Authors: Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women (43 page)

BOOK: One Thousand White Women

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In spite of efforts to convince the reader to the contrary, this book is entirely a work of fiction. However, the seed that grew into a novel was sown in the author’s imagination by an actual historical event: in 1854 at a peace conference at Fort Laramie, a prominent Northern Cheyenne chief requested of the U.S. Army authorities the gift of one thousand white women as brides for his young warriors. Because theirs is a matrilineal society in which all children born belong to their mother’s tribe, this seemed to the Cheyennes to be the perfect means of assimilation into the white man’s world—a terrifying new world that even as early as 1854, the Native Americans clearly recognized held no place for them. Needless to say, the Cheyennes’ request was not well received by the white authorities—the peace conference collapsed, the Cheyennes went home, and, of course, the white women did not come. In this novel they do.

Certain other historical events are here rendered, but in an entirely fictitious manner. At the same time, the real names of certain actual historical figures are used in this novel, but the characters themselves are fictional creations. In all other respects this book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, dates, geographical descriptions are all either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Finally, while a genuine attempt was made to render the Cheyenne language as accurately as possible, certain misspellings and misuses inevitably occur in this book. For these errors, the author offers sincere apologies to the Cheyenne people.

“Fergus is gifted in his ability to portray the perceptions and emotions of women. He writes with tremendous insight and sensitivity about the individual community and the political and religious issues of the time, many of which are still relevant today. This book is artistically rendered with meticulous attention to small details that bring to life the daily concerns of a group of hardy souls at a pivotal time in U.S. history.”

—
Booklist

“[May] and the other brides rise from the underbelly of society, becoming the most noble characters in this imaginative tale of the American West reeling under the decline of one culture and the forcible ascent of another.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“In a word,
One Thousand White Women
is terrific! What Jim Fergus has done within these pages is give life and voice to an aspect of the American West and its native peoples that has been, if not covered up, too long overlooked. It is a tremendous achievement by a remarkable writer.”

—David Seybold, editor of
Boats
and
Fathers and
Sons

“One Thousand White
Women
is definitely a fresh twist on the traditional Western. Fergus has started his career as a novelist with a book rich in the results of personal fervor and study, and one that reflects a sensitive imagination. Fans of Western fiction and students of American frontier history can confidently add this novel to their summer reading list.”

—
San Antonio Express News

“Jim Fergus’s powerful first novel is a surefire winner. I read it non-stop and would now like to propose a hundred-year moratorium on all books about white women in the Old West, since it will take the rest of us at least that long to amass the research—not to mention the compassion—needed to equal this fine work. A masterful job!”

—Robert F. Jones, author of
Tie My Bones to Her Back

“This is a rich, beautifully conceived, rollicking novel, literally bursting with original characters and with the profound joy and heartbreak of the real history of the American West. May Dodd may be the most compellingly alive fictional character of that history since Little Big Man.”

—Charles Gaines, author of
A Family Place, Stay Hungry, Pumping Iron
, and
Survival Games

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

In researching and writing this novel, the author gratefully acknowledges valuable insights and information gained from the following works:

Charles L. Blockson.
The Underground Railroad: Dramatic Firsthand Accounts of Daring Escapes to Freedom
(1987).

John G. Bourke.
On the Border with Crook
(1891).

W. P. Clark.
The Indian Sign Language, with Brief Explanatory Notes of the Gestures Taught Deaf-Mutes in Our Institutions for Their Instruction, and a Description of Some of the Peculiar Laws, Customs, Myths, Superstitions, Ways of Living, Code of Peace and War Signals of Our Aborigines
(1885).

William Cronon.
Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
(1991).

Thomas W. Dunlay.
Wolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860—90
(1982).

Jeffrey L. Geller and Maxine Harris.
Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls 1840—1945
(1994).

Brigitte Georgi-Findlay.
The Frontiers of Women’s Writing: Women’s Narratives and the Rhetoric of Westward Expansion
(1996).

Josephine Stands In Timber Glenmore and Wayne Leman.
Cheyenne Topical Dictionary
(1984).

Gloria Davis Goode. “Get on Board and Tell Your Story,” from
Jump Up and Say: A Collection of Black Storytelling,
Linda Goss and Clay Goss (1995).

George Bird Grinnell.
The Cheyenne Indians,
2 Vols. (1925).

———.
The Fighting Cheyennes
(1915)
.

———.
By Cheyenne Campfires
(1926).

E. Adamson Hoebel.
The Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains
(1960).

Robert H. Keller, Jr.
American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy, 1869—82
(1983).

John Stands in Timber/Margot Liberty.
Cheyenne Memories
(1967).

Thomas B. Marquis.
Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer
(1931).

Joseph C. Porter.
Paper Medicine Man: John Gregory Bourke and His American West
(1986).

Peter J. Powell.
Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History,
2 vols. (1969).

Glenda Riley.
Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1825—1915
(1984).

Mari Sandoz.
Cheyenne Autumn
(1953).

Frank N. Schubert.
Outpost of the Sioux Wars: A History of Fort Robinson
(1993).

R. B. Stratton.
Captivity of the Oatman Girls
(1875).

Robert Wooster.
The Military & United States Indian Policy, 1865—1903
(1988).

For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y 10010.

Bird drawings by Loren G. Smith

eISBN 9781429938846

First eBook Edition : January 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fergus, Jim

One thousand white women : the journals of May Dodd / Jim Fergus.—1
^stSt. Martin’s Griffin ed. p. cm.