Tag: strong woman

The Daughter of the Desert

The story of the dashing British officer, known as Lawrence of Arabia, credits him with leading the Arab revolt against the Turks during World War I. He’s a legend of history. Yet, there is another whose story we should know. The “Daughter of the Desert,” Gertrude Bell, made archeological, sociological, and political contributions to history. Significant enough, we should recognize her name along with (or more than) Lawrence of Arabia’s. Yet, history forgot or overlooked her story, a woman’s story, for years.

Early Life

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE, was born on the 14th of July 1868 in Washington, England. She had the good fortune of being born into a wealthy British family. Her grandfather was the Ironmaster Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell (1816-1904), an industrialist and a Liberal member of Parliament. Her father, Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet, (1844-1931) was a progressive capitalist and mill owner. He made certain his workers were paid fair wages and had paid sick days. Her mother, Maria (née Shield) Bell, died after the birth of her second child, Gertrude’s brother, Maurice. Gertrude was three.

Gertrude’s father married Florence Ollie, a playwright and author) when Gertrude was seven. Florence eventually gave birth to Gertrude’s three half-siblings, Hugh, Florence, and Mary3. Gertrude, already close to her Father, grew close to her step-mother as well.

She was outspoken and independent and enjoyed horseback riding, among other activities. Her father and stepmother realized Gertrude wasn’t like the other girls. When she wasn’t reading or writing, she engaged in various “naughty behaviors” like scaling cliffs and other heights3. Unlike the parents of most girls of her class, who were tutored at home, her parents sent Gertrude to school.

Education

At first, fifteen-year-old Gertrude was unhappy at Queen’s College, a girl’s school in London. But her insatiable appetite for learning helped her adjust. She excelled at her studies. 

Normally, at seventeen, girls in her class were presented at court and introduced to society. Society expected them to find a husband within three seasons. 

Gertrude completed her schooling at Queen’s College in 1886 and asked her father for permission to continue her studies at Oxford, which had recently allowed females to be included in certain programs. She first met T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) during her studies there. In 1888, she was the first woman to graduate in Modern History at Oxford. Hers was an honorary degree. Only males received academic degrees.

Social Life & Travel

She went to Bucharest with her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, and his family. Visits to Paris and other European cities followed. 

From 1890 to 1892, she made the rounds of London’s balls and banquets where young ladies met eligible bachelors, but didn’t find her match.

Gertrude’s uncle, Lascelles, became British minister at Tehran, Persia (Iraq). She joined him in May 1892, where she studied the Arabic and Persian languages. Describing Persia as “paradise,” Gertrude spent six months there and wrote a book, Persian Pictures, about her time there.

She took advantage of her privilege and family wealth to travel widely. Her travels include a world tour with her brother Maurice and a trip to Italy with her father. During her Alpine climbing adventures, she recorded ten new paths or first ascents in the Bernese Alps. Once she suffered frostbite after she and her guides clung to a rope on the side of a cliff for forty-eight hours during a terrifying storm of snow, hail, and lightning. 

Gertrude traveled to Turkey, Germany, and Jerusalem. She visited ancient sites in Syria, Lebonon, and Athens. All the while, she studied languages. She mastered Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Italian, French, German, and Turkish.

She Loved the Desert

But the Mesopotamia was the area she returned to over and over. She hired a guide, Fattuh, who became her confidante.

Throughout her travels to the desert, she learned about the people and cultures, established close relations with inhabitants and tribes. Being a woman, she could meet the wives and daughters of local notables. She didn’t take as much advantage of this as she might have. Her principal focus was meeting the shaikhs and leaders of Arab society.

Love Life

It was in Tehran that she met one of her uncle’s secretary, Henry Cadogan. She and Cadogan bonded over their love of poetry by Hafiz. They spent a lot of time together and eventually announced their engagement. Unfortunately, Cadogan was poor and in debt. Gertrude’s father would not approve the match. She returned to England to convince her parents to give their permission for her to marry Cadogan. While in England, Cadogan had died of pneumonia2 in 1893. Gertrude was heartbroken. She left England for Italy and Switzerland.

Her second chance at love came fourteen years later. She met the married British officer, Charles “Richard” Doughty-Wylie, in 1907. They never acted upon their feeling but exchanged letters expressing deep devotion to each other. He was killed in action at Gallipoli in April 1915. 

Some claim Gertrude, not Mrs. Doughty-Wylie, laid a wreath on his grave in November of that year.

Writing & Photography

In 1886, Gertrude published Persian Pictures, a photographic account of her trips to the Persian area. 

