The history of America’s westward expansion is rich with tales of courage, but none are more compelling than those of the Plains Heroines. These resilient women played an indispensable role in settling the vast American frontier, facing unimaginable hardships with unwavering spirit and contributing profoundly to the burgeoning civilization of the American West.
The emigration movement westward, akin to rising ocean tides, was driven by successive impulses. Initially, the spirit of religious liberty and adventure brought Europeans across the Atlantic. The next great impetus was the achievement of American Independence, followed by the acquisition of California and the discovery of gold, which propelled settlers across the continent. Finally, the completion of the Pacific Railroad provided the last great surge. By 1848, after the Mexican-American War, frontier states like Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin marked the edge of settled civilization. Beyond them lay a vast, largely uninhabited territory of over seventeen hundred thousand square miles, nearly half the size of Europe, ripe for exploration and reclamation.
The Pioneer Journey Westward
The pioneer army of occupation, embarking on this monumental task, traversed Missouri and Iowa. Crossing the Missouri River, they encountered the immense plains of Nebraska and Kansas, stretching for 500 miles to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Rivers like the Platte, Kansas, and Arkansas, along with the sun and moon, served as their primary guides. The migrating populace fanned out: some cultivated the fertile lands west of the Missouri River, others grazed livestock, while bolder souls penetrated the mountains, settling in valleys and high table-lands. The most daring marched 1,000 miles further, establishing homes on the Pacific slope.
The rivers and later the railroads became the anchors for new settlements. These were the places where homes were built, where women’s work was essential, and their influence crucial in building the empire on the plains. Through generations, women developed an increasing capacity to fulfill their mission on this continent, gathering strength and faculties to meet the multiplying physical and moral difficulties of frontier life. Despite this evolving resilience, one great grief remained for many: the separation from their old homes.
For the eastern woman, bidding farewell to friends before embarking for the plains often meant a final separation. Even for the relatively well-to-do immigrant wife, who might travel 2,000 miles by railroad and steamboat to the Missouri River, the transfer into a “prairie schooner” for the final leg into the vast expanse brought renewed pangs of separation. The Missouri River symbolized a decisive break; it was like venturing into a small boat on a dark, boundless ocean, with no certainty of return or finding a safe haven. The journey presented immediate dangers, the settlement held apprehended perils, and the new country brought difficulties, privations, labors, and trials. The possibilities of disease with little relief, and the utter solitude with scant companionship, painted a dreary picture.
A Heroine’s Unimaginable Loss: The Story of Mrs. N.
Yet, despite such bleak prospects, these Plains Heroines rarely shrank from the enterprise unless all hope of making a home had truly vanished. The tragic story of Mrs. N., recounted in 1866, serves as a poignant example of the profound suffering some endured.
While a squad of U.S. cavalry journeyed from the Great Bend of the Arkansas River to Fort Riley, Kansas, their commanding officer spotted a lone figure moving across the vast plain. It was a solitary woman, rifle in hand. As the cavalry approached, she assumed a defensive posture, ready to use her weapon. Reassured by their friendly gestures, she falteringly approached them. She was a woman under 30, small and fragile, with a pale, wasted face etched with lines of long sorrow. Her appearance stirred the chivalrous feelings of the soldiers. She was initially speechless with emotion, hearing her mother tongue for the first time in four weeks. The kind inquiries from the officer broke her composure, and she wept, struggling twice to tell her story before succumbing to convulsive sobs.
Weak and weary, the soldiers made her comfortable, wrapping her in an overcoat, offering food and stimulants, and providing a makeshift seat on a horse. The following day, with renewed strength, she recounted her harrowing tale.
From Ohio to the Plains: A Cascade of Tragedies
Three years prior, she, her husband, and four children had left their home in eastern Ohio for Kansas. During their journey through Illinois, her oldest boy fell ill and died, buried beneath the prairie grass. After crossing the Missouri River, her six-year-old daughter was taken by scarlet fever, laid to rest on the bank of the Kansas River. After an arduous 80-day march, they reached their destination on the Smoky Hill Branch of the Kansas River, west of Fort Leavenworth, where they settled on land ideal for grazing and tillage. Mr. N. focused on raising cattle, while his wife toiled day and night to create a comfortable home. Fortune smiled upon them; their herds thrived, two more children were born, and their home provided shelter. Bountiful harvests blessed their stores, and Native Americans visited as friends.
Then, suddenly, their bright sky darkened. A plague ravaged their cattle, followed by a swarm of grasshoppers destroying their crops, and a drought that scorched the land. Misfortunes, like a poet’s “battalions,” gathered. Pestilence delivered the final blow to their household. Her husband was the first to fall, dying after a week of suffering in delirium, spared from the knowledge of the evils to come. With her own hands, the wife dug a shallow grave on the bluff, and bearing his wasted remains, laid him coffinless in the trench. Returning to the house, she found her three oldest children suffering from the same illness. One by one, they breathed their last in her arms. Kissing their waxen features, she bore them out alone and laid them tenderly beside their father.
Her four-month-old baby, still a picture of health, became her sole reason to live. It thrived on her maternal bounty, even as her own frail life seemed to ebb. This sweet babe, like a potent elixir, kept her heart pulsing. A week passed, consumed by the terror that she might carry the latent pestilence and pass it to her infant. A racking pain and lassitude soon confirmed her fears. Lying on her couch, she watched with a mother’s keen vision as the destroyer’s shadow fell upon her little one’s face. It faded “so softly worn, so sweetly weak,” and within two days, lay like a bruised lily on her fever-burning bosom.
Merciful unconsciousness claimed the poor mother for hours. But the vital principle, asserting its triumph, brought her back to the remembrance of irreparable losses. Three days later, the fever left her. With a shaking frame, she laid her little withered blossom on its father’s grave, covering it with a mound of dried grass and autumn leaves.
The will to live slowly returned, but disease, grasshoppers, and drought had destroyed their means of sustenance. Household stores would last only a few more days. Her only precarious hope for food lay in game she could shoot. Native Americans, apprised of Mr. N.’s death, had carried off their horses. With no other avenue of escape, and after many “a longing, lingering look” at her desolate home, she took her husband’s rifle and bravely set out into the boundless plain, towards the trail from the Arkansas River to Fort Riley, where after days of suffering, she was found by the cavalry.
The Enduring Legacy of Frontier Women
Mrs. N.’s tragic experience, though extreme, highlights the extraordinary fortitude common among Plains Heroines. The vast plains of Kansas and Nebraska, naturally suited for agriculture and pastoral life, became a finishing school for skilled pioneer pupils. On this virgin soil, they built a civil and social fabric, incorporating past experiences into a harmonious whole.
In the eastern parts of Kansas and Nebraska, areas that were uninhabited just 25 years prior, now flourished with the appliances of civilization: schools, churches, town halls, improved agriculture, mechanic arts, and mercantile traffic. At the very foundation of this societal structure was the home, ordered and managed by women. These mothers, many not yet old, endured countless trials, labors, and perils to aid in this noble work, now looking upon their achievements with honest pride and satisfaction.
Conclusion
From the first waves of westward emigration to the establishment of thriving communities, Plains Heroines were the unsung architects of American expansion. Their unwavering courage, resilience in the face of immense loss, and tireless dedication to building homes and communities shaped the landscape and culture of the American West. Their stories, like that of Mrs. N., serve as powerful testaments to the strength of the human spirit and the indispensable role women played in forging a new civilization on the frontier.
