One Thousand White Women

by Jim Fergus

  When I returned several hours later to my tent, Martha lay awake in her cot beside mine. “May, dear God, are you quite mad?” she whispered, as I slipped beneath my blanket.

  I smiled and moved my head close to hers, and quoted, also in a whisper, “‘Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do.’ As You Like It, Act III, Scene 2. Perhaps this is why each time I have fallen in love, I am accused of madness, Martha.”

  “Love? Good God, May,” Martha said, “it’s impossible! The man is engaged. You are engaged. It can never be.”

  “I know, Martha,” I answered. “Of course it can’t. I only play. ‘We that are true lovers run into strange capers.’ As you may have guessed we amused ourselves by reading from As You Like It tonight.”

  “You’re not going to quit us, May?” Martha asked with a tremor in her voice. “You’re not going to abandon me to the savages while you run off with the Captain, are you?”

  “Of course not, dear,” I said. “All for one and one for all. Isn’t that the vow we made?”

  “Because I never would have come, May, if it weren’t for you,” said poor timid Martha, and I could tell that she was near to tears. “Please don’t leave me. I’ve been worried sick about it, ever since I noticed how you and the Captain look at each other. Everyone has noticed. All have spoken of it.”

  I reached out and took Martha’s hand in mine. “All for one and one for all,” I repeated. “I’ll never leave you, Martha. I swear. Never.”

  23 April 1875

  As I had suspected, the White woman has already been spreading lies about my so-called “tryst” with the Captain. She is abetted in these efforts by the Southerner, Daisy Lovelace, with whom Miss White seems to have struck up an unlikely friendship—possibly because they are both generally disliked by the others. But what possible difference can their opinion of me make? The scurrilous gossip they spread is fueled by dull envy, and I shall not let it concern me.

  Everyone has also noticed that both Miss White and Miss Lovelace try at every opportunity to curry favor with the Captain—unaware apparently that he, being a strict Catholic, dislikes Protestants on general principle— and, by reason of his wartime experience in the Union Army, is equally prejudiced against Southerners.

  It is a pathetic thing, indeed, to listen to the poor Lovelace woman trying to impress the Captain at the dining table with stories about her “Daddy” and the plantation they once owned with the two hundred “niggahs.” Such information serves no other purpose than to offend the Captain further. One night at dinner, he asked her politely what had become of her father’s plantation.

  “Why Daddy lost everythin’ during the wah, suh,” she said. “Damn Yankees burned the house to the ground and set the niggahs free. Daddy never did recover from the shock; he took to drink and died a broken and penniless man.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that, madam,” the Captain said with a polite incline of his head, but not without the usual spark of amusement in his eyes. “And did your father fight in the great war?” he asked.

  “No suh, he did not,” said the dreadful woman, who clutched her old decrepit poodle, Fern Louise, to her breast. She allows the wretched little creature to sit on her lap at meals, fussing over it like a baby and feeding it morsels of food from her plate. “Mah daddy felt that his fust duty was to stay home and protect his family and his property from the vicious rape and pillage for which the Yankee army was so infamous. And so Daddy sent two of his best buck niggahs to fight in his stead. Course, straightaway they run off to join the Union, like all niggahs’ll do given the very fust opportunity.” An unseen glance passed between the Captain and me; already we have a way of communicating wordlessly and we were both thinking at that moment that the Bard himself could scarcely have penned a more deserved end for this woman’s dear departed daddy.

  24 April 1875

  We have now entered Indian country, and are forbidden to venture away from the wagons unescorted by soldiers. We have just been informed that last month Lt. Levi Robinson, after whom the new camp to which we are being conducted was named, was ambushed and murdered by hostile Sioux Indians from the nearby Red Cloud Agency while accompanying a wood train from Fort Laramie on this very same route. Evidently this news has been kept from us until now, for fear of causing panic among our women, and, of course, further explains our large military escort and the fact that Captain Bourke is in command of it.

