One Thousand White Women (28 page)

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Authors: Jim Fergus

BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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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 experience 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.
 
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.
 
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.
Although it must certainly have been in violation of military regulations, one of the soldiers nearest Phemie couldn’t resist whispering. “What you
niggers
doin’ with these people?” he asked. “Are you prisoners?”
Phemie chuckled deeply. “We live with these people,
nigger,
that’s what we’re doing,” she said. “These are our people. My husband is Cheyenne and does not speak English.”
“Cheyenne!” said another soldier behind the first.
“Whooo-eeee,
woman! You is one crazy
nigger!”
As we entered the fort we could see that a small crowd of curious onlookers, civilians and soldiers, had gathered to observe our procession. Little Wolf rode at the head, followed by a half dozen of his warriors in a tight cluster, followed by the string of packhorses led by the women and some boys, several more warriors bringing up our rear. I, too, was afoot, leading Soldier and two other of our packhorses, walking abreast with Helen Flight, who led her own four horses in a string. I was dressed as usual in my antelope hide dress with leggings and moccasins. I usually wear my hair braided in the Indian fashion now—having found this to be more practical. My fellow wife Feather on Head is very adept at the process. For her part, Helen had her pipe clenched firmly between her teeth, wore her English shooting hat, buckskin trousers and jacket, and carried her muzzle loader in a sling over her shoulder. The Kelly twins sauntered boldly behind us, leading their own string of horses equally well laden with hides.
Only now, incredible to say, does it fully occur to me what a bizarre spectacle we must have presented to those assembled, and even now I flush with embarrassment in recounting the scene.
What other reception we might have expected, I do not know. My own foolish pride blinded me to the fact that far from looking the part of heroic explorers returning in triumph to civilization, we must have appeared in truth not merely comical, but utterly ludicrous.
A number of the soldiers’ wives were included in the group of curious onlookers and there arose among them an astonished murmuring which gave way to an excited chattering and pointing as our procession moved past.
“Look, look there, those are a pair of the white girls, the redheads,
” we heard them say.
“Look how filthy they are! Why they look like savages themselves!”
“Good Lord, that niger girl is half-naked!”
“And look at the outfit the Englishwoman wears, the painter, doesn’t she look like a buffalo hunter!”
“Isn’t that fair-haired girl with the braids the one that was so saucy with John Bourke last spring? From the look of her, she’s gone completely wild!”
“Wait until the Captain sees her now!”
These last remarks were like an arrow to my heart; and just as suddenly I knew that I did not wish to see Captain Bourke … prayed not to see him … How could we have been so proud, so foolish? My cheeks colored, I burned with shame, I cast my eyes to the ground.
“Tiny minds, May,” said Helen Flight with her usual good cheer, having obviously witnessed my distress. “They have no sense of manners or decorum whatever. And they are to be paid no attention whatever. Tiny, tiny little minds. Let them not concern us, my dear friend. Why you’re the smartest little picture of a lady here! And don’t you forget it. Keep your head up now, my dear! An
artiste
must never bow her head to the tiny minds. This is a lesson my dearest companion, Mrs. Ann Hall, taught me long ago. Never bow to the tiny minds!” And then Helen, God bless her, her eyebrows raised in delight actually took off her hat and waved cheerfully to the astonished crowd of onlookers.
Her words gave me strength, and I lifted my head again. Still, I continued to pray that the Captain was not here at Fort Laramie after all to witness my humiliation, to see me “gone wild.”
But then, for some reason, the mood seemed to change among the onlookers, as if their barbed curiosity spoken in tones loud enough for all of us to hear was not sufficient reproof for our transgression of all things wholesome and Christian. We had almost reached the trading post when someone hissed,
“Whores!”
And someone else:
“Dirty whores!”
“Why do you bring your filth here among decent God-fearing Christians?”
another said.
Perhaps because she has lived with such intolerance and prejudice for most of her life, the unflappable Phemie knew just how to react to it; she began to sing one of her “freedom songs,” as she calls them. Her rich, melodic voice rose above the ugly epithets, covered and finally silenced them:
“I‘ve been buked and I’ve been scorned,
I’ve been buked and I’ve been scorned, children
I’ve been buked and I’ve been scorned,
I’ve been talked about sure’s you born.”
 
And though I am certain now that they must have been punished later for it, several of the Negro soldiers who escorted us joined her in the next verse. They shared the community of racial memory and knew the song well. And they sang as if to protect all of us in their charge:
“There’ll be trouble all over this world,
There’ll be trouble all over this world, children,
There’ll be trouble all over this world,
There’ll be trouble all over this world.”
 
We were all of us heartened by the singing, given courage by the deep men’s voices in harmony with our own Phemie’s contralto which rose above the others like that of an angel—a black angel. And we all sang the third verse, which we had heard Phemie sing countless nights in her lodge:
“Ain’t gonna lay my religion down
Ain’t gonna lay my religion down, children
Ain’t gonna lay my religion down
Ain’t gonna lay my religion down”
 
Now we had reached the post store and our procession halted as the trader, with a half-breed interpreter in tow, came out to confer with Little Wolf. As we waited, and for the first time, I took the opportunity to look back at them, to gaze into the crowd at some of the individuals who had witnessed our arrival here in such low mean spirit. They had fallen silent now and regarded us with sullen looks of suspicion and … hatred.
Hardly had I begun to peruse their faces than my eyes met those of Captain John G. Bourke …

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