She published a book of poems translated from Persian to English, The Divan of Hafez, in 1897. It continues to be regarded as the best translation of that poet’s work in existence3. 

During her first solo journey through the desert in 1899, she photographed ancient sites, including Petra, Palmyra, and Baalbek. Once she learned photography and how to develop her photographs, she always took her camera and photographic equipment on her trips. Some of her photographs are the only remaining evidence of some antiquities that were destroyed later. 

Funding

Her grandfather died in 1904 and left her a large inheritance. She used the money to fund an archeological trip through the Near East. During the latter part of that trip, she hired Fattuh, her guide and confidante who traveled with her through the desert for years. 

In 1907, she published Syria: The Desert and the Sown, a book of her photographs and observations about the Middle East. She explored and mapped a swath from the remotest parts of Syria to the Persian Gulf. 

She co-wrote The Thousand and One Churches with Sir William M. Ramsay in 1909.

She published Amaranth to Amaranth in 1911 and The Palace and Mosque of Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture in 1914.

Archaeology

A black and white photograph of the Gates of Ha'il taken by Gertrude Bell. The wall with it's open gate looks similar to a castle wall only with tooth-like projections from the top of the wall. To the left is a tall rectangular wall with small square windows. The top of the building has the same style projections on the top. To the right the wall bends at a forty five degree angle then turns op degrees and continues off the picture. At some distance behind that turn is a conical tower like structure. There are people standing in front of the wall near the open gates but they are too distant to see distinctly.

Gertrude met archaeologist David Hogarth in Italy during a trip there with her father. It was then she began an in-depth study of Greek antiquities3.

In Binbirkilise, she worked with Sir William M. Ramsay, an archeologist and New Testament scholar. Gertrude, Ramsay, and their staff excavated destroyed churches and buildings from the Byzantine era. 

Also in 1909, in the Hittite city of Carchemish, Gertrude met art historian Josef Strzygowski. He believed that Near East art, architecture, as well as religious and cultural concepts, influenced those of Europe. She worked with him on in writing about the influence of Armenian architecture on Europe.

It was also in Carchemish that she met her old school friend T. E. Lawrence again. Their friendship rekindled. They exchanged letters for years.

In 1909, Fattuh led her to the Fortress of Al-Ukhaydir (c750-775 CE), which no Westerner had yet seen. Gertrude mapped, measured, and photographed Ukhaydir. She wrote home about how her discovery would make her name a recognized archeologist2.  On her return, she visited archeologist Robert Koldewey’s site and team at Babylon. She told them of her discovery. Several of them quickly went to the fortress, photographed it and published their work in 1912, beating her publication date of 1914.

World War I

In August 1914, the British entered World War I. The Ottoman Empire entered the war in late fall. After a highly placed friend’s recommendation, the British War Office asked Gertrude for her assessment of the situation in Ottoman Syria, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. Her response detailed her thoughts.

Gertrude volunteered with the Red Cross in France and England. She served as part of the Wounded & Missing Enquiry Department that coordinated communications about the wounded and casualties between army, hospitals, and worried families.

Drafted?

The leaders of the Arab Bureau summoned her to Cairo in November 2015. Headed by Colonel G. Clayton and Lt. Cmdr. David Hogarth (the archeologist and historian she’d worked with). T. E. Lawrence was also there. He had joined the Arab bureau in late 1914. 

As part of the Arab Bureau, she spent part of her time in British India, then in Basra. She joined the staff of Chief Political Office Perry Cox. She traveled the region from Basra to Baghdad, assessed the locals reactions, wrote reports, and drew maps. An unpaid position at first, it became a formal paid position in June 1916. She became the first and only female political officer in the British forces2. There was no established way to address females. They addressed her as Major Miss. She impressed many, others mocked her.

To win against the Ottomans, the British promised Sharif Hussein arms and advisers. They sent T. E. Lawrence to help conduct a guerrilla war against them, focusing on the railway. Later, David Hogarth credited Gertrude’s intelligence on the region for the success of the Arab Revolt. 

Oriental Secretary

On March 10, 1917, the British forces took Baghdad. Cox called Gertrude back to Baghdad and made her Oriental Secretary.

Despite a secret agreement in 1916 between the British, Italians, and Imperial Russians to divide the land between them, Gertrude argued for the free Arab state promised to Hussein. In April 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration, which promised Palestine to the Zionist movement as an autonomous Jewish state. Hussein understood he would receive Palestine while the French thought it promised to them in 1916.

In late 1917, Gertrude stayed in the hospital for exhaustion.

The war ended November 1918. 

