Passage to the
Wilderness
“A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdu’d,
And neither party loser.”(William Shakespeare,
Henry VI, Part Two, Act IV, Scene 2,
from the journals of May Dodd)
Well, here we are at last, Fort
Laramie, a dusty godforsaken place if ever there was one. It seems
a hundred years ago that we left the comparative lushness of the
Chicago prairie to arrive in this veritable desert of rock and
dust. Good God!
We are housed here together in
barracks, sleeping on rough wooden cots—all very primitive and
uncomfortable … and yet I should not speak those words just yet.
How much more uncomfortable will our lives become in the ensuing
weeks? A week’s rest here, we are told, at which time we are to be
escorted north by a U.S. Army detachment to Camp Robinson, where we
are finally to meet our new Indian husbands. Sometimes I am
convinced that I really must be insane—that we all are. Would not
one have to be insane to come to a place like this of one’s own
free will? To agree to live with savages? To marry a heathen? My
God, Harry, why did you let them take me away …
My Dear Harry,
You have perhaps by now heard the news
of my departure from the Chicago area. Of my relocation to the
West. Or perhaps this news has not yet reached you? Perhaps you are
dead, done in by Father’s hooligans … Oh Harry, I have tried not to
think of you, tried not to think of our sweet babies. Did you give
us all up, Harry, for a handful of coins? I loved you so, and it
tortures me not to know the answer to these questions. Were you
with another woman on the night of our abduction from your life,
drinking and unaware of our plight? I prefer to believe so, Harry,
than to believe that you were in league with Father. Was I not your
faithful lover, the mother of your children? Were we not happy for
a time, you and I? Did we not love our dear babies? How much money
did he give you, Harry? How much was your family worth to
you?
I’m sorry … surely I have unjustly
accused you … perhaps I shall never know the truth … Oh, Harry, my
sweet, my love, they have taken our babies … God, I miss them so, I
ache for them at night, when I awaken with a start, their dear
sweet faces in my dreams. I lie awake wondering how they are
getting on, wondering if they have any memory of their poor mother
who loves them so. If only I could have some news of them. Have you
seen them? No, surely not. Father would never allow it, nor even
allow the fact that such a lowborn man such as yourself could be
the father of his grandchildren. They will grow up spoiled and
privileged as I did, insufferable little monsters who will look
down on the likes of you, Harry. Strange, isn’t it? That our lives
could be torn from us so suddenly, our children swept away in the
middle of the night, their mother incarcerated in an insane asylum,
their father … God only knows what has become of you, Harry. Did
they kill you or did they pay you? Did you die or did you sell us
to the highest bidder? Should I hate you or should I mourn you? I
can hardly bear to think of you, Harry, without knowing … now I can
only dream of someday returning to Chicago, after my mission here
is fulfilled, of coming home to be again with my children, of
finding you and seeking the truth in your eyes.
As it is, Harry, how fortunate that
you and I were never officially married, for I am presently
betrothed to another. Yes, that’s right, I know it seems sudden.
But my general objections to the institution of marriage
notwithstanding, I have struck a strange bargain to purchase my
freedom. And although I do not as yet know the lucky gentleman’s
name, I do know that he is an Indian of the Cheyenne tribe. Yes,
well, I can only make this admission in a letter which even if I
knew how to reach you, I would be forbidden to mail. This is all
supposed to be very secret, though of course it is not … And while
it may sound insane to say so, I felt that I had a duty to write to
you, to tell you this news … even if I cannot post this letter.
Having discharged my obligation, I remain, if nothing else
…
The loving mother of your
children,
May
After a week here at Fort Laramie, I
shall be happy to be under way at last. The boredom has been
unrelieved. We are kept under virtual lock and key, prisoners in
these barracks, allowed only an hour to walk around the grounds in
the afternoons, escorted always by soldiers. Perhaps they fear that
we will fraternize with the agency Indians and all of us have a
change of heart. I must say these are every bit as abject as those
at Sidney—a sorrier more disgraceful group of wretches could not
exist on earth. Primarily Sioux, Arapaho, and Crows we are told.
The men do nothing but drink, gamble, beg, and try to barter their
poor ragged wives and daughters to the soldiers for a drink of
whiskey, or to the half-breeds and other criminal white men who
congregate around the fort. It is all unsavory and pathetic—many of
the women are themselves too drunk to protest and, in any case,
have very little say in these vile transactions.
