Journal Notes

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

Fashionably dressed bronc rider Bertha Kaepernik picked herself up from the dust and mud of the rodeo arena in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in August 1904, and wiped the dirt out of her eyes. She had just been thrown from a big gray horse, a bucker of the worst type. “Why of course I’m going to ride him again,” she told the rodeo officials. The charming and resilient cowgirl from Sterling, Colorado, was determined to show the crowd that the hard fall she had just received was merely a slight incident in the life of a woman who wanted to make a name for herself busting outlaw horses.

The big gray was brought back after a long chase down the arena, and Bertha once more swung into the saddle.  Spurs were sunk, and the quirt was brought down on the animal’s flanks; however he was tired of the routine and merely stampeded, much to the disgust of the daring rider.

Urging her horse back to the judge’s stand, Bertha called for another horse. A little roan containing the combined elevating power of a volcano and a charge of dynamite was brought out and duly saddled after a hard fight in which the animal tried to kill the horse wrangler by striking the man down with iron shod hooves.  The roan’s cantankerous attitude didn’t seem to faze her.  She was ready for whatever was to come.

Grasping the saddle horn with one hand and deftly inserting one foot in the stirrup and then swinging into the saddle with a nicety that left her well balanced for any jump the horse might make, Bertha was away on her rough voyage.  The roan proved to be a better bucker than the big gray that had thrown her.  He pitched and flipped and changed ends, but Bertha was in the saddle to stay.  She rode upright until the horse fairly wore himself out.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1883, Bertha Kaepernik made history in 1904 by becoming the first woman to ride a bucking horse at Cheyenne Frontier Days. She would go on to win the bucking championship at the Pendleton Roundup in Oregon in 1911, 1912, and 1914.

Not only was Bertha an accomplished bronco buster, but she also established the world record for the Roman race, making a quarter mile in eight seconds at Pendleton. She also set a record for a female Roman rider at the Washington Rodeo in Walla Walla.

In 1909 she married Dell Blancett, a trick rider for the Bison Moving Picture Company. He was killed in action during World War I.

In addition to competing in rodeos, she was a stunt woman working on some of the first Western films which starred Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson. She traveled extensively across the United States and Europe while working for Pawnee Bill’s Wild West show and the 101 Ranch Wild West show. When her career in rodeos and motion pictures ended, she became a guide at Yosemite National Park. She died at the age of ninety-five on July 3, 1979.

To learn more about fearless women like Bertha read

Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

Professional bronc rider Kitty Canutt grabbed a stick of wood lying next to a horse stall at the rodeo grounds in Spokane, Washington, and smacked champion relay racer Donna Card in the mouth with it. The incident occurred in early September 1918 and was the start of a feud between the cowgirls that would continue until their passings.

Kitty, wife of famed Hollywood movie stuntman Yakima Canutt, was upset with Donna over the way she behaved in the women’s relay race at the Spokane Rodeo. She claimed Donna fouled her in the third lap by crowding her into the fence. She complained to the judges, and, after investigating the charge, they determined Donna had run a clean race. Kitty was furious over the ruling and confronted Donna about the perceived indiscretion.  Kitty was disqualified from riding in any other events at the rodeo and was fined $25 for her violent outburst.  Donna went on to win the trophy as top relay racer.

Missoula, Montana, born Donna Card was a horseback riding phenomenon. She was an expert trick roper and fancy rider who won numerous championships, but her expertise was the women’s relay. Often associated with the Drumheller Company, a respected ranching firm that raised thoroughbred horses used in relay races, Donna was considered by rodeo enthusiasts to be one of the best women riders in the field.

The relay race required riders to make three laps around the track, changing horses at the end of the first and second laps. It was compulsory for riders to touch the ground with both feet when making horse changes. Early on, the relay race was considered a man’s game because of the danger and physical effort necessary in changing mounts. Donna was one of a few who proved women could become as good in the ranch sport as the men.

Donna frequently competed against accomplished relay racers Vera McGinnis and Mary Harsh. The women’s relay was considered by most rodeo attendees as the most spectacular of the events. Vera and Donna generally finished first and second in the contest, with Donna beating Vera for the top spot most of the time.

In 1918, Donna’s big win at the Spokane Rodeo made headlines. “Among the most interesting races of the day was the women’s relay, in which three strings were entered,” an article in the September 3, 1918, edition of the Spokesman Review read. “Miss Donna Card, clad in blue and white silk, was the winner, negotiating the two miles in three minutes forty-seven seconds.”