They assigned Gertrude to “sort out the Middle East Problem”. She wrote up an official report, “Self Determination in Mesopotamia” which detailed the creation of an independent state, Iraq. British officials didn’t believe the people were capable of self-government.

A New Country 

A black and white photograph of the sphinx in the background with members of the Cairo Conference on Camelback in the foreground. Gertrude Bell sits on a Camel between Churchill and Lawerence.

After the Iraqi Revolt in 1920, Gertrude and T. E. Lawrence suggested Faisal bin Hussein (r. 1921-1933), son of Sharif Hussein, be the King Western-friendly Iraq. The Cairo Conference of 1921 approved of this idea. It became Gertrude’s responsibility to advise Faisal I on how to govern. She encouraged him to preserve the history of Mesopotamia. In 1922 she helped Faisal establish the Baghdad Antiquities Museum (now the Iraq Museum) with artifacts donated from her own private collection. She drew the boundaries of the newly founded country, which also established the boundaries of Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Many of her friends left Iraq in the early 1920s, including Percy Cox. Gertrude stayed on as the Oriental Secretary when Henry Dobbs became the new High Commissioner. But Dobbs consulted her less frequently than Cox. She was no longer consulted as much by Faisal, either. This may have left her depressed.

By 1925, she returned to England with severe health problems for a brief stay. 

The war and subsequent coal strikes had exhausted her family’s fortune. They planned to move out of their mansion to reduce costs. About that time, Gertrude returned to Baghdad.

She developed pleurisy soon after.

Death

On July 12, 1926, her maid discovered Gertrude dead of an overdose of allobarbital sleeping pills. It is unknown whether it was an accidental overdose or intentional suicide. She had asked to be awakened in the morning, but she’d also made arrangements for her new dog to be looked after and had written to her mother about how lonely she was. 

A large crowd attended her funeral. King Faisal watched the funeral procession from his balcony. They buried her in the Anglican cemetery in Baghdad’s Bab al-Sharji district4.

Legacy

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE, left an astounding legacy. The boundary lines of Iraq that she drew remain today. Her work documenting archeology in the desert is priceless by many. Scholar, author, translator, and adventurer, Gertrude’s books, military documents, and personal letters remain fascinating. 

Dedicated to her memory, a stain glass window is in St. Lawrence’s Church, East Reunion, North Yorkshire. 

In the 2010s, John Miers, the cartoonist, and a team from Newcastle University released a comic book version of her life.

An exhibit at the Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar memorializes her family home. 

Newcastle University’s Gertrude Bell archive was added to UNESCO Memory of the World Program in 2017.

A new genus of wild bees discovered in Saudi Arabia were named Belliturgula najdica to honor her.

Films that include portions of her life include: A Dangerous Man: Lawrence of Arabia (1992), the film, Queen of the Desert (2015), chronicles her life (though not all of it is factual), and the 2016 documentary, Letters from Baghdad. 

Besides the books Gertrude wrote, her step-mother curated and published the first of two volumes of Gertrude’s correspondence in 1927.

Final Thoughts

The Daughter of the Desert is an address some Arabian people gave Gertrude. She may not have been born there, but she cared enough about the area to spend much of her time and energy there.

This blog post, though long, doesn’t truly do justice to her work and influence. Her mix of interests, her zest for adventure, her willingness to buck the system, made her an amazing woman of history. 

If you liked this post, you may like my other posts about women of history.

Had you heard of Gertrude Bell before? Did you know she was a contemporary of Lawrence of Arabia?

References:

1. “The Controversial Story of Gertrude Bell, the British Desert Queen of Iraq,” Yesterday is History.

2. “The Woman Who Made Iraq,” The Atlantic.

3. World History.org 

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Bell

Image Credits:

  1. Eight yr old & father : Edward Poynter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons  
  2. Bell & Fattuh outside a tent, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 
  3. The Gates of Ha’il, Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  4. Under the face of the Sphinx and from left to right : Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence Image by GM Georgoulas,  via Wikimedia Commons 

Discover the Tenth Muse

Celebrating Women’s History month, we’re exploring female writers, authors, poets. We’ll start with one of the earliest known female poet and songwriter. A woman whose work was widely quoted and revered by her male successors. It is said that Plato called Sappho the tenth muse.

A bust of Sappho with her hair in tight curls around her face and two long loose curls draped over each shoulder.

We know little about her, but there are many legends and stories that claim to know details. Scholars disagree and sometimes facts put those stories in dispute.

Her Life

Sappho was born on the Greek island of Lesbos in 620 BCE, to a wealthy, aristocratic family. Since Lesbos’s primary export was wine, it’s likely her family were vintners.