  The proximity of danger has imparted a new sense of immediacy to our mission, almost as if until this very moment, we had been but half-aware of the true nature of our destination—or perhaps only half-willing to think about it. I suspect that this may also be the cause of the increasing gravity I have noticed in John Bourke’s countenance since we departed Fort Laramie. Onward we go, closer and closer to our appointed fate …

  25 April 1875

  I have made an extraordinary discovery. This afternoon I went into the willows to do my business and there I surprised our teamster “Jimmy” in the same act. By obvious means I now know that “he” is a “she”—yes, not a young man at all, but a woman! I knew something was peculiar about him … her … from the beginning. Her real name, she has confessed to me, is Gertie, and she is known on the frontier as “Dirty Gertie.” We have heard stories of this woman’s escapades at the forts and trading posts all along the way. A saloon girl, turned gambler, turned gunslinger, turned muleskinner, she’s as rough and eccentric a woman as ever I’ve encountered, but not at all a bad sort, I believe, only a bit rough around the edges. She has begged me not to tell her secret as the other muleskinners are entirely ignorant of her true identity, and she would surely lose her position if they knew of the deception.

  “I’m just tryin’ to make my way in the world, honey,” she explained. “Ain’t a mule outfit in the country that’ll hire on a gal skinner—especially one named Dirty Gertie. And I learnt some time ago that if I go around as a boy, it keeps most a them fellas from tryin’ to crawl into my bedroll all night long—and those that does is roughly served by their compadres. Now a gal can holler all she wants and probly the only thing’ll happen is the others’ll line up behind the first. But if they think you’re a boy and one’em tries to get in your britches, why the others enjoy to inflict hurt on that kind of pervert. Men are strange creatures, honey, that’s all I know for sure.”

  Although I had some difficulty imagining the men beating a path to Dirty Gertie’s bedroll, I do enjoy riding up on the buckboard with “Jimmy” all the more for knowing “his” secret. I have not told another soul. Not even the Captain—although I have a suspicion he already knows.

  5 May 1875

  Camp Robinson is just as it sounds—a camp, a tent camp. We are housed in large communal tents where we sleep upon wooden and canvas cots with the same coarse woolen Army blankets to which we have grown accustomed on the trail. Great security measures are being taken here as well, with guards posted everywhere at all hours—to the extent that we have less privacy than ever.

  By all accounts there has been much unrest among the Indians at the agency throughout the spring. On the same day in February that poor Lieutenant Robinson was killed, the agent here, a man named Appleton, was murdered at Red Cloud and fourteen mules stolen from the government supplier’s string. Our own Cheyennes have been implicated in these depradations, along with the Sioux. We seem to have arrived at a volatile, if perhaps timely moment, and Captain Bourke is all the more concerned for our welfare. Soon we shall have full opportunity to put to the test the notion that we women may exert some civilizing influence over the wayward savages.

  After regular defections en route our little group now numbers well under forty women. We have been informed that we are the first installment of “payment” to the savages—thus we are truly pioneers in this strange experiment. Reportedly, more will immediately follow, as other groups have currently embarked to various forts across the region. As the first, we are to be “traded�
� to a very prominent band of the Cheyenne tribe—that of the great Chief Little Wolf. Vis-à-vis the Captain’s ethnographic expertise, we are told that the Cheyennes live in small communal bands that come together at certain times of year, somewhat like the great flocks of migratory geese. This makes the logistics of such an exchange rather complex, for these nomadic people follow the buffalo herds hither and yon during the spring, summer, and fall months and then maintain more or less permanent winter villages along some of the major river courses. We will be going first to one of these winter encampments, the exact location of which is unknown, but the Captain warns that we must be prepared to be on the move almost constantly. This sounds ever more foreign and terrifying to those of us who have been accustomed to a generally sedentary existence. Indeed, I wonder if there could have been any preparation made to ready us for our coming ordeal. Perhaps the Captain is right and this is all madness. Thank God we have Phemie and Helen Flight along. And Gretchen, too. Their close familiarity with the wilds of Nature should be invaluable to us all on this adventure, for many of our women are strictly “city girls” with little knowledge of the out-of-doors. I begin to understand why the recruiter Mr. Benton asked if we enjoyed camping out overnight … the least of our worries as the Captain pointed out …

