One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

by Jim Fergus

  I pull my covers tighter around me. I badly have to make my morning water, but I cannot bring myself to leave the warmth of bed, and shall try to distract myself for a few more moments in these pages.

  True to Gertie’s report, yesterday we watched as two large companies of cavalry, each with mule-drawn pack trains, departed the fort, one headed northeast toward Camp Robinson and the other northwest toward Fort Fetterman. These had to be General Crook’s forces, and Captain John Bourke must have been among them. I suspect that Crook had deployed his troops intentionally while we were still present to witness their strength, so that our band might report back to the others.

  I take only some small comfort in knowing that we have at least the fall and part of the winter to come into the agency; that much was made clear by both Captain Bourke and General Crook. I intend to speak with the others when we rejoin them so that we may make a united effort to convince our husbands, and perhaps just as importantly, the women of the tribe, of the wisdom of giving ourselves up. But I fear that after a generally peaceful summer and in a time of tribal prosperity, it may be more difficult to make the People understand why they must relinquish their freedom and vacate land that is theirs “forever”—a word clearly less flexibly defined by their culture than ours.

  I begin to worry for us with the coming of winter—especially with our babies on the way. Having been blessed throughout this past summer with a generally mild climate, we “brides” have experienced very little discomfort as a result of inclement weather—other than for the nearly constant prairie winds, which do sometimes provoke anxiety and irritability—and in poor Martha’s case have greatly exacerbated her hay fever. Now with this first sudden blast of arctic air blowing down out of the north country I dread the prospect of our confinement. Certainly a more permanent shelter at the agency—perhaps even a real house—seems an attractive proposition compared to a long winter in a tipi. For all that, I must admit that the Indian tipi is marvelously well designed—stays remarkably cool in the heat of summer and quite cozy thus far with this first true cold weather of the season. And with the morning fire burning, it warms quickly.

  Now Feather on Head with her dear baby boy—whom I call by the name Willie, after my own sweet William—has joined me under my buffalo robes. It is a game I have taught my tentmates; sometimes in the cool of dawn they steal into my bed and I nuzzle the baby, who smells like a wild prairie plum and we all of us giggle like children and often fall back asleep in each other’s arms, curled together like sisters, the baby nestled between us. Sometimes Pretty Walker joins us, her mother, Quiet One, not objecting to these sisterly intimacies. Over these past chilly nights the first wife has resumed her rightful place under the robes with her husband, and I have sufficiently recovered from my own night-terrors to relinquish the position. Truly we are all of us like a pack of dogs, seeking the comfort of another warm body next to ours. Sometimes my little Horse Boy, too, will crawl under the robes with us—although I find of late that he is growing too old to snuggle innocently with the women!—the other day I felt the imp pressing an arousal urgently against my leg! I flicked his little thing, hard as the stub of a pencil, with my finger, causing the child to squeal and quite effectively discouraging his ardor.

  Now we girls whisper and giggle under the robes; we trade English words and phrases for those in Cheyenne. The baby coos between us. A happier child I have never before known—he rarely cries and when he does Feather on Head pinches his nose and he stops almost immediately. In this way the Cheyenne mother trains her infant to a perfect animal silence.

  It is warm and pungent under our coverings, and we are safe together and none of us wishes to rise to face the frigid air and the crisp fresh snow outside. None of us wishes to pack our belongings today and begin travel in the cold and the snow. But then we hear the old camp crier and all are silent for a moment as we listen for the day’s news: “The People will prepare to depart this morning,” he cries out. “We leave for our winter camp to the north. Today we go home. Pack your belongings, take down your lodges, this morning the People will prepare to move.”

