One Thousand White Women (32 page)

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Authors: Jim Fergus

BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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A change of weather is in the air, and we prepare for departure. The mild early-fall temperatures which we have enjoyed these past few weeks have fallen precipitously overnight. Lying in our lodge last night I could hear the north wind blowing down; it made an ominous rumbling sound like a freight train. And though I was warm under my buffalo robes, I felt the chill of winter in my bones.
This morning my friend Gertie came visiting a last time. “You heard the news of your compadre, Narcissa?” she asked.
“I have not,” I answered, “but nothing would surprise me.”
“She’s in the fort hospital,” Gertie said. “They say she lost her baby, miscarried, but I know one a the nurses, and she says the doctor pulled it for her.”
“Pulled it?” I asked. “You mean to say she had her baby aborted?”
“That’s what I’m hearin’.”
“I was wrong, Gertie,” I admitted. “I am surprised. None of us even knew she was with child.”
“Nurse says that Narcissa begged the doctor to do it on account a her husband forced himself upon her,” Gertie said, “an’ she couldn’t stand the idea of givin’ birth to a heathen’s baby.”
“And she will no doubt be stayin’ at the fort to recuperate,” I said, “rather than returning north with the rest of us.”
“You got it, honey,” Gertie said with a nod. “Medical leave. Says her mission can be better served anyhow if she stays here to prepare the way for the heathens’ settlement on the reservation. You get my meanin’?”
“Perfectly,” I said. “A rat from a sinking ship. That’s the part that doesn’t surprise me. We all knew the woman was a hypocrite. I just never thought that she would go to such great lengths.”
“Somethin’ else you might want to know, honey,” Gertie said. “She’s tellin’ folks that you an’ some a the others has been on the warpath, that you gone plumb wild yourselves, took some Crow scalps, maybe even … maybe even … relieved some Crow fellas of some body parts, if you get my meanin’ …”
“I see,” I said. “And to whom is she spreading these rumors?”
“Anyone at the fort who’ll listen,” Gertie said. “You want to talk about it, honey?”
“No,” I answered. “I cannot, Gertie. Only to say that while we were encamped on the Tongue this summer, a group of us were abducted by Crow horse thieves. It must have been shortly after you left. I didn’t want to tell you about it because I knew that you’d blame yourself for not being there to look after us. Young Sara was killed in the incident. The rest of us were rescued by our husbands. That’s all I can tell you,”
Gertie nodded. “Sure, I understand, honey,” she said. “I won’t ask ya about it again. I just thought you should know what the missionary gal was tellin’ folks. It don’t make a damn bit a difference to me, see? I been there myself. I know what it’s like.”
“Thank you, Gertie,” I said, grateful that she would not press me on the matter.
“Mostly I come to say good-bye, honey,” Gertie said. “We’re fixin’ to head out ourselves. I don’t know where, they never tell us nothin’. But it must be a mighty big expedition, because they give me back my job skinnin’ mules, and if they’re desperate enough to hire known gals as muleskinners, they must be takin’ every damn mule and every damn wagon in the whole country. We’re supposed to be ready to march tomorrow morning. My guess is Crook is repositioning some a his troops further north on account a the trouble in the Black Hills. Word is that the Sioux under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull has been harassing the miners and settlers in that country. I don’t know where your folks are headed, honey, but if I had any choice in the matter, I’d sure want to avoid that country. Thing is, when it comes to identifyin’ Injun bands, the Army can’t tell the difference between buffalo shit and sirloin steak. Even their Injun scouts half the time can’t tell the different bands apart. At least not from a distance, and by the time they get up close enough, it’s almost always too damn late. So the Army takes the position that any Injuns they come across in hostile territory is a hostile—guilty’til proven innocent.”
“And the Captain hasn’t told you anything more specific, Gertie?” I asked.
“I ain’t seen him, honey,” she said. “When it comes to the movement of troops he’d be skating on awful thin ice to be tellin’ military secrets to an old muleskinner, if you get my meanin’.
“But I did hear about that business with the battery,” she continued. “You know it took some balls on the Cap’n’s part not to juice old Little Wolf when he had the chance. The Cap’n lost face with his own men when he backed down.”
“He didn’t back down,” I said. “He just didn’t turn the crank on the machine.”
