Bring up the intriguing subject of prostitution history in the American West, and you are sure to liven up a conversation.
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The thought of someone paying for sex diverts from societal and cultural ideals about how and when sex should be employed. It also brings forth a slew of questions, from how business was conducted to how the industry maintained its relationship with governments, big and small. In between are enough bawdy stories to make a sailor blush.
Although prostitution in the West could indeed be gritty and dangerous, the act was sometimes viewed as a healthy and integral part of life. In the days of the mountain men rendezvous, certain American Indians offered the sexual favors of their wives and daughters to their white guests. For instance, the Assiniboines of the Great Northern Plains commonly lent out their daughters for sex, always in trade for goods. The more the girls brought in, the greater the respect for them and their families. Not all tribes, however, allowed such sexual license.
One of the earliest cultured women to make her presence known in the West was Santa Fe's celebrated courtesan, Gertrudis Barceló, known as Madam Tules, who first appeared in New Mexico in 1815. A married mother who began gambling professionally around 1825, Tules became single in 1841 and began romancing powerful men who could assist her in opening up her first brothel.
Tules served elite customers who included churchmen, U.S. Army officers and politicians. Newspapers noted her presence at social affairs, but descriptions of her fluctuated. An “old woman with false hair and teeth,” pioneer wife Susan Shelby Magoffin commented in 1846. “Young and blooming as we ever saw her,” the Santa Fe Republican reported the following year. Beauty was, indeed, in the eye of the beholder.
By the time the wealthy Tules died, in 1852, more and more male settlers were coming west, increasing the need for female companionship. In the harsh and lonely mining camps of the Rocky Mountains, men pinned for women to the extent they would pay just to see or touch female undergarments, whether or not a woman was wearing them. Any man whose wife lived with him on the frontier was considered rude if he declined to bring her to social functions so she could dance with the other men.
Many of the few but brave women who made their way from the East looked for riches via the skin trade. Almost without exception, pioneer mining camps, boomtowns and whistle-stops became home to at least one or two soiled doves, if not a roaring red light district. Contributing heavily to town economies in the way of business licenses, fees and fines, a number of red light districts evolved into the social centers of their communities.
As the industry grew, so did the number of women who approached prostitution as a business profession. They did so with limited success. Prostitutes working above bars or in the seedier brothels rarely made enough money to withdraw and often ended their lives by suicide, overdose or illness. Gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia, potentially fatal maladies, ran rampant during the 19th century. An 1865 hospital report in Idaho City, Idaho, stated that one out of every seven patients was suffering from venereal disease. Botched abortions and murder rounded out the number of women who died while working as prostitutes.