The Missing Narratives of the American West

When the public considers the American West, they are often overwhelmed with images of John Wayne riding a horse through the plains with a golden sunset on the horizon, or maybe cowboys chasing down stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans on horseback, or miners sifting for the promise of golden riches in the creeks and rivers of the mountains. 

Whatever it may be, white men tend to take the central focus when it comes to the long-standing public narrative surrounding the history and perception of the American West. In doing so, we as the public end up ignoring the violence and exploitation that made Westward Expansion possible. 

While New Western Historians are actively analyzing, collecting, and researching new themes to dispel the myth of the "great-white West," the above narrative has resisted in public consciousness and memory. This is not simply due to the compelling nature of the Western genre of film calling upon a sentimentalization of a past that did not exist, but the actual structuring of the historical narrative that has been wrought with racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Through this, we have seen historical accounts actively removed from the historical narrative, creating undue tension when trying to dispel the myth that the United States was not built based on the greatness of white men and their desires to expand (not only in the American West, but throughout the history of the United States). 

Here four women are featured, all of whom experienced the American West, but not in the image of the movies or the greater public memory. Each of these women experienced the American West through the lens of conquest, violence, racism, and sexism and still made huge strides for themselves and their communities.