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Authors: Jim Fergus

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BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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“I was the child born of this union,” Phemie said. “I, too, grew up in that house, where I was given lessons in the kitchen by the tutor of Master’s ‘real’ children—his white family. Eventually the mistress discovered the truth of my parentage—perhaps she finally saw some resemblance between the kitchen nigger’s child and her own children. And one night when I was not yet seven years old, two men, slave merchants, came and took me away—just as my mother had been taken from her family. She wept and pleaded and fought the men, but they struck her and knocked her to the ground. That was the last time I ever saw my mother, lying unconscious with her face battered and bleeding …” Phemie paused here and looked out the train window, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.
“I was sold to the owner of a plantation outside Savannah, Georgia,” she continued. “He was a bad man, an evil man. He drank and treated his slaves with terrible cruelty. The first day that I arrived there he had me branded on the back with his own initials … Yes, he burned his initials into the flesh of all his slaves so that they would be easily identified if ever they ran away. I was still just a child, eight years old, but after the first week that I was there, the man began to have me sent to his private quarters at night. I do not need to tell you what happened there … I was badly hurt …
“Several years passed this way,” she went on in a softer voice. “Then one day a Canadian natural scientist came to visit the plantation. He came under the guise of studying the flora and fauna there—but he was an abolitionist and his true purpose was to spread the word to the slaves about the underground railroad. He carried excellent letters of introduction and was unwittingly welcomed at all the plantations. Because I had a little education, and because I had always been fascinated with wild things of all kinds, my master charged me with accompanying the naturalist on his daily excursions to collect specimens. Over the several days of his visit, the man spoke to me often of Canada, told me that every man, woman, and child lived free and equal there—that none was owned by another. The scientist liked me and took pity on me. He told me that I was too young to attempt to escape alone but that I should encourage some of the older slaves to take me with them. He showed me maps of the best routes north and gave me the names of people along the way who would help us.
“I spoke to some of the others, but all were too terrified of the Master to attempt such an escape. They had seen what Master did to runaway slaves who were returned to him.
“One night a week or so after the man left, after I had returned weeping and in great pain to the slaves quarters from Master’s bedroom, I made a bundle of a few clothes and what little food I could gather and I left alone. I did not care if I died trying to escape. Death seemed welcome compared to my life.
“I was young and strong,” Phemie said, “and over the next several nights I ran through the forest and swamps and canebrakes. I never stopped running. Sometimes I could hear the hounds baying behind me, but the naturalist had instructed me to wade up streambeds and across ponds, which would cause the dogs to lose the scent. I ran and I ran.
For weeks I traveled north, moving by night, hiding in the undergrowth during the day. I ate what I could scavenge in the forest and fields, wild roots and greens, sometimes a bit of fruit or vegetables stolen from farms or gardens. I was hungry and often I did not know where I was, but I kept the North Star always before me and I looked for landmarks which the scientist had described to me. Often I longed to go into the towns I passed to beg a little food, but I dared not. Upon my back I still wore Master’s brand, and if captured I would surely be returned to him and terribly punished.
“In those weeks alone in the wilderness, I began to remember the stories my mother had told me of her own people, of the men hunting and the women gathering from the earth. I would never have survived my journey to the land of freedom were it not for what my mother had taught me about the wilds. My grandmother’s knowledge, passed down through my mother, saved my life. It was as if, all these years later, my mother’s mother came back for me just as she had always believed she would come for her …
“It was several months before I finally crossed into Canada,” Phemie continued. “There I called on people whose names the naturalist had given me and eventually I was placed in the home of a doctor’s family. I was well treated there and was able to continue my education. I lived with the doctor and his family for almost ten years—I worked for them and was paid an honest wage for my labors.
“One day I happened to see a small notice in the newspaper requesting young single women of any race, creed, or color to participate in an important volunteer program on the American frontier. I answered the advertisement … and, here we are … you and I.”
“But if you were happy with the doctor’s family in Canada,” I asked Phemie, “why did you wish to leave there, to come on this mad adventure?”
