In order for women to succeed in the West, they had to fight off Indian raids and endure starvation. Some women did not like to be referred to as "the Missus." Thousands of the women homesteaded their own land and competed for jobs normally taken by men. They wanted the right to vote and won that right in 4 Western states by 1900. The first California census revealed that women made up less that 10 percent of the white population.

Marriage sparked for reasons other than romance. Under the new act, Donation Land Act of 1850 in Oregon Territory, a husband and wife were entitled to twice the acreage a single man could claim. A historian claimed that "with the coming of women and children came the graces of life and better social conditions. In settling the frontier a women had to be a mate, companion and homemaker to her husband, to...