Read One Thousand White Women Online
Authors: Jim Fergus
One Thousand White Women (23 page)
And after that we fell silent, as the exhaustion of the night’s efforts overcame us. I curled up on my own sleeping place next to Gertie’s. I felt like a little girl having a friend spend the night and was especially grateful this morning to have her here with me. She is a rough woman, it is true, and could surely use a bath, but she has a big heart, and what more can be said of a person than that?
The sun had risen, and the camp was going about its business, but it was muffled quiet and safe inside the tipi, the gentle morning sunlight filtering softly through the buffalo skins; the fire was warm and took the early-morning chill off the air, the tent pungent with the mingled scents of human beings and smoke and coffee and meat cooking, the smell of animal hides and earth. All these no longer seemed to me to make for an offensive odor, but rather an oddly comforting one—the smells of home.
Within moments Gertie had started to snore, loud and rhythmic, a snore befitting a muleskinner named Jimmy, but it did not disturb me … and soon I drifted off to sleep myself.
Over a week has passed since our night of terror. I have rested my pen, and with the others thrown myself back into the business of living day to day, trying in the process to repair the dreadful damage done, to refill the empty well of our spirits.
Gertie left this morning, alone, for Camp Robinson. She carried only a letter from me to my children, and a private message to Captain Bourke. In the letter I thanked the Captain for his concern for my welfare but declined his offer to return with Gertie. I wished him well in his new married life. I told him that I was most satisfied in my own …
As to the news that she had brought from him, I have not mentioned a word of it to any of the others. Perhaps I err in this decision and should let all decide for themselves what course to follow, but I see no reason to alarm the women about events that are quite beyond their control. To panic them now when all are at their most fragile could only lead to more tragedy and despair. We may have entered into this enterprise as volunteers, but recent events suggest that we are, in reality, captives.
As I had feared, a group of our women, led by Narcissa White—who after the night of drunken debauch and her own violation by her husband, apparently decided to give up her mission here—tried to leave camp the very next day. Just as Gertie predicted, the women’s husbands had no difficulty tracking them and returning them to their lodges within a few hours. They wouldn’t have gotten far anyway and would only have perished in the prairie or been captured by some other tribe. “If they’d a got caught by the Crows or the Blackfeet,” Gertie said, “they’d a found out how cushy life is here with the Cheyennes.”
My own husband Little Wolf did not return to our lodge for three days and three nights, nor was he anywhere seen about the camp. He stayed out during that time, alone in the prairie, without shelter, food, or water, sleeping on the ground, doing, I believe, penance for his sins. Perhaps he sought divine guidance from his God.
When he came back in at last he was trailed by a sickly coyote; everyone in camp saw it and everyone remarked upon it—although only we white women seemed to consider this to be a particularly bizarre sight. We are beginning to realize that the savages’ world has even a different corporeality than ours, and one quite inaccessible to us.
The coyote was gaunt and losing its hair in patches, and skulked around our lodge for three more days, always keeping a little away. I was frightened of the beast—when I shooed him he skittered sideways like a crab and made a strange hissing sound. Each time that Little Wolf departed the lodge, the coyote followed him, trailed along always the same distance behind. For their own reasons, the camp dogs did not bother the coyote—perhaps they recognized its illness—and they seemed intentionally to keep away from it.
Little Wolf himself never spoke of the coyote, never so much as acknowledged its presence; he remained silent and brooding as if involved in some terrible struggle of his own. He refused even to make the sign talk with me and when I tried to speak to him in English as I had done on our honeymoon outing together, instead of responding in his own language as was our way, he ignored me altogether. There was much speculation in camp about his behavior.
The medicine man, White Bull, told Helen Flight that the coyote was the Chief’s medicine animal, that its sickness represented his own sickness and the sickness of the People from drinking the whiskey, and that if the coyote died in the camp, this would be a very bad thing for everyone. But after three days the coyote disappeared—one morning it was simply gone and did not return—and gradually Little Wolf came back to himself.
