by Jim Fergus
“I’m sorry, I don’t really speak the language yet,” I answered.
“You are Caucasian, madam?” he asked in astonishment.
“Yes.”
“A captive?”
I picked my tether rope off the ground and held it up to him. “It would appear so, sir, yes.”
“I am Captain John G. Bourke. May I ask who you are, and how you came to be here?”
“That is a long story.”
“Where were you captured?”
“I was riding with the Cheyenne during the battle on the Rosebud.”
“Riding with the Cheyenne? In what capacity?”
“As a warrior.”
“I am afraid that I do not understand, madam. Please explain yourself.”
In that moment, Seminole himself galloped up to the hut, as if he knew the soldiers were there and was clearly agitated about it. The captain stood and turned toward him. Seminole leapt from his horse, coming to attention and offering a kind of absurdly exaggerated salute. It occurred to me that were he not also insane and depraved, he would simply be a buffoon. Little wonder that Hawk mocked him when they were boys.
“Ah, mon cher capitaine,” he said, “mais quel plaisir de vous voir, what a pleasure to see you, my dear Captain Bourke.” He swept his arm out in an expansive gesture as if to indicate the grand premises. “Welcome to my humble abode. Jules has been looking all over for you in the supply camp, and finally I was told that you had gone to find me. To what does Jules owe the honor of this visit?”
“What is the meaning of this, Seminole? Who is this woman?”
“She is an enemy warrior, mon capitaine, fighting with the Cheyenne, and taken prisoner by my men during the battle.”
“But she is a white woman,” said the captain.
“Ah, oui, that is correct, mon capitaine.”
“Fighting with the renegade savages against the United States Army?” said Bourke, clearly confused. He turned and addressed me again: “You do understand, madam, that for a citizen of the United States to ride into battle as a soldier of an enemy army is an act of treason?”
“I’m not really a citizen of the United States, Captain.”
“Tell me your name, please.”
“Mé’koomat a’xevà … which, as you appear to be fluent in several native tongues, you may know translates into English as something like Woman Who Kicks Man in Testicles.”
At this, Bourke actually blushed, and I remembered that the Kellys had told me he was a devout Catholic, and rather straightlaced … although clearly less so in his relations with May Dodd. “Are you mocking me, madam?” he asked.
“No, of course not, that really is my name.”
“Your Christian name, please?”
“I don’t have one, sir. I was reborn into the Cheyenne tribe. And I am married to a Cheyenne man, a warrior named Hawk … perhaps you know him? As Wyoming and Montana are only territories and not states, you could say that I am, by marriage, a citizen of the Cheyenne nation.”
“There is no such thing as the Cheyenne nation, madam,” said Bourke. “This is the United States of America, and we claim sovereignty over these territories. You are a traitor, and will be charged as such.”
“Mais non, non, mon cher capitaine,” Seminole protested, “My dear Captain Bourke, Jules must respectfully remind you that the agreement our esteemed Général Crook made with his Indian scouts is that renegades wounded or taken prisoner by our warriors during battle, including women and children, belong to us, not to the Army.”
“Yes, Seminole, renegade prisoners of enemy tribes,” said Bourke.
“Exactement, mon capitaine. You heard the lady speak herself. She is Cheyenne, a member of an enemy tribe.”
“She is a white woman, and this is a bizarre situation, to say the least. But we will get to the bottom of it. You will release this woman into my custody right now, Sergeant Seminole. Untie her. I assume she has a horse. Fetch it. In addition, you are to report to General Crook as soon as possible. He is ordering all his head scouts to come in. He wishes to get a rough sense of the full scope and size of the Cheyenne and Lakota force we met today. The battle did not go as the general had expected it would. We do not suggest that the Army was beaten; however, the savages fought with a good deal more ferocity and tenacity than anticipated, as well as a certain tactical prowess we have rarely seen from them. We suffered considerable losses.”
Perhaps it was due to my own sheer exhaustion, fear, rage, and sense of utter hopelessness, but I could not prevent myself from speaking up then. “You said it yourself, Captain, there is no such thing as the Cheyenne nation. However, they believe there is, as the Lakota believe there is a Lakota nation. Having been here long before us, they also believe that they have certain inalienable rights to continue living on the land their ancestors have walked for a thousand generations … land I might add that your government, which now claims sovereignty, gave to them recently by treaty. They fought today with tenacity and ferocity as you put it, for the simple reason that they are making a last stand in defense of their country … not yours, not mine, not the United States of America, their country. They have had enough treaties broken and land stolen from them, enough Army attacks upon their villages in the dead of winter, the slaughtering of defenseless women, children, and elders. Indeed, my understanding, Captain Bourke, is that you yourself participated in such a massacre upon the village of the Cheyenne chief Little Wolf this past winter in which your … shall we say your dear friend May Dodd and others of her party were killed. Is that not correct, sir?”
Bourke went pale at my outburst and looked at me with an expression of shock and incredulity. “Good Lord,” he said in a low, tremulous voice, nearly a whisper, “but … but this is madness. How dare you address me in this manner, madam? Who are you? Where have you come from? How did you get here?”
