One Thousand White Women (14 page)

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Authors: Jim Fergus

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As you might well imagine, I and most of the other ladies have balked at giving up our own clothing in favor of the savage attire. The clothes and meager personal possessions which we have brought with us into this wilderness represent our last connection to the civilized world, so we are naturally reluctant to part with them—for fear that once we don savage garb, we become perforce savages—not just the brides of savages, but savages ourselves. This is, you understand, an important distinction … Some in our group are so intent on keeping up their attire and toilet, no matter how inappropriate these may be, that they can sometimes be seen promenading through the camp—little gaggles of our ladies strolling and chatting and twirling their parasols as if on a garden tour, trying desperately to appear oblivious to our present circumstances. I think that they are quite mad—indeed, some of them really are mad—but while I personally have decided to give up such attempts to forge civilization out of wilderness, I must admit that I have not quite yet resigned myself to dressing exclusively in animal skins.
Fortunately, the Cheyennes are traders, as well as hunters, and some of their attire is not so terribly different from our own. They have available, for instance, cloth and blankets and buttons, and other articles from our world. Indeed, some of the men dress quite ludicrously in bits and pieces of white man’s clothing, wearing altered U.S. Army uniforms, and hats—all misshapen and with the tops cut out and eagle feathers protruding from them. This gives the Indians who affect this attire the appearance of children playing dress up; they look more like carnival clowns than soldiers—their outfits bizarre hybrids of the two cultures …
I’m pleased to report that my own intended dresses very modestly in traditional Indian garb. The only white man article which he affects is a large silver peace medal around his neck, a gift from President Grant himself.
But I seem to be rambling again … where was I? Ah, yes, with the exception of Miss White and some of her more strident followers we are to be married in traditional Cheyenne wedding gowns. We are to be dressed prior to the feast by our Cheyenne “mothers” and “sisters,” literally stripped of our civilized clothing and dressed as savages—this is difficult to describe to you Hortense and, I’m certain even more difficult for you to understand, but the prospect is somehow both … terrifying and exhilarating.
Without intending to keep you in undue suspense, I shall continue this correspondence after I am officially a bride … right now there is much to do.
 
Good God, Hortense, so much to tell you, I am only now, two days later awakening from the experience … I am still not myself, fear that I shall never again be the same. I have been drugged, my senses assaulted, my very being stripped to its primitive core … its savage heart … where to begin … ?
The music … still beats in my mind, throbs through my body … dancers whirling in the firelight … coyotes on the hilltops and ridges, taking up the song beneath the moon …
 