Yet we must keep heart that these fort
Indians are in no way representative of the people to whom we are
being taken. At least so I continue to maintain for the sake of the
child Sara and my friend Martha. As I pointed out to Martha, even
in the unlikely event that her husband were to trade her to a
soldier for a bottle of whiskey, it would only mean that she would
be free, relieved of her duty, back among her own people. Ah, but
then I had forgotten that dear Martha’s heart is now firmly set on
finding true love among the savages, and thus my attempt to comfort
her with the possible failure of her union had quite the opposite
effect.
The only other diversion in our
otherwise tedious stay at Fort Laramie comes during the communal
meals held in the officers’ dining hall. We have been, presumably
for reasons of security, isolated from the general civilian
population at the fort, but some of the officers and their wives
are allowed to take their meals with us. Once again the “official”
version of our visit here is that we are off to do “missionary”
work among the savages.
Today I had occasion to be seated at
the table of one Captain John G. Bourke, to whose care our group
has been assigned for the remainder of this journey. The Captain is
aide-de-camp to General George Crook himself, the famous Indian
fighter who recently subdued the savage Apache tribe in Arizona
Territory. Some of our ladies had read about the General’s exploits
in the Chicago newspapers. Of course, I did not have access to such
luxuries as newspapers in the asylum …
I am very favorably impressed with
Captain Bourke. He is a true gentleman and treats us, finally, with
proper courtesy and respect. The Captain is unmarried, but rumored
to be engaged to the post commander’s daughter, a pretty if
somewhat uninteresting young lady named Lydia Bradley, who sat on
his right at table, and tried to monopolize the Captain’s attention
by making the most vapid conversation imaginable. Although he was
most solicitous of her, she clearly bores him witless.
Captain Bourke was far more interested
in our group, and asked many penetrating, if delicately phrased,
questions of us. He is clearly privy to the true nature of our
mission—which is not to say that he approves of it. Having spent a
good deal of time among the aboriginals during his former posting
in Arizona Territory, the Captain prides himself on being something
of an amateur ethnographer and seems quite knowledgeable about the
savage way of life.
Apropos of nothing, I shall, by way of
personal aside, mention my observation that the Captain appears to
have rather an eye for the ladies. I confess that he is a most
handsome fellow, with fine military bearing and a manly build. He
is dark of hair that falls just over his collar, wears a moustache,
and has deep-set, soulful, hazel eyes, with a fine mischievous
glint to them as if he were perpetually amused about something.
Indeed his eyes seem less those of a soldier than they do those of
a poet—and are shadowed, somewhat romantically, by a slightly heavy
brow. He is a man of obvious intelligence and
sensitivity.
It amused me and pleased my vanity to
notice further that Captain Bourke directed more of his
conversation to me than to any of the other women at the table.
This fact was not lost on his fiancée and only served to make the
poor thing prattle on ever more inanely.
“John, dear,” she interrupted him at
one point just as he was making an interesting observation about
the religious ceremonies of the Arizona savages. “I’m sure that the
ladies would prefer conversation about more civilized topics at the
dining table. For instance, you have very cavalierly neglected to
compliment me on my new hat, which just arrived from St. Louis and
is the very latest fashion in New York.”
The Captain looked at her with a
distracted and mildly amused air. “Your hat, Lydia?” he asked. “And
what does your hat have to do with the Chiricahuas’ medicine
dance?”
Her efforts to turn the conversation
to the topic of her hat thus rebuffed, the poor girl flushed with
embarrassment. “Why, of course, nothing whatsoever, dear,” she
said. “I thought only that the ladies might be more interested in
New York fashion as a topic of dinner conversation than in the
frankly tedious subject of savage superstitions. Is that not so,
Miss Dodd?” she asked.
I could not help uttering an
astonished laugh. “Why yes, Miss Bradley, your hat is perfectly
lovely,” I said. “Tell me, Captain, do you think that we women
might be able to impart to our savage hosts a finer appreciation of
New York fashion?”
The Captain smiled at me and nodded
gallantly. “How very deftly, madam, you have married the two topics
of ladies headwear and savage customs,” he said, his eyes sparkling
with good humor. “Would that your upcoming missionary work among
them be accomplished as smoothly.”
