Clara Shortridge Foltz (1849 - 1934)
Showing her streak of independence at an early age, Clara eloped with her lover when only fifteen years old, but as their family grew he found it difficult to support them. She, for her part, was able to do so by writing articles for newspapers such as
The New Northwest and the San Jose
Mercury. After thirteen years her husband abandoned her, leaving her with five children to support. She did so by studying law in a local judge’s office thanks to the patronage of Sarah Knox-Goodridge, a local suffragette, and by giving lectures on suffrage. She managed to get a bill through which changed the requirement for lawyers to be white males, and so became in 1878 the first woman in California, indeed the first on the west coast, to pass the bar. However having been but poorly educated (given that she ran off to have babies at 15) she wanted to study to improve her knowledge of the law, and immediately ran into another obstacle set up by the male-dominated society.
Applying to Hastings College of Law, she was refused admission due to being a woman. With her ally, Laura deForce Gordon, she authored a bill which argued that if women could practice law (a right she herself had procured) then it made no sense for them not to be able to study it. Her bill suggested that
"No person shall, on account of sex, be disqualified from entering upon or pursuing any lawful business, vocation, or profession." At a time when women’s rights were beginning to be taken seriously, she was able to convince the judge and gain admission to the college for all women. Ironically, the long and protracted legal battle had exhausted her funds, and she was unable to attend the college herself, returning to practicing rather than studying the law. She practiced in San Diego, San Francisco and New York.
Originally a supporter (though not allowed to vote) of the Republican party, she spoke publicly for them in four elections, but switched her allegiance after 1886, lecturing now for the Democrats in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. She became a leading figure in the women’s voting rights movement, working with the suffrage movement for over half a century and gaining many essential rights for women. In 1893 she suggested the radical idea of a public defender, a system which is now in use across the USA and most of the world, but which then wasn’t even considered. This was certainly another first, and Foltz’s life would be characterised by pioneering attempts and ideas and firsts.
She was the first female clerk for the State Assembly's Judiciary Committee (1880); the first woman appointed to the State Board of Corrections; the first female licensed Notary Public; the first woman named director of a major bank; and, in 1930, the first woman to run for Governor of California, at the age of 81. She also became the first woman deputy District Attorney, and authored the Women’s Vote Amendment for California in 1911. Despite her heavy workload, she never neglected those five children (she did not marry and had no more) and again, despite her prominence in the women’s suffrage movement, was keen to stress the importance of the domestic role in women’s lives.
When she passed away in 1934 from a heart attack at the age of 85, her coffin was carried by federal and state judges, as well as the Governor of Los Angeles. Although she never got to study at Hastings, under pressure from its female members the college granted her a posthumous degree in Law in 1991. In 2002, the Criminal Court in Los Angeles was renamed in her honour.
Susette La Flesche aka Inshata Theumba (1854 - 1903)
Born to the son of a French fur trader and his Ponca wife, Susette was educated at a white school in New Jersey after the Presbyterian mission school on the reservation closed. Her parents favoured assimilation with the white people, believing it held the best prospects for their children, and perhaps seeing the writing on the wall as the white man moved west. As regards education, their instincts proved right, as Susett’s sister, Susan, was to become the first ever Native American physician, while her other sister, Rosalie, became a financial manager for her tribe. Susette though was more interested in politics and so ensured she could learn the English language, which would be vital if she were to pursue such a career. Having graduated, she returned to the reservation where she wished to teach the Omaha, whose chief, Big Elk, had adopted her father as his son and where her family now lived. She ran into problems of a legal and bureaucratic nature though.
She was told by the Indian Commissioner that she could not teach on the reservation without a certificate, in order to obtain which she requested permission to leave the reservation, was refused, left anyway, and got her certificate. On her return though she was further baulked when the Commissioner said she needed also a “certificate of good moral character”. She got this from her school in New Jersey, but now the Commissioner was just simply ignoring her calls. She threatened to go to the newspapers about his intransigence and the clear impression that he simply did not want her teaching here, and he gave in, unwilling to be a part of any investigation, much less a scandal.
She travelled to Oklahoma, where her people, the Ponca, had been forcibly relocated and reported on the poor conditions of the camp, putting into action her earlier threat of using the newspapers to get her point across. Nearly one third of the tribe had already died due to the conditions and the journey to get to the reservation, and malaria was rampant while supplies were scarce, despite the government having promised to furnish them. Further, when the chief of the Omaha, Standing Bear, left the reservation for Nebraska to bury his son, who had died on the journey down, in his native land, he was arrested and put on trial. Susette interpreted for the chief, testifying as to the dismal conditions on the reservation, bringing media attention to the trial and confirming for the first time the rights of Indians as US citizens.
