`Thus I salute the Kentucky Daisey's claim': gender, social memory, and the mythic West at a proposed Oklahoma monument

Abstract

On 22 April 1889, at the beginning of the first Oklahoma land run when the US federal government allowed nonIndian settlers to claim what had been Native American lands, Nannita R.H. Daisey entered the newly opened territory by train to become one of the very first women to stake a quarter-section land claim, on land today part of Edmond. According to local lore, Daisy leapt from the cowcatcher of the train to stake her claim, removing her petticoat to mark the spot. Over 100 years later Edmond has proposed a bronze monument to Daisey, petticoat flying, riding on the cowcatcher, in an effort both to attract tourists with public art, and to recognize women's contributions to Oklahoma settlement. On the surface this seems a laudable attempt to re-inscribe women's lives in the history of the American West, the social memories of Oklahomans, and the landscape of contemporary Edmond -except that the story about the cowcatcher and the petticoat, though passed down in local lore for more than 100 years, is false. And that, in turn, provides feminist historical geographers with an opportunity to examine the canonization of an exaggerated version of an already heroicized tale of Euro-American conquest, and what that implies for the representation of women in the American West. In this article, in an effort to improve upon decades of superficial scholarship, and in the face of the proposed monument's mis-portrayal, I attempt to detail Daisey's biography and describe her actual deeds. But, since the lives of prominent westerners are often difficult to disentangle from the powerful romanticizing influence of the mythic West on themselves and on their representations, my attempt itself raises issues about the study and representation of westerners in the US as the article explores ways that western women have been represented, the role of a monument as the landscape representation of a western woman, and the specific gendered spatial framework for the creation of contemporary social memory that Nannita Daisey's monument and legendary tale present.

Narratives of the Mother Road: Geographic Themes Along Route 66

“…Others have assessed the commemorative landscape and the representation of heritage that is projected to observers at monuments and other historic sites. Significant work that unpacks heritage texts in the collective memory includes how Americans commemorate (or choose to forget) sites of violence and tragedy (Foote ), memorialization of the civil rights movement in the American South (Dwyer and Alderman ), how the controversial past is remembered and forgotten in Berlin, Germany (Till ), the commemorative landscape at a Savannah, Georgia, monument remembering slavery (Alderman ), thematic representations of American Indians along the Great Plains section of the Lewis and Clark Trail (Blake ), and an analysis of the uneven process of accurately commemorating an Oklahoma land run (DeLyser ). Key to this research is an analysis of what narratives are remembered, what is ignored or forgotten, which social actors and ideologies shape the commemorative landscape, and where sites of public memory are located.…”

“…Memorialization in public spaces typically projects authority and permanence to observers and gives the impression that commemorative landscapes are permanent and impartial, even when they are contested spaces where memory and identity are negotiated amongst disparate groups (Dwyer and Alderman 2008;Alderman and Inwood 2013). However, creators often attempt to carefully craft place images and historical narratives that legitimize their historical perspective, recording a selective version of history for consumers (Lowenthal 1976;Lowenthal 1998;DeLyser 1999;Urry 2002;Foote 2003;Alderman and Dwyer 2009;Hurt 2010). As a result, communities and museums often infuse their physical and symbolic landscapes with historic imagery and interpretation meant to please the consumptive nature of tourists, but that lacks the presentation of multiple perspectives of the past (Hughes 1992;Johnson 1999; Sch€ ollmann and others 2000; Inwood 2010).…”

Tracing absence: enduring methods, empirical research and a quest for the first neon sign in the USA

“…For absences, when actually traced, may assert their agency to overturn historical accounts – even those thought well established, like the story of the first US neon sign. But the accounts traced absences overturn may prove remarkably durable – particularly when commemorated in landscape (DeLyser ). In some landscapes, absence is expected (DeLyser ; Wylie ; Edensor ), while in others absence emerges as if by surprise.…”

(In)Formal memoryscapes and the unma(s)king of a Malaysian war heroine

“…An analysis of the private museum in Papan reveals too how this holds implications for nonstate efforts to mark aspects of the past rendered obscure within national historiography. In so doing, the paper provides a nuanced analysis of gendered representations of war memory in Malaysia, thus adding to geographical works on women heroines usually drawn from Euro‐American cases (Heffernan & Medlicott, ; Mandziuk, ; Pickles, ; Delyser, but see Muzaini & Yeoh, ). It shows how simplistic it is to attribute the confinement of women to edges of public memory as just the product of patriarchy.…”

“…After the literature review in the next section, and given the importance of allowing a woman ‘to speak for herself of her own deeds’ (Delyser, : 66), Sybil's story is retold based on her own rendering of her war experiences in No Dram of Mercy ([1954] 2006). Following this is an account of the ways in which her story has been relegated to the outskirts of official memory and how it has been revived elsewhere, specifically via the private museum in Papan.…”