  Still we do not rise, we snuggle tighter under the buffalo robes until the old crone begins her shrill squawking … “Everybody out of bed, up!, it is time to pack, we leave today.” And if any hesitate she has her willow switch handy and we hear her swacking the covers—any excuse for the old hag to draw on her arsenal of weaponry. Finally Feather on Head slips out from under the robes, suddenly serious again with the often grim business of womanhood in tribal life, which offers scant opportunity for such idle lounging; this morning she leaves her baby in the bed with me—she knows I will care for the sweet Willie, and thus she is free to begin her chores unencumbered. For a few more precious minutes I nuzzle the infant until he coos, coos like a pigeon. But I can wait no longer to make my water, nor can I tolerate any longer the squawking of old vohkeesa’e and so I too, with great reluctance, put away my notebook, and finally slide out from beneath the warmth of my buffalo robes to face the trials of the day. I slip little Willie out behind me and hang him in his baby board, which leans up beside Feather on Head’s sleeping place. He does not make a sound in protest, but I think that he looks at me regretfully, as if to say, “Don’t leave me here, don’t leave me, auntie.”

  When I step out through the lodge opening, the sun is just cresting the eastern horizon, but contains no hint of warmth this morning. The temperature must be well below freezing, the snow crystalline and sparkling and not yet trampled but for one distinct set of footprints heading down toward the river. It is the track of Little Wolf who rose early for his daily morning swim, which he and the others in the Savage Men’s Bathing Club continue to take no matter what the weather. Now I follow his prints, stopping in the willows on the way to squat and take my pee, which steams yellow in the snow, melting down quickly to reveal the wet red earth beneath. And then on down to the river where I strip, first removing my leggings and moccasins before giving up the warmth of the heavy buffalo robe I wear and then quickly shedding my dress. Without hesitating, without giving myself time to so much as contemplate the terrible frigidity of the water I wade into the river, quick as I can, the breath catching in my throat, and I make a shallow dive, and come back to the surface gasping, trying to draw a breath out of my frozen breast and emitting a small choked cry of shock! Good Lord, it is cold!

  I rush from the water and wrap the buffalo robe, which still holds some trace of the tipi’s warmth, round my naked body and grab my dress, moccasins, and leggings and I run, back to the lodge, barefoot through the snow, my feet numb by the time I arrive. I burst through the opening, laughing and making brrrrrr sounds much to the delight of my tentmates. The baby dangling from his baby board gurgles delightedly at my grand entrance, his eyes wide. “Yes, etoneto!” I say using the Cheyenne word, then the English: “Coooold! Brrrrrr!” And the girls, Feather on Head and Pretty Walker, cover their mouths and giggle their soft shy giggles that sound like riffles on a spring creek. And the baby gurgles happily. And the old crone squawks, but even she and the usually undemonstrative Quiet One can’t help now but give up small smiles at my antics …

  In this way our day begins. I think only of my duties. Today we leave. I am a squaw.

  23 September 1875

  The breaking of camp proceeded somewhat slower yesterday with the cold weather, and it was midmorning before we were finally under way. By then the wind had come up out of the north, and directly into this we rode all day.

  Thankfully, all who wanted them had horses for the return trip, for we traveled unencumbered by the several hundred hides with which we arrived here, and the trade goods we bartered for took up somewhat less packing space.

  I rode most of the day alongside my friend Helen Flight. Our strange new spiritual advisor, Brother Anthony, trailed behind us on his little burro, the fellow’s long legs dangling, his feet very nearly reaching the ground, the poor donkey breaking periodically into a rough-gaited trot to keep from
falling too far behind.

  With the Kellys’ canny representation, Helen had managed, after all, to procure some new painting supplies from the “horrid little frog” as she refers to Big Nose. It seems that some of the garrison wives also enjoy dabbling in the arts as a means of passing the endless days when their husbands are off on expeditions, and so the Frenchman stocks a few such supplies. She has replenished her store of charcoal and sketch paper, and has even obtained a precious roll of painter’s canvas. The dear thing also purchased two new notebooks, which she presented to me as a gift. I was terribly grateful to her for I am filling these pages at an alarming rate, and may soon have to stop writing altogether for they are becoming rather cumbersome to transport.

