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Show ~ f ~~N.~ o -CATION Convo speakers Siporin and Butler 'speak of the past' T he following are excerpts from a story abou t Thursday's Convocation speakers, Ona Siporin and Anne Butler. It was written by Jennifer Hines of Th e Herald fourn al. "There are m any stories still to be told about pioneer women in the West. Stories about lives of great travail and hard work. Stories about women who showed in novation and strength-as well as some who led criminal lives. " But now two women from Utah State University are telling those stories that ' were somehow wiped out of our m emory and left out of our history book.' "Anne M. Butler and Ona Siporin share their version of the American West in 'A Mosaic of Uncommon Common Women, ' a slide show/storytelling presentation sponsored by the Utah Speaker's Bureau. " Early pioneer women weren't all young, white and beautiful, as so often portrayed in books, television and movies. And their lives were not always glamorous and romantic, the two say. "Take Josephine 'Little Joe' Monahan for instance. Born in Buffalo, N .Y., in 1847, the daughter of Irish parents, she gave birth to an illegitimate son. "Josephine left N ew York and re-emerged in Idaho City, Idaho. But now, 'Little Joe' was a man who could ' outshoot, outride and out-wrangle any cowboy in southwestern Idaho.' Siporin relates. She had the tough, cracked, tan hands earned after years of ranching, mining and herding sheep. She sent child support payments back home regularly: she owned and ran her own ranch. No one guessed Josephine's secret, disguised as she was in rancher's gear. No one, that is, until the day she died. "Then there was the young black woman in New Mexico Territory who, at the age of 16, was convicted of murde~ sentenced to hang, given a last minute • reprieve by a politically-conscious governor and spent 13 years in the state penitentiary. "While in prison, she gave birth to a son who was adopted by a local family. "Years later, the woman attempted to find his birth certificate, only to be told by the prison and hospital authorities there was no record of her son's birth. "These women and many others all had something in common-they were ordinary wom en who through the circumstances of their lives rose to extraordinary levels, Butler and Siporin say. "With of wealth of historical material to choose from, Butler and Siporin decided to focus their presentation on a family them e-'to show the diversity of family,' says Butler. "They attempt to show black women, middle-class women, single parents, as well as women of accomplishment. "For pioneer women, men and children before the turn of the century, everyday life was constant hard work. 'Work defined the life of the pioneers,' Butler says. 'Work defied gender lines: women did women's work, women did men's work.' "In addition to constant work, there was little privacy to be fo und in the close quarters of sod houses, according to Butler. "The lifestyle left many in poor health and with strained relationships between fa mily members. "In real life, a pioneer wife could find herself serving dinner in a sod house only to have the famil y cow come crashing through the ceiling-an event sure to strain even the most composed, Butler says. " The two wom en each have different m ethods of delving into history. "Butler takes the historian's approach, perusing hundreds of documents and public records to draw some general conclusions. "Siporin, a professional storyteller, tends to delve into one particular character, then fill in the blank spots with her own interpretation-one that evolves with each telling. 'I'm the liar and Anne's the scholar,' says Siporin. "The idea of the slide/storytelling show germinated in 1991 when Butler was approached by the Girl Scouts, who 'wanted a program that would reflect the new history of the West for teenage girls,' says Butler. The program kicked off a five-day wagon train for the Scouts. Following the presentations, Butler and Siporin were overwhelmed by the response. " A Mosaic of Uncommon Common Wom en is important, Butler and Siporin say, because those early pioneers are no different than today's wom en who m ay see themselves as extraordinary in any way. "Women's contributions were deeper and m ore varied than we have been willing to think about, Butler says. 'We like having the opportunity to bring to center stage these women's lives,' she said." Butler challenges historians on subject of prostitution Daily lives of prostitutes in the American West were nasty, brutish and short, says writer One of Thursday's SUU Con vocation speakers, historian, co-editor of the Western Historical Quarterly and a professor of history at Utah State University Anne M. Butler, is the author of a book entitled Daughters of fay, Sis ters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90. The following is a review of Butler's book which was printed in the American Historical Review. It was written by G.J Barker-Benfield from State University of New York in Albany. "Drawing large! y on the court records and newspapers of 12 western states, Anne M. Butler shows that the daily lives of prostitutes were nasty, brutish, and short. "She challenges historians including Judith Walkowitz, Marion Goldman and Ruth Rosen, who, she unfairly suggests, have depicted the prostitute as a 'professional who chose her job after carefully crafting her career plans.' "Dividing her 155 pages of text into six chapters, Butler demonstrates that prostitutes lived everywhere in the rural and urban West, came from a variety of ethnic groups rooted in preindustrial economies, and were poor and young. Although many of them were mothers, all their relationsh ips 'floundered in a torrent of destructive .. .experiences,' a view that is in contrast to Goldman's wished-for picture of sororal ties in accordance with Carroll Smith-Rosenburg's ideal. " Butler also shows that prostitutes were trapped by poverty and social ostracism and were subject to alcoholism, drug addiction, violence and suicide. "The degradation of these women was reinforced by politicians and law officers for whom the legal or illegal status of prostitutes was in some sense a resource. 11 "Finally, despite much irrelevant evidence, the author argues fairly persuasively that prostitution was a de facto part of military policy, whereby army authorities maintained prostitution while denying that they did so. "Many army posts employed prostitutes under several misleading classifications, including ' laundresses.' "One suspects that the laundresses whom Linda Kerber describes following the revolutionary army probably were prostitutes, although it seems likely that they, like Butler's laundresses, did the laundry, too. " Butler makes several original points, showing the existence of smallfarm brothels and comparing the reform convent in St. Paul, Minnesota, to the bordellos whence it drew its 'Magdalens.' "Her account of the broken adult lives of prostitutes complements Ruth Rosen's account of the homes from which they came. "Butler can write concisely and well, but, too often, her prose is overcome by indignation. "She provides no sense of change over time, and she dispenses recom menda tions on how churches, newspapers, an d comm uni ties should have behaved to ameliora te prostitu tion. " But what is not surprising is that Butler ignores Goldman's Gold Diggers and Silver Miners (198 11, dismissing it as a footnote. " In contrast to Butler's large can vas, Goldman wrote a local history of prostit ution in Virginia City, Colorado, during the same period. "Goldman's detail, her atten tion to questions of social stratification and general gender arrangements, and her m ethods of exploiting census materials and diaries could have been invaluable to Butler. "Butler's account of the repeated suicide attempts of Lottie Pickett illustra tes 'the problems of the prostitu te, ' but the existence of 'Suicide Frenchy' in Goldman's Virginia City and a contex.t of 'almost unbelievable' suicide rates for pw~ tit utes point to a much more arrest ing historical dimension to e issue, that of type. " Nonetheless, we must be gratdul to Butler and these other historians for establish mg the history of prosti tution as a subject of signiiicance to gender arrangements as a whole, and I look iorward to the integration of these different historical aspects." Butler will be speaking along wi th storytclkr Ona Siporin. T he two will discuss "A Mosaic of Uncommon Com m on Women" at 11 a.m. in the SUU Auditorium. -... |
