Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past by Peter Boag (University of California)
I thought there was nothing new to write about the American West. I forgot cross-dressing.
In a scholarly account, Peter Boag writes that not all who came west were manly men or feminine women. He reveals that cross-dressing, while not exactly common, was far from unknown on the American frontier.
Some cross-dressers were homosexuals, transvestites or transgendered folks. But many women who dressed as men did so primarily for safety or comfort, to escape family or vengeful husbands. Some committed crimes, but most, perhaps, wanted jobs that were unavailable to women. Men, on the other hand, dressed as actresses or explained, when caught, that they cross-dressed as a lark.
Once exposed, cross-dressers were often ridiculed in the newspapers. Many were reviled but some, such as Colorado’s Mountain Charley, became famous. Another was the thrice-married “Mrs.” Nash, actually a male washerwoman with the 7th Calvary, who was wed three times.
In “Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past,” Boag says doctors and early sexologists blame cross-dressing on everything from the suffrage movement to the evil ways of immigrants to the surfacing of atavistic tendencies.
Many cross-dressers lived undetected for years, their secrets exposed only upon death. Others failed to look the part of the opposite sex. In 1874, a man in San Francisco drew attention to himself not because of the dress he was wearing but because he was playing an accordion — badly.
Fort Logan by Jack Stokes Ballard and the Friends of Historic Fort Logan (Arcadia)
Fort Logan was established in 1887, when Congress approved $100,000 for its construction. The land was donated by Colorado, which was eager to acquire one of the new urban-type forts that were replacing frontier outposts. Fort Logan reached its zenith during World War II, when some 5,500 were stationed there.
Fort Logan’s 165-year history is documented in photographs in “Fort Logan,” which shows the fort’s evolution from military post to mental hospital and national cemetery.
The fort’s architecture was a sort of military-Victorian. There was a handsome commanding officer’s quarters and duplexes for lesser personnel, who included Dwight D. Eisenhower, his wife and son, in 1925. He returned to the fort on a visit — perhaps one of many visits he made to Denver to visit his wife’s family — following the war.
The photographs show training exercises, leisure activities, architecture and even balloon launchings. The army hired famed high-wire walker Ivy Baldwin, a one-time resident of Eldorado Springs, to make balloon ascensions.
Fort Logan is known today mainly as a military cemetery. The first burial, the daughter of a private stationed at the fort, took place in 1889. Since then, buffalo soldiers, Medal of Honor winners and ordinary soldiers have been interred at Fort Logan.
Playing With Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West edited by Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols and Will Bagley (Arthur H. Clark)
Parley P. Pratt and the Making of Mormonism edited by Gregory K. Armstrong, Matthew J. Grow and Dennis J. Siler (Arthur H. Clark)
Early Mormons were faithful record keepers, writing letters, diaries and personal accounts, all to the satisfaction of later historians. These two books draw heavily on such writings.
“Playing With Shadows” contains the accounts of four Mormon apostates. Two were dedicated followers of church founder Joseph Smith but disagreed with Brigham Young and his policy of blood atonement. One of them wrote, “I think there is no set of men except lightning rod agents and commercial drummers that have the cheek of Mormon apostles.” The other called Young an atheist. The two men left the church but returned late in life.
The third account is a dime-novel-style autobiography. The woman’s recollections are of murder and mayhem that may bear some truth, although it’s unlikely that Billy the Kid rescued her from Indians and gave her $4,000, as she claimed.
The final story is of a Brigham Young loyalist and bodyguard who never left the church but whose writings express dissatisfaction with church leaders he claims abused him. It is a poignant account of a man who was left behind as times changed.
The early church, the editors write, “feared dissent as much as it valued unity.” Dissenters were thought to be malcontents who were somehow flawed. But these apostates should not be dismissed as turncoats, they say. Their stories should be valued as part of the human aspect of the Mormon experience.
“Parley Pratt” is a more traditional Mormon book, a series of positive essays about a beloved man who ranked behind only Joseph Smith and Brigham Young in importance in the early church.
The essays, which had their genesis in a 2007 conference on the life, times and legacy of Pratt, examine all aspects of the apostle’s life and his contributions to Mormon theology and the growth of the church.
Many historians believe that Pratt’s death at the hands of his twelfth wife’s first husband, was a cause of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre. In one of the essays, Richard E. Turley Jr., church historian denies the connection. But in his acclaimed book on the massacre, Bagley, an editor of “Playing With Shadows” makes a compelling case that the murder did indeed contribute to the massacre. The opposing views of the two historians underscore why it’s important that both sides of Mormon history should be published.
