One Thousand White Women (35 page)

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Authors: Jim Fergus

BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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Winter
 
“When the end of the village was reached we were to charge at full gallop down through the lines of ‘tipis’, firing our revolvers at everything in sight. Just as we approached the village we came upon a ravine some ten feet in depth and of varying width, the average being not less than fifty. We got down this deliberately, and at the bottom and behind a stump saw a young boy about fifteen years old driving his ponies. He was not ten feet off. The youngster wrapped his blanket about him and stood like a statue of bronze, waiting for the fatal bullet. The American Indian knows how to die with as much stoicism as the East Indian. I leveled my pistol …”
(John G. Bourke, from his memoir,
On the Border with Crook
)
 
 
We arrived at winter camp in timely fashion, for two days ago the first snows came. Fortunately, we had nearly a fortnight of mild weather previous to this and the men made a number of successful hunts. Now the larder is full with all manner of game—fresh, dried, and smoked, and we seem to be exceptionally well supplied.
A frigid wind blew down from the north for an entire day before delivering the full brunt of the blizzard. And then the snows marched across the plains like an approaching army, blowing horizontally, at first lightly but soon so thickly that even going outside to do one’s business was to risk becoming disoriented and lost in the maelstrom. Fortunately the camp itself is situated so as to be partially protected from the worst of the wind and drifting snow. After another day, the wind began to subside, but the snow continued, falling straighter now, until the air was windless and the flakes, as big as silver dollars, fell steadily. For two days and two nights it snowed thus. And then the wind came again and blew the skies clear and as suddenly stopped. The mercury plunged and the stars in the sky glittered coldly off the fresh snow, which had drifted in huge sculpted mounds across the rolling prairie so that it appeared as if the earth itself had shifted, reformed itself with the storm.
Of course we were very much “housebound” during the storm and there was no visiting among us for those several days. All stayed as much as possible in their lodges; and though ours was warm and snug, the confinement became, finally, quite tedious. After the wind abated I did venture down to the river one morning for a bath, which cold as it is, I do not intend to give up—this activity, at least, allowing me to get out of the “house” however briefly.
 
