Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life

The seventh day after the birth of the baby a delegation of several squaws wives of chiefs came to pay me a formal visit. They brought me some finely woven baskets and a beautiful papoose-basket or cradle such as they carry their own babies in.... [I]t was their best work. I admired it and tried to express to them my thanks... -from Chapter 13: A New Recruit Martha Summerhayes was a respectable Victorian lady when she left civilized society behind in 1874 to follow her cavalry-officer husband West to the Wyoming Territory and then to unknown and inaccessible Arizona. Written at the urgent and ceaseless request of her children and first published in 1908 this compulsively readable account of her life on the frontier is a unique document of the American exploration and settling of the West offering a little-heard womans perspective on an historical era that continues to echo in contemporary American society. From the deprivations of her kitchen-where she has no choice but to make do with army pots and pans designed for cooking for dozens-to terrifying encounters with wildlife attacks by Indians and the challenge of giving birth alone Summerhayes indomitable spirit and sense of adventure shines through. American writer MARTHA SUMMERHAYES (1846-1911) was born in Massachusetts and spent two years studying in Germany before her life on the American frontier.