Pioneer Women in the Wild West

Season 1, Episode 11. America's Wild West evokes images of grizzled men in fringed chaps, but women were also there to help shape the frontier: the pioneer women who fought through many hardships to carve out a life on the dusty plains and the Mexican and Native American women who were already there, trying to hold on to their way of life. What was life like for these women as they traveled by wagon train and set up houses on the prairie? How did women already living there deal with the threat pioneers posed? And what about the cowgirls and lady gunslingers of legend: were they real? Let's find out if the Wild West was a place of freedom for women or if the same Victorian-era rules still applied. Get ready for rough rides, loud bawdy houses, extreme weather, hard work and many, many snakes.