When a Woman Knew Her Place
...And it covered 10,000 acres

When settlers moved west to claim the land that the rail roads, the army, and the buffalo men, had opened up on the American frontier, they brought their women and children with them.  It was a dangerous land, inhabited by strange and wild animals, Indians who also claimed and loved the land, deadly storms, unbelievably hot dry summers, and cold, bone chilling winters. 

Even in areas where the weather was more gentile, the conditions were tough. Men and women worked together for everything they got from the land, whether raising cattle or truck.  It was all manual labor, from sun up until sundown, seven days a week.

Town was usually miles if not days away, and doctors were rare and often too far away to be of help in real emergencies.

Men died young of hard work or disease or both.  Many times a young woman would find herself alone, to try to make the dream they shared live on.  Many women returned east, or to town, but many also stayed.  They set their jaw against all odds, and made the land give up its bounty.  Many found their dreams and prospered and held thousands of acres and wielded much power at a time when they were supposed to be quiet and meek. 

But these were the woman of the west, the ancestors of the strong, beautiful, independent woman all of us who cherish the west and its lifestyle admire and love, these are our mothers, our sisters and our wives.  These were the women who knew their place, every acre of it.   In this work I salute, and pay homage to the kind of women who made the west, not the west of destination, but the west of legend.

Steve Miller