“All the same to the soldiers, honey,” she said. “It was their chance to whup the big Chief with their stronger medicine—to teach him a lesson—and the Cap’n let’em down.”
“It was a damn battery, Gertie!” I said. “That’s all it was. It was just a damn electrical apparatus!”
“Sure, honey, I know what it was,” she said, “but that’s just how men are—‘I got a bigger battery than you.’ He did it for you, honey. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know that,” I said, “and it was a decent thing for him to do. If you see the Captain, Gertie, will you thank him for me.” I laughed. “And if he needs reassurance on the matter, you may tell him that his battery is every bit the equal of the Chief’s.”
Gertie grinned. “That’s what they like to hear, ain’t it, honey?” she said.
 
On such short notice the authorities failed to locate a priest to take the place of our disgraced Reverend Rabbit, but somehow they managed to find a Benedictine monk to accompany us. We have no idea where the strange fellow came from and know nothing about him except that he rode into our camp yesterday evening on a burro and introduced himself as Anthony—explaining that he had taken his name from Saint Anthony of the Desert, the fourth-century Egyptian hermit monk, and that, like his spiritual namesake, he was seeking a remote spot in the wilderness in which to found his own monastery, and that if we didn’t mind, he would be pleased to accompany us.
“Good God,” I said under my breath to Helen Flight beside me, “first they send us an overweight Episcopalian pederast on a mule, and now comes a gaunt Benedictine anchorite on a donkey. I think we can see how the authorities value our spiritual needs.”
“Ya’ve
come to the right place, if you’re lookin’ for remote,
Broother
Anthony that’s for
shooore,”
said Meggie Kelly greeting the fellow. “Me an’ Susie are a couple a good Catholic
goorls
ourselves. An’ we’re
’appy
to
’ave ya
along—right, Susie?”
“Right as rain, with me,” said Susie.
“Quite,” said Helen. “Anthony of the Prairie we shall dub you! Splendid addition to our little group, I should say.”
It is just dawn now as I make this entry. We are to break camp later this morning. I am presently huddled under my buffalo robes and blankets as Quiet One stokes the morning embers.
“Eho’eeto,”
she whispers when she notices me watching her.
“It is snowing.
”
I pull my covers tighter around me. I badly have to make my morning water, but I cannot bring myself to leave the warmth of bed, and shall try to distract myself for a few more moments in these pages.
True to Gertie’s report, yesterday we watched as two large companies of cavalry, each with mule-drawn pack trains, departed the fort, one headed northeast toward Camp Robinson and the other northwest toward Fort Fetterman. These had to be General Crook’s forces, and Captain John Bourke must have been among them. I suspect that Crook had deployed his troops intentionally while we were still present to witness their strength, so that our band might report back to the others.
I take only some small comfort in knowing that we have at least the fall and part of the winter to come into the agency; that much was made clear by both Captain Bourke and General Crook. I intend to speak with the others when we rejoin them so that we may make a united effort to convince our husbands, and perhaps just as importantly, the women of the tribe, of the wisdom of giving ourselves up. But I fear that after a generally peaceful summer and in a time of tribal prosperity, it may be more difficult to make the People understand why they must relinquish their freedom and vacate land that is theirs “forever”—a word clearly less flexibly defined by their culture than ours.
I begin to worry for us with the coming of winter—especially with our babies on the way. Having been blessed throughout this past summer with a generally mild climate, we “brides” have experienced very little discomfort as a result of inclement weather—other than for the nearly constant prairie winds, which do sometimes provoke anxiety and irritability—and in poor Martha’s case have greatly exacerbated her hay fever. Now with this first sudden blast of arctic air blowing down out of the north country I dread the prospect of our confinement. Certainly a more permanent shelter at the agency—perhaps even a real house—seems an attractive proposition compared to a long winter in a tipi. For all that, I must admit that the Indian tipi is marvelously well designed—stays remarkably cool in the heat of summer and quite cozy thus far with this first true cold weather of the season. And with the morning fire burning, it warms quickly.
