Until Marian Meyer chanced upon an 1885 newspaper article, no one even suspected that Mary Dodson Donoho had preceded Susan Magoffin as the first Anglo-American woman to journey the Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe by more than a decade. Magoffin came in 1846, but Donoho and her husband William took their first child with them over the trail in 1833. Historian Meyer's meticulous research has produced this fascinating biography of a pioneer Anglo woman, whom she aptly calls the "new first lady of the Santa Fe Trail." William Donoho was instrumental in securing freedom for three woman captured by Comanches-Sarah Horn, Mrs. Harris, and Rachael Parker Plummer, and accounts of their 1830s captivity and release are also given.
"Susan Magoffin was long believed to be the first American white woman to travel the [Santa Fe] trail. But Santa Fe historian Marian Meyer discovered in 1987 that Susan had been preceded by a trader's wife 13 years earlier. 'Mary Donoho, 25 years old, arrived in Santa Fe in 1833, with her husband William and a nine-month-old daughter, ' Marian said. 'They were with a party of 150 Missourians and great wagon train of freight...'" -From The National Geographic, March 1991 Marian Meyer has written the story of Mary Donoho who was the first woman to survive the rugged and grueling crossing of the Santa Fe Trail in 1833. Mary Donoho, "the new first lady of the Santa Fe Trail" was a woman of uncommon substance who lived in Santa Fe until the 1837 Perez Rebellion and then moved with her husband to Clarksville, Texas. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Donoho ran the 'legendary' Donoho Hotel in Clarksville, Texas, and raised her six children. Mary Donoho's life lives up to the image of the undaunted pioneer woman of the past.
For a long time, the American West was mainly identified with white masculinity, but as more women’s narratives of westward expansion came to light, scholars revised purely patriarchal interpretations. Writing the Trail continues in this vein by providing a comparative literary analysis of five frontier narratives---Susan Magoffin’s Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, Sarah Royce’s A Frontier Lady, Louise Clappe’s The Shirley Letters, Eliza Farnham’s California, In-doors and Out, and Lydia Spencer Lane’s I Married a Soldier---to explore the ways in which women’s responses to the western environment differed from men’s. Throughout their very different journeys---from an eighteen-year-old bride and self-styled “wandering princess” on the Santa Fe Trail, to the mining camps of northern California, to garrison life in the Southwest---these women moved out of their traditional positions as objects of masculine culture. Initially disoriented, they soon began the complex process of assimilating to a new environment, changing views of power and authority, and making homes in wilderness conditions. Because critics tend to consider nineteenth-century women’s writings as confirmations of home and stability, they overlook aspects of women’s textualizations of themselves that are dynamic and contingent on movement through space. As the narratives in Writing the Trail illustrate, women’s frontier writings depict geographical, spiritual, and psychological movement. By tracing the journeys of Magoffin, Royce, Clappe, Farnham, and Lane, readers are exposed to the subversive strength of travel writing and come to a new understanding of gender roles on the nineteenth-century frontier.
Traces the making of the influential 1950s film inspired by the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, sharing lesser-known aspects of Parker's 1836 abduction by the Comanche and her heartbreaking return to white culture, in an account that also explores how the movie reflects period ambiguities. 30,000 first printing. Movie tie-in.
Founded in 1610, Santa Fe has been a beacon for those yearning for adventure, a different way of life, a place of expression, and the opportunity to meld the old with the new. Designated America's first United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Creative City in 2005, Santa Fe is home to people from around the world. Legendary Locals of Santa Fe pays tribute to a diverse group of individuals, who through different eras have contributed to the city's vitality: Native American Po'pay, leader of the Pueblo Revolt; world-renowned sculptor Allan Houser; priest Padre Antonio Martinez, who brought the city's first printing press; Pulitzer Prize authors Willa Cather and Oliver La Farge; Fray Angelico Chavez, Santa Fe's preeminent historian; Santa Fe Opera founder John Crosby; Stewart L. Udall, former Secretary of the Interior under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; and Sgt. Leroy A. Petry, the 2011 Medal of Honor recipient. All share an enduring spirit and belief in the community that the Spanish explorers had the foresight to name "the City of Holy Faith."
For nineteenth-century travelers, the Santa Fe Trail was an indispensable route stretching from Missouri to New Mexico and beyond, and the section called “The Missouri Trail”—from St. Louis to Westport—offered migrating Americans their first sense of the West with its promise of adventure. The truth was, any easterner who wanted to reach Santa Fe had to first travel the width of Missouri. This book offers an easy-to-read introduction to Missouri’s chunk of Santa Fe Trail, providing an account of the trail’s historical and cultural significance. Mary Collins Barile tells how the route evolved, stitched together from Indian paths, trappers’ traces, and wagon roads, and how the experience of traveling the Santa Fe Trail varied even within Missouri. The book highlights the origin and development of the trail, telling how nearly a dozen Missouri towns claimed the trail: originally Franklin, from which the first wagon trains set out in 1821, then others as the trailhead moved west. It also offers a brief description of what travelers could expect to find in frontier Missouri, where cooks could choose from a variety of meats, including hogs fed on forest acorns and game such as deer, squirrels, bear, and possum, and reminds readers of the risks of western travel. Injury or illness could be fatal; getting a doctor might take hours or even days. Here, too, are portraits of early Franklin, which was surprisingly well supplied with manufactured “boughten” goods, and Boonslick, then the near edge of the Far West. Entertainment took the form of music, practical jokes, and fighting, the last of which was said to be as common as the ague and a great deal more fun—at least from the fighters’ point of view. Readers will also encounter some of the major people associated with the trail, such as William Becknell, Mike Fink, and Hanna Cole, with quotes that bring the era to life. A glossary provides useful information about contemporary trail vocabulary, and illustrations relating to the period enliven the text. The book is easy and informative reading for general readers interested in westward expansion. It incorporates history and folklore in a way that makes these resources accessible to all Missourians and anyone visiting historic sites along the trail.
Gertrudis Barceló was born at the turn of the nineteenth century in the Bavispe valley of east central Sonora, Mexico. Young Gertrudis, who would later achieve fame under the name “Tules,” discovered how to manipulate men, reading their body language and analyzing their gambling habits. This power, coupled with a strong-willed and enterprising nature, led Doña Tules to her legendary role as a shrewd and notorious gambling queen and astute businesswoman. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, her monte dealings and entertainment houses became legendary throughout the southern Rocky Mountain region. Doña Tules’s daring behavior attracted the condemnation of many puritanical Anglo travelers along the Santa Fe Trail. Demonized by later historians, Doña Tules has predominately been portrayed as little more than a caricature of an Old West madam and cardsharp, eluding serious historical study until now. Mary J. Straw Cook sifts through the notoriety to illustrate the significant role Doña Tules played in New Mexico history as the American era was about to begin.