The weather continues clear and cold, but at least we are able to get about now to visit. I should mention that an inventory of our numbers since our band’s return from Fort Laramie reveals that well over half of our women chose to move with their husbands and “families” to the agency for the winter—good timing on their parts as a move now with the snow would be virtually impossible. Gretchen and her doltish husband No Brains are still among us, as are Daisy Lovelace and Bloody Foot, of whom Daisy has grown even fonder. “Ah
nevah
would have believed
mahself,
” she says, “that I could fall in
luuuve
with a
niggah Injun
boy, but
ah’m
afraid that this is exactly what has happened. I don’t care if he is
daaaak
as
naaaght, Ah luuuve
the man, and I am proud to say that Ah
am
carryin’ his
chaald.”
As to Phemie, especially since our visit to Red Cloud, she and I have been in some conflict about the matter of enrolling at the agency, and have had several heated discussions on the question. For my part, I argue that such a move is inevitable and in the best interest of the People—while she equates the reservation system with the institution of slavery itself.
“My husband
Mo’ohtaeve ho’e
and I have discussed the matter,” Phemie says. “He does not remember our people’s slavery for he has lived most of his life as a free man. Thus we have decided that we will not surrender to the agency. My days of enslavement to white folks are behind me.”
“Phemie, there is no slavery on the reservation,” I argue. “The People will own the land and will earn their livings as free men and women.”
To which Phemie answers in her melodious and imperious manner. “I see,” she says. “Then the Cheyennes will enjoy complete equality with the whites, is this what you are telling me, May?”
“That’s right, Phemie,” I answer, but I hesitate just long enough that she senses my lack of conviction on the matter.
“And if the People are equal to the white tribe, why then are they being restricted to reservations?” Phemie asks.
“They are being asked to live voluntarily and temporarily on reservations as a first step toward assimilating them into our own society,” I answer, and already I know that I am walking right into the trap she lays for me.
Phemie laughs her deep, rich chuckle. “I see,” she said. “And if they do not ‘volunteer’ to live on the reservation? Then am I to understand that they may remain on this land which belongs to them and upon which they have been living for many hundreds of years and where some of them, myself and my husband included, are quite content to remain?”
“No, Phemie,” I answer, abashed, assuming the role now, involuntarily, of Captain Bourke, “they cannot live here any longer. You cannot. If you try to stay here past the February deadline, you will be breaking the law and you will be punished for it.”
“The law made by the whites,” Phemie says. “The whites being, of course, the superior race, who make these laws in order to keep the inferior in their place. That, May, is, by definition, slavery.”
“Dammit Euphemia!” I answer in frustration. “It’s not the same thing at all.”
“No?” she asks. “Explain to me then the difference.”
And, of course, I cannot.
“My people were once forcibly removed from their homeland,” Phemie continues. “My mother was taken from her family when she was just a child. All my life I have dreamed of going back for her. Now, living among these people, I have in a sense done so. This is as close as I will ever get to my mother’s homeland, to my family. And I have promised myself, May, that one way or another I will live from now on as a free woman, and I will die, if necessary, to protect that freedom. I could never tell these people that they should surrender and go to live on reservations or at agencies, because to do so is to take from them their freedom, to make of them slaves to a higher order. That, my friend, is my position on the matter and nothing you can say to me will change my mind.”
“But Phemie,” I plead, “why then did you sign up for this program? You are an educated woman; you must have understood that the process of assimilation that we are facilitating is, inevitably, a process whereby the smaller native population is absorbed into the greater invading one. It is the way of history, has always been.”
“Ah, yes, May,” Phemie chuckles, seemingly amused at my distress, “
your
version of history, the white man’s version. But not mine, certainly, not the history of these, our adopted people. My history, my mother’s history, is one of being torn from homeland and family and enslaved in a foreign land. Theirs is one of being pushed from their own land and slaughtered when they refuse to give it up. Absorbed? Assimilated? Hardly. Our common history is one of dispossession, murder, and slavery.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Phemie,” I say. “Which is precisely our purpose here. To see that history does not repeat itself, to prove that there is another way, a peaceful solution in which both races learn from the other, learn to live in harmony together. Our children will be the final proof of this commitment, and the true hope for the future. Let us say, for example, that my son were to grow up to marry your daughter. Think of it, Phemie! Their offspring would be part white, part black, part Indian. In this way we are pioneers, you and I, in a great and noble experiment!”
“Oh May,” Phemie says with real sadness in her voice. “The plantations were full of mulattos—people of mixed blood and of all shades of color. I myself am one. I am half-white. My father was the master. Did this make me free? Did this make me accepted by the ‘superior’ culture? No, I was still a slave. In many cases our lives were more difficult for being of mixed blood, for we were considered neither black nor white, and resented by both. Your Captain was right. You’ve seen the half-breeds around the forts. Do they appear assimilated to you?”
“They come and go among the two races,” I said, without conviction. “But they were all born to women of the exploited culture, fathered by the exploiters. We women hold the key, Phemie, we mothers. We couple with the Cheyennes of our own free will; we bear their children as gifts to both races.”
“For the sake of your children I hope you’re right,” Phemie said. “You asked me a moment ago why I signed up for this program. As I told you months ago on our train ride here, I signed up to live as a free woman, to serve no man, to be inferior to no one. I shall never give up my freedom again, and I shall choose to have children only when I know that they may live as free men and women. If I have to fight first for their freedom, so be it. And to be born on a reservation is not freedom.”
And thus Phemie and I go round and round … I, advocating peaceful surrender in the interest of future harmony, an idealistic vision of the future perhaps … and one, it is true, without precedent in human history. And Phemie advocating resistance, intransigence, militancy—in the process inflaming her husband and her warrior society against the idea of going into the agency, against the invading white man, against the soldiers.
But we have time yet—a long winter to grapple with these questions—to reach some consensus. As always sentiment among those remaining in the camp runs decidedly mixed on the matter of going in. Some of us are making small inroads persuading our own families that this is the only reasonable course of action. Due to the great influence that women hold in the Cheyenne family, I have been concentrating my own efforts on my fellow tentmates. I describe to them the many marvelous inventions of the whites—with some of which they are already familiar—the many comforts they will own in civilization, the conveniences and advantages which are so dear to a woman’s heart … . For win the women’s hearts and those of the People will soon follow.
 