  Helen kept a pipe clenched determinedly between her teeth as we rode into the frigid wind; it poked out through her scarf, but she had little success keeping it lit. We both were well covered, I in an extra layer of fur-lined moccasins and leggings and a kind of muff affair, made out of silky beaver fur, to keep my hands warm, and she with a new pair of gloves and men’s boots for which she had traded at the store, and also wearing native fur and hide leggings. We both wore heavy coats of buffalo hair which we were particularly grateful to have had made for us during the summer by our camp seamstress Jeanette Parker. On our heads we each wore cossacklike hats of beaver fur pulled low over our ears; these last, an Indian fashion and very snug. Both of us also wore woolen scarves over our faces. In these confining outfits conversation would have been difficult in the best of circumstances—all but impossible with the wind blowing directly into our faces so that the words seemed to be pushed back down our throats before they had time to escape. We would try to holler back and forth and then would look at each other helplessly to see if we had been understood. Finally we gave a kind of mutual shrug and contented ourselves to ride in silence, with nothing but our thoughts for company, hunkered low on our horses, trying vainly to make our profiles as small as possible against the ceaseless wind.

  How strange to recall that six months ago we departed Fort Laramie as anxious white women entering the wilderness for the first time; and now, perhaps equally anxious, we leave as squaws returning home. I realized anew as we rode into the cold wind on this morning that my own commitment had been sealed forever by the heart that beats in my belly; that I could not have remained even if I so wished.

  Nor can I make room on this page or in my own heart for further thoughts of John Bourke. I push him from my mind. This is no act of easy omission on my part; I do not consign him casually to a forgotten past. It is rather an act of will—a kind of self-performed surgery on my soul … the bloodiest of mutilations. Having seen him again, having been held in his arms for that brief moment, having felt again his strong tender hand upon my stomach, the cutting away of him is even more painful this time … for in our parting I sense a new finality …

  I write these few lines from our first night’s camp out of Fort Laramie. It did not seem as though we made much progress today, as if the wind itself restrained us. In spite of the fact that I was warmly attired, I felt frozen to the bone by the end of the day—the prairie wind cuts like a razor through any clothing—and the warmth of our lodge this evening seems especially luxurious.

  Little Wolf killed an antelope today on the trail and tonight we dine on the fresh backstrap—the most tender and delicious in my opinion of all wild meats. I invited Helen and her husband, Mr. Hog, as well as our new monk Anthony to join us for dinner—which remark as I read it back sounds somewhat more elegant and formal than the occasion warrants.

  The guests scratched on the lodge covering at roughly the appointed hour, and were seated in the place of honor by the fire. After Little Wolf had blessed the meat by raising a piece to the four directions, and to the heavens and the earth, and then set it on a little platter off to the side of the fire for He’amaveho’e—the Great Medicine himself—to dine upon (although, of course, it is quickly consumed by one of the dogs, which act everyone pretends not to notice), we all fell to eating with hearty appetites. The savages take their meals in a rather serious spirit—perhaps as a matter of life and death—and there is very little conversation around the dining circle.

  But Helen and I tend to flout that particular convention (among others, to be sure!), and thus we chattered away, trying to make our new guest feel as much at home as possible in his strange new surroundings.

  “Do tell us, Brother Anthony,” Helen asked, “are you interested in Nature?”

  “It is my life,” answered the young Benedictine, with soft reverence in his tone. “I am blessed by all of God’s creations.”

  “Splendid!” said Helen. “That is to say, an appreciation of Nature is nearly a requisite to spiritual survival in the wilderness.

  “I don’t suppose, if I may be so bold to ask,” Helen asked, “that you’re a sporting man?”

  “A sporting man?” asked the monk.

  “No, of course you’re not,” Helen said, “it’s just that this time of year—although at the moment I must say it feels quite like the dead of winter—that is to say, it is the autumn that gets my blood to coursing with thoughts of the hunt—stalking the uplands, the thunderous flush of wings, the crack of guns!

  “Indeed, I should like to invite you all very soon over to Mr. Hog and my lodge for a game bird dinner. Do you like to cook, Brother Anthony?”

