"Wenona", a turn-of-the-century wild west performer, looks down from the
wall above my desk. Wearing a fringed dress and moccasins, she sits proudly
astride her horse, rifle butt against her thigh. Her black braided hair frames
her dark-skinned face, set with a quiet, serious expression.
Next to her, an "Indian Princess" (circa 1920) leans over the edge of her birchbark canoe, catching her pale reflection in the moonlit water. Her single braid
curls around her milky white shoulders which rise, dough-like, above her
strapless red tunic. An obvious imposter, this calendar girl's masquerade of
exotic, sexual "Indianness" rests on a history of genocide, forced removals
from the land, and the insidious follies of Victorian culture, bent on producing
something we call "femininity".
Although I know it, I have to keep reminding myself that the woman playing
at being "Wenona" is also White: a.k.a. Lillian Smith, "The California Girl",
who made her fame as a sharp shooter with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
The wild west was a show, and its characters were always masquerading. Like
so many wild west performers, Lillian Smith's disguise as "Wenona" is so convincing that she is thought to belong to some unidentified but authentic First
Nation by the official store-houses of history - libraries, archives and museums. She even turned up a few years ago - wearing a war bonnet! - in the First
Nations cowgirls section of the Legends of our Times: Native Ranching and
Rodeo Life on the Plains and Plateau exhibition presented at the Canadian
Museum of Civilization.
The irony is that First Nations women did perform as cowgirls in wild west
shows, just as Tom Three Persons, a Blood, who won the first cowboy championship at the Calgary Stampede in 1912, was one of many cowboys from nearby First Nations communities who participated. First Nations women were in
high demand to play "Indians", but some of them participated in the rough
stock games too. Their history has begun to be documented by authors such as
Ruth Phillips and Trudy Nicks ("From Wigwam to White Lights: Princess
White Deer's Indian Acts"), and Bunny McBride (Molly Spotted Elk). If the
latter is a traditional biography, the former asks questions about how knowl-
Indian Girls; or, a Tale of Some “White Sioux Queens” by Marilyn Burgess
• 1
edge and artifacts from First Nations communities are made to fit the grand
narratives of ethnography by the dominant cultural institutions of library,
archive and museum. Both Princess White Deer (Mohawk) from Kahnawake,
and Molly Harper (Penobscot) from Indian Island, participated in wild west
shows, sometimes as cowgirls, at other times as Indians. How many others
have we yet to discover from this early period?
This essay reflects on an archival search for pictures which defy categorization:
"Indian cowgirls," and how it is that a White woman came to be interested in them.
I first wrote about the connection between racist stereotypes of First Nations
women and popular White cowgirls heroines in Indian Princesses and
Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier. In that essay, I strove to show how
cowgirls were part of a system of representation whose effect was to produce
Whiteness and femininity (and hence femininity as inherently White). I
approached the topic of cowgirls as a way of understanding the thing I most
take for granted, the production of my own Whiteness, and how it rests on the
racializing narratives of "Others". Instead of thinking in terms of difference, I
found myself pondering the myths that tie us together.
The repressions which Victorian society exacted of its female subjects were
performed as excesses by the gender-bending cowgirl. Significantly, these
excesses were resolved through a racial masquerade. Simply put, in the wild
west, the (White) cowgirl has the heart of an Indian, or she is a White girl
abducted by the Indians, or she is a White girl dressed like an Indian. She is
never just plain White. Examples abound in Victorian frontier adventure
novels and Hollywood movies. (Remember Dances with Wolves?)
The participation of First Nations women as cowgirls within the vast performance of the wild west at the turn of the century is barely acknowledged. The
reason for this is that the story of the west as preserved in/by archives, is
shaped by adventure novels, travelling circuses, American soldiers' diaries,
Hollywood movies, hearsay, and by photographs of famous and infamous
women riding bucking horses. The pictures preserved as "history" were originally circulated to promote spectacular shows or sold as curiosities to tourists
and newcomers. They were staged, and from the beginning, were spin-offs of
popular entertainment culture.
Indian Girls; or, a Tale of Some “White Sioux Queens” by Marilyn Burgess
• 2
In the wild west rodeo show or travelling circus, adventure novel and movie,
cowgirls were White and were performed by White women. Exotic Indian
Princesses were performed by White women. There were a handful of exotic
Indian Princess cowgirls and they were played by White women. With few
exceptions, First Nations women played degraded and degrading "squaws".