Today Gretchen and I have broken yet another barrier between the sexes. If only temporarily …
We have all long envied the custom that the men observe of the “sweat lodge.” This is a special tipi which serves the same function as a steam house in our own culture, except that this one seems also to hold special religious connotations—and women are strictly
verboten,
as Gretchen puts it. A large fire is built in the center of the sweat lodge, upon which rocks are laid until they are heated nearly red-hot and then water poured over the rocks to create steam—this whole process attended to by a medicine man who also frequently speaks some ceremonial mumbo jumbo and passes a pipe for the men to puff contentedly upon. The participants themselves sit in a circle around the outside of the fire, until they are perspiring freely and when they can bear the heat no longer run outside and roll around in the snow or leap into a hole chopped into the now frozen river. They then return to the sweat lodge to begin the process anew. This strikes me as both a healthful and a hygienic recreation—particularly in the wintertime.
The other day I was visiting with Gretchen in her lodge and she happened to mention—somewhat longingly I thought—that her husband, No Brains, was presently performing a sweat-lodge ceremony. She told me that in the old country her people observed exactly this same practice through the long, dark, northern winters—without the religious overtones, of course, and with no prohibitions upon the sex of the participants. Gretchen’s own family had brought the custom with them to America and built a sweat house on their farm in Illinois—which they enjoyed all year.
“Oh,
May, der is nutting bedder dan a goot
steam bath, I tell you
dat
,” Gretchen said, shaking her head mournfully.
“And why should we not be able to take steam baths ourselves?” I asked.
“Oh, no May,” she said,
“de
men not allow women in
de
sweat lodge here. My
husband
he tells me
dat.
”
“Why not?”
“Because, it is only for
de
men,” Gretchen said. “It is just
de
way
de
People says so.
“Gretchen, what good reason is that?” I said. “Let’s you and I march right over there now and have a sweat bath ourselves!”
“Oh, no I don’t
tink
so, May,” Gretchen said, “I don’t
tink dat be sech
a
goot
idea …”
“Of course it is, it’s a wonderful idea,” I insisted. “And think how invigorating it will be! It is time we taught these people that any activity that is suitable for the men should also be enjoyed by the women. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!”
“Vell,
OK, May,
vhat de
hell,” said Gretchen.
“Vatch
you going to wear in
de
sweat house, May?”
“I’m going to wear a towel, dear,” I answered. “What else would one wear in a sweat lodge?”
“Yah,
May, me too,” said Gretchen, nodding.
“Dat’s
a
goot
idea.”
Many of us had brought cotton towels with us when we first came here, a luxury that the Indians have also discovered, and which item is now available at all the trading posts. Thus I fetched my towel from my lodge and went back to meet Gretchen so that we might make our assault on the male bastion of the sweat lodge together.
Truly, living in such close proximity, a sense of modesty regarding our physical bodies is hardly at issue among most of us any longer—and no one pays the slightest attention whether one is clothed from head to toe or half-naked. Going about with one’s breasts free seems quite natural. And so Gretchen and I stripped off our dresses, giggling like schoolgirls plotting a prank, wrapped our towels around our enormous pregnant waists, and dashed through the snow to the sweat lodge. We scratched on the covering to the opening. “Hurry up, it’s freezing out here!” I cried in my best Cheyenne. I believe now that the medicine man was so shocked to hear a woman’s voice demanding entrance, that he opened the flap just a crack out of pure curiosity to see who might have the audacity to challenge this “men only” institution. And when he did so, we did not hesitate for a moment but burst through the opening into the wonderful humid warmth of the sweat lodge, laughing and quite pleased with ourselves. At our sudden appearance, there arose from the men seated around the fire a great grunting of alarm. The medicine man himself, old White Bull, whom I find to be a tiresome and humorless old bag of wind, was not in the least bit amused by our uninvited entrance, and began to speak sternly to us, waving at us a rattle that the Cheyennes use to ward off evil spirits. “You women go away,” he said. “Leave here immediately. This is a very bad thing!”
“Not bad at all,” I answered. “It’s perfectly delightful. And we’re staying until we have ourselves a good sweat!” With which Gretchen and I sat ourselves down right in front of the fire.
Several of the men, the most stringent traditionalists, stood and left the sweat lodge, grumbling and grunting indignantly as they did so. Gretchen’s husband spoke sternly to her. “What are you doing here, wife? You shame me by coming here in this manner. This is no place for women. Go home!”
“You
gest be quite
you
bick
dope! she answered (we have all remarked on the fact that Gretchen even speaks Cheyenne with a Swiss accent!), shaking her finger at her husband, her enormous naked breasts flushed pink as scalded suckling pigs in the steamy heat.”A man don’t talk to his wife like
