One Thousand White Women

by Jim Fergus

  “Fern Louise, is it then?” says Meggie. “Isn’t that a grand name, Susie?”

  “Loovely, Meggie,” Susan says. “A loovely little dog.”

  Still ignoring them, the Southern woman pulls a small silver flask from her purse and takes a quick sip, which act is of great interest to the twins.

  “Is that whiskey you’ve got there, Missy?” Margaret asks.

  “No, it is naught whiskey,” says the woman coolly. “It is mah nuurve medicine, doctor’s order, and no, you may not have a taste of it.”

  The twins have met their match with this one I can see!

  Now here comes my friend, Gretchen Fathauer, bulling her way down the aisle of the train, swinging her arms and singing some Swiss folksong in a robust voice. Gretchen never fails to cheer us all up. She is a big-hearted, enthusiastic soul—a large, boisterous, buxom rosy-cheeked lass who looks like she might be able to spawn single-handedly all the babes that the Cheyenne nation might require.

  By now we all know Gretchen’s history almost as well as our own: Her family were immigrants from Switzerland, who settled on the upland prairie west of Chicago to farm wheat when Gretchen was a girl. But the family farm failed after a series of bad harvests caused by harsh winters, blight, and insect attack, and Gretchen was forced to leave home as a young woman and seek employment in the city. She found work as a domestic with the McCormick family—yes, the very same—Father’s dear friend Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaper … isn’t it odd, Hortense, to think that we probably visited the McCormicks in our youth at the same time that Gretchen was employed there—but of course we would never have paid any attention to the bovine Swiss chambermaid.

  Gretchen longed to have a family of her own and one day she answered an advertisement in the Tribune seeking “mail-order” brides for western settlers. She posted her application and several months later was notified that she had been paired with a homesteader from Oklahoma territory. Her intended was to meet her at the train station in St. Louis on an appointed day, and convey her to her new home. Gretchen gave notice to the McCormicks and two weeks later boarded the train to St. Louis. But alas, although she has a heart of gold, Gretchen is terribly plain … indeed, I must confess that she is rather more than plain, to the extent that one of the less kind members of our expedition has referred to the poor dear as “Miss Potato Face” … and even those more charitable among us must admit that her countenance does have a certain unfortunate tuberous quality.

  Well, Gretchen’s intended had only to take one look at her, with which he excused himself under pretense of fetching his baggage, and Gretchen never laid eyes on the miserable cur again. She tells the story now with great good humor, but she was clearly devastated. She had given up everything—and was now abandoned at the train station in a strange city, with only her suitcase, a few personal effects, and the meager savings from her former employment. She could not bear the humiliation of going back to Chicago and asking the McCormicks for her old job. Nor was the possibility of returning to her family, shamed thusly by matrimonial rejection, any more appealing to her. No, Gretchen was determined to have a husband and children one way or another. She sat on the bench at the train station and wept openly at her plight. It was at that very moment that a gentleman approached her. He handed her a small paper flyer on which was printed the following:

  If you are a healthy young woman of childbearing age, who seeks matrimony, exotic travel, and adventure, please present yourself to the following address promptly at 9.00 a.m., Thursday morning on the twelfth day of February, the year of our Lord, 1875.

  Gretchen laughs when she tells the story—a great hearty bellow—and says in her heavy accent, “Vell, you know, I tought this young fellow must be a messenger from God, I truly do. And ven I go to to dis place, and dey ask me if I like to marry a Cheyenne Indian fellow and have his babies, I say: ‘Vell, I tink de savages not be so chooosy, as dat farmer yah? Sure, vy not? I make beeg, strong babies for my new hustband. Yah, I feed da whole damn nursery, yah?’” And Gretchen pounds her massive breast and laughs and laughs.

  Which causes all the rest of us to laugh with her.

  Unable to break the Southern woman’s steely indifference to them, the Kelly sisters have moved on to try their luck in the next car. They remind me of a pair of red foxes prowling a meadow for whatever they might turn up.

  Just now as I was writing, my new friend, Phemie, came to sit beside me. Euphemia Washington is her full name—a statuesque colored girl who came to Chicago via Canada. She is about my same age, and quite striking, I should say nearly fierce, in appearance, being over six feet in height, with beautiful skin, the color of burnished mahogany—a finely formed nose with fiercely flared nostrils, and full Negro lips. I’m sure, dear sister, that you and the family will find it perfectly scandalous to learn that I am now fraternizing with Negroes. But on this train all are equal, at least such is the case in my egalitarian mind.

  “I am writing a letter to my sister at home,” I said to her, “describing the circumstances of some of the girls on the train. Tell me how you came to be here, Phemie, so that I may make a full report to her.”

  At this she chuckled, a rich warm laugh that seemed to issue from deep in her chest. “You are the first person who has asked me that, May,” she said. “And why would your sister be interested in the nigger girl? Some of the others seem quite distressed that I am along.” Phemie is very well spoken, with the most lovely, melodic voice that I’ve ever heard—deep and resonant, her speech like a poem, a song.

  It occurred to me that, truth be told, you, dear sister, probably would not be interested in hearing about the nigger girl. Of course, this I did not say to Phemie.

  “How did you happen to go to Canada, Phemie?” I asked.

  She chuckled again. “You don’t think that I look like a native Canadian, May?”

  “You look like an African, Phemie,” I said bluntly. “An African princess!”

  “Yes, my mother came from a tribe called the Ashanti,” Phemie said. “The greatest warriors in all of Africa,” she added. “One day when she was a young girl she was gathering firewood with her mother and the other women. She fell behind, and sat down to rest. She was not worried, for she knew that her mother would return for her. As she sat, leaning against a tree, she fell asleep. And when she woke up, men from another tribe, who spoke a tongue she did not understand, stood round her. She was only a child, and she was very frightened.

  “They took her away to a strange place, and kept her there in chains. Finally she was put in the hold of a ship with hundreds of others. She was many weeks at sea. She did not know what was happening to her, and she still believed that her mother would come back for her. She never stopped believing that. It kept her alive.

  “The ship finally reached a city the likes of which my mother had never before seen or imagined. Many had died on route but she had lived. In the city she was sold at auction to a white man, a cotton shipper, who owned a fleet of sailing vessels in the port city of Apalachicola, Florida.

  “My mother’s first master was very good to her,” Phemie continued. “He took her into his home where she did domestic duties and even received a bit of education. She learned to read and write, a thing unheard of among the other slaves. And when she became a young woman, her master took her into his bed.

  “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 …

  31 March 1875

  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 go
vernment. 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 …