Other repercussions of that night: a man named Runs From Crow, who was married to our own little French girl Marie Blanche, was killed by a fellow named Whistling Elk—shot dead through the heart. Poor Marie has had a very hard time of it, what with her parents both murdered in Chicago, and now her husband. She is quite beside herself, for she rather liked the fellow. Now Runs From Crow’s younger brother, One Bear, has offered to marry her, which is the Cheyenne custom—and rather a civilized one in my opinion. It is my limited experience that French women are, by nature, a practical race, and Marie Blanche, while still grieving for her first husband, is considering the proposal. She will certainly need someone to care for her and her child.
Sadly, the murderer, Whistling Elk, is married to Ada Ware—as if that poor dark thing didn’t already have sufficient cause for Melancholia in her life. The affair is a shocking event for the Cheyennes, as killing another member of the tribe is the greatest crime of which a man is capable in their society, and has occurred only rarely in all their history. The murderer, with any members of his family who choose to accompany him, is exiled and must live alone beyond the perimeters of the village. He will be forever an outcast, never fully accepted back into the tribe. People cease to address him, or to so much as acknowledge his presence, and he is not allowed to participate in any tribal activities. He becomes, in effect, an invisible man.
Ada’s exiled husband has even been stripped of his name and renamed, Stinking Flesh, for the Cheyennes believe that one who kills a tribal member begins to rot from the inside out. By tribal law, Ada is free to leave the man with no formal divorce decree being required, but for the moment at least has chosen to join him in his banishment. As she is guilty of no crime herself, she is free to come and go among us. However, as the wife of the murderer she is considered to be tainted by her contact with him, and is not allowed to touch anyone or anyone’s possessions. Pots or dishes from which she eats at the lodges of others must be broken or discarded for fear that they have been contaminated. I need hardly add that this superstition does not make Ada a popular visitor or dinner guest in anyone’s lodge.
“When the doctors at the hospital questioned me about my illness,” the poor hapless thing said at our meeting the other day, “I told them that I found it unsupportable being married to an adulterer—especially through the long gray Chicago winter. It was that time of year in particular that I felt the full weight of the black dog crouched on my chest, as if suffocating me. And so that winter the doctors consigned me to a dark room in an insane asylum, where the black dog was my sole company. My husband took the opportunity of my illness and prolonged absence—which was really in payment for his sins—to divorce me and marry his lover. Still the doctors questioned me incessantly: Why was I so sad? Why did I dress always in black? To what did I attribute my Melancholia?
“Now I find myself married to a murderer by the name of Stinking Flesh—who by all accounts is rotting from the inside out … and once again I have been exiled for his crime. Now does any among you wonder why I dress in black? Is there no end to a woman’s suffering on this earth?” It was the most Ada had ever spoken to us or revealed of herself.
“
Aye,
but look on the bright side then, Ada,” said Meggie Kelly. “
Ya
may be married to a
moordoorer
but now that he’s an outcast, at least you don’t have to worry about the beggar committin’
adooltory
on
ya,
for no one else’ll
tooch
him!”
Aye,
but look on the bright side then, Ada,” said Meggie Kelly. “
Ya
may be married to a
moordoorer
but now that he’s an outcast, at least you don’t have to worry about the beggar committin’
adooltory
on
ya,
for no one else’ll
tooch
him!”
We all laughed; even Ada smiled, for she is not without a sense of humor, albeit a frequently dark one.
“Meggie’s right,” said her sister, Susie, “and furthermore, dear, I get a
tooch
of the Melancholia
meself
in Chicago in the wintertime, but
ya
’
ave
to admit that
thar’s
a great deal more
soonshine
in the prairie in the summertime than ever
thar
was in Chicago in winter. It’ll be too damn hot for that old black dog in this country, I’ll wager. You won’t be seein’
mooch
of him out here.”
tooch
of the Melancholia
meself
in Chicago in the wintertime, but
ya
’
ave
to admit that
thar’s
a great deal more
soonshine
in the prairie in the summertime than ever
thar
was in Chicago in winter. It’ll be too damn hot for that old black dog in this country, I’ll wager. You won’t be seein’
mooch
of him out here.”
And in such ways we try to bolster each other’s spirits.
This next sad fact I am most loath to report: a number of other girls, both native as well as several of our women, were ravaged that night by drunken savages—in some cases, as in that of Narcissa White, the women’s own husbands forced themselves upon them. Daisy Lovelace has grown silent and withdrawn since her terrible ordeal, and we are all filled with concern for her. Her husband, at least, is a kindly and patient man and seems to be caring well for her.
