Earl Pomeroy

Abstract: OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO, the University of Nebraska Press published Dee Brown's The Gentle Tamers, one of the first books to attempt an overview and analysis of the roles of women in the West. The-Gentle Tamers elaborated and codified the assumption that the white male "tamed" the West in its physical aspects and that white women, who followed the men, gently tamed the social conditions (including, of course, white men). By focusing on women as a group, Brown filled a major gap in western historiography, and because he provided a thesis and a framework, his book remains the most widely read book on women in the West. This essay is an attempt to place the concept of the "gentle tamers" in its larger historiographical context, to examine the ways in which women in the West have been viewed by historians, and to explore new possibilities for analysis.'