“They were fine people,” Phemie said. “I loved them and will be forever grateful to them. But you see, May, I was still a servant. I was paid for my work, that is true, but I was still a servant to white folks. I dreamed of more for myself, I dreamed to be a free woman, truly free, on my own and beholden to no others. I owed that to my mother, and to my people. I know that as a white woman, it must be difficult for you to understand this.”
I patted Phemie on the back of her hand. “You’d be surprised, Phemie,” I said, “at how well I understand the longing for freedom.”
But now an ugly thing has occurred, spoiling the moment. As Phemie and I were sitting together, the Southern woman Daisy Lovelace, seated across the aisle, set her ancient miserable little poodle down on the seat beside her and said in a voice so loud that we couldn’t help but turn to look.
“Feeern Loueeese
,” she said, “would you rather be a
niggah
, or would you rather be
daid?”
upon which cue the little dog teetered stiffly and then rolled over on its back with its little bowed legs sticking straight in the air. Miss Lovelace shrieked with mean-spirited laughter.
“Wretched woman!” I muttered. “Pay no attention to her, Phemie.”
“Of course I don’t,” Phemie said, unconcerned. “The poor soul is drunk, May, and believe me, I’ve heard far worse than that. I’m sure that such a parlor trick was a source of great amusement to her plantation friends. And now she finds herself among our motley group, where she must at least assert her superiority over the nigger girl. I think we should not judge her just yet.”
I have dozed off, with my head on Phemie’s shoulder, only to be rudely awakened by the shrill voice of a dreadful woman named Narcissa White, an evangelical Episcopalian who is enrolled in the program under the auspices of the American Church Missionary Society. Now Miss White comes bustling down the aisle of the train passing out religious pamphlets. “‘Ye who enter the wilderness without faith shall perish’ said the Lord Jesus Christ,” she preaches, and other such nonsense, which only serves to further agitate the others—some of whom already seem as skittish as cattle going to the slaughterhouse.
I’m afraid that Miss White and I have taken an instant dislike to one another, and I fear that we are destined to become bitter enemies. She is enormously tiresome and bores us all witless with her sanctimonious attitudes and evangelical rantings. As you well know, Hortense, I have never had much interest in the church. Perhaps the hypocrisy inherent in Father’s position as a church elder, while remaining one of the least Christ-like men I’ve ever known, has something to do with my general cynicism toward organized religion of all kinds.
The White woman has already stated that she has no intention of bearing a child with her Cheyenne husband, nor indeed of having conjugal relations with him, and she assures us that she signed up for this mission strictly as a means of giving herself to the Lord Jesus—to save the soul of her heathen intended by teaching him “the ways of Christ and the true path to salvation,” as she puts it in her most pious manner. Evidently she intends to distribute her pamphlets among the savages, and seemed not in the least deterred when I pointed out to her that very likely they won’t be able to read them. It may be blasphemous for me to say so, but personally, I believe that our Christian God as He is represented by the likes of Miss White may be of somewhat limited use to the savages …
I will write to you again soon, my dearest sister …
 
We crossed the Missouri River three days ago, spending one night in a boardinghouse in Omaha. Our military escort, or “guard” as I prefer to call them, treat us more as prisoners than as volunteers in the service of our government—they are contemptuous and snide, and have a gratingly familiar air that suggests some knowledge of the Faustian bargain we have struck with our government. None of us was permitted to go abroad in Omaha, nor even allowed to leave the boardinghouse—perhaps they fear that we might have a change of heart and seek to escape.
The next morning we boarded another train, which for the past two days has followed along a bluff overlooking the Platte River—not much of a river really—wide, slow-moving, and turgid.