Forgive me, dear sister, but I fell back into a deep slumber after my last incoherent ramblings … I must have slept the full day and night round and I woke feeling better, stronger, a child grows inside of me … is it possible? Or have I only dreamed this, too …
Yes, the scene of our wedding night is even more vividly etched now in my mind … let me describe it to you:
The moon was full in the sky; it rose early before the sun had set and did not set again until after the sun rose; the moon spent the entire night crossing the sky, illuminating the dancers in an unearthly glow, casting their shadows across the plains as if the earth itself danced … all who danced lit by moonlight.
We spent nearly the full day of the wedding in our lodges being dressed by the women, ornaments and totems hung from our clothing and from our hair, our faces painted with bizarre designs so that we would hardly recognize one another later under the pure white moon … perhaps this was just as well, perhaps our painted faces were meant as disguises, allowing each of us, savage and civilized alike, to act out these pagan rites in anonymity. It is true that several days later—or so I feel it to be for I have lost all track of time—we “civilized” women are hardly able to look one another in the eye for the madness that overcame us.
The men had recently returned from a successful buffalo hunt—stupidly, it had never occurred to me that the Cheyennes had been waiting for that good fortune to befall them before scheduling the wedding feast, because of course, without the bounty of the hunt, it would be a poor feast, indeed. Clearly, I have as much to learn about the ways of subsistence living as they do about those of civilization.
As it was, individual feasts were held in virtually every lodge in the camp, a kind of large, communal, movable feast. There was a vast amount of food, much of it surprisingly palatable. The first wife, Quiet One, is renowned in the camp for her talents as a cook and outdid herself on this occasion. She roasted the tender ribs and liver of the buffalo over coals, and boiled the tongue, and from another pot served a stew of meat and the wild turnips referred to by their French name,
pommes blanches.
There were other roots and various spring greens with which I am not familiar by name, but all quite interesting to the taste. We “brides” were not allowed to lift a finger—to the point that even our food was cut up for us in small morsels and hand-fed to us by our Indian attendants, as if they were trying to conserve our strength … now I understand why.
There was one particular dish that I must tell you about, a dish that most of our women, myself included, were unable to tolerate. Too horrible! Too despicable! Boiled dog! Yes, yes, choked pup! It is considered a great delicacy, saved for just such a special occasion as our wedding. My friend Feather on Head who served the older one as a kind of
sous chef,
performed the gruesome task of wringing the little puppy’s neck just prior to cooking —which she did with her bare hands as casually as if she was wringing out a dishcloth. My God! When I tried to intervene, to rescue the poor little thing from her death grip, she merely laughed and pulled away and continued her stranglehold until the flailing puppy was limp and lifeless. It was then scalded in boiling water, scraped of hair, gutted, and roasted over the fire, and all present made such a fuss about its culinary qualities with much satisfied oohing and ahhing and general lip-smacking. I could not bring myself to taste the dog meat—even its odor while cooking sickened me.
Our tipi was crowded with twelve people exactly, the majority of them clearly chosen because they were poor. You would know little about this, Hortense, because you have led such a sheltered and privileged life, but there is a universality to poverty that transcends culture; just as in our own society, there are among the savages both rich and poor—those who are successful hunters and providers who live in well-appointed lodges with many hides and robes and have a good string of horses, and those who have little and depend on the largesse of their neighbors. And never have I seen a more generous, selfless people than these. I believe that those unfortunates who came to our lodge that night—there, you see, already I begin to take a proprietary interest in my living quarters!—were the families of men who had been killed in battle, or possibly the families of some of those poor wretches whom we had encountered at the forts—the drunks and beggars who had deserted their wives and children … one can’t help but wonder what we are doing to these people that their lives and livelihoods unravel so with our presence—“spoiled” by contact with us, as the Captain put it …
It seems to be a primary duty of my husband … how strange to say … my husband Little Wolf … as head Chief to look after the poor of his people. Several women brought children of various ages with them to the feast; they sat quietly in the back of the lodge, silently accepting the food their mothers passed them.
After all had eaten, the younger children, sated, fell asleep on the robes, the men passed a pipe and told stories, which of course, I could not understand, but to which the older children listened raptly. Possibly it was the effect of the food, or the warmth inside the lodge, or simply the soft murmuring of the men’s voices—I confess that I am beginning to find the language less objectionable; it possesses a certain rhythm and cadence that though primitive is no longer so displeasing to the ear—I began to fall into a kind of trance, a state that was like sleep, but I was not asleep, just floating as if in a dream, as if drugged.
Then by some unspoken signal, everyone began to leave the lodges to assemble in the communal circle around which the tents are strategically placed … this is, I suppose something like our own town square, but of course round rather than square. All is round in this strange new world … The musicians (yes, well, again I must use the term loosely for they would hardly be confused for the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra!), and the singers and dancers also began to assemble. Our own women gathered in small clusters to inspect each other’s “wedding gowns,” to marvel at each other’s painted faces and outlandish costumes. My friend Martha was made up to look like a badger—an uncanny resemblance—with a black mask and white stripe down her forehead and nose. I have no idea for what purpose, but the savages have some meaning for everything. For my part half my face was painted black with white stars forming constellations on my cheeks and the full moon on my forehead, the other side of my face was painted all white with a blue river meandering its length. “You are the day and night,” Martha said strangely, marveling, she too appearing to be in some kind of narcotic stupor. “You are the heavens and the earth!”
