Read The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Online

Authors: Glenda Riley

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #19th Century, #test

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (23 page)

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lavender dress. Although Bess received no financial help from her parents, she and Annie managed to finance her nurses' training, and she graduated in 1926.

Lest Oakley sound too good to be true, however, her gifts often had another side to them. With her gifts frequently came instructions and unsolicited advice. Annie's grandniece Bess, for example, revealed that Annie sent her special cosmetics along with directions. Annie noted, "You must be very careful what you put on your face, Dear." Annie also tended to use family members' homes as her own. On one occasion, she shipped a number of linen stage sets to her sister Hulda with a request to store them in Hulda's barn. Hulda eventually took the matter into her own hands; she cut up the linen, washed off the paint, and made a variety of towels and doilies from it. Clearly, although family members appreciated Annie's benevolence, they did not always follow the advice or orders that accompanied it.

Also, according to Irene Patterson Black, many family members took Annie's generosity for granted. They thought that because Annie earned substantial wages, gift-giving was easy for her. Few realized that Annie often denied herself to give to them. Moreover, in her last years, Annie occasionally spoke about the jealousy and divisiveness her gifts had caused among some family members, but she told Irene that she could not "deny" her relatives. Thus, rather than always causing her joy, Annie's benevolence sometimes marred her pleasure in her family and her visits to them.

Throughout her charity endeavors, Annie received Frank's full support. He best expressed his own attitude in a poem he wrote in 1911. Titled "What Did You Do?," it included these lines:


Didn't you know it's the part of a brother of Man To find what the grief is and help what you can? ........................................................................ Did you reach out a hand? Did you show him the road, Or did you just let him go by with his load?

Frank also abetted Annie in developing still another quality of ladyhood, the woman as a civilizing force. Because neither he nor Annie drank, smoked, gambled, or cursed, they were in an ideal position to act as models for the many performers who did all of those things.

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Annie soon discovered that it was not always easy to maintain her exemplar position. For instance, because she practiced and worked outdoors, the vagaries of climate affected her disposition year round, sometimes for the worst. Constant travel must have taken its toll as well. And, in spite of Frank, Annie was probably lonely at times, for few other Anglo women traveled with the troupe, and Native American women lived in their own section of the camp. Newspapers were quick to comment if Annie happened to be the only white woman traveling with the show during a particular season. But her supporters often explained that despite the temptations and pressures, Oakley not only remained virtuous herself but exercised a moral, salutary effect on those around her.

Within the Wild West troupe, Oakley frequently acted as an example and guide to almost everyone. In 1899, she remarked that if any of the performers or crew met her "on the street, when they were with a man not of the highest character or slightly intoxicated, perhaps, they would all cross the street" out of respect. Annie added that not one of them had ever spoken a "rough word" to her. And in 1908, she reiterated, "Never has one of those cowboys made a remark to me which he would not make to an 8-year-old child.'' Annie's niece Fern painted a similar picture. She commented that if even the "roughest canvasman" happened to curse in Annie's presence, he would tip his hat and beg her pardon.

Predictably, Oakley's moral stance did not always serve her well. Some people found Annie prude-like and "holier than thou." Although they might have respected her beliefs, they sometimes jested about Annie's morals behind her back. Some members of the troupe even hinted that Annie's straitlaced behavior stemmed from stinginess rather than from true virtue, maintaining, for example, that Annie would drink a beer if someone else paid for it. People inside and outside the company also saved their off-color jokes and oaths for times when Annie was not present. In a way, then, Annie's morality increased her isolation and set her apart from the possibility of developing many intimate relationships. Surely she would have said that she cared little for relationships with such people, yet sitting in her tent, head bowed over her embroidery hoop, must have been less than riveting at times.

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Once again, however, Oakley was well aware that she lived in the public eye and that her conduct had an impact outside the world of show business among the public. Because most people thought little of showpeople's morals, especially those of showwomen, Annie had the opportunity to revamp public thinking. Indeed, most people quickly saw the difference between her and other performers. In 1889, one fan was so taken with Annie's moral tone that he declared that she, "the circus-girl," fairly reeked "of beautiful purity and of maidenly dignity."

Annie also exercised her civilizing influence on the match and exhibition circuit. In 1897, for example, Annie maintained that few ladies shot because shooting grounds seldom made proper provision for them. Specifically, she continued, "A majority of club grounds have barrooms attached, and very often a part of the small clubroom is used for the sale of beer and liquors." Annie related her own experience at a recent tournament, where the shooters' room, a tent, had a bar in one end. Although the weather turned severe, she and many of the "gentlemen shots" preferred ''to remain outside rather than risk the tobacco smoke and smell of whisky inside."

