. "It 1900 saw the Great Plains in culturally predic­ may enchant the imagination for a moment to table ways, with attitudes ranging from indif­ look over the prairies and plains as far as the ference to romantic ecstasy. Their response to eye can reach," Sarah Raymond wrote in her the new landscape was also colored by their diary in 1865, "still such a view is tedious and sex and the values, interests, and habits of the monotonous. It can in no wise produce that female world. If environmental perception is rapturing delight, that pleasing variety of the affected by "personality, training, presupposi­ sublime and beauty of landscape scenery that tions, and prejudices," then certainly gender, mountains afford." Although Raymond used which can influence all of these, should also be romantic standards in evaluating the plains, considered in coming to understand how others judged the setting in terms of what it nineteenth-century Americans evaluated the might become. As Alexis de T ocqueville had visual characteristics of the Great Plains.2 Julie Roy Jeffrey is the author of the influential WOMEN'S PERCEPTIONS OF THE PLAINS book Frontier Women: The Trans Mississippi To note the impact of gender on women's West 1840-1880 (1979). She is professor of history perceptions of the Great Plains does not mean, and director of historic preservation at Goucher however, that there was one female response. College. What women settlers noticed and thought about their surroundings differed according to [GPQ 8 (Spring 1988): 69-78J their location, background, condition, and 69 70 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1988 even the weather or time of year. North however, that women from different back­ Dakota settler Mary Roberts recognized as grounds shared an aesthetic appreciation of much when she wrote in her diary that the natural setting. Even if they were only "Shurly no one want a priettier place than the dimly aware of romantic standards of land­ prairie when it is calm. "3 scape beauty, the most pragmatic women were Individual expectations and goals also capable of going beyond utilitarian or minimal could affect perceptions. Northern women responses. Flora Heston peppered her letters to who went to Kansas to save it from slavery her husband, Sam, who was filing his claim in might view Kansas as a threatened Eden, 1884, with practical questions: Was Ford whereas settlers like Flora Heston, who were County subject to droughts? Were there making "a desperate effort to get a home," snakes, varmints and wolves? Would water be would see the territory in light of its domestic handy? Yet once there, Flora wrote to her possibilities. Books, pamphlets, and letters also mother and sisters that Kansas was "the most influenced impressions. Clarissa Griswold car­ beautiful country I ever saw," praised its pure ried with her from Minnesota "glowing reports air, the "perfectly green" prairies, "the prettiest ... of thrills experienced, and fortunes made flowers," and the wondrous mirages.s ... in the territory of Dakota," and correspon­ The act of settlement itself forced emigrants dence from Mary Faeth's husband boasting into a special and often intense relationship about "the beauties and the pleasures" of "the with the environment. Travelers to the Great wonderful plains" of western Kansas shaped Plains realized as much. Frances Fulton, who her hopes."4 Despite these differences, howev­ visited Nebraska in the 1880s, sensed how er, it is possible to make some generalizations different the prairies were "for those of us who about the responses of a varied group of carried our return tickets," and Abbie Bright, women settlers to the Great Plains between who spent several months in the 1870s with 1850 and 1900. Most literate and accessible are her brother on his Kansas claim, confided in women like Miriam Colt, Sara Robinson, and her diary, "I like it, but if someone said I must Hannah Ropes, Kansas emigrants of the 1850s stay here always, then I fear I would not."9 from New England middle class families, or One of the differences between passing educated women like Mary Dodge Woodward, through the plains and settling there was who located in Dakota in the 1880s. Although visual. The traveler experienced the landscape more ordinary women's sources are limited, as an ever-changing panorama. Fulton likened evidence of their perspectives does exist. 5 the view from her train one early morning to a Letters written by Flora Heston, who emi­ picture unrolled from beneath the wheels on a grated from Indiana to Kansas with slender great canvas while we stood still. 10 The settler, resources, or the reminiscences of Martha fixed in one place, saw only the change of Smith, who with her husband and "five litel seasons and the changes wrought by human children" left Missouri to go "to a new land hands. A view monotonous one day would and get rich" and "have a real home of our most likely be monotonous the next. What for own," give some idea of the parameters of the some was a scenic backdrop for a journey experiences of ordinary women. 6 Pioneer col­ became for others the stage for everyday lections and interviews also capture aspects of activities. Involvement with nature replaced these women's relationships with their envi­ casual interest or romantic rhapsody. ronment. Some have argued that women settling on OBSERVERS OF THE LANDSCAPE the Great Plains either found their surround­ ings depressing or, perhaps because of their In their roles as mothers, housekeepers, class and limited education, failed to see any and food providers, women had no choice but beauty in them. 7 There is ample evidence, to study the natural world. Responsible for WOMEN'S RESPONSES TO LANDSCAPE 71 children's safety, they searched for snakes also reveal basic visual desires and needs. At lurking in the house or outside in the grasses. the most fundamental level, women wanted to Doing the laundry demanded watching the be able to see where they were. Women found weather and recognizing its swift changes, as the landscape depressing when a flat terrain or Mary Dodge Woodward realized: "We had just confinement in a one-story house or cabin hung the clothes out when the wind began to made it impossible to have a panoramic view. blow," she wrote in her diary. "We had to Adela Orpen's account of her years on the bring them in and dry them around the Kansas frontier suggests the importance wom­ kitchen fire." The threat of fire also called for en placed on being able to see their surround­ "close vigilance in watching" the skies. Anna ings properly. Early in her reminiscences, Ruppenthall, a Kansas settler of the 1870s, Orpen reflected that the reproduction of an recalled that her "last act at night, after seeing antique statue was the "only thing of beauty in that the children were all asleep, and all quiet our Kansas house and in the whole prairie." among the livestock '" was to sweep the Outside, there was nothing worth looking at entire horizon for signs of flame." Keen eyes on the "vast, measureless prairie." In the searched out wild fruits and nuts to supple­ second year of living in Kansas, however, her ment the family diet. Women by necessity father built an outdoor staircase leading to the became astute observers of the natural world second floor. From this staircase she wrote, and, as Elise Isley remarked, "we watched the "we had a glorious view across the prairie."13 shoots coming through the ground with more The landscape was, of course, the same; the than the eye of mere Nature lovers."ll difference was that now Orpen could see it as a Comments in letters, diaries, and remi­ whole and place herself in it. niscences indicate how frequently the environ­ ment intruded upon women's lives, forcing POSITIVE RESPONSES TO THE LANDSCAPE them to notice and respond. The tough prairie grass made "such a wear and tear upon our Orpen's reminiscences suggest that the shoe leather," wrote Kansas settler Miriam scenic sense of the landscape did not disappear Colt, that she went barefoot or wore rubbers just because nature was so often intrusive. outside to save her shoes. When the grass was Indeed, female settlers lavished praise on the high, walking was difficult for everyone, but "beautiful rolling prairies" that so easily af­ long skirts made getting around especially hard forded panoramic vistas and views.
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