The "squaw" was the 'other' to the "exotic" (from a Victorian point of view)
huntresses and warrior maidens who inspired the creation of the cowgirl: a
cruel racist fiction. Because of their ubiquity in the grand spectacles of the
wild west, it is the exceptions that are so compelling. We know so little about
the Indian cowgirls, and yet they are precious, for they give the lie to the hegemony of the wild west.
The cowgirl is a performance, a temporary identity worn on the surface of the
body. To play her convincingly, the performer has to adopt a certain cowgirl
attitude (usually butch, but cowgirl beauty queens exist too), which has its
roots in popular imaginings of First Nations women on the frontier. She needs
a gun, a fringed skirt and a horse, or any other prop borrowed from popular
novels, illustrations and staged "ethnographic" photographs. These constitute
a collective nineteenth century fantasy about First Nations women and they
are essential to the evolving image of the cowgirl. Other clichés of frontier culture are equally acceptable.
Can one draw a pictorial record of the First Nations women who inspired
these cowgirl personas? Might we not call them the original cowgirls? Who
were they? How are we to account for them? How does one ask for them when
consulting an archive of historical photographs? It has been said that archives
provide a defense against forgetting or loss (Derrida). But whose
forgetting?And whose loss? An individual photograph can produce its own
effect of desire. It can make us identify with itself, and it can inspire longing.
In so doing, it has the power to shift the terms of engagement with the past,
and to produce a different past.
I didn't set out to research First Nations women in the cowgirl project. The
project began with my desire to produce an imagined lesbian herstory in
which the cowgirl could figure as an historical example of gender transgression. It was a search for origins and was from the beginning invested by the
Indian Girls; or, a Tale of Some “White Sioux Queens” by Marilyn Burgess
• 3
promise of a photograph. The promise of the archive. Casting my desiring gaze
upon the butch women of the rodeo, I too was caught by the seductions of the
wild west.
The search was not easy. Archivists and librarians repeatedly claimed not to
have any images of cowgirls, though their cowboy collections were extensive. I
looked through these, one picture at a time. I bought books. I rummaged
through antique shops. Eventually I found over one hundred pictures of (White)
women riding bucking broncs, performing rope tricks, posing with their horses
and trick riding. I indulged in the fantasy that all these women were lesbians,
and that really, I was undoing a master plot to deny the existence of lesbians historically. Like the Canadian Museum of Civilization's pictures of Wenona, my
cowgirl pictures would be proof that in the past, women just like me had kicked ass.
What I didn't anticipate, but also discovered, was that the butch behaviour of
my intoxicating lesbian cowgirls was only possible in the late 19th and early
20th centuries because of its association with popular myths about First
Nations women. I don't walk in the shoes of a Tlingit, or Blood, or Abenake
woman's shoes. What might be obvious to them was a complete revelation to
me. The racist underpinnings of the cowgirl, an identity so triumphantly associated with "women's liberation", were so unsettling, because so profound,
that I felt a need to learn more. It seemed logical to start by looking for the
images of First Nations women that had been appropriated.
To search for images of Indian cowgirls in the public record of the wild west
(usually catalogued as western history) means looking for images of Native
women that preceded and inspired the image of the (White) cowgirl. It means
looking to uncover some of the conditions of possibility of the White female
frontier heroine. Unless you understand this historical relationship, it is hard
to imagine what an Indian cowgirl image might be. Of course, an image of an
Indian cowgirl is also an image of a cowgirl who happens to belong to a First
Nation, but as we discovered, no one believes any historical images of cowgirls
of any kind exist.
Because of illness, it becomes necessary for Skawennati Fragnito, my friend,
my editor, and now for a short while my research assistant, to travel to
archives and western history museums in my place. For several months, she
Indian Girls; or, a Tale of Some “White Sioux Queens” by Marilyn Burgess
• 4
becomes the principal researcher, making decisions, shaping the research. As
the one left behind, I become her assistant, forwarding phone calls, taking
messages, seeing to her finances and visiting arrangements. Our differences of
perspective, our different desires, complicate the project.
Skawennati tells me a story about confronting an archivist (probably an
archive clerk, a "fetcher"), while doing research in the USA. The clerk refused
her access to a particular photographic collection on Plains nations American
women, insisting there were no pictures of cowgirls, and certainly none of
Indian cowgirls. Note the distinction. White cowgirls just are, Indian cowgirls
are Indians in cowgirl drag.
When faced with requests for images of First Nations cowgirls, or images of
First Nations women which inspired the cowgirl persona archivists and librarians stumble into a conundrum of cognitive dissonance. The cowgirl cannot be
imagined outside her Whiteness. She requires no further explanation. The
Indian cowgirl is different. She is a special kind of cowgirl, qualified by her
"real" identity as First Nation.
