Women's Autobiographies of the American West
(A bibliography in progress)
[Click here for writing project associated with this bibliography.]
Nannie Alderson, A Bride Goes West (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1969)
[Montana]
Joyce J. Anders [b. 1927], Anders of Two Rivers (Fairbanks: Jenny M Publishers, 1997)
[Alaska]
Mary Hunter Austin [1868-1934], Earth Horizon: Autobiography (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991)
[Southern California]
Harriet Fish Backus, Tomboy Bride (Boulder, Colorado: Pruett Pub. Co., 1969)
[Idaho and Colorado]
Sanora Babb, An Owl on Every Post: A Memoir (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1994)
[Colorado]
Phyllis Barber [b. 1943], How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994)
[Nevada]
Isabel Bayley, ed., Letters of Katherine Anne Porter (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990)
[Texas]
Libby Beaman [d. 1932] and Betty John, Libby: The Sketches, Letters & Journal of Libby Beaman, Recorded in the Pribilof Islands, 1879-1880, as Presented by Betty John (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Council Oak Books, 1987)
[Alaska]
Isabella Lucy Bird [1831-1904], A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (New York: G. P. Putnams's Sons, 1879)
[Rockies]
Isabella Lucy Bird [1831-1904], The Hawaiian Archipelago: Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands (New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1894)
[Hawaii]
Muriel Wylie Blanchet [1891-1961], The Curve of Time (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1961)
[Vancouver Island, British Columbia]
Lamanda Maria Chaffee Booth [1817-1906], Lamanda's Covered Wagon Journey to Colorado, 1862: Her Personal Diary (Twain Harte, California: R. Blake, 1997)
[Wagon train trip from Lancaster, Wisconsin, to Central City, Colorado, in 1862]
Eulalia Bourne, Woman in Levi's (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1967)
[Arizona]
Eulalia Bourne, Nine Months is a Year at Baboquívari School (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968)
[Arizona]
Margaret Duncan Brown [1882-1965], Shepherdess of Elk River Valley (Denver: Golden Bell Press, 1967)
[Colorado]
Rebecca Burlend [1793-1872], A True Picture of Emigration, or, Fourteen years in the Interior of North America (1848)
[Illinois Plains]
Fabiola Cabeza de Baca [1898-1991], We Fed Them Cactus (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954)
[New Mexico]
Rachel Calof, Rachel Calof's Story: A Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995)
[North Dakota]
Maria Campbell [b. 1940], Halfbreed (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973)
[Saskatchewan and Western Canada]
Margaret Irvin Carrington [1831-1870], Absaraka, Home of the Crows: Being the Experience of an Officer's Wife on the Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983)
[Great Plains]
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (Dame Shirley) [1819-1906], The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-1852 (Pioneer Magazine, 1854-55; San Francisco: T. C. Russell, 1922)
[California]
Agnes Morley Cleaveland [b. 1874], No Life for a Lady (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1941)
[New Mexico]
Ann Raney Coleman [1810-1897], Victorian Lady on the Texas Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971)
[Texas]
Catharine Wever Collins, An Army Wife Comes West: Letters of Catharine Wever Collins, 1863-1864 (Denver, Colorado: The State Historical Society of Colorado, 1954)
[Colorado]
Elizabeth Corey, Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990)
[Iowa]
Virginia Cornell [b. 1936], Doc Susie: The True Story of a Country Physician in the Colorado Rockies (Carpinteria, California: Manifest Publications, 1991)
[Colorado]
Isabel Crawford [1865-1961], Kiowa: A Woman Missionary in Indian Territory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998)
[Nebraska]
Mary Crow Dog [b. 1953] and Richard Erdoes, Lakota Woman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990)
[South Dakota]
Mary Brave Bird [b. 1953] (Mary Crow Dog) with Richard Erdoes, Ohitika Woman (New York: Grove Press, 1993)
[South Dakota]
Delfina Cuero [1900-1972] (as told to Florence Shipek), The Autobiography of Delfina Cuero (Los Angeles: Dawson's Bookshop, 1968)
