From “Chapter One, Introduction” of Harvesting Their Stories:
South Dakota Writers’ Perspectives on Pioneering Women 1870-1900

Poke bonnets, covered wagons, sod shanties, and a lone man behind a team of horses with a sodbuster strapped around his shoulders struggling to slice through the virgin prairie. These are just a few of the “props” most frequently associated with Dakota Territory’s pioneering life (Riley 173). For decades authors and artists have created quasi-realistic interpretations of how the West was tamed, and the main character they depict is usually a robust and rugged man “with the rifle across his saddle horn” (Brown 11).

But where were the women? Many students of America’s homesteading past have accepted the traditional view that women were non-participatory or were, at the most “reluctant pioneer(s)” who followed their husbands into the vast Great American Desert (Bush 24). Women were enshrined in sunbonnets, sitting demurely on wagon benches, and getting jostled to and fro while their husbands, with reins in hand, steered teams of oxen across the wild prairies looking for claims to stake. Like those earlier pioneers who had gone to the West Coast, many women did follow their husbands onto the Dakota prairies, dreading “Indians and wild animals,” but they also went with “tenacity and quiet force,” for they were also dedicated in making homes for their families wherever they settled (Brown 17).
This thesis explores South Dakota writers’ literary portrayal of such women in works set during the major pioneering period of the Dakotas, 1870-1900. Authors like Ole Rolvaag and Hamlin Garland depict women as weak psychologically, unable to adapt to less “civilized” environs, haunted by their pasts, and failing physically before the challenge of taming the Plains. While these portraits have some basis in fact, they stand in stark contrast to those by women writers of the Dakotas who, in describing their female protagonists of the same historic period, would dispel the stereotype of weak womanhood. Among such women writers were Eleanor Gates, Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mary Brenenman, Aagot Raaen, and Rachel Calof. Although these individuals represent different cultural backgrounds, they concentrate on the emotional strength, physical endurance, resiliency, and practicality that propel their female characters into heroic status. Their resultant fictions, although perhaps not as artistically or stylistically perfected, serve to counterbalance their male counterparts’ fictions.

Because it is apparent that the “female settler . . .exhibited a wide diversity in their makeups,” this thesis will focus on realistic portraits of Dakota women (Riley 41). By taking neither the traditionally masculine nor the feminist approach, both perspectives will be examined as they depict the pioneering period of 1870-1900.
 

This 107-page thesis is available through South Dakota State Library or the author. Steppes to Neu Odessa and Postcards from the Old Man are also available for purchase.

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