ross the country, for the risk remained far too great to compensate for the fortune they could gain. Even if economic disparities existed, nature did not discriminate. The rough journey meant that the chances of death were fairly equal regardless of people’s rank in life. Even if one did not die, Louisiana Strentzel noted that the tough passage through terrain meant that people threw away all their unnecessary belongings – tools, books, clothing, and even gold – to make the crossing easier (Strentzel 257–258). Ultimately, people came to the West on a level playing field. While gendered conceptions would have most certainly existed, there was no monolithic class that enforced that structurally enforced these ideas.
The milieu of non-elite White