"Determined to Do Something Real Bad"

Erin, at  The Books I Should Have Read, has found a wonderful book.

Letters from a Woman Homesteader

For Mother's Day this year I received a Kindle. I promptly filled it with dozens of free public domain works, including Letters from a Woman Homesteader, which is a collection of letters from Elinore Pruitt Stewart to Mrs. Coney, a former employer of hers. It only took reading one letter and I was hooked.

I had never heard of this book, but upon searching for more information about Elinore, I found that she has something of a cult following. Here are the basics. Elinore was born either in Arkansas or Oklahoma (reports vary) in 1876, the eldest of nine children. She was married and had a daughter. Her first husband died and she took her baby daughter further west and worked as a laundress and nurse for Mrs. Coney in Denver. It is this former employer to whom the letters are addressed, written after she filed a claim on land in Wyoming in 1909.

And what letters! Elinore is a consummate storyteller, bringing to life the the beauty, grandeur, and danger of Wyoming and the colorful people who were settling it in the early 1900s. She introduces her readers to people of all types, including immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Mexico. She paints vivid pictures of sleigh rides through a vast white landscape, a cattle drive and the search for bandits, a desperate woman alone on a starlit winter night giving birth to her child, an eccentric and ancient Southerner and his lost love, sunset wagon rides across a landscape covered with wildflowers, and so much more. Her interactions with the interesting people in her "neighborhood" are endlessly fascinating.

But what makes her letters so fresh and compelling is that Elinore is a fearless woman in a time when her sex  were considered too delicate for "men's" work and still would not have the right to vote for another decade. She was not afraid of hard work and taking chances. And yet she was feminine, writing not only of mowing hay but of raising children, making meals, sewing garments, and matchmaking.

One of my favorite of her letters involves an impromptu trip she took with her then two-year-old daughter. The menfolk were off on a cattle drive and their women were making a trip into Utah. Her employer (who may have been her husband as well at this point) had forbidden her from going because the trip was dangerous and he didn't think it would be good for her daughter Jerrine. Here is the first part of that letter.

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Next day all the men left for the round-up, to be gone a week. I knew I never could stand myself a whole week. In a little while the ladies came past on their way to Ashland. They were all laughing and were so happy that I really began to wish I was one of the number, but they went their way and I kept wanting to go somewhere. I got reckless and determined to do something real bad. So I went down to the barn and saddled Robin Adair, placed a pack on "Jeems McGregor," then Jerrine and I left for a camping-out expedition.

It was nine o'clock when we started and we rode hard until about four, when I turned Robin loose, saddle and all, for I knew he would go home and some one would see him and put him into the pasture. We had gotten to where we couldn't ride anyway, so I put Jerrine on the pack and led "Jeems" for about two hours longer; then, as I had come to a good place to camp, we stopped.

While we had at least two good hours of daylight, it gets so old here in the evening that fire is very necessary. We had been climbing higher into the mountains all day and had reached a level tableland where the grass was luxuriant and there was plenty of wood and water. I unpacked "Jeems" and staked him out, built a roaring fire, and made our bed in an angle of a sheer wall of rock where we would be protected against the wind. Then I put some potatoes into the embers, as Baby and I are both fond of roasted potatoes. I started to a little spring to get water for my coffee when I saw a couple of jack rabbits playing, so I went back for my little shotgun. I shot one of the rabbits, so I felt very like Leather-stocking because I had killed but one when I might have gotten two. It was fat and young, and it was but the work of a moment to dress it and hang it up on a tree. Then I fried some slices of bacon, made myself a cup of coffee, and Jerrine and I sat on the ground and ate. Everything smelled and tasted so good! This air is so tonic that one gets delightfully hungry. Afterward we watered and restaked "Jeems," I rolled some logs on to the fire, and then we sat and enjoyed the prospect.

The entire post is here.

Thanks, Erin!