Donna defeated the world’s champion relay racer, Mabel Strickland, at the Spokane fair in September 1922. She took a commanding lead in the first lap and held it throughout the race. So outrode both Mable and Kitty Canutt.

In addition to being recognized for her efforts in relay racing, Donna was also a fashion trendsetter. The blue satin riding skirt, white jersey, and patent leather slippers worn at the Yankee Stadium Rodeo in New York in 1923 was duplicated by clothing designers in attendance and sold to the public.

To learn more about fearless ladies like Donna Card read

Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Cowgirls of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

Rodeo fans at the Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon, in 1928 were thrilled by the prospect of meeting the cowgirl actress chosen to reign over the prestigious event.  Queen Mary Duncan had entertained motion picture audiences with her horseback riding skills in the popular silent films Four Devils and The River.  Audience members hoped she would demonstrate some of the roping and riding techniques she performed on screen at the event, maybe even participate in a relay race or two.  Champion trick rider Mabel Strickland, who had ruled as queen over the prior year’s program, had dazzled ticket buyers with an exhibition of her talent.  Queen Mary’s contribution to the festivities would not be as daring.

Born on August 13, 1894, in Luttrellville, Virginia, Mary learned to ride at a young age and could have gone on to work in Wild West shows but decided to attend Cornell University instead.  She left college after two years to go on the stage.  She had phenomenal success in the Broadway plays Poppy and Shanghai Gesture.  On the merits of those performances, she was signed by Fox Film Corporation to appear in a series of films portraying a feisty rancher’s daughter who helped fight off cattle thieves.  The vivacious, auburn-haired beauty’s talent for the screen equaled her talent on stage.

Mary Duncan had been in Pendleton a month prior to the Round-Up.  She arrived with director Edward Sedgwick and other cast and crew members to film a movie entitled Our Daily Bread.  Sedgwick wanted to use the rodeo as a backdrop for the setting.  It was the first time in motion picture history that the Round-Up would be both heard and seen on the screen.  The director filmed the rodeo in 1924 when his then wife, Josie Sedgwick had been the queen of the event.  Unlike Josie’s court, Mary’s did not feature cowboy attendants.  The Round-Up board of directors appointed a traditional court: two princesses from Pendleton and two from the surrounding area.  Queen Mary and her attendants appeared in the parade dressed in white leather costumes trimmed in black.  Mary rode in a stagecoach and her attendants followed her on horseback.

When the Round-Up concluded, Mary, Edward Sedgwick, and the others associated with the production of Our Daily Bread remained in the area.  Local newspaper reporters followed Mary’s every move, referring to her as “Queen” in the articles written about her and the film being made in the wheatfields and hills of Umatilla County.  “The people out here are perfectly marvelous,” she told a reporter for the La Grande Observer. “I wish you would convey for me how glorious my time in Oregon has been.”

Pendleton residents who spent time with the actress during her visit praised her for her charm and kindness.  Some claimed she was one of the “most talented Round-Up Queens who never rode a horse.” The community invited Mary back to the rodeo to serve again as the queen of the event years after she returned to Hollywood, but she declined the offer, insisting the honor should go to a working cowgirl.

Queen Mary Duncan died on May 9, 1993, at the age of ninety-eight.

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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Lucyle Richards tightened the grip she had on the rope attached to the flank strap tied around the steer she was about to ride. The monstrous animal underneath the ninety-nine-pound woman recognized by rodeo fans across the country as the most beautiful of all the professional cowgirls, waited anxiously for the chute to open. The steer was huffing and angry and Lucyle anticipated a rough time. The audience at the rodeo in Kilgore, Texas, on August 13, 1939, were excited to see the accomplished performer and they called out her name and cheered. She stayed on the back of the steer for more than a minute before being thrown head over heels at a distance of twelve feet. Lucyle was a bit shaken but she quickly picked herself up and waved to the crowd. They erupted in thunderous applause and she bowed in appreciation.

Born Lucyle Garms in Pushmataha County, Oklahoma, in 1909, to a Choctaw Indian mother and Irish father, her rodeo career began at the age of thirteen. Not only did she ride bucking steers and horses, but she was an accomplished trick roper and rider. She won the World Championship Saddle Bronc riding competition in Chicago in 1930 and earned additional titles for the sport in Boston in 1934.