  6 May 1875

  Good God, we saw them today! Our adoptive people. A contingent of them rode in to inspect us as though we were trade goods … which, indeed, is precisely what we are. They quite succeeded in taking my breath away. I counted fifty-three in the party—although it was somewhat like trying to count grains of sand on the wind—all men, mounted, they rode as if they were extensions of the horses themselves, rode in together like a dust devil, like one being, whirling and wheeling their horses. Our guards, alarmed, stood at the arms-ready position, surrounding our tent quarters, but it was soon clear to all that the Indians had only come to inspect the trade goods.

  They are, I am relieved to report, nothing at all like those pitiable wretches around the forts. They are a lean and healthy race of men, dark of face, brown as chestnuts, small-boned and with sinewy, ropy muscles. They have a true animal litheness about them, and a certain true nobility of countenance. My first impression is that they are somehow closer to the animal kingdom than are we Caucasians. I mean this not in any disparaging sense; I mean only to say that they seem more “natural” than we—completely at one with the elements. Somehow I had imagined them to be physically larger, hulking creatures—as the artists render them in the periodicals—not these slender, nearly elfin beings.

  Which is not to suggest that the savages are unimposing. Many of our visitors had their faces painted in bizarre designs, and were resplendently attired in leggings and shirts made of hide, with all manner of fantastic adornment. Others were bare-chested and bare-legged, their torsos, too, painted fantastically. Some wore feathers and full headdresses and carried brilliantly decorated lances that flashed in the sunlight. They wore beads and hammered silver coins in their braided hair, necklaces of bones and animal teeth, brass buttons, and silver bells so that their grand entrance was accompanied by a kind of low musical chattering and tinkling that contributed to a general effect of otherworldliness.

  They are magnificent horsemen and handled their small, quick-stepping ponies with perfect precision, the horses themselves spectacularly painted with designs, their manes and tails decorated with feathers and beads, pieces of animal fur, brass and copper wire, buttons and coins.

  Some of the savages wore little more than loincloths in the way of clothing—these are immodest garments that leave little to the imagination and caused some of our young ladies to turn their heads away out of a sense of modesty. Not so I, having never been of a particularly modest disposition. Indeed, among the many other contradictory emotions that I experienced upon first laying eyes upon these whirling creatures—man and horse—I admit to having felt an eerie, terrifying sense of exhilaration.

  The apparent leader of this contingent of Cheyennes, a proud and handsome man, conferred in rapid sign language with the sergeant in charge of our guard troops. We have been advised that we must all learn the sign language as soon as possible, and pamphlets prepared by Lt. W. P. Clarke describing some of the most common gestures have been distributed among us. Captain Bourke, who is well-versed himself in this skill, has been teaching us a few of the rudimentary gestures. In jest, the Captain and I have even attempted to act out a passage from Romeo and Juliet in sign talk—and not without some success, I might add—and a great deal of merry laughter—which activity seems ever more precious as our fate approaches!

  Having heard the speech of some of the hangs-around-the-fort Indians and that of the Army’s own native scouts, I do not very well see how we shall ever be able to learn the spoken language of these people. It sounds so primitive to the ear—grunting and guttural—obviously a tongue without familiar Latin roots … we may as well try to learn the speech of coyotes or cranes for all it has in common with ours.

  Now some of our women could only bring themselves to peek timidly from behind the tent flaps as the Indians milled about making these dreadful sounds. Those more bold among us came out to stand in the yard in front of the tents for a better look at our new gentlemen friends. It was a peculiar moment, I can assure you: the women gathered together in small clusters facing these savage mounted men, both parties inspecting the other like packs of dogs sniffing the wind.

