The frontier life was one of interest to thousands of Americans during the 19th century. West, a place to start anew without the turmoil of cities and industry that continued to expand on the eastern coast of the quickly growing young country. The West was no utopia by anyone’s standards, however, and the impact the journey and the new life had on women changed their way of thinking for the future. Life on the trail was no glorious journey even for those with enough wealth to travel the path; disease was rampant and death very common for anyone unlucky enough to contract disease. The number of settlers in the West and the diversity among them would lead to conflict and hardship for decades to come. The West was not a place women went for emancipation. The decision to pull up the family roots and move west was always a decision come to by men, the women accompanying the men would have to go along with the decision and learn quickly the how to adjust to a life full of mystery and despair. Between 1840 and 1870 more than 300,000 people headed westward overland1 with their family and belongings in tow. Many of the settlers heading west were former slaves from Africa seeking a place to escape the hatred of the eastern shores of the United States and begin afresh with the world at their fingertips. Many of these minorities found it even harder to live in the frontier as racial discrimination was prevalent in a land where few laws were enforced and people’s actions were determined by their will to survive. Life in the new lands in the west led women to begin to perform tasks they were not accustomed to do in their previous homes. A woman could not head into town to purchase supplies from the general store; in the West, a woman had to provide for her family by preparing meals, clothing, and anything else she needed to by using the land around her. This new reality is a mirror of the experiences that many women lived in the early years of colonization in the New World. At the time of the Puritans and Pilgrims, the colonies provided them with no help in the way of pre-made clothing, soap, or any other home necessity. Eventually, however, the colonial woman would have transitioned into the way of industrialization and urbanization as the country grew towards independence. The situation of the pioneer women was the opposite of the colonial woman. In the 1800’s, the typical woman could expect to have certain things always be available to her without much effort. Once out on the trail this reality was lost almost immediately as the harsh rigors of her new life would be upon her. Once reaching the West, the conditions of life improved, at best, in a miniscule way as the land was harsh to grow anything on, and the constant threat of attack was always in the air. “At first the West seemed full of promise to many new settlers. But in reality, taming the wilderness was a constant struggle, and working or farming the land was extremely hard work. For women, endless chores and the strain of childbearing made many of them look and feel old before they were forty.”2 The California Gold Rush of 1848 further worsened the treatment of women in the West. In the mining towns of California prostitution was everywhere. The women who could not afford to make it on their own where most often thrown into the brothels and made sex slaves for the miners of the town. Conditions were even worse for immigrant women of the western frontier as women of Chinese ancestry were treated like animals and brutally humiliated for pleasure. Few of these women lived long enough to escape the torture that was brought on them; in fact, most of the girls who were brought for indenture from China died before the age of twenty. One woman made it her life’s work to help the Chinese girls who were sold into these harsh conditions. Donaldina Cameron was a Presbyterian missionary who fought for the lives of thousands of Chinese immigrant girls who were extorted as sex