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Authors: Jim Fergus

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BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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We have been camped for the past six days along the Tongue River, the single longest encampment since we began traveling. It is a lovely spot situated in a natural bowl at the base of the mountains, well protected from the wind and elements. The small valley is green and lush, with ample grass for the horses, surrounded by low hills and bluffs, the river lined by huge cottonwoods whose leaves rustle softly with the slightest breeze.
I walk down to a pool on the river each morning at first light, my favorite time of day, before the camp is fully awake, to fetch the morning water. The wrens have just taken up their lusty morning songs and warblers flicker like bright yellow flames in the green willows’ branches. Often ducks, geese, and cranes flare off the water at my approach, and sometimes a doe deer with a fawn bounds away, tails flagging through the undergrowth. At the river’s edge, swallows swoop from their nests in the sandy cliffs to skim insects from the surface, and rising trout make concentric rings upon the pool. I drop my paunch vessel into the cool, moving water and as it fills to tug heavily downstream, I feel a part of this world, pulled like the vessel itself to fill up with this life.
This is the best time to make these scribblings in my journal, a few minutes stolen from the beginning of the day, before the bustle and commotion of camp life begins. I sit on my rock overlooking the pool on the river, the air cool and still, the bluffs still shadowed, the sun not yet risen above them, the constant prairie winds not yet come up …
Sometimes Helen Flight joins me at dawn on my rock to sketch the bird life. If we sit very quietly, sandhill and whooping cranes might come back into our pool, blue herons and night herons, geese and ducks of many varieties. She holds her sketch pad open on her lap, pipe clenched firmly between her teeth, eyebrows raised as always in delighted anticipation, as if something perfectly extraordinary is taking place. Periodically when I pause in my writing she gently lifts my notebook from my lap and makes a quick study of a bird in the margins of the page—a swallow swooping for insects on the water, or a Kingfisher perched on a tree branch, holding a fish in its beak. “Perhaps
Mesoke,
” she says, handing it back to me, “you and I should consider a collaboration of our own,
‘A Woman’s Life among
the Savages of the Western Prairies’
we might entitle it, letterpress by Mrs. May ‘Swallow’ Dodd Little Wolf, with illustrations by Mrs. Helen Elizabeth ‘Medicine Bird Woman’ Flight Hog.”
“A splendid idea, Helen!” I answer lightly. “Certain to become a classic in frontier literature!”
“Unfortunately human figures have never been my artistic forte,” Helen says. “That is to say, I’ve always been more comfortable drawing animals—specifically birds. Once I undertook a full-length portrait of my companion Mrs. Ann Hall of Sunderland, who, gazing upon it for the first time, exclaimed: ‘Why, Helen, you’ve got me looking exactly like a roseate spoonbill!’”
Besides Helen’s company, if I sit long enough on my rock, we may be joined by Gretchen, Sara, Martha, Daisy, or Phemie—often a number of us get together here—a kind of morning girls’ club, I, its self-appointed president.
Daisy is happily much recovered from her night of terror at the hands of the drunken savages, and considerably softened around the edges. Oddly (although under the present circumstances of our lives what can any longer be considered odd?) she has become quite close friends with Phemie since her “accident.”
“Did
y’all
hear the news about my dear friend, Euphemia Washington?” Daisy asked us this morning, holding her little poodle Fern Louise in her lap. “She has just been asked to join the Crazy Dogs warrior society—an event without precedent among the savages. And
Ah
do not mean as a ceremonial hostess at social events.
Ah
mean as a
full
-fledged warrior woman. The very
fuust taame
in the history of the tribe that a woman has been so honored—and a
whaate
woman to boot. Aren’t
y’all
so proud? Fern Louise and I are, aren’t we, darlin’? We believe it is a great honor to us all,
havin’
come about naturally due to Miss Phemie’s prowess on the games field and in the
huuunt.
”
Now little Sara beams and chatters away in Cheyenne, laughing with Pretty Walker, the daughter of Quiet One and Little Wolf, who often accompanies me to the fetch the water. The Indians call Sara Little White Girl Who Speaks Cheyenne, for she has been the first among us to learn their language fluently; they can hardly appreciate the full irony of the fact that prior to speaking Cheyenne she was mute! Now she has blossomed like a wild rose under the prairie sun—happier and healthier than I’ve ever seen her. I can hardly believe that she is the same frail and frightened child who clung so desperately to me on the long train ride west. She and her slender young husband, Yellow Wolf, are inseparable, thick as thieves—two people have never been more deeply in love.
Speaking of which, dear Gretchen,
Moma’xehahtahe,
she is now called, or Big Foot, has reconciled with her foolish husband, No Brains, whom she has well cowed and completely under her thumb—or her foot, I should say—since the dark night of whiskey drinking earlier this summer.
He is an indolent, vain fellow with a well-deserved reputation as a poor provider for his family. Often Gretchen must heave him out of the tent with strict instructions to “
Brink
home dinner you
bick
lazy dope!” and on the all too frequent occasions when No Brains has returned from the hunt with an empty packhorse, we have witnessed a bizarre, albeit not unamusing spectacle: a contingent of angry family members, led by Gretchen herself, followed by the man’s mother and any children who happen to join in, chasing the fool through the camp with sticks. “
Yah!
You great
bick stupit
idiot,” Gretchen, red-faced with Swiss wrath, hollers at him, kicking him in his buttocks and smacking him roundly about the head and shoulders with her stick, as the children lash at his legs. “How you expect to support a family if you can’t even
brink
home meat to put on
da
table?
