“God intended women to be outside as well as men, and they do not know what they are missing when they stay cooped up in the house.” – Annie Oakley
National Day of the Cowgirl (celebrated annually in September) honors the diverse and significant contributions of Western women to society. It’s a chance to recognize their strength, confidence, and resilience, embodied by the iconic cowgirl lifestyle.
In March, we featured a variety of legendary cowgirls. This month, we’re spotlighting daring outlaw women of the Wild West who defied societal expectations during their time.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid didn’t have a very organized group of bank and train robbers, but The Wild Bunch did have a woman member, Laura Bullion (1876-1961) of Wyoming, also knowns as Della Rose, The Rose of the Wild Bunch, Desert Rose and Wild Bunch Rose.
Those feminine aliases contrasted with her rather masculine face and tendency to wear men’s clothing, according to “Horsey Hooves,” a blog of the Hopnetic digital media group.
Bullion and her lover Ben Kilpatrick were both in the Wild Bunch but it was in St. Louis, MO, where the law caught up with her for her part in the Great Northern Robbery. She served three years in prison after which she lived a quiet life. But in remembrance of her past, her tombstone bears a carving “The Thorny Rose.”
The only female stagecoach robber in the Arizona Territory was Canadian-born Pearl Hart.
Hart often wore her hair short and dressed in men’s clothing on the robberies. She always carried a .38 caliber revolver and robbed with an accomplice called “Joe Boot.” Legend says “they robbed like there’s no tomorrow.”
She was convicted of interference with the US mail and served five years in the Yuma Territorial Prison. When she got out, she created a skit based on what happened in the prison. After doing her own show, she joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show under an alias.
The California Gold Rush in 1849 attracted all kinds of people to the West. One of these was gambler and prostitute Eleanor Dumont, 1829-1879.
Although she claimed to be French when she arrived in California in 1854, she was actually French-Creole with roots in New Orleans. She earned the sobriquet Madame Moustache for the prominent peach fuzz on her upper lip.
An accomplished card dealer she used her skill to acquire a gambling hall she named “Vingt-et-un,” after the original name for Blackjack, on Broad Street in Nevada City. A classy establishment which became a huge success, attracting customers from miles around.
She bought and rebuilt and sold gambling establishments as local economies changed dictated by the quantity of gold discovered. They were not necessarily just gambling halls.
Dumont’s marketing strategy included parading her “girls” through town to show off how beautiful they were in daylight.
In spite of her business acumen, she was swindled out of her fortune by her lover, Jack McKnight. He left her in 1872.
Eventually, Dumont lost a bet she couldn’t pay and was soon found dead of a morphine overdose, police called it a suspected suicide.
Goldie Griffith, 1893-1976, was a lesser known member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
She joined as a member of a small group of showgirls and was hired before she learned to ride. But learn she did and ended up busting broncos. Later, she worked as an actress and stunt woman in Western movies.
Always the showgirl, she married Hiram Joseph Sterling during a Wild West Show.
They had one child, but she ended up shooting him with her show gun.
After her release from prison, she worked in ranching, owned restaurants, then trained dogs for the war effort. She was also the first female applicant to the San Francisco Police Department.
Rose Dunn, 1878 – 1955, learned to ride, rope and shoot from her two older brothers.
In her early teens she met George “Bittercreek” Newcomb, a cowboy turned outlaw, according to Legends of America. Newcomb was with the Dalton, then Doolen gangs. Rose accompanied him when he started his own gang. In September of 1893, Newcomb was cornered by a posse of US Marshals and shot in the street. Rose ran to help him with ammunition and a Winchester rifle. She provided cover and they both escaped.
They fled to the Dunn ranch where her brothers, who let their greed for the bounty overshadow their filial affection for their little sister, shot them both out of their saddles. Newcomb was killed.
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