Married a number of times, her husbands included rodeo stars Oklahoma Curly Roberts and T. J. Richards. “I like to take chances,” she told a Fort Worth, Texas, newspaper reporter in the summer of 1938. “That’s why I do what I do, riding vicious horses for a living. I’ve been riding the rodeo since 1929 – from Texas to London and back. It’s been a good life, lots of fun, but it has not been without its struggles – five broken ribs, a fractured chest bone, and innumerable bruises. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

During the 1940s, Lucyle’s time in the arena was overshadowed by the troubles in her personal life. In late April 1941, she was arrested for the murder of her fiancé, wealthy cattleman Frank Dew. The two had been romantically involved for more than a year when she suspected he had been seeing another woman. Lucyle showed up at Dew’s home to confront him over the matter and during their physical altercation, Lucyle pulled a gun from her purse. The pair wrestled over the weapon and Frank died shortly after being shot. Lucyle denied firing the shot that killed him and a jury found her not guilty at the end of a four-day trial.

At the conclusion of the court case, Lucyle left bronc busting to attend the Chennault Aviation Academy in Houston. After learning to fly she became an instructor. She was one of only four women instructors in the country in the special government training program. During World War II, Lucyle ferried bombers between the United States and England.

By 1951, the accomplished rodeo entertainer and aviatrix returned to the arena winning the Saddle Bronc Riding Championship in Oklahoma City and at Madison Square Garden in New York. Ten years later, she retired from riding and became a police officer in Yoakum, Texas.

In 1987, the woman described as a cross between Annie Oakley and Amelia Earhart, was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Lucyle Richards passed away in 1995 at the age of eighty-six.

To learn more about fearless women like Lucyle read

Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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When the five-reel western drama A Knight of the Range premiered in early 1916, critics praised silent film cowboy and cowgirl actors Harry D. Carey and Olive Fuller Golden performances.  Audiences were dazzled by the equestrian feats never-before seen in a motion picture.  “Stunts that are inconceivable of execution are performed before the all-seeing eye of the camera,” a review of the film in a Hollywood magazine read.  “Lovers of riding will miss the treat of their lifetime if they fail to see Western stars Carey and Golden work their magic on horseback.  Golden is one of the prettiest and most popular of film favorites.  Her long golden curls droop over her shoulders and her bewitching smile is as golden as an Arizona sunset; golden also is her disposition.  She will be a star as long as motion pictures are being made.”

Olive Fuller Golden was a rodeo performer who got her start in film in 1914 in a picture called A Sorrowful Shore.  Born on January 31, 1896, she came from a performing family headed by her father, famed vaudeville entertainer George Fuller Golden.  She traveled to Hollywood from New York in 1913 where she became an original stock player for director D. W. Griffith – along with Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and Harry Carey.   She starred opposite Harry Carey in her first film and the pair married two years after A Sorrowful Shore premiered.

In 1916, Olive signed a contract with Universal, where legend has it, she introduced her husband to John Ford and helped convince the studio executives to let Ford direct pictures.  Until that time Ford had been a stuntman and assistant director.  She acted in John Ford’s film The Soul Herder in 1917.  She then retired from films and helped manage Harry’s career and raised a family.  Shortly after her husband’s death in 1947, Olive decided to come out retirement.  She appeared in a number of movies including Gunfight at the O. K. Corral, The Wings of Eagles, and Two Rode Together.  The most memorable film in which Olive appeared was Ford’s The Searchers in which she played the mother of Vera Miles and her real-life son, Harry Carey, Jr.

Olive died in March 1988 at the age of ninety-two.

To learn more about these fearless cowgirl stars read

Along Came A Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of Rodeos and Wild West Shows

The Doctor Was A Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier

Coming February 2024

Historian Enss (The Widowed Ones) profiles in this colorful account 10 of the first female physicians on America’s Western frontier. She portrays them as highly determined individuals, whose resolve not only saw them through the medical schools that resisted admitting them, but also through the treatment of recalcitrant patients (“Doctors were few and far between in the unsettled land,” she writes, and yet “for a time it seemed most trappers, miners, and merchants would rather suffer than consult a woman doctor”).

Among the “lady physicians” and “hen medics,” there was Lilian Heath, a pioneer of plastic surgery who in 1886 mended the face of a man who’d shot himself in despair (she told him he looked better after her 30 surgeries than before); Emma French, the 16th wife of a Mormon who received the midwifery training common among her sister wives; and Bessie Efner, who was seduced to Wyoming by boosters of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, only to find that the men were unwilling to see her—her first patient was a horse she cured of colic.

Between the brief biographies are insightful notes on topics such as treating influenza, sterilizing patients, and extracting bullets. Readers who enjoyed Campbell Olivia’s Women in White Coats will want to check this out. (Feb.)

Early Comments about the Bill Tilghman book scheduled for release in fall 2024.