Vee
must depend on your
gottdamnt brudder
and your
udder
friends to feed and clothe us. I
vill
not be a charity case! I always
vork hart
for my own living and I not take handouts now! You
stupit
silly jughead! Look at you, you all
drest
up, you got all
dat
fancy stuff, and you could not bring home meat if the
da gottdamnt
buffalo falls dead at your feet! You great
stupit
nincompoop!”
And poor No Brains stumbles through the camp, trying to escape Gretchen’s Big Foot, while warding off the others’ battery of blows until inevitably he stumbles and falls to the ground where he is set upon by the smallest children who strike him with their little sticks and shout insulting epithets at him, laughing gaily all the while. Let it not be said that the hunter’s life on the prairie is an easy one.
And yet in quieter moments, when we meet, as now, on our rock above the pool of the river in the still of the morning, Gretchen, as placid as a dairy cow, expresses her great fondness for this same buffoon. She is, I think, grateful to have a husband at last, and only wants him to make something of himself.
“I admit
dat
he is not
da
brightest fellow, in
da
whole
vorld, dat
is true,” Gretchen says in his defense. “But before
da
children come, I
vill
teach
da
big ninnyhammer how to be a
goot hustband
and provider. I know I
yam
not a pretty girl myself, but I always
vork hart
and I make a nice home for my family
vedder dey
be Indian people or white people—it don’t matter to me. I am a
hartvorking,
tidy person, and I
vill
be a
goot mudder
to my children—and a
goot vife
to my
hustband. Dat
is how I was taught by my own
mudder.
And, you know girls,
dat
fellow of mine he may be
da
biggest pumpkinhead in
da
whole tribe, but he is still my man … you know, and he likes me …
yah!
” she covers her mouth and giggles. “He likes me lots,” she adds striking her robust breast with a flat hand. “He loves my
bick
titties! All he wants to do is to roll in
da
buffalo robes with me!” And we all laugh. Bless her heart.
Now the camp begins to stir, and others come down to the water’s edge to fill their water paunches, and the men, the members of the Savage Men’s Bathing Club arrive at the water for their morning dip, and we can hear them splashing about up- or downriver, and the birds begin to lift off, flushed by the human congress in their domain, the deep sounds of hundreds of heavy wings all along the river, the cacophonous cries of the rising birds like a discordant natural orchestra—yakking and honking and wailing and warbling—fading away to be replaced by the voices of women, children, and men. In the distance, the camp crier begins his rounds … calling his messages in a high shrill voice, marking the end of this quiet, best time of day …
Sometimes I send Pretty Walker back with the water paunch while I stay on writing or visiting with my friends. She is a lovely thing—the boys can hardly keep their shy eyes off her—slender and long-legged like her father, moves with the grace of a dancer, is not so sullen and suspicious as her mother—an eager, open-natured child, with bright, intelligent eyes. She enjoys the company of us white women, and we have been teaching her a few words of English, while she, in turn, helps us with our Cheyenne. Most of us are less self-conscious about speaking the language now, and can make ourselves understood on a rudimentary level—which, as these people are hardly given to complicated philosophical discourse, is usually quite sufficient. Pretty Walker has been most useful to us in this regard, and we have great fun with her, although I’m afraid that our budding friendship has not entirely met with the approval of her mother.
I have avoided this next topic for the fact that it so exceeds the bounds of propriety, but I must here make mention of one of the most difficult adjustments that we have had to make. That is in the matter of toilet facilities. Fortunately, ours is a very cleanly tribe—unlike some of the others. One might well imagine the stinking mess that would accumulate in a camp of two hundred people if everyone simply went off to do their business at random in the bushes. We have in our recent travels come across the vacated campsites of other tribes—the stench announcing their location from miles away.
The Cheyennes have devised a relatively hygienic solution to this—although one that does not afford a great deal of privacy. In each camp a central area is established, always placed downwind of the village, where all are expected to do their business. Young boys are assigned to guard these communal latrines and to make sure that waste is immediately buried. This is a boy’s first job after which he graduates when older to guarding the horses. Latrine duty and the burying of feces is done not only for reasons of basic sanitation, but also because there are many dogs about the camp and, given the opportunity, dogs will … forgive me, please, for this is a vile subject … roll in, and even eat, human excrement.
For our part, we white women have made certain improvements on the latrine system. Little Marie Blanche, our French girl (who has, after all, “married” her murdered husband’s brother), was quite appalled by the whole thing. The French being accustomed to irregular bathing, have devised many clever means of hygienic compensation, and thus Marie Blanche has insisted that water vessels, to serve the function of “bidets,” be installed and maintained by the “B.M. boys,” as we call them. Thus in this one small—but to a woman, essential—area I think perhaps we have taught the savages something useful. But surely I’ve said enough on a subject which requires no more graphic description …
Despite my present acceptance of our lot, even a certain contentment, I have had an uneasy premonition of late—an indefinable sense of gloom lurks in the background of my general good spirits. I wonder as I strain to see the page in the silvery half-light of dawn, if something were to happen to prevent my return to civilization, who would ever read these words? What would become of my dear children, Hortense and William, should I be unable to make my way back to them? I pray that the letter Gertie took for me will reach them, but how can I know that Father and Mother will ever show it to them when they are old enough to read? Such thoughts fill me with unease. Whatever is to become of me, I should be greatly consoled by the knowledge that my children might one day learn something of their mother’s life among the savages, might understand that however eccentric she may have been—however stubborn, foolish, and impetuous—she was not insane …
BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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