Women in Ancient Greece were bound by the customs and traditions of their city-states. So although some scholars believe she was a woman of leisure, her wealth did not protect her from the expectations of her family and society. We know through her poetry that she learned to play the lyre, and that she composed lyrics for single voices. Surviving fragments of her poetry refer to two brothers. She may have had a third brother.

She lived most of her life in her hometown of Mytilene on Lesbos.  

The Legend

Some scholars believe she married a wealthy man, Cercylas, a wealthy man from the island of Andros. Her poetry also mentioned a daughter. 

She may have run a school for unmarried women. Or she could be confused with another ancient Greek woman who ran such a school.

Several different tyrants ran Athens during Sappho’s lifetime. It is possible she lived in exile in Athens for a time. Exactly why and when is unclear. Speculation is that she may have gotten too political in her writing.

There is a legend that she leaped from the Leucadian rock to certain death in the sea because of her unrequited love of Phaon, a younger man and a sailor. Most critics today believe that story is simply a legend. Scholars believe she died in the year 579 b.c.e.

Photograph of the profile of "the Oxford Bust" of Sappho, the tenth muse. It has the head and torso coming from different statues, probably put together by a sculptor in the 1600s.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Her Work

We don’t know who published her work. Nor do we know how long they published her work. We don’t know whether she refined an existent meter of poetry or she created her own. Today we call it a “Sapphic” stanza.

Her poems depart from the tradition of her time. They do not address the gods. Rather, her verses are personal, spoken from one person to another. They simple, direct, and convey the bittersweet difficulties of love. Read a sample.

Some say that Plato (born in 428 b.c.e.) called her the “Tenth muse,” though other scholars claim it is unlikely it was Plato. We know they admired her for centuries because coins and statutes and busts with her likeness and name survived to this day.  

Her Legacy

Based on ancient writings, scholars believe someone collected her work into nine volumes in the third century B.C. Scholars discovered her through quotations by other ancient authors. In 1898, scholars unearthed fragments of papyri with her poems on them. Archeologists discovered more scraps of her poetry in Egypt in 1914. 

The New Comedy was a style of Greek drama introduced in the middle of the third century BC. Where old comedy parodied public figures and included supernatural or heroic bits, New Comedy were not realistic plays but conveyed “the disillusioned spirit and moral ambiguity of the bourgeois class of this period.” The writers of the New Comedy portrayed Sappho as “overly promiscuous and lesbian.” They convinced Pope Gregory who burned all her works in 1073. (The term “lesbian” is derived from the island of her birth).

We’ve discovered only one intact poem traced to her. The French translation is below.

Photograph of the French translation of "an ode of Sapho." The only surviving poem attributed to the tenth muse.

The Tenth Muse

Not only is Sappho one of the earliest female writers known to us, her life is an example of how we can misjudge the bits and pieces of a life that survives the person.

If the scholars can’t agree, how can we think we got it right?

As my women in history posts often reflect, women’s contributions to history are often ignored or misconstrued. Would they have judged her work differently if she were male? If the New Comedy writers hadn’t satirized her, would we enjoy her lyrics today?

Her writing could reflect who she was or who she knew or what she saw in society. Scholars will jump to conclusions, but we will never know the truth about the tenth muse.

Image Credits

First Image is by G41rn8, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Second Image is by Harrsch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Last image is by Anonymous, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

She Was Convicted Because the Sex Side of Life Was Judged Obscene

On April 4, 1872, Livonia Coffin and George Whitefield Ware, Worcester, Massachusetts residents, welcomed their second child, daughter Mary Coffin Ware. Although the women’s suffrage movement started in the United States in 1848, women still did not have the right to vote in 1872. And married women could not own their own property, keep their own wages, or sign a contract. These conditions deeply affected Mary’s life. She was convicted because the sex side of life was judged obscene.

Photograph of Mary Dennette in Suffragette outfit, standing in a car handing something to a man and his son standing beside the car. She was convicted because the sex side of life was judged obscene

Early Life

In 1882, Mary’s father died of cancer. Her mother moved the family to Boston to be closer to her mother’s relatives. But finding a job to support the family proved impossible. So Mary’s mother chaperoned young ladies traveling to Europe for pay. Unable to take Mary (or her other children) with on those trips, Mary and her siblings stayed with her aunt and went to public school. 

Lucia Ames Mead, Mary’s aunt, was active in social reform, women’s voting rights, and advocated for world peace. In time, this influence would reveal itself in Mary’s life.

Education

Mary graduated from her high school, Miss Capen’s School for Girls in Northampton, Massachusetts, and went to the School of Art and Design at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There she studied textile design and won prizes for tapestry and leatherwork projects.

