From Homesteaders to Wolfers
Evelyn Cameron’s film captured Montana’s pioneers.
By: Jana Bommersbach 07/01/2006
Her name wasn’t in history books or halls of fame, and her contribution to Western history was stashed, literally, in the basement of a friend.
Then writer Donna M. Lucey came snooping around in 1978, looking for photos to illustrate a book on female pioneers. The curator of the Montana Historical Society in Helena mentioned there was a stash of glass plate negatives, but all efforts to display them had been rebuffed by the farm woman who’d inherited Cameron’s estate.
Thankfully, Lucey was a skilled persuader. She convinced Janet Williams to share the treasures hidden in her basement. “I was astonished by what I saw,” Lucey writes in her book Photographing Montana, 1894-1928. “For years I had been traveling throughout the West, combing photo collections for Time-Life Books’ series on the Old West, and I had never found anything like these pictures. They presented an intimate view of pioneer life in eastern Montana, a close-up portrait of men and women who had settled one of the most remote and desolate regions of the West.
“As remarkable as the pictures them-selves was the fact that the photographer, whose name was Evelyn Cameron, was almost entirely unknown except by a few historians in Montana, none of whom had seen more than a small sampling of her work.... Cameron’s name appeared in no general histories of the West nor of western photography. But the few images I had in hand were proof that Evelyn Cameron was a master photographer of the West.”
Originally published in 1990 by Alfred A. Knopf and republished in 2001 by Mountain Press Publishing of Montana, Lucey’s book shares a full history of this remarkable woman who left the luxury of English society on her honeymoon to tough it out in a remote piece of the Old West. The book features about 150 photos from the 1,800 negatives Lucey found in that basement.
From Tea and Fox Hunts
Evelyn Batterseas was born on August 26, 1868, the youngest child of an English merchant who traded in East Indian items and provided a full Victorian lifestyle for his family. There was a plush house, generous grounds and 15 servants. Women were expected to spend their time at teas and fox hunts—women riding sidesaddle, of course—and were discouraged from “unladylike” activities such as education and work.
Little of this suited Evelyn, who in 1889 dismayed her family by marrying a Scot named Ewen Cameron. He shared her love of horseflesh and hankered to explore new lands. Apparently, Evelyn didn’t look back as she enthusiastically boarded a boat for America. “Indeed, the prospect of a life in a remote wilderness suited her perfectly,” Lucey writes. “Not only could she lead the outdoor life
of riding and hunting she adored, she could also escape the scrutiny of her disapproving relations.”
The couple arrived in eastern Montana with an English cook and one of Custer’s scouts as guide, and settled around Miles City and Terry in a stark landscape with “intense solitude.” The cook was soon gone as the couple struggled to make a life. They hoped to raise polo ponies for the European market, but after many years of trying, they finally gave it up. They originally lived off Evelyn’s trust fund, but it wasn’t enough. To help support her husband (and her brother, who now lived with them), Evelyn planted an acre-large garden and sold vegetables, bringing in the only cash the family saw. The garden also, of course, fed the family.
Post A Comment