  “I am a baker,” Anthony answered softly. I was rather warming to our monk, whose manner is one of great simplicity and quiet attentiveness. I think that he shall do well among these people, that he may be useful in reminding us all that God’s work on earth is best accomplished in such a spirit of humility.

  “A baker! Splendid!” said Helen, her eyebrows popping up. “That is to say, to my mind there’s nothing more useful than a man who can bake. Yes, indeed, fresh-baked bread will be a wonderful addition to our menus,” she went on. “You know the natives have gone wild for the stuff—no pun intended. And we are now well supplied with flour and baking powder. Yes, I dare say we’ll do a good bit of interesting cooking this fall, wouldn’t you agree, May?”

  Thus we ate our antelope, chatting and listening to the wind howling outside. It remained snug inside our tent with the fire burning; the wind sliding around the tipi without entering—an advantage to its round design.

  When all had finished eating, Little Wolf extracted his pipe and smoking pouch, while Helen, never timid about being unconventional, packed her own short-stemmed pipe with tobacco and lit it from a small stick held to the fire. Then all settled comfortably against their backrests, as Horse Boy and the old crone slipped off to curl up on their sleeping robes.

  Even the usually gregarious Helen fell silent and contemplative. The only sounds inside the lodge came from the small cracklings of the fire, and the wind blowing outside. It was a moment of near perfect serenity, and I took the opportunity to study my fellow tentmates, Feather on Head holding her baby, and Quiet One, for once not cleaning or cooking or moving about, just sitting quietly next to her daughter Pretty Walker, both of them staring into the fire. Little Wolf, seated on the other side of them, puffed reverently on his pipe, which he would then hand over gently and with some ceremony to our contemplative guest Anthony, who in turn passed it along to Helen’s husband, Hog.

  As I looked about, I tried to imagine what the others were thinking of on this night. Surely Helen, like me, had felt the tug of civilization in our short time at the fort, and I think we both wondered now if we would be able to get all the way back when the time came.

  Perhaps our Indian families thought about the coming winter, or in Little Wolf’s case, about the uncertain future of the people with whose welfare he is forever charged. Perhaps they thought only of the next day’s journey, of the friends and family with whom they would soon be reunited.

  Surely our new monk prayed to his God to show him the way in this strange new world; I smiled at him when I caught his eye so that he might know that he was among friends.
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br />   From his bed, Horse Boy stared into the fire, his bright gunmetal-colored eyes reflecting the flickering flames. Perhaps he thought only of his horses on this cold autumn night, for soon he would bundle himself up in a blanket and leave the tent to sit up with them, guarding against thieves and wolves, before being relieved by another boy just before dawn. Such a hardy race of people these are! God love them …

  After a time Helen and Hog, who is himself a quiet and dignified fellow, and seems genuinely fond of his eccentric artist wife, rose to return to their own lodge. Although I offered to make a place for Anthony to sleep the night in our lodge, he declined, saying that he had a blanket with him and that he was quite accustomed to sleeping upon the bare ground. It was a part of his devotional labors, he said.

  I went outside with the guests when they left, to do my business before bed. Especially with winter coming on I must teach the savages the utility of a chamber pot—a clever white man invention that has some real application to tent living!

  Although I had wrapped myself iw a blanket, I felt the sting of wind on my cheeks as I exited the tipi. We were camped in the crook of a small creek surrounded only by high, treeless plains—uninteresting and lonely country, with nothing to break the wind, which comes whipping down off the ridges to assault our little grouping of tipis huddled here together, so small and defenseless. How tiny we are, exposed to the huge elements! No wonder these people are superstitious in the face of it. No wonder they try to curry favor with the gods of the four directions, with the gods of Earth and Heaven, with the spirits of wild animals and weather at whose mercy we live. And no wonder, by the same token, that the white man builds his forts and houses, his stores and churches—his flimsy fortifications against the vastness and emptiness of earth which he does not know to worship but tries instead to simply fill up.