She graduated from art school with honors in 1894 and moved to Philadelphia, where she lead the department of decoration and design at the Drexel Institute of Art for the next three years. After she left the Drexel Institute, she studied antique leatherwork in Spain and Italy. When she returned to the U.S., she settled in Boston where she organized art exhibitions for the Society of Arts and Crafts.

Marriage

She met William Hartley Dunnett, an architect, in 1894 and married him on January 20, 1900. After they married, she wrote and gave lectures about arts and crafts, became a board member of the Society for Arts and Crafts, and took part in Boston social reform groups

The birth of their first son in December 1900 almost killed Mary. In 1903, Mary’s second pregnancy was also difficult. The child lived for only three weeks. 

Their third child was born in 1905. Her labor was so difficult she had to quit her work in order to recover. The doctor advised them Mary should have no more children.

Mary and Hartley were ignorant of birth control. Abstinence was the only method either of them knew.

Changes

Mary’s husband, Hartley, began working on a house for a doctor and his wife in 1904. Over time, he developed a very close relationship with the doctor’s wife.

In 1908, Mary took a job as the field secretary of the Massachusetts Suffrage Association in Springfield, Massachusetts. She spoke to individuals and groups about suffrage, organized events, and recruited new members.

Hartley left Mary in 1909.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association in New York City, New York, elected Dennett as correspondence secretary in 1910. She accepted the position and moved to New York.

Mary grew concerned about the affect Hartley had on their children and filed for divorce in 1912. He sued for custody of the children. It was scandalous and therefore a popular topic in the newspapers.

In 1913, the court granted Mary the custody of her children and finalized her divorce from Hartley. The court required Hartley to pay child support. He claimed he did not make enough money to do so and refused to pay.

A New Life

Also in 1913, Mary accepted an offer to lead the Twilight Sleep Association. Twilight sleep referred to the doctors using anesthesia (scopolamine and morphine) during labor to induce a semi-conscious state in mothers-to-be during deliveries. Twilight sleep reduced the use of forceps, which reduced infant mortality and the risk of injury and infection to both mother and infant. She served as president, then Vice President of the Association.

During this time, she struggled to support her sons and incurred many debts.

When World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, Mary volunteered for the Women’s Peace Party in New York that opposed the war.

Sex Ed

The cover of the Sex Side of Life an Explanation for young people is two toned, cream on the top third with the title on it and red on the bottom two thirds with Mary's name toward the bottom. She was convicted because the sex side of life was judged obscene

In 1915, Mary created a pamphlet to answer some of her eldest son’s questions about sex. She titled the work, “The Sex Side of Life: An Explanation for Young People.” In the pamphlet, she discussed that the books she’d read were vague and misleading. The vagueness and misinformation resulted from state and federal obscenity laws that limited the amount of detail that could be published about sex education.

She wrote that the sex education books she’d read also portrayed the sex as fearful or shameful act. Her twenty-four-page pamphlet included clear information about sex and realistic descriptions of intercourse. Once friends learned of the pamphlet, they wanted one to help teach their children about sex.

Birth Control

Mary became more involved in the birth control movement. Working with Jessie Ashley and Clara Gruening Stillman, they established the National Birth Control League in 1915 to increase knowledge about and access to birth control.

Mary lobbied New York’s federal congressmen to repeal the Comstock Act. She wanted Congress to remove the words “prevention of contraception” from federal obscenity statutes. Her efforts brought the birth control movement to the attention of the media and birth control activist Margaret Sanger.

Sanger had left the country from 1914 to 1915 to avoid prosecution for writing a radical (and co-called obscene) newspaper called The Woman Rebel.

Mary disapproved of Sanger breaking the law in order to bring attention to it. And Sanger thought Mary’s efforts to get free birth control for everyone was doomed to fail. Sanger believed working through state governments and allowing doctors to prescribe birth control had the best chance for success.

Photograph of a modern birth control pill card with last seven days of pills still in it. Mary was convicted because the Sex Side of Life was judged obscene

More Publicity Woes

Mary’s name was in the papers again during 1915, thanks to a public invitation from her ex-husband, Hartley, his partner, Margaret Chase, and her husband. They wanted her to join them and form a “quadrangle” of love. Mary feared the negative publicity and notoriety she gained from her ex-husband’s unwanted proposal would adversely affect the organizations she worked with.

For the next two years, Mary shifted her focus to women’s suffrage and the anti-war movement. But as the war dragged on, and President Woodrow Wilson supported the war efforts, resistance to her anti-war campaigns led to her return to birth control activism.

