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Sally Skull Now if we could just find a little more documentation of white women in the fur trade...well, other than women in the oldest profession :-) brought west for entertainment at the 'voos... White guys wound up writing most of the history of that time period, and they don't call it HIS-story for nothin'... There was Sally Skull, of course, the original "Mustang Sally", whose trade in Mustangs and contraband during the Civil War helped fund and supply the Confederacy. She wasn't in the Fur Trade, but she was active during that period in Texas history, according to an article called "Two Sixshooters and a Sunbonnet, the Story of Sally Skull", by Dan Kilgore. Sally (born Sally Newman, granddaughter of William Rabb), came to Texas at the age of 6 in 1823, with her grandfather's extended family to Austin's colony near Lagrange. After her father died in 1831, she inherited half of his stock and land near Wharton, and married at 16. During her life, she was married at least 5 times, allegedly shot one of her husbands and died at the hands of the last (her second husband was named George Scull, and she kept that name), and had two children educated at convents in New Orleans. She rode a horse astride like a man, and was a superb horsewoman, riding and roping as well as any man, and could handle a bowie knife well too. She could pick flowers with her blacksnake whip or leave its imprint on a man's shoulders if he crossed her. She was rated a champion "cusser", and was an expert shot with a rifle or the two pistols she carried at her belt. She shot a man in self-defense at Kinney's Fair in Corpus Christi in 1852, at a fandango (dance). By the 1850's she was a horsetrader and wagon-freighter, cattle dealer, and rounded up wild mustangs on the south Texas prairie and sold them at market, traveling by herself most of the time, or with a few Mexican vaqueros, and because of her reputation, nobody crossed her. What a gal !! Mustang Sally More about Sally Scull, the original "Mustang Sally": http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/SS/fsc33.html View more articles