The token.

Yes, he's the token.

Um, he does in fact travel from east to west, uh, in a fairly linear fashion.

Uh, but he has some interesting elements to his story that I think make him worth knowing about, and, and also showing that the kind of, quote-unquote, "pioneer man" is not, is not the same.

Uh, you know, none of these, uh, men were exactly alike, and they all have different and interesting stories.

So Ovando grew up as a Shaker in New Lebanon, New York, and he, um, decided, I mean, as is tradition in that religious practice, when he became an adult, he decided to leave the community.

He went west to Kansas and then Colorado, uh, was in the gold mines for a little while, and then volunteered for the war effort in, uh, Colorado during the American Civil War.

Right

which also brings us to little wolf who's a cheyenne chief that you bring into the story as well and yeah Where do we start with Little Wolf? Where do we

start? I, you know, I really love him.

He is...

He was such a fantastic leader.

And he, you know, he was born in the 1830s.

He was Northern Cheyenne.

And he basically grew into a leader with military capabilities.

He

In so many ways, they become what you call cultural brokers.

Sure.

Yeah.

You know, cultural brokers were individuals who lived really in the borderlands between different communities.

And they often spoke multiple languages.

They felt very comfortable adapting to different communities.

You know, living with people, intermarrying with them, establishing family connections across communities.

What would you say? What would your sort of response be to that kind of criticism?

Fair representation, thank you.

Yes.

And I think focusing on women allows you to tell a host of different stories than have been told before.

We tend to focus a lot on soldiers and politicians, and those are very specific stories of the American West that really hinge on violence, organized violence, informal violence, and then also kind of legislation.

And so when you focus on women, they tell you a different story.

And I think I had... known about Sacagawea before I started to research her, what everybody knows, right? She was with Lewis and Clark.

She had John Baptiste, her baby, on her back the entire way.

I mean, these are the kind of, pardon the pun in the context we're discussing, these are the kind of gold nuggets you need in a history book to not make it dry regurgitation.

is abolished by now in America when this is happening to her so there is there are still women being sold and traded after abolition

Yes, exactly.

There are indigenous women being sold and then also Asian women, particularly Chinese women.

And the path that she followed from Hong Kong to Idaho actually was a pretty well-traveled route because Chinese men had followed that route in the 1840s to work in the gold mines of California, and then a little bit later in the 1860s to help to build the Central Pacific Railroad, which is the western half of the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in 1869.

And after that was completed and after that work was done, a lot of these Chinese men migrated then to other towns in the American West.

And so we see these rather significant large China towns in all kinds of towns throughout the American West and in the Rocky Mountains.

And we also see mining towns that are majority Chinese at this point, which is where Polly Bemis ends up.

because I did not know about them, but I love them now.