“Do I detect a tone of skepticism in
your voice, Captain?” I asked. “You do not believe that we might
teach the savages the benefits of our culture and
civilization?”
The Captain adopted a more serious
tone. “It has been my experience, madam,” he said, “that the
American Indian is unable, by his very nature, to understand our
culture—just as our race is unable fully to comprehend their
ways.”
“Which is precisely the intended
purpose of our mission,” I said, treading rather closely to the
subject of our “secret.” “To foster harmony and understanding among
the races—the melding of future generations into one
people.”
“Ah, a noble notion, madam,” said the
Captain, nodding in full acknowledgment of my meaning, “but—and I
hope you will forgive me for speaking bluntly—pure poppycock. What
we risk creating when we tamper with God’s natural separation of
the races will not be one harmonious people, but a people
dispossessed, adrift, a generation without identity or purpose,
neither fish nor fowl, Indian nor Caucasian.”
“A sobering thought, Captain,” I said,
“to a prospective mother of that generation. And you do not believe
that we might exert any beneficent influence whatsoever over these
unfortunate people?”
The Captain reddened in embarrassment
at the boldness of my admission, and Miss Bradley looked confused
by the turn in the conversation.
“It has been my unfortunate
experience, Miss Dodd,” he said, “that in spite of three hundred
years of contact with civilization, the American Indian has never
learned anything from us but our vices.”
“By which you mean,” I said, “that in
your professional opinion our mission among them is
hopeless.”
The Captain looked at me with his
intelligent soulful eyes, the furrow between his eyebrows
deepening. I thought I detected in his gaze, not only concern, but
something more. He spoke in a low voice and his words chilled me to
the bone. “It would be treasonous for an officer to speak against
the orders of his Commander in Chief, Miss Dodd.”
A hush fell over the table, from which
all parties were grateful to be rescued finally by Helen Flight. “I
say, Miss Bradley,” she said, “were you aware that the feathers on
your hat are the breeding plumes of the snowy egret?”
“Why, no, I wasn’t,” answered Miss
Bradley, who seemed relieved and somehow vindicated by the fact
that the conversation had come back, after all, to the subject of
her hat. “Isn’t that fascinating!”
“Quite,” Helen said. “Rather a nasty
business, actually, which I had occasion to witness last spring
while I was in the Florida swamps studying the wading birds of the
Everglades for my Birds of
America portfolio. As you correctly stated, the
feather-festooned hat such as the one you wear is very much the
vogue in New York fashion these days. The hatmakers there have
commissioned the Seminole Indians who inhabit the Everglades to
supply them with feathers for the trade. Unfortunately the adult
birds grow the handsome plumage that adorns your chapeau only
during the nesting season. The Indians have devised an ingenious
method of netting the birds while they are on their nests—which the
birds are reluctant to leave due to their instinct to protect their
young. Of course, the Indians must kill the adult birds in order to
pluck the few ‘aigrettes’ or nuptial plumes as they are more
commonly known. Entire rookeries are thus destroyed, the young
orphaned birds left to starve in the nest.” Miss Flight gave a
small shudder. “Pity … a terribly disagreeable sound that of a
rookery full of nestlings crying for their parents,” she said. “You
can hear it across the swamp for miles …”
Poor Miss Bradley went quite ashen at
this explanation and now touched her new hat with trembling
fingers. I feared that the poor thing was going to burst into
tears. “John,” she said faintly, “would you please escort me back
to my quarters. I’m feeling a bit unwell.”
“Oh, dear, did I say something wrong?”
asked Helen, her eyebrows raised expectantly. “That is to say, I’m
frightfully sorry if I upset you, Miss Bradley.
I was anxious to speak to Captain Bourke at greater length, and in private, about his obvious objections to our mission among the savages, and after dinner I spied him sitting alone in a chair on the veranda of the dining room, smoking a cigar. The bald truth is, I am undeniably drawn to the Captain, which attraction perforce can come to naught … but what harm can there be in an innocent flirtation?
I must have startled the Captain, for
he fairly leapt from his seat at my approach.
“Miss Dodd,” he said, bowing
politely.
“Good evening, Captain,” I answered.
“I trust that Miss Bradley is not too ill? I’m afraid Helen’s
remarks upset her.”
The Captain waved his hand,
dismissively. “I’m afraid that Miss Bradley finds many things
upsetting about life on the frontier,” he said with an amused
glimmer in his eye. “She was sent here last year from New York,
where she has lived most of her life with her mother. She is
discovering that army forts are hardly suited to young ladies of
refined sensibilities.”