Apparently, Oakley's model proved effective, for growing numbers of women flocked to the shooting grounds each year. In 1902, one commentator remarked that because of Annie Oakley's example, many women had already taken up shooting. He concluded that "true sportsmen" were pleased, for these women would, like Annie Oakley herself, act as a civilizing force and "sweeten the joys of field sports."

This portrait of Annie Oakley as a Victorian lady runs counter to most people's imagined picture of her. Several people questioned for this study commented that when they thought of Annie, they envisioned male clothing, rough language, and a woman intent on smashing all barriers between women and men. One even styled Oakley a "woman's libber."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Annie not only rejected male dress and behavior but also refused to support the prevailing women's issue of her day, suffrage. Rather than using her reputation as a shooter and her dignity as a lady to further

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such a cause, Oakley disavowed it because she regarded it as unladylike. Annie also explained that she saw little value for women in such a reform.

In addition, Oakley would have disapproved of the way some women's rights leaders comported themselves. Newspaper accounts as well as gossip would have informed Annie that suffragists of the late nineteenth century were engaged in internecine warfare that often brought them scorn and disrepute. The fight had begun in 1869, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony organized the National Woman Suffrage Association, which excluded men from membership, published a journal called
Revolution
, and pressured the U.S. Congress to grant women the right to vote while Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe formed the American Woman Suffrage Association, which welcomed male members, published
Woman's Journal
to offset the ''radicalism" of
Revolution
, and lobbied individual states for suffrage. Perhaps as a result of this dissension, minimal progress occurred during the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. In 1867 and 1868, woman-suffrage amendments failed in Kansas. When, in 1869, Wyoming Territory granted women the right to vote, followed by Utah Territory in 1870, reformers hoped for a landslide, but the move toward suffrage failed to gain momentum.

Instead, in 1870, the sisters and influential reformers Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe collaborated in writing
Principles of Domestic Science
, which emphasized changes in the family rather than suffrage as the answer to womens' problems. Then, during the 1870s, stockbroker and free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president in 1872, embarrassed suffrage leaders with what most people considered outrageous comments, unladylike behavior, and statements supporting free love.

During these upheavals, many women came to believe that access to the ballot box would simply bring corruption and vice to women as well as to their families. Oakley added another dimension to this thinking; she stated that she feared that not enough "good" women would vote. Even when the conflict between the two wings of the suffrage movement ended in 1890 with an uneasy truce and a merger between them, Annie remained aloof.

Of course, woman suffrage would have had little immediate

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impact on Annie's life as a sportsperson and athlete. Rather, the changes taking place in women's sports at the time would have meant far more to her than suffrage. During Annie's formative years, American women had increasingly expanded their athletic activities. During the 1870s, they began to take up croquet, and soon they played alongside men. They also engaged in ice and roller skating and participated in archery tournaments, probably the first organized sport for women. In 1874., Mary E. Outerbridge of New York introduced tennis into the United States. Hindered by corsets, long skirts, and massive hats held to their heads by veils tied under their chins, women tennis players swung their rackets with ladylike grace but little athletic prowess.

During the time Annie was making her own mark in sports, the 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s, women entered bowling tournaments, pedestrian races, and rodeos, especially as bronc riders. Socialite Eleonora Sears, great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, toppled barriers to women's participation in organized events by winning more than 240 trophies in a variety of sports, including tennis and long-distance walking. She also shocked the nation in 1910 when she rode astride and competed against men on the polo field.

Still, despite the opportunities such changes created for Annie, she had no interest in emulating these "new women," as many Americans called them. Annie recognized that she already faced tough odds as a woman. Almost everyone who watched her shoot, or who heard about her, viewed her as a
woman
shooter. An 1888 judgment was typical: "Miss Oakley is a wonderful shot for a lady." Consequently, people watched how she, as a woman, reacted to various situations. She remembered that as she stepped up to the shooting line, both men and women observed her closely. Women especially looked her over, in her words, "sometimes disdainfully." She added, "If they wished to be friendly they could.'' If not, she convinced herself she did not care.

Rather than presenting herself as a new woman, Oakley chose to act like a lady on the shooting field. In one of her early matches, Annie competed against twenty-one shooters, all male. "When they saw me coming along they laughed at the notion of my shooting against them," she recalled. They were, she said, "less

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