Luckily, the body which approaches a state archive matters. There are protocols in place which give Skawennati (Mohawk) the right to look at collections
concerning Native Americans. So although she cannot ask for images of First
Nations cowgirls, she does eventually gain access to the carefully guarded
archives which, we suspect, hide our booty.
We have only the ethnographic record when it comes to publicly collected
images of First Nations women on the frontier. Pictures there do exist of
women wearing buckskin dresses decorated with beads - a "cowgirl" costume
if anybody cares to notice. Skawennati sees this and sends them back as her
first selection of pictures. Still working under the seductive influence of my
strong-bodied cowgirls of the wild west, I imagine something more "cowgirlish". With time, I come to see what Skawennati sees. I am reminded again of
the power of the wild west myth in the absence of counter knowledge.
After months of correspondence and on-site visits to archives and libraries
throughout the west, Skawennati returns with a handful of images and references to only four Indian cowgirls: Princess Wenona (who turns out to be Lillian
Indian Girls; or, a Tale of Some “White Sioux Queens” by Marilyn Burgess
• 5
Smith, a White girl), Princis Mohawk (alias Florence Hughes Randolph, a rich
White girl), Mayme Stroud (no further information). And Mrs. Josephine
Sherry, a black woman.
Lillian Smith, disguised as Princess Wenona; rodeo performer Florence
Randolph Hughes calling herself Princis Mohawk; a dime novel heroine called
the White Sioux Queen; Martha Jane Cannary posing as Calamity Jane,
dressed in buckskin jacket and pants: throughout my engagement with the
cowgirl project, I have found White women playing out the fantasy of the Other:
the wild woman, the huntress astride her steed, the sexually wanton outlaw.
Sometime later, Skawennati discovers Princess Red Bird, on a greeting card.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Princess Red Bird worked for the
Hugo Brothers Wild West Show and traveled as far as Japan with the outfit.
We don't know what Nation or community she belonged to, but she seems to
be the real thing so far!
In the wild west, the Indian cowgirl's identity is also a performance, inspired
not only by the historical legacy of First Nations women, but also by the
clichés of the princess. The White cowgirls who play at being Indian cowgirls
are called Princess Wenona, Princis Mohawk. Even the (real) Indian cowgirl is
called Princess Red Bird. They are not called cowgirl. The Indian cowgirl can
only play at being a cowgirl, by a regime of representation that takes characteristics from Plains nations cultures, assigns them to White women, and then
overlays them on the bodies of First Nations women, as an obvious disguise,
meant to reveal, not hide, their "Indian royalty".
And yet, there is the sticky question of the photographs. They are so compelling, so satisfying. They seem to rise above the limitations of the wild west's
ordering of the races. They transgress and redress and undress the lie of femininity and a woman's place in history.
Eventually, Skawennati and I uncover Linda One Spot, a Sarcee girl who entered
the steer riding competition as a boy at the 1952 Calgary Stampede, and Princess
Red Bird waving the American flag while clinging furiously to the saddle of her
bucking bronc. We have found Rose Nelson, a mixed blood wild west performer
in Buffalo Bill's Wild West. And Maria Analina Restrepo, a dignified black-
Indian Girls; or, a Tale of Some “White Sioux Queens” by Marilyn Burgess
• 6
skinned lady posed in her native Columbia with gun and bandoleer. I wish there
were more and no doubt there are, somewhere. My participation in
CyberPowWow is an opportunity to share these with you.
POSTSCRIPT
There have been throughout this project several layers of desire, each associated with the archive. The White women in the photographs in their trans-race
performances of the native exotic. (A desire for the "other".) A research director, performing an historical investigation, looking for confirmation that she
has a past. (A desire for origins.) Skawennati, the Mohawk researcher, looking
at the photographs. (The desiring gaze.)
There has also been Gail Guthrie Valaskakis (Chippewa), an encouraging
friend, and enthusiastic promoter of the project. Gail is the initiator of and
major curator of the Indian Princesses and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the
Frontier exhibition, currently touring the country. Without her insightful comments, gifts of pictures, and push to disseminate the work, I doubt that we
would have come this far. The project has also been shaped by her desires.
Throughout, there have been three women looking, attempting to deconstruct
the relations of power inscribed on the bodies of women. There have been
three women hoping to have some fun as they labour to re-write the past. At
the heart of this project has been a wealth of friendship, without which this
contribution to CyberpowWow would not have been possible.
Indian Girls; or, a Tale of Some “White Sioux Queens” by Marilyn Burgess
• 7