Making a Living & Building a Life: Ranchwomen in Early Arizona History :: Essays Papers

Making a Living & Building a Life: Ranchwomen in Early Arizona History In the early days of Arizona, ranchwomen played vital roles as business partners, wives, mothers, nurses, teachers, etc. Many of their stories reveal how women often were married into the cattle industry. The lives of many of these early women begin to be told by connecting them with their husbands. However, it is obvious that these women were not just â€Å"the wives of so and so.† Instead, the women actively participated in the development and worked to put all of their effort into helping their husbands’ business succeed. This led to a flourishing of a group of highly skilled, adaptable, and socially aware women. The commonly held belief that it was solely men who drove cattle across the desert, dealt with the details of a family business, and worked the ranch alone while their wives watched after the children, is continuously refuted by the stories of ranchwomen in early Arizona. In actuality a ranchwoman made the cattle industry, not just her husbandâ⠂¬â„¢s business, but rather â€Å"their† business. Besides business, women were concerned with community and home-building. The organization and influence of â€Å"The Cowbelles,† has not only provided a historical record of life on Arizona ranches, it has also provided an example and inspiration to women today. The additional efforts these women put towards encouraging neighborly attitudes, becoming nurses and teachers, and simply doing what was necessary to survive all were part of laying the foundations for some of the first modern day towns of Arizona. A timeline of events reveals the gradual birth of the cattle industry in Arizona and reveals the positive and negative results for different groups of people. In 1822, Mexico gained independence from Spain which resulted in a new government. Protection by the military was largely withdrawn from what is now known as Arizona; as a result, new settlers on the land had major problems dealing with a 50 year period of Apache depredations (Accomazzo v). However, in the 1870’s many of the tribes which were troubling to the settlers were sent to reservations by the federal government (Accomazzo v). In 1872, what is known as the â€Å"second phase of cattle ranching in Arizona, that of the Americans† began (Accomazzo vi).