Now Feather on Head with her dear baby boy—whom I call by the name Willie, after my own sweet William—has joined me under my buffalo robes. It is a game I have taught my tentmates; sometimes in the cool of dawn they steal into my bed and I nuzzle the baby, who smells like a wild prairie plum and we all of us giggle like children and often fall back asleep in each other’s arms, curled together like sisters, the baby nestled between us. Sometimes Pretty Walker joins us, her mother, Quiet One, not objecting to these sisterly intimacies. Over these past chilly nights the first wife has resumed her rightful place under the robes with her husband, and I have sufficiently recovered from my own night-terrors to relinquish the position. Truly we are all of us like a pack of dogs, seeking the comfort of another warm body next to ours. Sometimes my little Horse Boy, too, will crawl under the robes with us—although I find of late that he is growing too old to snuggle innocently with the women!—the other day I felt the imp pressing an arousal urgently against my leg! I flicked his little thing, hard as the stub of a pencil, with my finger, causing the child to squeal and quite effectively discouraging his ardor.
Now we girls whisper and giggle under the robes; we trade English words and phrases for those in Cheyenne. The baby coos between us. A happier child I have never before known—he rarely cries and when he does Feather on Head pinches his nose and he stops almost immediately. In this way the Cheyenne mother trains her infant to a perfect animal silence.
It is warm and pungent under our coverings, and we are safe together and none of us wishes to rise to face the frigid air and the crisp fresh snow outside. None of us wishes to pack our belongings today and begin travel in the cold and the snow. But then we hear the old camp crier and all are silent for a moment as we listen for the day’s news:
“The People will prepare
to
depart this morning,”
he cries out.
“We leave for our winter camp to the north. Today we go home. Pack your belongings, take down your lodges, this morning the People will prepare to move
.”
Still we do not rise, we snuggle tighter under the buffalo robes until the old crone begins her shrill squawking …
“Everybody out of bed, up!, it is time to pack, we leave today.”
And if any hesitate she has her willow switch handy and we hear her swacking the covers—any excuse for the old hag to draw on her arsenal of weaponry. Finally Feather on Head slips out from under the robes, suddenly serious again with the often grim business of womanhood in tribal life, which offers scant opportunity for such idle lounging; this morning she leaves her baby in the bed with me—she knows I will care for the sweet Willie, and thus she is free to begin her chores unencumbered. For a few more precious minutes I nuzzle the infant until he coos, coos like a pigeon. But I can wait no longer to make my water, nor can I tolerate any longer the squawking of old
vohkeesa’e
and so I too, with great reluctance, put away my notebook, and finally slide out from beneath the warmth of my buffalo robes to face the trials of the day. I slip little Willie out behind me and hang him in his baby board, which leans up beside Feather on Head’s sleeping place. He does not make a sound in protest, but I think that he looks at me regretfully, as if to say,
“Don’t leave me here, don’t leave me, auntie.”
When I step out through the lodge opening, the sun is just cresting the eastern horizon, but contains no hint of warmth this morning. The temperature must be well below freezing, the snow crystalline and sparkling and not yet trampled but for one distinct set of footprints heading down toward the river. It is the track of Little Wolf who rose early for his daily morning swim, which he and the others in the Savage Men’s Bathing Club continue to take no matter what the weather. Now I follow his prints, stopping in the willows on the way to squat and take my pee, which steams yellow in the snow, melting down quickly to reveal the wet red earth beneath. And then on down to the river where I strip, first removing my leggings and moccasins before giving up the warmth of the heavy buffalo robe I wear and then quickly shedding my dress. Without hesitating, without giving myself time to so much as contemplate the terrible frigidity of the water I wade into the river, quick as I can, the breath catching in my throat, and I make a shallow dive, and come back to the surface gasping, trying to draw a breath out of my frozen breast and emitting a small choked cry of shock! Good Lord, it is cold!
I rush from the water and wrap the buffalo robe, which still holds some trace of the tipi’s warmth, round my naked body and grab my dress, moccasins, and leggings and I run, back to the lodge, barefoot through the snow, my feet numb by the time I arrive. I burst through the opening, laughing and making
brrrrrr
sounds much to the delight of my tentmates. The baby dangling from his baby board gurgles delightedly at my grand entrance, his eyes wide. “Yes,
etoneto!”
I say using the Cheyenne word, then the English:
“Coooold! Brrrrrr!”
And the girls, Feather on Head and Pretty Walker, cover their mouths and giggle their soft shy giggles that sound like riffles on a spring creek. And the baby gurgles happily. And the old crone squawks, but even she and the usually undemonstrative Quiet One can’t help now but give up small smiles at my antics …
In this way our day begins. I think only of my duties. Today we leave. I am a squaw.

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