21 June 1876
This entry and much of the last two, I write from a tent in the supply base camp of General George Crook’s troops of the Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition. I wear leg shackles to effectively preclude any escape attempt, and I am guarded on all sides by armed soldiers, which equally discourages the brief nostalgia I felt for the comforting embrace of civilization. Nevertheless, I am fed, I have bathed and been given clean attire—a man’s cotton shirt and trousers, which because of my height, fit me adequately, with a belt to cinch them up about my waist, although it does seem strange to wear white-man clothing again. My ledger book was temporarily confiscated from me and transcribed, in case it might hold information of interest to the War Department. Captain Bourke returned it to me himself, and seemed particularly solicitous on this point, largely, I believe, because May Dodd had kept a journal, which was presumably burned by Mackenzie’s Army, along with everything else in the village. As a literate fellow, particularly admiring of Shakespeare, according to the Kelly sisters, I suspect that Bourke adheres to the principle of preserving the written word, even something as humble as one of my ledger books.
Before they led me away from Seminole’s camp, I begged the captain to intervene on Pretty Nose’s behalf. But this he would not do. She was the Crow’s captive, he said, to do with as they pleased. As we rode out, I began to sing another of Lulu’s songs, “Au Claire de la Lune,” “By the Light of the Moon,” in the hopes that she would see me leaving with the soldiers. I was briefly heartened to hear her take up the song with me, until the doleful tone of her voice told me of her own suffering. I worry as much for her fate as I do my own.
This is my fourth day here now as the Army attempts to sort out what disposition is to be made of me … I have answered no questions about my identity, given neither my name nor any details of where I came from, for why should I help them facilitate my return to Sing Sing?
The captain came to see me this morning, as he has each day. He brought me several new pencils, which I appreciate. He seems a decent and rather tortured fellow himself. However, I can’t help but wonder if his new kindness to
me is not simply a means of trying to gain my confidence.
Today he told me the Army was willing to recognize that I had been coerced into fighting with the Cheyenne, and that if I cooperated, at least told them my name and where I came from, they would not bring treason charges against me. All would be forgiven and they wished only to return me as quickly and quietly as possible to my previous “civilian” life, whatever and wherever that may be.
He then told me that the War Department was well aware of the fact that a group of white women, volunteers in the Brides for Indians program, had been mistakenly sent west this past February, though the program itself had been terminated. Of course, they knew of the attack on our train by what they assumed was a band of Lakota warriors.
“In addition to all the young Army recruits,” Bourke said, “a number of these women volunteers were also killed in the attack, and their remains eventually identified. Others had wisely defected along the way, and these, too, have been identified. However, it appears from records obtained by the War Department that seven of the total number of women remain unaccounted for. It has been assumed that this was simply a clerical error—sloppy record keeping on the part of a defunct and frankly illegal government program—although there has been speculation that possibly these missing women had been taken captive by the renegades. In any case, madam, the records are presently on their way here, and should arrive within the next day or two. I am asking you now if you were among this group? Is that how you came to be with the Cheyenne? And are there others still with them? It is critical that you tell me so that we might take measures to protect them.”
“As you took measures to protect May Dodd and her friends, Captain?”
Bourke looked away with an expression of genuine anguish on his face. He did not answer me.
“If I am a prisoner of war,” I said, rattling my shackles, “as I clearly appear to be, I continue to exercise my right to tell you nothing. And if I am not a prisoner, then you must release me.”
Bourke stood to leave me. “That, madam, I am afraid I cannot do.”
* * *
Despite my shackles and my ever-dimming future, one aspect of my incarceration I must admit I rather appreciate—in addition, of course, to the luxuries of a bath and palatable food—is the opportunity to be alone. Solitude is not readily available in the general course of tribal life, and certainly not to our group since the very beginning of this adventure. I listen now to the afternoon prairie wind rising outside; one can hear it coming from a good distance away, and as it arrives, it wraps over and around the tent, rippling the canvas walls. I feel a strange sense of calm and solace in being thus enveloped, in finally having this time to myself—no longer running, free of the endless travel, free of the constant work making and breaking camp, of the dust and dirt, free of the specter of impending war with its constant anxieties, and actual war with its chaos and brutality—time to reflect, rather than simply to react.
I have a chance, finally, to think about Hawk. When we parted on the morning of the battle, he asked me again not to go. He told me he was obligated to ride with his own warrior society, the Dog Soldiers, that Little Wolf was in charge of making the plan of battle for all the warrior societies, and that he must follow his chief. He said he would not be able to look after me, and he placed a single hawk feather in my hair. “This is all the protection I can give you,” he said. “Stay here in the camp with my son, keep him safe, bring your little Mouse here and look after her. I beg of you.” But in my typically pigheaded fashion, which Meggie and Susie have always said was going to get me in trouble … and so it has … I felt that I could not disappoint my women, could not let my partner Pretty Nose go into battle alone … and thus despite Hawk’s entreaties, and even though I did not wish to go to war, I went anyway … and this is where that decision has brought me … what a fool I am.
