by Jim Fergus
“He’s a lost soul,” I said of the pathetic Reverend, “who may not deserve, but still requires, mercy.”
“Noothin’ to be doon for him, May,” said Susie. “They won’t kill the old booger. They’re just goin’ to teach him a goood lesson.”
And indeed, the outraged parents’ fury soon abated, the family went home with their son, and the crowd dispersed. Then the twins and I went to our fallen spiritual advisor, who lay curled upon the ground, reduced to a quivering mass of torn red flesh. We helped him back into his lodge, where old Dog Woman, clucking his concern, ministered to his wounds.
I’m afraid that the Big White Rabbit’s disgrace among the People is final, and irrevocable. I must say, beyond the fact that some of us have fulfilled our end of the bargain by becoming pregnant, we do not seem to be having much success in instructing the savages in the benefits of civilized ways.
28 August 1875
We are on the move again. This time and for the first time since our arrival we are dividing into several groups and heading off in different directions. The game has dispersed and so must the People, for it is easier for smaller bands to feed themselves than one large band all together.
This separation has caused a great deal of anxiety among our women. Martha is nearly hysterical with worry as she and her husband Mr. Tangle Hair belong to a different band than my family, and as a consequence we will be separated—possibly for weeks … possibly longer.
“I cannot leave you, May,” the poor thing said this morning when we learned of our imminent departure. “Oh, dear God, what shall I do without you?”
“You’ll be fine, Martha,” I tried to console her. “You’ll have others in your group.”
“For how long are we to be apart?” Martha asked. “I cannot bear the thought. What’s to become of us?”
“You must stop worrying so,” I said. “You worry yourself sick and then everything turns out fine after all, does it not?”
Martha laughed. “My friend,” she said, “if you call the events of the past months, and especially those of the past weeks, ‘fine,’ truly you possess a serenity that will never be mine. I cannot survive without you to give me strength.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Of course you can, dear. We will be together again soon enough.”
“How can you know that, May?” she asked. “How can we know that we’ll ever see each other again?”
“There you go worrying again,” I said, trying to be lighthearted. “You are soon to be a mother, and I have always been a believer in the old saw that anxious mothers give birth to anxious babies.”
“Of course you’re right, May,” she said. “But I cannot help myself. I am anxious by nature. I never should have come here to the wilderness … I’m too much of a mouse, terrified of everything …”
“After what you have been through, Martha,” I said, “you have every right to be terrified.”
“But you are not, May,” she said. “I would give everything to be like you—intrepid and unafraid. I know that we are not to speak of that night, but I must tell you this … I must tell you how proud I was of you … and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I didn’t help you when they murdered Sara …” Now Martha had begun to weep. “I was so frightened, May. I wanted to come to your aid, but I could not, I could not move. Perhaps if I had been able to help you the wretch wouldn’t have killed her …”
“You must never think that, Martha,” I said, sharply. “And you must honor our pact not to speak of that night. There was nothing any of us could have done to save the child.”
“Yes, but you protected Pretty Walker,” Martha said. “I would never have had the courage to do what you did, May.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “Enough of that, Martha.”
And then she put her arms around me and hugged me with all her might. “Tell me something to give me courage, May.”
“I can tell you one thing only, my dearest friend,” I said. “And then we will not speak of it again. You must promise me that.”
“Yes, of course, I do.”
“I was just as terrified as you that night, as everyone else,” I said. “I have been from the beginning of this experience. But I’ve learned to disguise my fear. I made the vow to myself on our very first day, that whenever I was most afraid for my life I would think of my babies, my Hortense and Willie, and I would find peace in knowing that they are safe, I would seek serenity in the image of their little hearts beating calmly. That’s what I thought of when the savages set upon me that night. I realized that the worse thing that could happen to me was not that I should be killed—but that this baby I carry would die. And thus I submitted. And I endured. Just as you and the others endured. Because we are women, because we are mothers some of us, and others mothers to be. And some, like Helen Flight, are just plain strong. Do you remember what Helen said once in our discussion on the subject of a warrior’s medicine? That if they believed strongly enough in their own power, perhaps they are protected by it?”
“Yes, I remember,” Martha said, “and you said it was pure poppycock! Pure superstition!”
“Yes, I did,” I admitted, and I laughed. “And truth be known, I still think so! But you must remember, Martha, that you survived that night yourself, you submitted and endured, and by doing so you saved your baby. Your power as a woman, as a mother, is your medicine, and it saved you. Take your courage from that. Do not be afraid of our separation. Have faith that it is only temporary, that you will be well protected by your husband, your family, and the friends who accompany you, and that you and I shall be reunited again in due time.”
6 September 1875
Our band heads south. We are told that we are returning to Fort Laramie to trade at the post there for sufficient provisions to see us through the coming winter. Little Wolf also wishes to discuss with the fort commander the matter of the remainder of the white brides that have been promised to his young warriors by the Great White Father. I have neither tried to disabuse him of this notion nor said a word to him of Gertie’s report to me on the subject. There have already been disgruntled murmurings of late among some of the Cheyennes that once again the whites are reneging on a treaty provision, for, of course, no more brides have been sent since our arrival—and clearly no more will be.
