'LET HER WORKS PRAISE HER': WOMEN'S EXPERIENCES IN THE SOUTHWEST, 1846-1912 (MISSIONARIES, MILITARY, NEW MEXICO)

摘要

Although women from several ethnic backgrounds--Indian, Hispanic, Black, and Anglo--influenced the cultural and social development of nineteenth-century New Mexico, the present study examines the experiences of Anglo women who left written records of their reactions and activities in the Southwest between 1846 and 1912. In addition to diaries and letters, sources include a variety of other documents that women authored: reports to mission boards about missionary work, depositions and affidavits to the government for pensions, poetry, reminiscences of adventures as army wives, travelogues, essays, short stories, and scientific tomes. Moreover, a wealth of public documentation supplements and corroborates literary sources.;Indian and Hispanic women left virtually no written sources comparable to those that Anglo women produced, but their roles and experiences prior to American occupation are summarized as a background to the Anglo presence in the region. An examination of the careers of missionary wives and women married to army officers, groups strongly influenced by the ideology of domesticity, follows. Through biographical sketches further chapters discuss the experiences of an army nurse/laundress, a battered wife who became a local-color writer, a mission teacher, and the first female anthropologist in the Southwest.;These discussions of various women (who may each represent a particular type), reveal that although they shared some attitudes and expectations, they engaged in a variety of activities. More significantly, such diversity suggests that no single conceptual framework about women's history in the West encompasses these women and their experiences. The women whose stories appear in the present work emerge as unique and distinct personalities. Because they wrote down their impressions, we may share something of their experiences in the nineteenth-century Southwest.