Ho for California!: Women’s Overland Diaries from the Huntington Library (The Huntington Library Classics)

The five diaries presented here reflect the experiences of five different women, on three of the major westward routes in the middle of the nineteenth century—across Panama in 1849, the California or northern route in the 1850s, and the Gila or southern trail in the post-Civil War period. As individual as the women who wrote them, the diaries are alike in one respect: they explode the stereotype of the westering woman. The reader will find neither the sunbonnet saint, striding grimly forward undaunted by the dangers ahead, nor the timorous and reluctant voyager living in dread of Indians and wild beasts. The self-perceptions of these women are as varied as those of male writers, as these diaries vividly illustrate. Women's diaries are comparatively rare, and this book includes five of unusual interest. They reveal yet another aspect of America's frontier saga.