Perhaps most unfortunate, the wretch responsible for the entire night of terror, Jules Seminole, remains still among us, unpunished and by all appearances unrepentant. But for a still swollen ear he seems to have recovered from Crooked Nose’s blow, and has already several times come by our lodge to leer at me and make his unspeakably degenerate talk … I try to disguise my fear of him, but I am terrified of the man, and make every effort not to go abroad unaccompanied.
Little Wolf, too, is aware of Seminole’s skulking and unwholesome interest in me, but has thus far managed to keep vigilant control over his temper when the man comes around. As Sweet Medicine Chief, my husband is powerless to do anything other than speak out against Seminole in council for bringing the whiskey among the People. Truly, but for his own fall from grace as a result, Little Wolf’s observance of his duties is monk-like … nearly Christ-like in its selflessness.
This morning Helen Flight came to visit, to invite me to a dance tonight in which she is guest of honor. The Kit Fox warriors returned yesterday from their raid against the Crows. Having wisely not imbibed in the drinking on that Hellish night, they had held their own private war dance across the river, and off they went the next morning as planned. All of them were by then painted with Helen’s fantastic bird designs—the likes of which the savages, whose own painting skills are limited to the most simple stick figures, had never before seen.
The raid was a great success, and yesterday the Kit Fox warriors came whooping into camp with the usual fanfare, driving an enormous herd of Crow ponies. Not only had the men captured many enemy horses, but also they had not lost a man.
“I’m afraid,
Mesoke,
” Helen told me this morning, “that the Fox chaps are giving me full credit for the success of the venture, after all. ‘Medicine Bird Woman’—they call me now
‘Ve’kesohma’heonevestsee’
—a frightful mouthful isn’t it? so please do continue to call me by my short name, Bird, won’t you?”
Mesoke,
” Helen told me this morning, “that the Fox chaps are giving me full credit for the success of the venture, after all. ‘Medicine Bird Woman’—they call me now
‘Ve’kesohma’heonevestsee’
—a frightful mouthful isn’t it? so please do continue to call me by my short name, Bird, won’t you?”
“Of course,
Ve’ese,
” I answered. (Some of us are making a concerted effort to speak the Cheyenne tongue, and names are an easy place to start.)
Ve’ese,
” I answered. (Some of us are making a concerted effort to speak the Cheyenne tongue, and names are an easy place to start.)
“Yes, well one bloke has already been’round to present me with three Crow horses and to tell me the story of his great success in the raid,” said Helen. “I should say—to sing and dance the story. I’m sure you’ll see the performance again tonight if you would be so good as to accompany me to the dance. I had the chap painted with the image of a snipe and he showed me how he and his horse had been able to zigzag through the bullets and arrows of the pursuing enemy just as the snipe flies, thus avoiding all injury. All the while as he danced and sang this tale, he held his arms out like bent wings and made the specific winnowing sound of the snipe in territorial display. Quite extraordinary, I should say. Haunting actually … never seen anything quite like it. That is to say, he sounded so like the bird, it was as if he had actually become the snipe.”
“Perhaps I must revise my opinions of the efficacy of your magic, Helen,” I said. “You may make of me a believer yet.”
Speaking of which Reverend Hare’s staggering loss of faith that terrible night—the dismal failure of his own “medicine”—has greatly diminished his influence among both our women and the savages—who despise more than anything the display of cowardice. They reason that if the Reverend’s medicine is so puny in the face of that of his archenemy—the evil God Satan—against whom he is constantly preaching, then what kind of power does the Father’s Great White Spirit really have? However childlike in nature it seems, the savages’ theological reasoning has a certain simplistic logic. The influence of gods being only as good as their earthly representatives, at the moment Helen Flight’s magic seems to hold greater sway among all …
The word about the camp is that tomorrow we depart on the summer hunts, I do not know where we go, or for how long … I do not know if John Bourke, or Gertie or the Army itself will be able to monitor our movements. This imminent departure to live the life of nomads seems yet another separation, yet another step further into the wilderness—leading us not closer, but seemingly always further away from our eventual return …
Having missed my monthly cycle, I am more than ever certain that I am pregnant now. The prospect of being a mother again fills me with both joy and trepidation. Now there are two of us to worry about …
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