More Activism 

In 1918, Mary became executive secretary for the National Birth Control League in New York City. The following February, the editor of the Medical Review of Reviews agreed to publish her pamphlet, “The Sex Side of Life.” Unable to get support from New York politicians, Mary resigned from the Nation Birth Control League in 1919.

Later that year, Mary founded the Voluntary Parenthood League. The League’s goals were to remove birth control from obscenity laws by lobbying the federal government and to better educate parents about teaching sex education to their children.

Mary campaigned and lobbied federal officials to exempt information about birth control from obscenity laws. She even appealed to the solicitor of the US Postal Services, saying that since they couldn’t open all mail and check it, post offices could not enforce the Comstock Act.

The Post Office Department banned circulation of any mail that contained Mary’s “The Sex Side of Life.”

Mary resigned from the Voluntary Parenthood League in 1925.

Spreading Information

After her resignation, Mary continued to receive mail from parents asking about birth control and sex education. The post office thwarted her attempts to send those people her pamphlet, “The Sex Side of Life.” The common method of placing mail in unsealed envelopes allowed the post office to open and confiscate all copies of her pamphlet. So Mary began sending the pamphlet in sealed envelopes.

Mary published Birth Control Laws: Shall We Keep Them, Change Them, or Abolish Them in 1926. The book described the state and federal laws and Mary’s arguments to change the laws.

Indicted

In 1928, Mary had a court case filed against her. An alleged woman named Mrs. Carl Miles, who said she received Mary’s pamphlet by mail, which violated the federal code preventing mailing of obscene literature. Once again, Mary faced unwanted publicity.

Stories about the fifty-three-year-old grandmother appeared in most newspapers in the country.”

Jstor.com

On April 23, 1929, a jury composed entirely of middle-aged family men convicted Mary for sending obscene materials through the mail. She faced up to a five thousand dollar fine or five years in jail or both.

It fined her three hundred dollars. 

She refused to pay.

An Appeal

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sponsored her, supported her pamphlet, saying it was not obscene but an important educational tool. The court of appeals learned that Mrs. Carl Miles was a fake character created by the post office to trick Mary into mailing a copy of her pamphlet so they could file the case.

On March 3, 1930, the appellate court ruled that because Mary’s intent was educational and not obscene, the pamphlet did not qualify as obscene. Circulation of “The Sex Side of Life” increased after the original ruling was reversed.

Death and Legacy

Mary Coffin Ware Dennett died in Valatie, New York on July 25, 1947. She was 75.

From 1929 to 1930, most of the nation knew about Mary and her trial. They knew she was convicted because “The Sex Side of Life” was judged obscene. They knew about her appeal. What no one knew was that “United States v. Dennett would ultimately prove to be a landmark censor ship case that paved the way for dramatic changes in the legal definition of obscenity.”

What if Mary Dennett originally had pleaded guilty?

Image Credits

First Image is Public Domain

Second Image Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Final Image by Ichigo121212 from Pixabay 

Her Story is Missing from Our History Books

Ruth Margaret Muskrat Bronson, a Cherokee poet, educator and Indian rights activist, is a person who should be in all our history books. Her passion, creativity, and dedication to her people alone earned her a place in history. But her story is a missing from our history books. Muskrat Bronson acted when women were struggling to be seen and to vote. In addition, she was a mixed race Indian with all the racial difficulties that came with that. It’s our national shame we don’t all know her name.

Image of Ruth Muskrat in her Plains Indian buckskin dress holding the report she presented to the President. Her history is missing from your history
Public Domain, By National Photo Company, restored by User:Adam Cuerden – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress

Early Life

Muskrat was born Sunday, October 3, 1897 in White Water, on the Delaware Nation Reservation in Indian territory (now Oklahoma). Her father, James Ezekial Muskrat, was a Cherokee who’s ancestors had traveled the Trail of Tears in the late 1839s. Ida Lenora (nee Kelly) was her mother, an Irish-English transplant from Missouri whose family had moved to Indian Territory.

Muskrat’s surviving relatives and biographers believe her father’s “Restricted Indian” status and his struggle to become a citizen heavily influenced her world view .

Restricted status meant that while her father held the title to their land, he could not sell or trade the land without the approval of the Secretary of the Interior. (For more information, see the Bureau of Indian Affairs FAQ page. )

As early as 1817, U.S. citizenship had been conferred by special treaty upon specific groups of Indian people. American citizenship was also conveyed by statutes, naturalization proceedings, and by service in the Armed Forces with an honorable discharge in World War I. In 1924, Congress extended American citizenship to all other American Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)

The Curtis Act

At ten, she lived through devastation to her people by the Curtis Act of 1898.