Is it true what Seminole said? Was Hawk shot? Is he dead? Do I really believe he has the ability to know where I am, that he will come for me? That he can turn himself into a raptor? To fly? Or was it simply a trick of ventriloquism on his part?… for the only thing I know for certain is that he can mimic the cry of a hawk in a voice indistinguishable from that of the bird itself … and he can make it sound as if it is coming from the air. But fly…? Have I gone mad? It is a notion counter to all reason, to all we know about the physical world around us. Of course, people cannot turn themselves into birds, they cannot fly. They do not converse with bears as Hawk said his grandmother had … as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Had I suggested any such thing to my students when I was teaching school, I would surely have been branded a witch—tarred and feathered, turned out, shunned … or worse, burned at the stake.
Yet reason and the physical world, the nature of reality itself, is simply different among the natives … less rigid, broader, more fluid. It reminds me of the Kellys’ advice to forget everything we ever knew or learned in our past lives, for none of it applies here. The natives have a way of putting it themselves: “the real world behind this one,” they call it, suggesting that what we see and understand of the surface world is but a façade, which they are capable of navigating beyond. And so it is that in living among them, such things as shape-shifters, talking bears, men turning into birds and flying, all seem somehow plausible.
Being thrust back into the rational realm of civilization has prompted these thoughts on my part, these questions, these grave doubts. It is like the first few moments upon waking from a vivid dream, while one is still in that limbo state between one world and another, not certain where the line lies between the two, or even which is which. Gradually at first, and then all at once, the actuality of the physical world overwhelms that of the dream. Perhaps this is what is happening to me now. Life with Hawk and the Cheyenne is the dream, as was my captivity by Seminole a nightmare, all beginning to fade in the face of this, the real world, to which I have been so abruptly returned.
And something else … I feel my daughter’s death more acutely here again … for it is here that it happened. Not that I ever forgot her in my short, fledgling life with Hawk, but somehow there the pain was mitigated by being immersed in a strange, alien place in which Clara had never lived, in which we had never lived together. I long to sink back into that dream, to have Hawk’s baby, all of us women together in our lodges, with our husbands and children, living a simple life in nature—but without war, without violence.
22 June 1876
Captain Bourke returned again this morning, bearing a thick folder of papers. He asked for permission to sit, and he took the chair across from mine at the small traveling campaign table that furnishes my tent. He opened the folder and withdrew several sheets of paper from the top, his dark brow furrowed, wearing not at all a triumphant expression, but one of genuine regret.
“From the physical description,” he said, “height, weight, eye and hair color, this would appear to be your dossier, madam, or may I address you now as Mrs. Paterson, Mrs. Molly Paterson?”
“No, that you may not do, Captain. I go under my maiden name, Miss Molly McGill, and you may call me that, but not the other.”
“However, you were listed under the name Paterson in the brides program, is that not correct?”
“Yes. But I am telling you, it is no longer my name.”
“And your residence was Sing Sing Prison in New York?”
I nodded.
Bourke looked again at the papers in his hand. “I now understand, Miss McGill,” said Bourke, sadly, “why you were reluctant to reveal your true identity. A convicted murderer serving a life sentence…”
“As you can see, Captain, the brides program was not terribly selective.”
This prompted a slight ironic smile from the captain. “May I assume that you were wrongly convicted, Miss McGill?”
“Not at all. Guilty as charged.”
“And you feel no remorse?”
“None. Would it make you feel better if I did, Captain? You’re goin
g to send me back, aren’t you?”
“It was not my decision to make,” he said, “but, yes, you are to be returned to New York as soon as possible. You will be transported by Army escort to the Union Pacific station in Medicine Bow. There you will be met by officers of the U.S. Marshals Service who will accompany you on the journey to New York.”
I lifted a foot, rattling again my chain. “Wearing these, I assume?”
“That will be determined by the marshals.”
“And when do I leave?”
“Within forty-eight hours. There is still paperwork to be completed. I’m sorry, Miss McGill. Truly, I am. You have clearly led a difficult life, and been hardened by it.”
“Living in New York with a drunken wastrel husband who murdered our daughter does that to a girl, Captain … not to mention two years in prison, much of that in solitary confinement … or for that matter this life I have led thus far on the plains. I expect your friend, May Dodd, was equally hardened by her experiences, was she not?”
A shadow crossed Bourke’s face, and he looked away but did not answer, the pain in his expression mixed with a certain confusion. It became clear to me how incomprehensible May’s life as a woman, and mine, were to the captain … he seemed to be searching for a way to forgive us our trespasses.
“I met your daughter while among the Cheyenne, Captain.”
“That is quite enough, Miss McGill,” Bourke snapped. “My personal life is none of your concern.”
“I am concerned about all children. Especially those living with what remains of the free tribes, given U.S. Army policy toward the disposition of these people.”