[Southern California]
Elizabeth Bacon Custer [1842-1933], Boots and Saddles, or, Life in Dakota With General Custer (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1885)
[Great Plains]
Elizabeth Bacon Custer [1842-1933], Tenting on the Plains, or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas (New York: C. L. Webster & Company, 1893)
[Great Plains]
Angela Davis [b. 1944], Angela Davis: An Autobiography (New York: International Publishers Co., 1989)
[California]
Mourning Dove [1888-1936], Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography, ed. Jay Miller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990)
[Pacific Northwest]
Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1976)
[Arizona]
Gretel Ehrlich [b. 1946], The Solace of Open Spaces (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985)
[Wyoming]
Anne Ellis [1875-1938], The Life of an Ordinary Woman (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929)
[Colorado]
Anne Ellis [1875-1938], 'Plain Anne Ellis': More About the Life of an Ordinary Woman (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931)
[Colorado]
Anne Ellis [1875-1938], Sunshine Preferred: The Philosophy of an Ordinary Woman (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934)
[Colorado]
Martha Farnsworth [1867-1924], Plains Woman: The Diary of Martha Farnsworth, 1882-1922 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
[Great Plains]
Elizabeth Chester Fisk [b. 1846], Lizzie: the Letters of Elizabeth Chester Fisk, 1864-1893 (Missoula, Montana: Mountain Press Pub. Co., 1989)
[Montana]
Ellen Gordon Fletcher [b. 1841], A Bride on the Bozeman Trail: The Letters and Diary of Ellen Gordon Fletcher 1866 (Medford, Oregon: Gandee Printing Center, 1970)
[Montana]
Mary Hallock Foote [1847-1938], A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote, edited by Rodman W. Paul (Huntington Library, 1972)
[Colorado, Idaho, California]
Jessie Benton Frémont [1824-1902], The Letters of Jessie Benton Frémont (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993)
[Rockies]
Emily French [b. c1843], Emily: The Diary of a Hard-Worked Woman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987)
[Colorado]
Margaret Frink, Journal of the Adventures of a Party of Gold-Seekers: Martinsville, Indiana, to Sacramento, California, March 30, 1850 to September 7, 1850 (Oakland: California, 1897)
[California]
Arabella Fulton [1844-1933], Memoir: Selections (New York: F. Watts, 1995)
[Iowa, Oregon]
Diane Glancy, Claiming Breath (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992)
[Oklahoma]
Alice Kirk Grierson [1828-1888], The Colonel's Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989)
[Great Plains]
E. J. Guerin, Mountain Charley, or, The Adventures of Mrs. E. J. Guerin, Who Was Thirteen Years in Male Attire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968)
[California, Colorado]
Mary Ann Hafen [b. 1854], Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman's Life on the Mormon Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1938)
[Great Plains, Rockies, Utah]
Janet Campbell Hale [b. 1947], Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter (New York: Random House, 1993)
[Idaho, Washington, and California]
LaVerne Hanners, Girl on a Pony (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994)
[Oklahoma]
Linda Hasselstrom, Windbreak: A Woman Rancher on the Northern Plains (Berkeley: Barn Owl Books, 1987)
[South Dakota]
Julia Archibald Holmes [1838-1887], Bloomer Girl on Pikes Peak, 1858 (Denver: Denver Public Library Western History Dept., 1949)
[Colorado]
Kenneth L. Holmes, Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987; 8 vols.)
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins [1844?-1891], Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (New York: Putnam, 1883)
[Nevada]
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston [b. 1934], Farewell to Manzanar (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973)
[California]
Janet G. Humphrey, A Texas Suffragist: Diaries and Writings of Jane Y. McCallum (Austin: Ellen C. Temple, 1988)
[Texas]
Beverly Hungry Wolf [b. 1950], The Ways of My Grandmothers (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1980).
