Frontier respect for a woman hinged on proven wilderness skill, not gender

Evidence

But when I told him I had ridden the trail in the storm of Tuesday, and had ridden over 600 miles alone in the mountains, he treated me with great respect as a fellow mountaineer, and gave me some matches, saying, “You’ll have to camp out anyhow; you’d better make a fire than be froze to death.” The idea of my spending the night in the forest alone, by a fire, struck me as most grotesque. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 543

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to independent female characters in fiction like Jane Eyre’s self-reliance and Octavia Butler’s survivalist protagonists. — connects to: Pioneer ruffians would not harm a woman of proven pluck — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 37
• ADDENDUM: Touches the thread of the reader’s interest in wilderness competence overturning social convention — consistent with the terrain of the trees infrastructure essay.

Related

• Pioneer ruffians would not harm a woman of proven pluck (similarity 0.84)
• Western frontier men prized courage in women as their main protection. (similarity 0.80)
• Backcountry Western men insisted on courteous respect toward women. (similarity 0.79)
• Pioneer frontier wives regarded all courtesy and gentleness as sinful laziness. (similarity 0.78)