  Poor Martha blushed crimson and was rendered completely speechless by the sight of the Indians.

  Our Englishwoman, Helen Flight, her eyebrows raised as always in pure astonishment, was, as usual, at a less total loss for words. “Oh … my goodness! Colorful lot, aren’t they? That is to say, the Indians of the Florida swamps with whom I had brief acquaintance were usually covered with a terribly unattractive brown mud against the ubiquitous mosquitos. But these chaps are an artist’s dream!”

  “Or a guurl’s wuuust naaghtmare,” said Daisy Lovelace, who I’m certain had been drinking, and clutched her old tiny French poodle to her breast, her hooded eyes narrowed to slits. “Why they are as daahk as niggahs, Feeern Loueeese. Wouldn’t Daddy jest die if he knew his little girl was going to marry a damn niggah Injun boy?”

  The cheeky Kelly twins were also completely uncowed by the spectacle of savages, and pushed directly to the front of our group to face the Indians boldly. For their part the Cheyennes seemed fascinated by the sight of the twin redheads; the men grunted and sneaked furtive looks at them. The savages have the oddest way of looking at you, while not appearing to look at you. It is difficult to describe but the men did not stare directly at us in the same way that white men might, but rather seemed to study us in their peripheral vision. “Look, Meggie,” said Susan. “See how charmed that one is with me! That handsome laddy there on the spotted white pony. Aye, I believe he loykes me!” And with this, the brazen girl hiked her dress up to reveal her bare leg to the young man. “’Ave a peek at that then, darlin’,” she said with a raw laugh. “How’d ya like to rest your lance in that sweet cooontry?” Her bold gesture seemed to cause the poor fellow great distress, and he wheeled his horse in a tight circle.

  “Ah, but you’re a naughty girl, Susie, ye are!” said sister Margaret. “Aye, lookit how you’ve got the poor lad roonnin’ in circles already! It’s sartain, though, that he’s got eyes for you.”

  Gretchen Fathauer stood, solid as a house, her hands on her broad hips, eyes squinted against the sun. Finally she raised her fist in the air, and shook it as if to get their attention, and cried out. “Yah! All you fellas there! I am a goot woman! I make someone of you a goot wife.” And she pounded her breast. “I yam not a pretty girl but I make bick, strong babies!” And she laughed, bellowing like a cow.

  Phemie, as always perfectly serene, only chuckled in her deep good-natured way and shook her head, seemingly quite pleased at the spectacle. Her dark Negro skin seemed to cause a bit of commotion among the savages, as well, for several milled around her, making s
ounds like conversation and touching their own faces as if discussing her skin color. Then someone called out to the crowd and a moment later a large Negro Indian rode to the front and presented himself to Phemie. I mean to say that he was dressed exactly like the savages but he was very clearly a black man, and a large black man at that, who, seated on his little Indian horse, made the thing look like a child’s pony. “Well, I’ll be,” Phemie said, chuckling, “I thought I’d seen everything, but just look at you. What you doin’ dressed up like an Indian, nigger?” But the black man did not appear to speak English any more than the other savages, and he only grunted something incomprehensible to her in their language.

  There then ensued a spirited discussion among the heathens. Some began to shout out to one another; it reminded me a bit of the atmosphere of a cattle auction at the Chicago stockyards; I believe that the men were actually staking their claims to us! They never pointed their fingers, but studied us intently and called out. We could only imagine their discussion: “I’ll take that one with the yellow hair! I’ll take the redhead. I’ll take the big one! I’ll take the black-skinned woman. I choose the one in the blue dress! I’ll take the one with the white dog! Had it not all been so perfectly dreamlike, perhaps we might have taken offense at their presumption. But it has been clear from the beginning, and never more so than at this moment, that we are in the process of entering a new world, that the civilization which we have inhabited all our lives is crumbling away beneath us like an enormous sinkhole opening under our feet.