“Aye, and we’re a pair of foxes we are, Meggie!” said the Kelly sister Susan appreciatively. Surely the red-haired Irish twins were no less identical got up with real fox heads attached to their hair and fox tails pinned to their rears. An uncanny likeness, and knowing something of the girls’ wily natures, a stroke of pure genius on the part of the heathens.
But perhaps most striking of our group was the Negro Phemie, her entire face and body painted white with brilliant red stripes running up her arms, around her neck and eyes, her full Negro lips painted crimson, even her hair painted blood red—my God, she was magnificent to behold … a savage dream goddess.
Now appeared the holy man they call Dog Woman and his apprentice, named Bridge Girl—also a
he’emnane’e,
as these half-men/half-women are called. Two stranger creatures I have never before laid eyes upon! The young apprentice, Bridge Girl, speaks in the soft, high voice of a female, but is clearly a young boy. The older man, too, is effeminate in both voice and gesture. Yes, well we’ve seen similar people on the streets of Chicago—Nancy Boys, Father refers to them.
Now these two set about organizing the dancers, which they did with great solemnity and skill. The men/women are said to possess special abilities at matchmaking and are very popular with the young people, their advice in matters of the heart much sought after. For they know everything of both sexes.
Now at last the music began—an entire savage orchestra! Flute players, drum beaters, gourd shakers … a primitive symphony, to be sure, that makes for a crude harmony … but one with an undeniably rhythmic power. Then the singers took up the song, the eeriest song I’ve ever heard, the higher notes of the women floating lightly over the deeper tones of the men, a throbbing steady repetitive beat like a riffle running into a pool … it sent chills up my spine and in concert with the otherworldly music actually caused a number of our women to swoon dead away, they had to be revived by the fire—a huge bonfire that had been built in the center of the circle, flames and sparks leaping into the night sky, licking the heavens … I assure you, dear sister, not even the lunatic asylum in full riot could prepare one for this bizarre spectacle …
Dog Woman announced the different dances, sometimes gently scolding the young people if they did not perform the steps exactly right. Truly, she reminded me of old Miss Williams at our dancing school in Chicago—you remember her don’t you, Hortense? … you see, still I clutch these memories to draw me back, to keep me from going completely mad in the face of this assault on our sensibilities …
The children sat in the back behind the adults on the outside of the circle, watching raptly, beating time with their hands and feet, their faces shining in the moonlight, the flames from the fire sparking in their slate-colored eyes, flickering golden in their oiled black hair.
Now the huge Reverend Hare resplendent in his white clerical gown made his grand entrance. He held his Bible aloft for all to see. Although the savages cannot read, they know it to be a sacred text—being a people to whom totemic objects are of utmost importance—and many crowded around him trying to touch it. The Reverend called out and the grooms began to appear out of the shadows of the fire, seemed to issue from the flames themselves like phantoms. I am to this day not absolutely certain that we had not been unwittingly drugged during the feast, for we all remarked later on the dreamlike state we felt.
If we brides considered ourselves to be elaborately made up for the occasion, the grooms were even more fantastically painted and adorned. It was difficult even to identify some of them and many of our women had simply to take as an article of faith the fact that the man standing beside them was really their intended. I did recognize my Chief Little Wolf, who wore a headdress with buffalo horns on either side, black raven feathers surrounding his head, ringed by eagle feathers, spilling like a tail down his back. He wore spotless new beaded moccasins, a fine deerskin shirt artfully trimmed with what, I now realize, can only have been human hair. Over his shoulders he wore a buffalo robe that had been painted red and was adorned with all manner of intricate designs. In one hand he carried a red rattle, which he shook softly in time to the music, and in the other a lance trimmed with soft fur. He was a picture of savage splendor, and in my altered state of mind, I felt oddly proud to be standing beside him. Well, after all, isn’t this how a girl is supposed to feel on her wedding day?
Over the sound of the music and with the dancers still performing in the background, Reverend Hare began reciting the Christian wedding vows. Whatever else may be said of the man he has a commanding and sonorous speaking voice, which managed to rise above the music:
“Dearly beloved we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company to join together these men and these women in holy matrimony …”
 
And each verse, the Reverend repeated in Cheyenne.
“Into this holy estate these couples present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace …”
 
Did Captain John G. Bourke swoop into the camp at this moment atop his big white horse and snatch me away from these proceedings, carry me off to live in a little house set in a grove of cottonwoods on the edge of a meadow, by the banks of a creek, at which safe harbor I would be reunited with my own sweet babies and bear others by my dashing Captain and there live out my life as a good Christian wife and devoted mother? No, alas, he did not … Did I pray fervently that at this very moment in the ceremony of matrimony, my Captain would rescue me thusly? … Yes … I did, I confess that I did … God help me.
“Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”
 
When the Reverend uttered his translation of this last verse, a collective
“houing”
arose from the grooms, a strange noise like an unearthly wind blowing through the assemblage.
“Wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded Husband, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, no long as ye both shall live?”

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