Zoe Tilghman, my grandmother, was a truly remarkable woman – a pioneer, horsewoman, musician, linguist, student, educator, writer, poet, wife, mother. When she married Bill Tilghman she also became an eyewitness to the important part he played in Oklahoma and the developing West. Chris Enss and Howard Kazanjian have done an excellent job of capturing her life.

Suzie Baerst

This unique “story within a story” reveals the challenges and triumphs of being married to one of America’s most prominent western lawmen.  The colorful exploits of William “Bill” Tilghman, as told through the equally fascinating story of his wife Zoe, present the reader of this book with an exciting and insightful “edge of your seat” experience!

Wyatt McCrea – Actor/Producer

“Gritty, violent, magnificent and noble describes America and the early lawmen who made the frontier safe for expansion. The authors do a masterful job of unpacking the life of revered lawman Bill Tilghman through the words and prose of his second wife, Zoe Tilghman a scholar, mother, poet and remarkable woman in her own right. This husband and wife team were one of America’s early power couples.”

Eileen O’Neill – Former Head of Discovery Channel and TLC

Who was lawman Bill Tilghman? He did not have the dime novels that made Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill famous, nor Stuart Lake who spun the life of Wyatt Earp into fame. But he was one of the greatest lawmen of all. Tilghman now has history documentarians Chris Enss and Howard Kazanjian to show us details about the man from his own notebooks and from his talented wife Zoe’s own hand.

Wayne Tilman – Bestselling Author and Bill Tilghman’s Relative

The Went That-A-Way

In celebration of the new book coming out entitled The Doctor Was a Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier and the impending holiday, this tale of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s demise seemed fitting.

On Wednesday, January 25, 1911, physicians across the world gathered at the great hall at the Academy of Medicine in New York to honor America’s first woman doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell.  The tenacious pioneer in the fight for the right of women to study and practice medicine had died nine months prior to the event honoring the contributions she made to the field.  The audience was composed largely of women all of whom owed a debt of gratitude to Elizabeth Blackwell.

Born in Bristol, England on February 3, 1821, Elizabeth immigrated to America in 1832 with her parents.  Her desire to attend school and study medicine began at an early age.  Elizabeth was twenty-six years old when she was admitted to New York’s Geneva College in 1847.  She had applied to twenty institutions before being accepted as a medical student at the prestigious university.  The male students there believed Elizabeth’s request was a joke and agreed to let her attend the classes based on that idea, but the daring young woman was not playing around.  She prevailed and triumphed over taunts and bias while at school to earn her degree only two years after enrolling.

While in her last year of school, she treated an infant with an eye infection.  As she was washing the baby’s eye with water she accidentally splattered the contaminated liquid in her own eye.  Six months later she had the eye removed and replaced with a glass eye.  Hospitals and dispensaries refused to admit her to practice at their facilities and she was denounced by the press and from the pulpit.

After graduating in 1849, Elizabeth found herself socially and professionally boycotted.  Public sentiment was so against her for pursuing a career in a field deemed unladylike that she could not find a place to live anywhere in New York.  Using funds given to her by her family she built her own home.

In 1854, she borrowed the capitol needed to build the first hospital for women in the country.  Most of the patients she worked with were poor.  Patients were charged a mere $4 a week for services that would cost them $2,000 at another facility.  Elizabeth also founded the Women’s Medical College of New York and when the Civil War broke out she assisted in launching the Sanitary Aid Association.  In addition to maintaining her practice and creating benevolent community services, Elizabeth also wrote a number of books on the subject of medicine.  Two of her most popular titles were Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession for Women and Essays in Medical Sociology. 

By the turn of the century Elizabeth Blackwell had retired from medicine and returned to England.  In the spring of 1907 she was injured in a fall from which she never fully recovered.  She died on May 31, 1910 from a stroke.  The epitaph below the Celtic cross which marks her grave at Kilmun Churchyard on the Holy Loch, near Clyde, includes these words:  “The first woman in modern times to graduate in medicine (1849) and the first to be placed on the British Medical Register (1859).

Thank you to Women Writing the West for this incredible honor.

What a great weekend at the Will Rogers Medallion Award program! Seeing good friends, spending time with accomplished Western authors, poets, and filmmakers, listening to Craig Johnson, NY Times bestselling author and creator of the Longmire series, share tales of his early days in the business, and the announcement that the Will Rogers Medallion Award will officially be moving to the Will Rogers Museum in Oklahoma made the event complete. I returned to California late last night with these items and feeling grateful for the recognition The Widowed Ones and Along Came a Cowgirl received.