dat,
mister! You don’t like
dat
I come here
dat gest
too damn bad,
den
you can
gest
go home yourself!” The man was instantly cowed by his wife, and fell silent, much to the evident delight of a number of the other sweat bathers.
“Hemomoonamo!”
someone hissed. (“Henpecked husband!”)
“Hou,
” said another, nodding.
“Hemomoonamo!”
And they all nickered softly in amusement.
This bit of humor helped to settle the men, and the sweat-lodge ceremony continued much as if we were not there. Indeed, I think it served the men’s purpose simply to pretend that we were not there. After Gretchen and I had both broken into heavy perspiration, and the heat inside the lodge had become nearly unbearable, we crawled to the opening where old White Bull let us out and then we ran buck naked to the river, squealing like crazed children, Gretchen running with her heavy lumbering gait, her massive breasts swinging like well-loaded parfleches.
A thin skin of new ice had already formed on the opening of the water hole and through this we plunged, gasping and trying to catch our breaths, exiting again as quickly as we could and running back lickety-split to the sweat lodge. An ill-advised activity perhaps, for pregnant women, but Indian babies must be hardy to the elements.
But this time, of course, stodgy old White Bull did not answer our entreaties at the entrance, would not untie the lodge flap. “We are freezing out here!” I cried. “You, old man, let us in there right now!” But he did not answer and finally, lest we really did freeze, we ran back to Gretchen’s lodge, where we dried ourselves by her fire.
“You know what we shall do, Gretchen?” I suggested. “We shall build our own sweat lodge for the women. Yes, it promises to be a long winter, and we have plenty of hides and nothing but time, so we shall all band together to sew our own sweat lodge, and when we are finished, there will be no men allowed! It will be strictly a girls’ club.”
“Goot
idea, May!” Gretchen concurred.
“Dat’s
a damn
goot
idea. No men
allowt!
Girls only!”
And so this is how we shall pass the winter. Making what diversions for ourselves that we can, pranks and make-work projects like our sweat lodge, anything to keep ourselves active. For the days, shorter each in their stingy measure of daylight, can seem interminable if one spends them sitting in the dim lodge. We have our chores, of course, going for the living water in the early morning, and gathering firewood—neither of which activity I object to as at least they get me out of the damn tent. And there is always cooking to be done and food preparation and cleaning and sewing and all the other, sometimes dreary projects of wifedom. But these, too, also serve to prevent idleness.
We remaining white women have become, if anything, even closer in our sisterhood. Without the constant activities of traveling—dismantling and reassembling the lodge, packing and unpacking—we have more time to meet regularly in one or another of our lodges, where we consult each other on the progress or lack thereof that we each make in our efforts to convince our families to go into the agency before February.
In our daily meetings we also compare our respective pregnancies, plan our upcoming births, and offer each other what moral support we can. We gossip and argue, laugh and weep, and sometimes we just sit quietly together around the fire, holding hands, staring into the flames and embers, and wondering at the mystery of our lives, wondering what is to come … happy that we have one another, for the winter promises to be long and lonely …
We are all much comforted by the presence of Brother Anthony of the Prairie and frequently meet with him in his own spare lodge, which he has erected on the edge of the village. It is a very simple, immaculately clean affair, as befits a monk, and often we sit by his fire and recite the daily liturgy with him.
“In this place I shall build my hermitage in the spring,” says Anthony in his soft soothing voice. “In these hills above the river I shall be blessed to have everything I require, for a man needs little to commune with God, but a humble shelter and a pure heart. Later with my hands I shall begin the work of building my abbey. I shall be blessed to have other men of humble minds and simple hearts follow me here, and here we shall pray and study and share the word of God with all who come to us.”
It’s a lovely image and often we all sit together in contemplative silence and imagine it. I can almost see Brother Anthony’s abbey in the hills, can imagine us all worshiping quietly there, can imagine our children and our children’s children after us coming to this place … it is a fine comforting thought.
Beside reading, reciting the liturgies and instructing us in his Bible, Anthony is teaching us and the native women to bake bread—a fine occupation in the winter and one that fills our tents with wonderful aromas.
The weather continues mostly clear and crisp, with thankfully little wind, and when the sun is up and shining off the pure white prairie, all is very beautiful.

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