We passed through the little settlement of Grand Island, where we took on supplies but were not permitted to disembark, westward through the muddy village of North Platte, where we were once again forbidden to so much as stretch our legs at the station. We did witness a remarkable spectacle yesterday morning at dawn—thousands, no I would more accurately guess, millions of cranes on the river. As if by some signal, perhaps simply frightened by the passing of our train, they all suddenly took flight, rising off the water as one being, like an enormous sheet lifted by the wind. Our British ornithologist, Miss Flight, was absolutely beside herself, rendered all but speechless by the spectacle. “Glorious!” she said, patting her flat chest. “Absolutely glorious!” Truly I thought the woman’s eyebrows were going to shoot right off the top of her head. “A masterpiece,” she marveled. “God’s masterpiece!” I found this at first to be an odd remark, but soon realized how accurate a description it really was. The birds made a noise we could hear even over the roar of our locomotive. A million wings—imagine it!—like the sound of rumbling thunder or a waterfall, punctuated by the strange, otherworldly cries of the cranes, their wingbeats at once ponderous and elegant, their bodies so large that flight seemed improbable, legs dangling awkwardly beneath them like the rag tails of a child’s kite. God’s masterpiece … and perhaps after my long, spartan confinement behind four walls and a locked door such a spectacle of freedom and fecundity seems even more wonderful. Ah, but on this morning the earth seems like an especially fine place to be alive and free! I think that I shall not mind living in the wilderness …
I have no true sense of this strange new country yet. Compared to Illinois, the vast prairies hereabouts seem more arid, less productive, and the few farms that we pass down in the river floodplain appear poor—boggy and undeveloped. The people working in the fields look gaunt-eyed and discouraged as if they have given up already any dreams of success or prosperity. We passed one poor fellow trying futilely to plow a flooded field with a team of oxen; it was clearly a hopeless endeavor, for his oxen were mired up to their chests in the mud, and the man finally sat down himself and put his head dejectedly in his arms, looking as though he was going to weep.
I suspect that the uplands are better suited to the cattle business than are these marshy lowlands to agriculture. Indeed, the further west we move the more bovines we encounter—a variety of cattle that is quite different from anything I have ever seen back in Illinois, longer-legged, rangier, and wilder, with long, gracefully arced horns. Yesterday we saw a colorful sight—a herd of what must have been several thousand cows being driven across the river by “cowboys.” The engineer had to stop the train for fear of a collision with the beasts, thus giving us a wonderful opportunity to observe the scene. Of course, I have read about the cowboys in periodicals and I have seen artists’ renderings of them and now I find that they are every bit as colorful and festive in the flesh. Martha blushed quite crimson at the sight of them—a charming habit she has when excited—and an exciting scene it was, too. The cowboys make a thrilling little yipping noise as they drive their charges, waving their hats in the air cheerfully. It all seems rather wild and romantic, with the herd splashing across the river, urged along by these gay cowboys. We are told by one of the soldiers that these men are on the way from Texas to Montana Territory, where a prosperous new ranching industry is springing up. Who knows, perhaps we “Indian brides” will also visit that country in time—we have been forewarned that the savages are a nomadic people, and that we are to be prepared for frequent and sudden moves.
 
Today our train has been stopped for several hours while a number of the men aboard indulge in a bit of “sport”—the shooting of dozens of buffalo from the train windows. I fail to see myself where exactly the sport in this slaughter lies as the buffalo seem to be as stupid and trusting as dairy cows. The poor dumb beasts simply mill about as they are knocked down one by one like targets at a carnival shooting gallery, while the men aboard, including members of our military escort, behave like crazed children—whooping and hollering and congratulating themselves on their prowess with the long gun. The women for the most part are silent, holding handkerchiefs to their noses while the train car fills with acrid smoke from the guns. It is a grotesque spectacle and seems terribly wasteful to me—the animals are left where they fall, many of those that aren’t killed outright, mortally wounded and bellowing pitifully. Some of the cows have newborn spring calves with them and these, too, are cheerfully dispatched by the shooters. I have noticed during the past day that the country we are passing through is littered with bones and carcasses in various stages of decay and that a noticeable stench of rotting flesh often pervades the air. Such an ugly, unnatural thing can come to no good in God’s eyes or anyone else’s for that matter. I can’t help but think once again what a foolish, loutish creature is man. Is there another on earth that kills for the pure joy of it?
Now we are finally under way again, the bloodlust of the men evidently sated …
BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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