After he won his case, Standing Bear travelled throughout the eastern USA, accompanied by Susette as his interpreter, speaking about the rights of Native Americans. They later took their tour across the Atlantic to England and Scotland. Susette had by now married Thomas Tibbles, the editor of the Omaha
Herald, who had been so instrumental in bringing the needed attention to her cause through his newspaper coverage. On their return to America, the couple wrote about the incipient Ghost Dance movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which almost three hundred Lakota were slaughtered by the US Army in 1890. She also wrote and lectured about Native American women’s issues. She died in 1903, having just barely seen the new century in, and eighty years later was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame, with entry to the National Women’s Hall of Fame following in 1994.
Sarah Jane Cummins
You couldn’t call it the ideal honeymoon, could you? Picture the scene: jammed in with the rest of your family and your new husband into a ten foot by three space, jolting and banging along the dirt tracks and across onto the prairie known initially as the Great American Desert, and later renamed as the Great Plains, up the steep inclines of the Rockies and across those mountain ranges, following the trail mostly laid down by Native Americans in earlier times that led to the New Promised Land, sleeping out under the stars because there was so little room in the wagon, and when forced by bad weather to endure the cramped conditions, sharing it with tools, meat, provisions and other worldly goods which had all been piled on and packed into the wagon at the beginning of the journey, and which would not be unloaded until the destination was attained. Sunup to sundown, constantly on the move; hot, sweaty, aching in every bone, apprehensive of bandits or Indians along the way, unsure of even arriving safely, or if you did, of making a success of your new endeavour, and homesick already for the life left behind.
Such was the situation sixteen-year-old Sarah Jane Cummins found herself in when, along with her new husband of barely weeks, Benjamin Walden, she and her family set out from Missouri in search of a better life on the new frontier. Sarah found that she was forced to grow up very quickly during the journey, and traditional gender roles began to mix and turn fluid as everyone did what they could, regardless of sex, to ensure the success of the venture. Sarah had been used to travelling and moving, as her father had followed the opportunities in each territory as he saw them unfold, moving first to Ohio and then Illinois, but this was to to be the longest and most gruelling journey her father would ever take her on, lasting four months over wet, rocky, and at times arid and scorching terrain with no small amount of danger on the way. I suppose she must have thought that if she and Benjamin lasted through this ordeal, they would be together forever.
Sarah showed herself more than willing to do men’s work, as she disdained the practice of ladies riding “side saddle” and rode her horse like a man as she guided her husband’s wagon past ruts and pitfalls, also noting the vast wilderness as she rode, taking in all its rugged beauty and composing lyrical descriptions of the trail in her journal. However, as with most of the missionaries written about in the previous piece, there was no real regard for the Native Americans whom, by their incursions into what was their ancestral lands, Sarah and her family, along with all the other settlers, were displacing. Rather, she seems to have taken great umbrage - through her entry in her diary - at Cayuse and Walla Walla parties who caused “a night of terror” as they harassed the wagons trains passing through their homelands, only placated by strong coffee brewed by the invaders.
Sarah turned seventeen during the journey, and by the time they arrived in the Williamite Valley in Oregon and had staked their claim, it became clear that tough as the journey had been, the end point was not like arriving at a hotel or someone’s house where you could stay for the holidays. There was nothing at the end of this particular dusty rainbow other than the land - precious though it was, and given free of charge - and everything that they wished to create there they would have to mould with their own hands, from building a home to tilling the land and raising cattle and other livestock. This was definitely a new life that came, to use a twentieth-century expression, with some assembly required. Hard work was the order of the day, and there was no time for rest, chiefly because all that awaited them at their destination was a pretty basic shack or cabin, and it would take real effort to turn it into anything resembling a home they could live in.
I began writing this piece, learning as I went and wondering what great contribution to American history Sarah Jane Cummins made. The answer, I found out, is nothing really, but then in another way everything. She didn’t become a lawyer or a doctor (though she did dabble in real estate, something few women back east had the chance or opportunity to engage in) and she didn’t single-handedly (so far as I know) hold off any bloodthirsty bands of native savages. Her husband lasted forty-odd years with her, so she wasn’t left alone to fend for herself in the new wilderness. In many, most indeed ways she was nothing remarkable.
And yet, Sarah Jane stands as an example of the kind of eastern girl who very quickly became a western woman, adapting to her new life and the challenges of the frontier, making a home for herself and her family (she eventually had five children, though only two survived) and proving that women were more than the sum of their parts. She set, if not a trailblazing path, then at least a marker down for the women who would follow her and colonise the west, the women who would dare to dream of a better, more exciting, more profitable - both in terms of money and of personal betterment - life out beyond the fringes, over the Rockies and across the plains, and, as someone once said, into the West. Proof, indeed, that not all the women who went out to seek their fortune and make a new life were heroines, but they all had courage and determination, and sometimes that’s all you need.