This will be our first contact with civilization since we were given over to the People in May … only five months. But it seems a lifetime. After all that we have endured I am filled with a strange trepidation about the prospect of returning to the fort. Of course, I cannot help but wonder if Captain Bourke will be still stationed there with his new bride. I have had no more word from him since Gertie’s visit earlier in the summer. And since that time we have been almost constantly on the move.
Presently we are extremely well supplied with buffalo robes and hides, elk, deer, and antelope skins, so much so that nearly all of our horses are fully packed and more of the People are afoot. There is talk among the young men about launching yet another horse-stealing raid against the Crows. Others talk of stealing horses from some of the white settlements we pass on the way to the fort. The “old men chiefs” such as my husband council against this, for they believe that we are at peace with the whites.
I, myself, am largely afoot, for my own horse Soldier has been pressed into duty carrying parfleches of household goods. And so I walk to lessen his burden. I do not mind to walk, in fact in some ways prefer it. Whatever one may say about the hardships of this nomadic life, we are all of us women in magnificent physical condition. I had hardly realized how sedentary and soft of muscle I had become during my long incarceration in the asylum; one begins to take the inactivity for granted and nearly forgets the joys of healthful outdoor exercise. The first weeks among the savages every muscle and every bone in my body ached with fatigue. But now I am fit as a fiddle. So it is with the other women, some of whom I hardly recognize any longer. Almost all have lost weight, and are darker of skin and sleek as racehorses. I believe from this ex
perience that Caucasian women should also discover the healthful benefits of this open-aired life of physical activity.
I’m happy to report that Helen Flight and her husband are included in our little band as are Phemie and the Kelly girls. Of my closest friends Gretchen, Martha, and Daisy Lovelace are all headed off in separate directions. Poor Ada Ware has loyally remained with her murderer husband and continues to live on the periphery of the Dull Knife band, who themselves are off, God knows where. It is much like keeping track of separate flocks of geese, and while not wishing to alarm poor Martha on the subject, I have no idea how or when we will be reunited.
Both the unfortunate Reverend Hare and Narcissa White have elected to join Little Wolf’s band—presumably because ours is headed to the fort. After the former’s disgrace, he trails some distance behind us on his white mule, like a penitent or an outcast himself. I never cared for the man, but I feel some pity for him now. I won’t be surprised if, after we reach the fort, we will be seeing the last of him. As to Narcissa, after the conspicuous lack of success of her own mission, I have a suspicion that she, too, may be plotting a defection.
Most of the southern Cheyennes have already departed back to their own country, while a few accompany us to Fort Laramie and from there will continue south. I am deeply distressed to report that after a much welcome absence of nearly two months the damnable wretch Jules Seminole is again among us. I hope that we will have seen the last of the lout after we reach Fort Laramie, when he will surely continue on south with the rest of his people. After my experience at the hands of the Crows I am less able than ever to tolerate his presence.
“Exoxohenetamo’ane,” I finally said to my husband the last time the man came skulking around our lodge. “He talks dirty to me.”
Little Wolf’s face darkened in rage. And there the matter rests.
Our smaller group is able to move with even greater dispatch, breaking camp early every morning and traveling hard until nearly dusk. I do not know how many miles we cover each day. The country itself is quite pretty—rolling prairie grassland cut periodically by river courses, the water low now after the dry summer, the whorled grasses already beginning to turn their autumnal shades of yellow. A chill fall wind blows down out of the north reminding us all of the coming winter.
Keeping the Bighorn Mountains to the West, we move roughly south by southeast, across the Tongue, where Hanging Woman Creek flows into it, to the junction of the Clear River and the Powder, following the Powder down to the Crazy Woman Fork and then east and south toward the Belle Fourche. At least this is how I mark the watercourses on my Army map, though some have different names among the whites than the Indians. Beyond the Belle Fourche, the buffalo-grass prairie gives way gradually to a series of desolate, arid buttes, rocky canyons, and dry creek bottoms. We hurry across this inhospitable desert for the only water to be found here is brackish and alkaline, and impossible to drink.
One day we were just able to make out the faint outline of the Black Hills rising up on the eastern horizon, and the next day we were close enough to see the pine-studded slopes but these we kept to our left as we headed south on the prairie’s edge.
10 September 1875
A war party of Oglala Sioux has ridden down out of the Black Hills to intercept us. Fortunately these people are close allies of the Cheyennes, and members of the party have relatives in our own camp. Even though they had identified us as friends, the warriors made a spectacular entrance, quite clearly designed to impress us—which it most certainly did—with their faces painted like demons, they were dressed in all manner of elaborately beaded and adorned attire, yipping and wheeling their horses—a more ferocious-looking bunch I have never before seen.
It has been my observation that the savages are showmen of the first order who spend a great deal of time on their personal toilet and appearance and no more so when they prepare for war. The old medicine man, White Bull, has explained to Helen Flight that a warrior must always look his best when going off to wage war in the event that he is killed in battle. For no warrior wishes to embarrass himself by being underdressed when he goes to meet his maker, the Great Medicine. “So you see, May,” said Helen Flight with perfect delight, “it’s an artist’s dream come true, for not only do I adorn the warrior for his protection in battle, but I adorn him so that he might make a good impression on the Great Medicine. That is to say, what more can the artist hope for than to have her work viewed by God in his heaven?” I hardly need mention that Helen, although she professes to be an Anglican, is nearly as irreverent as I.