The Curtis Act, an amendment of the Dawes Act, called for the abolition of tribal governments on March 6, 1907. The act meant to establish individual landholdings in the European-American model for subsistence farming by families. It also provided for the establishment of public schools. But the lands in Indian Territory and the dry climate made the 160-acre allotments too small to permit profitable farming.

Originally her people (one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Indian Territory) were exempt from the 1887 General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) because of the terms of their treaties. The Curtis Act meant that when she was ten, the tribes lost control of about 90 million acres of their communal lands. They lost more in subsequent years.

Education

Muskrat enrolled in preparatory school at the Oklahoma Institute of Technology at fourteen. After she graduated in 1916, she went to Henry Kendall College in Tulsa, then Northeastern State Teacher’s College.

Financial hardships forced her to quit school and teach for two years. She attended three semesters at the University of Oklahoma in 1919.

During the summer of 1921, she worked for the YWCA. They sent her to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. There, her organizing efforts and the subsequent report she wrote about those efforts earned her a scholarship to the University of Kansas. She studied at KU for three more semesters.

She wrote and published poems during her college days.

“Songs of the Spavinaw” (1920)

Stanza One

I am the river of Spavinaw,

     I am the river of pain;

Sadness and gladness must answer my law;

Measure for measure I give, and withdraw

Back through the hills of the Spavinaw,

     Hiding away from the plain.

Read the rest of the poem and an analysis of it on poemanalysis.com.

Read her poem “The Trail of Tears” published by the University of Oklahoma Magazine in 1922. She also wrote “The Hunter’s Wooing” (1921), “Sonnets from the Cherokee” (1922), and “If You Knew” (1923).

Early Political Work

At twenty-five, she was the first Native American to represent her people internationally. As part of a YWCA youth conference delegation, she traveled to Hawaii, Manchuria, Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong. The trip brought her to the attention of the International Press. It also inspired her to become a cultural activist.

The following year, she traveled to many places and worked for racial equality. For her public appearances, she wore a Plains Indians buckskin dress. She chose that dress because that was how most Americans thought all Indians dressed. She wanted them to see her as an Indian.

Her most important appearance was a presentation and speech she made. The “Committee of One Hundred” was a group of Native American leaders intended to advise President Coolidge on American Indian policy.

Image of President Coolidge and Rev. Sherman Coolidge, and Muskrat Bronson presenting the volume of Red Man. Her story is missing from our history books.
President Coolidge and Rev. Sherman Coolidge, Ruth Muskrat Bronson, Public Domain

Part of that Committee, she presented President Coolidge with the volume of the “Red Man in the United States: An intimate study of the Social, Economic, and Religious Life of the American Indian.” She also gave a speech advocating for Indians to solve their own problems.

Mr. President, there have been so many discussions of the so-called Indian Problem. May not we, who are the Indian students of America, who must face the burden of that problem, say to you what it means to us?

Antiques Roadshow, PBS

Later Education and Early Work

In 1923, she enrolled at Mount Holyoke College with a full scholarship. She graduated with a BA in English after two years.

After graduation, she taught English at the largest Indian school in the world, the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. She became head of the college placement bureau and won the Henry Morgenthau Prize in 1926. The prize was for best use of her college education in the first year after graduation.

She married a Connecticut Yankee, John Bronson, in 1928. They adopted a native Indian girl. She was their only child.

Career

Muskrat Bronson got a job at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). She implemented the first national American Indian higher education program through the BIA. Traveling across American Indian country, she increased the number of American Indian students enrolled in higher education by at least 200%.

Awarded the Indian Achievement Medal of the Indian Council of Fire in 1937, Muskrat Bronson was the second woman to have received the award since its inception.

Writing

Muskrat Bronson left the BIA in 1943 to raise her daughter. During this period, she wrote and published several books and articles including: Indians are People Too (1944), The Church in Indian Life (1945), and Shall We Repeat Indian History in Alaska (1947).

The National Congress of American Indians

Later, Muskrat Bronson worked at the NCAI. Appointed the executive secretary of the organization, she spent a decade monitoring legislative issues.

She promoted Native American progress at tribal meeting across the country. She advocated for native water rights along the Colorado River, Alaska native rights, and gaining quality medical care for American Indians.

They elected Muskrat Bronson treasurer of the NCAI in 1955. After that, she focused on ways to work directly with local communities.

Arizona

She moved to Arizona in 1957. There, she worked for Indian Health Service, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. She was a health education specialist at the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation.

Muskrat Bronson also served a philanthropic organization called ARROW. Once again, she managed the education loan and scholarship funds of that organization. And she advised tribes about community development.

