In the art of the American West, women have traditionally occupied a minor position. Compared to a surfeit of depictions of cowboys, braves, soldiers, miners, Indian chiefs, scouts, trappers, and traders, there are relatively few images of women; and when considering women who were not native to the plains and prairies, the field narrows still farther. Although literature and popular culture have given us numerous female types of the trans-Mississippi West (saloon and dance-hall girls, frontier mothers, helpless captives, schoolteachers, renegade female outlaws, wild-west-show women), art has virtually ignored all but the emigrant woman who traveled west in a covered wagon to establish a home on the prairie.
Cormac McCarthy and Popular Culture A New Old West