Although there is much intermarriage between the Sioux people and the Cheyennes, Little Wolf does not speak their language, and does not generally care for them. He believes that their women are unvirtuous. Truly my husband is very much of a tribalist and has kept himself and his family separate from these allies, almost as much as he has from contact with the whites.
Nevertheless, after the warriors—perhaps thirty in number—had finished their display of horsemanship and fierce posturing before us, the Chief emerged briskly from our lodge to speak the sign language with the leader of their party—an enormous fellow named, as I understood it, Hump.
Naturally, before anything important could be discussed between the two Chiefs, the entire Sioux contingent had to be invited to eat and smoke. Not to extend such an invitation would be considered impolite. Several families opened their lodges to the warriors, after which a general council was held in the Medicine Lodge. When all the formalities were completed, and the ceremonial pipe lit, the Sioux at last explained that the intent of their war party was to launch a series of raids against the white gold seekers and settlers who were invading the Black Hills.
Speaking through a Cheyenne interpreter, the Sioux Chief, Hump, then asked Little Wolf if the Cheyennes would join them in a war against the whites. The Black Hills, Hump said, belonged to both the Sioux and the Cheyennes, had been given to them “forever” in the last great treaty talks.
Little Wolf listened politely to this request and then answered that he was quite familiar with the terms of the treaty but that, as the Sioux could plainly see, ours was only a small band with more women and children among it than warriors and that at present we were on our way to do business at the trading post, not to wage war against white settlers.
“Perhaps the Cheyennes will not fight the whites because the soldiers have given you these pale women,” Hump said, waving his arm toward us. “Perhaps the white women have made you soft and afraid to fight.” At this evident bon mot some of the Sioux warriors present made insinuating snickers.
My husband’s face darkened and I could see the muscle in his jaw rippling, a sure sign of his well-known temper rising. “The Sioux are certainly aware of the Cheyennes’ ability to make war,” Little Wolf said. “We claim that we are the best fighters on the plains. It is a foolish thing for the Sioux to say that we are afraid. Ours is not a war party, but a trading party. I have spoken. And that is all I have to say on the subject.”
With this Little Wolf stood and left the Medicine Lodge. I followed him home. The next day the Sioux were gone.
14 September 1875
Yesterday we reached Fort Laramie. A more distressing return to the bosom of civilization, I can hardly imagine … we are all left now to ponder the question of which world we really inhabit … perhaps neither.
We struck our camp as far away as we could from the hangs-around-the-fort Indians, whose appearance and behavior was, if anything, even more shocking to us after living among the Cheyennes these past months. Truly contact with our white civilization has caused nothing but ruination and despair for these unfortunate souls. A number of them, ragged and thin, came straightaway to our camp to beg from us.
After we made camp, Little Wolf himself led our trade contingent to the fort grounds to conduct our business at the trading post there, our packhorses well laden with hides. A few among our group chose to accompany their husbands to the fort, but others had grown
suddenly shy faced once again with the prospect of confronting civilization after these many months in the wilderness.
As I look back now with the luxury of twenty-four hours of hindsight, I realize that I, myself, was impulsively bold in my own insistence upon going to the fort with my husband. So anxious was I to catch a glimpse of civilization that I had hardly given a thought to how we would appear to civilized people. I think, too, that in the back of my mind, I must have hoped to catch sight of John Bourke, or at least to hear some word of him.
Phemie and Helen, equally unselfconscious, also elected to go into the trading post, as did the Kelly girls—whose swagger is undiminished by any circumstances. Both the Kellys and Helen Flight, I should mention, have become rather wealthy women by savage standards—the former by the ill-gotten gains of their gambling empire, and Helen for artistic services rendered. Helen hoped to trade her goods for gunpowder and shot for her muzzle loader, as well as for additional painting supplies and sundry “luxuries” of civilization.
“And I intend to post a letter at last to my dear Mrs. Hall!” she said, with great excitement. I, too, had prepared a letter to send to my family, although I felt certain that we would be forbidden still by the military from posting these communications.
Our old crier, Pehpe’e, identified us to the fort sentry, and after some delay the gates swung open and a company of Negro soldiers galloped out to meet us. With snappy military precision, they formed lines on either side of our little trade contingent to escort us inside. For all their soldierly discipline, the black men could hardly take their eyes off our Euphemia. Nexana’hane’e (Kills Twice Woman) as she is called since our rescue from the Crows, rode her white horse beside her husband Black Man, who rode a spotted pony. It was a mild day and she was bare-chested as is her summer habit, wearing nothing but a breechclout, her long legs, bronzed and muscled, adorned with hammered copper ankle bracelets. She wore copper hoops in her pierced ears, and a necklace of trade beads around her neck and looked as always perfectly regal—more savage than the savages themselves.