[Northern Plains]
Dorothy M. Johnson[1905-1984], When You and I Were Young, Whitefish (Missoula: Montana Historical Society Press, 1997)
[Montana]
Mary Harris Jones [1830-1930], The Autobiography of Mother Jones (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1925)
[Colorado]
Teresa Jordan, Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album (New York: Vintage, 1994)
[Wyoming]
Phoebe Goodell Judson [1832-1926], A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home (1925)
[Puget Sound]
Cynthia Kadohata, The Floating World (New York: Viking, 1989)
[California]
Akemi Kikumura [b. 1944], Through Harsh Winters: The Life of a Japanese Immigrant Woman (Novato, California: Chandler and Sharp, 1981)
[California; Narrative of the life of Michiko Tanaka, b. 1904]
Maxine Hong Kingston [b. 1940], The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (New York: Knopf, 1976)
[California]
Edith Eudora Kohl [b. 1884], Land of the Burnt Thigh A Lively Story of Women Homesteaders on the South Dakota Frontier (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1938)
[South Dakota]
Alice Koskela [b. 1949], The Pull of Moving Water (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1999)
[Idaho]
Anita Kunkler [1907-1967], Hardscrabble: A Narrative of the California Hill Country (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1975)
[California]
Natalie Kusz, Road Song (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990)
[California, Alaska]
Carobeth Laird, [b. 1895] Encounter With an Angry God: Recollections of My Life With John Peabody Harrington (Banning, California: Malki Museum Press, 1975)
[California]
Carobeth Laird, [b. 1895] Limbo: A Memoir About life in a Nursing Home by a Survivor (Novato, California: Chandler & Sharp, 1979)
[California]
May Wynne Lamb [1889-1975], Life in Alaska: The Reminiscences of a Kansas Woman, 1916-1919 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988)
[Alaska]
Seigniora Russell Laune, Sand in My Eyes (Seigniora Russell Laune, 1956)
[Oklahoma]
Mabel Barbee Lee, Cripple Creek Days (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1958)
[Colorado]
Mary Paik Lee [b. 1900], Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990)
[California]
Frank Linderman, Prettyshield: Medicine Woman of the Crows (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1972)
[Great Plains]
Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962], Winter in Taos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935)
[New Mexico]
Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962], Edge of Taos Desert (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937)
[New Mexico]
Abbie Morgan Madenwald [b. 1908], Arctic Schoolteacher: Kulukak, Alaska, 1931-1933 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994)
[Alaska]
Susan Shelby Magoffin [1827-c1855], Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962)
[New Mexico]
Nancy Mairs [b. 1943], Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996)
[Arizona]
Wilma Mankiller [b. 1945], Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993)
[Oklahoma]
Mary McNair Matthews [1834-1903], Ten Years in Nevada, or, Life on the Pacific Coast (Buffalo: Baker, Jones, 1880)
[Nevada]
Colleen McElroy [b. 1935], A Long Way From St. Louie (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1997)
[Texas, Washington State]
Cyra McFadden, Rain or Shine: A Family Memoir (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998)
[All over the West]
Mary Jane Megquier [1813-1899], Apron Full of Gold: Letters From San Francisco, 1849-1856, ed. Robert Glass Clelland (Huntington Library, 1949)
[California]
Myrtle Drexel Metz [b. 1924], Of Haviland and Honey: A Colorado Girlhood, 1924 to 1947 (Boulder, Colorado: Pruett, 1992)
[Colorado]
Cherrié Moraga, Loving in the War Years (South End Press, 1983)
[California]
Margaret E. Murie, Two in the Far North (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books, 1964)
[Alaska]
Virginia Reed Murphy [b. c1834], Across the Plains in the Donner Party (North Haven, Connecticut: Linnet Books, 1996)
[California]
Rose Pender, A Lady's Experience in the Wild West in 1883 (London: G. Tucker, 1888)
[Texas, California, Utah, Wyoming, Dakota Territory]
Dorothy L. Pillsbury, Star Over Adobe (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1963)
[New Mexico; also No High Adobe; Adobe Doorways; Roots in Adobe]
Polinqaysi Qoyawayma (Elizabeth Q. White) [b. 1892] (as told to Vada F. Carlson), No Turning Back: A Hopi Indian Woman's Struggle to Live in Two Worlds (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1964)
[Arizona]
Delphine Red Shirt [b. 1957], Bead on an Ant Hill: A Lakota Childhood (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998)
[Nebraska and South Dakota]
Clarice E. Richards, A Tenderfoot Bride: Tales From an Old Ranch (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1920)
[Colorado]
Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe, Army Letters From an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 (New York: D. Appleton, 1909)
[Great Plains]
Mary Canaga Rowland, As Long As Life: The Memoirs of a Frontier Woman Doctor (Storm Peak Press, 1994)
[All over the West]
Sarah Royce, A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1977)
[All over the West, eventually California]
Mari Sandoz [1896-1966], Sandhill Sundays and Other Recollections (North American Review, 1930)
[Nebraska]
Mollie Dorsey Sanford [1838/9-1915], Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1959)
[Nebraska and Colorado]
Julia Scully [b. 1929], Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood (New York: Random House, 1998)
[Alaska]
Carolyn See, Dreaming: Good Luck and Hard Times in America (New York: Random House, 1995)
[California]
Helen Sekaquaptewa (as told to Louise Udall) [b. 1898], Me and Mine: The Life Story of Helen Sekaquaptewa (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1969)
[Arizona]
Sarah Gilbert White Smith, Diary, 1838 Mar. 10-1839 Sept. 14 (Manuscript)
[1813-1855. Journal of Mrs. Smith's journey with her husband (and others) from Springfield, Mass. to Waiilatpu, Or. Ter. to join Marcus Whitman in his missionary work. Repository also has available in microfilm. "Copied by her neice [sic], Alice J. White." Original apparently destroyed. Open to qualified researchers with some restrictions.Lucretia Vaile, Palmer Lake, Colo., gift, 1958. Daughter of Alfred and Sarah (Gilbert) White of West Brookfield Mass. Wife of Rev. Asa B. Smith. Rev. and Mrs. Smith were pioneer Oregon missionaries to the Indians, under appointment of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Repository also has as published in: First white women over the Rockies, v. 3 / edited by C.M. Drury. Glendale, Calif.: A.H. Clark, 1966.]
