Ir's All in a Day's (and Night's) Work

The domestic work  that women on the westward migration did included some highly unfeminine chores.  Certainly not anything close to Victorian standards, the rhythm of a woman's work  began before dawn with the lighting of the fires, putting the kettles of water on and milking the cows.  By the time the coffee was boiled, the beans warmed and the bread baked, the men were rising to gather in the herds.

Helen Carpenter was a bride on her honeymoon...

:"Although there is not much to cook, the difficulty and inconvenience in doing it amounts to a great
deal - so by the time one has squatted around the fire and cooked bread and bacon, and made several dozen trips to and from the wagon, washed the dishes and gotten things ready for an early breakfast, some of the others already have their night caps on to go to bed.  In respect to women's work, the days are all very much the same - except when we stop and then there is washing to be done and light bread to make and all kinds of odd jobs.  Some women have very little help about the camp, being obliged to get the wood and water, make the camp fires, unpack at night and pack up in the morning...if they are Missourians they have the milking to do if they are fortunate to have cows.  I am lucky in having a Yankee for a husband so I am well waited on..."

Cooking, of course was not new to women, but cooking in the open was.  Lodisa Frizzell said that it "goes agin the grane."  Two forked sticks were driven into the ground, a pole laid across and a heavy kettle swung upon it.  Pots fell into the fire and families soon became accustomed to food that was burned.  There were no tables, and all preparation was done on the ground.  As Lodisa said, "All our work  here requires stooping.  Not having tables, chairs or anything it is very hard on the back."

Esther Hanna, 18 years old and a minister's wife wrote in her diary of winds that were "very high and piercing..had to haul our water and wood for the night.  I have also had to bake tonight.  It is very trying on the patience to cook and bake on a little green wood fire with the smoke blowing in your eyes so as to blind you, and shivering with cold so as to make your teeth chatter."

Cooking in the rain was difficult with the weeds and buffalo chips wet and not able to burn.  "There is nothing to eat but crackers and raw bacon" one woman wrote.  In heavy rain, women might dig a hole in the ground, jam in a hollow ramrod to serve as an air shaft, and then fill the hole with small rocks to bake bread on those.  The food had a pungent smell of ashes or sagebrush or buffalo chips and smoke.  During one rainstorm, James Clyman told of one women who "having kneeded her dough, she watched and nursed the fire and held an umbrella over the fire and her skillet for nearly 2 hours while the bread baked."  Now that is determination!

More on Cooking on the Trail next time...
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On September 17, 1868, early in the morning  a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux stage a surprise attack on Major George A. Forsyth and a volunteer force of 50 frontiersmen in Colorado.