In 1962, Muskrat Bronson received the Oveta Culp Hobby Service Award from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for her work to improve the lives of Native Americans. And she retired from government service.

After she moved to Tucson, she became the national chairperson of the Community Development Foundation’s American Indian section under the umbrella of the Save the Children Foundation.

Portrait photograph of Ruth Margaret Muskrat Bronson,
By Unknown photographer – Gridley, Marion E. (1947) Indians of Today, Chicago: Millar Publishing Company, Public Domain,

Later Life

Muskrat Bronson continued to advocate for Native Americans to determine their own development and leadership programs, even after a stroke in 1972.

She was a recipient of the National Indian Child Conference’s merit award in 1978 for her commitment to improving children’s quality of life.

Ruth Muskrat Bronson died in Tucson, Arizona on June 12, 1982.

Our Shame

It’s our national shame we don’t all know her name. Ruth Muskrat Bronson embraced her mixed heritage. She believed Indians could benefit from many things from both cultures. For her entire life, she advocated for American Indians to maintain their culture and be self-determining.

Our shame is that despite Muskrat’s tireless work, today approximately 90,000 American Indian families are under-housed or homeless and only 13% of American Indians have a college degree.

Stop our national shame. Speak out, volunteer, buy Native American products, support our American Indian communities.

Her story is missing from our history books. Embrace our real history. It is our national shame we aren’t taught about people like Muskrat Bronson. We don’t own how we’ve mistreated others, especially American Indians. What will you do to advocate like Ruth Muskrat Bronson?

The First Female Olympic Champion to Strike Gold

The first modern Olympic Games took place in Athens, Greece, April 6–15, 1896. Women athletes could not participate for ninety-four years. Hélène de Pourtalès of Switzerland became the first female athlete to compete at the Olympic Games and the first female Olympic Champion to strike gold.

About Hélène

Portrait of the Countessa Hélène de Pourtalès the first female Olympic Champion to strike gold.
contessa

Hélène de Pourtalès (pronounced El-én day Por-tá-lay) was born in New York, New York on April 28, 1868 to Henry Barbe and Mary Lorillard Barbey.They named her Helen Barbey. 

Her father was an affluent financier. Her mother came from a family whose wealth came from a tobacco empire. Helen inherited her passion for horses and love of sailing. Her uncle, Pierre Lorillard IV, lived in Newport, Rhode Island and helped make it a yachting center. He was also a Thoroughbred racehorse owner.

On April 25, 1891, Helen married Hermon Alexander, Count von Pourtalès, (1847–1904). He was a captain of the Cuirassiers of the Guard, a heavy cavalry regiment of the Royal Prussian Army. She became known as Hélène de Pourtalès.

Hélène had dual citizenship, Swiss and American. Her husband had dual Swiss-German nationality. They had three daughters.

In 1896 Europe’s most prominent families had personal flotillas. Among them were members of the Swiss Pourtalès family.

The Olympics

Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), was a French educator and historian, the instigator of the modern Olympic Games, and founder of the International Olympic Committee. He said that female athletes would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect.”

But in 1900 they allowed a few female athletes to compete as long as their legs were “aesthetically” covered by long skirts. They only allowed women to participate in five out of nineteen sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism and golf. Out of 997 athletes, twenty-two were women.

One hundred-fifty yachts from six countries competed at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris. Each yacht followed rules from their own area since the International Yacht Racing Union did not yet exist. No rules existed to standardize the boats either. They ordered classes by tonnage.   

On May 22, Hélène was a crew member along with her husband’s nephew aboard the Swiss boat, Lérina. Her husband was helmsman. They won gold in the first of the two regattas for the 1-2 ton class boats. In the second race three days later, they won silver.

Sepia tone photograph of the Swiss boat Lérina, crewed by Hélène de Pourtalès the first female Olympic champion to strike gold.

Hélène was the first Swiss female athlete to go to the Olympics, the first female athlete to compete at the Games, and the first female  Olympic Gold Medalist. 

NOTE: England’s Charlotte Cooper was the first individual female Olympic champion, as winner of the women’s tennis singles tournament. She also won a gold medal in the mixed doubles.

From First to Current

Hélène de Pourtalès was the first female Olympic Champion to strike gold. But she wasn’t the last. From 1956 to 1964 the Russian gymnast, Larisa Latynina, won fourteen individual medals and four team medals and became the female with the most Olympic medals. This year in Tokyo, almost 49% of the 10,305 Olympic athletes are female. It’s taken 121 years to be close to gender equality in numbers. Someday, hopefully soon, there will be true equality.