Grace Snyder [1882-1982], No Time on My Hands (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963)
[Great Plains]
Monica Sone [b. 1919], Nisei Daughter (New York: Little Brown, 1953)
[Washington]
Helen Winter Stauffer, ed., Letters of Mari Sandoz (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992)
[Nebraska]
Elinore Pruitt Stewart [1878-1933], Letters of a Woman Homesteader (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914)
[Wyoming]
Elinore Pruitt Stewart [1878-1933], Letters on an Elk Hunt by a Woman Homesteader (New York: Houghton Mifflin company, 1915)
[Wyoming]
Hallie Crawford Stillwell [b. 1897], I'll Gather My Geese (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991)
[Texas]
Carrie Adell Strahorn [1854-1925], Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage: A Woman's Unique Experience During Thirty Years of Path Finding and Pioneering from the Missouri to the Pacific and From Alaska to Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988)
[All over the West]
Martha Summerhayes [1846-1911], Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Woman (Salem, Massachusetts: Salem Press, 1911)
[Arizona]
Hope Williams Sykes [b. 1901], Second Hoeing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1935)
[Colorado]
Atlanta Georgia Thompson, Daughter of a Pioneer (Portland, Oregon: Binford & Mort Pub., 1990)
[Pacific Northwest]
Era Bell Thompson [b. 1907], American Daughter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946)
[North Dakota]
Lucy Thompson (Che-na-wah Weitch-ah-wah) [b. 1856], To The American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman (Eureka, California: Cummins Print Shop, 1916)
[Northern California]
Ticasuk (Emily Ivanoff Brown) [b. 1904], The Roots of Ticasuk: An Eskimo Woman's Family Story (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing, 1981)
[Alaska]
Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982)
[California, Arizona]
Ida Hunt Udall [1858-1915], Mormon Odyssey: The Story of Ida Hunt Udall, Plural Wife (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992)
[Utah]
Ruth Underhill [1884-1984] and María Chona [b. c1838], Papago Woman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1936)
[Arizona]
Leonor Villegas de Magnón [1876-1955], The Rebel (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1994)
[Texas borderlands]
Sallie Wagner, Wide Ruins: Memories from a Navajo Trading Post (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997)
[New Mexico]
Waheenee (Buffalo-Bird Woman) [b. 1839] (as told to Gilbert L. Wilson), Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story Told by Herself to Gilbert L. Wilson (St. Paul, Minnesota: Webb Pub. Co., 1921)
[North Dakota]
Mary Richardson Walker [1811-1897] and Myra Fairbank Eells, On to Oregon: The Diaries of Mary Walker and Myra Eells (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998)
[Oregon]
Anna Lee Walters [b. 1946], Talking Indian: Reflections on Survival and Writing (Ithaca: Firebrand Books 1992)
[New Mexico]
Hazel Brown Welsh [b. 1899], Pioneer Daughter (San Francisco, California: Big Horn Books, 1985)
[California]
Marietta Wetherill [1876-1954], Marietta Wetherill: Life With the Navajos in Chaco Canyon
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997)
[Arizona]
Eva Antonia Wilbur-Cruce [b. 1904], A Beautiful, Cruel Country (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987)
[Arizona]
Terry Tempest Williams [b. 1955], Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (New York: Pantheon, 1991)
[Utah]
Luzena Stanley Wilson [b. c1821], Forty-Niner: Memories Recalled for Her Daughter, Correnah Wilson Wright (Eucalyptus Press, 1937)
[California]
Pauline Wonderly, Reminiscences of a Pioneer (Placerville, California: El Dorado County Historical Society, 1965)
[California]
Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (New York: Harper, 1952)
[California]