There are many myths about the American west. There’s the myth of bringing order out of a savage wasteland. The myth of the noble Caucasian cowboy. The myth of rugged individualists who wrested a living from the earth without help from anyone else. And the myth of women without agency who deferred to men. All of these are wrong. Yet they are remarkably sticky in American cultural consciousness, according to historian Megan Kate Nelson, a former Pulitzer Prize finalist.