“Better suited, perhaps,” I said
jokingly, “to we rough-and-ready girls from the Middle
West.”
“Not well suited, I should say,”
answered the Captain, his brow knitted thoughtfully, “to womankind
in general.”
“Tell me, Captain,” I asked, “if life
at the fort is difficult for women, how much harder will our life
be among the savages?”
“As you may have guessed, Miss Dodd, I
have been fully briefed by my superiors about your mission,” he
said. “As I suggested in our dinner conversation on the subject, I
would prefer not to express my opinion.”
“But you already have, Captain,” I
answered. “And in any case, I do not ask your opinion. I merely ask
you, as an expert on the subject of the savage culture, to describe
something of what we might expect in our new lives.”
“Am I to understand,” said the
Captain, his voice tightening in anger, “that our government did
not provide you ladies with any such information when you were
recruited for this mission?”
“They suggested that we should be
prepared to do some camping,” I said—not without a trace irony in
my tone.
“Camping …” the Captain murmured. “ …
madness, the entire project is utter madness.”
“Would this be a personal or a
professional opinion, Captain?” I asked with an attempt at a laugh.
“President Ulysses S. Grant himself has dispatched us on this noble
undertaking, and you call it madness. Perhaps this is the treason
to which you referred.”
The Captain turned away from me, his
hands crossed behind his back, the fingers of one still holding the
smoldering cigar. His strong profile with long straight nose was
outlined against the horizon; his nearly black hair fell in curls
over his collar. Although this was hardly the time for such
observation on my part, I confess that I could not help but notice
again what a fine figure of a man the Captain is—broad of back,
narrow of hip, straight of carriage … the breeches of the soldier’s
uniform displayed the Captain’s physique in a most favorable light
… watching him now, I felt a stab of something very like … desire—a
sensation which I further attribute to the fact that I have been,
for over a year, confined to an institution without benefit of
masculine company, other than that of my loathsome
tormentors.
Now Captain Bourke turned around to
face me, looked down upon me with a penetrating gaze that quite
literally brought the blood to my cheeks. “Yes,” he said, nodding,
“the President’s men in Washington sent you women here, consigned
you to marriage with barbarians as some sort of preposterous
political experiment. Camping? The very least of your worries, Miss
Dodd, I assure you. Of course, the Washingtonians have no idea what
sort of hardships await you—and probably don’t care. As usual, they
have not bothered themselves to consult those of us who do know.
Our orders are simply to see that you are delivered safely to your
new husbands—offered up, as it were, as trade goods. To be traded
for horses! Shame!” said the Captain, whose anger had come up now
like a fast-moving squall. “Shame on them! It is an abomination in
the eyes of God.”
“Horses?” I replied in a small
voice.
“Perhaps they neglected to mention
that the savages offered horses for their white brides,” the
Captain said.
I recovered my composure quickly.
“Perhaps we should be flattered,” I said. “I understand that the
savages hold their horses in the very highest esteem. Furthermore,
you must remember, my dear Captain, that no one forced us to
participate in this program. We are volunteers. If there is shame
in our mission, then some of it must rest with those of us who
signed up of our own free will.”
The Captain looked at me searchingly,
as if trying to ferret out some possible motive that might make
such a thing comprehensible to him. His broad brow cast a shadow
like a cloud over his eyes. “I watched you at table tonight, Miss
Dodd,” he said in a low voice.
“Your regard did not escape my
attention, Captain,” I said, the blood rising again in my cheeks …
a certain tingling sensation.
“I was trying to understand what had
possessed a lovely young woman like yourself to join such an
unlikely enterprise with such a motley assortment of cohorts,” he
continued. “Some of the others … well, quite frankly it is easier
to speculate why some of the others had signed up. Your British
friend, Miss Flight, for instance, clearly has a pressing
professional need to visit the prairies. And the Irish sisters, the
Kelly twins, why they have the look of rogues about them if ever
I’ve seen it—I’ll wager that they were in trouble with the police
back in Chicago. And the big German girl—well, surely her
matrimonial prospects among men of her own race are somewhat
limited …”
“That is most unkind, Captain,” I
snapped. “You disappoint me. I took you for too much of a gentleman
to make such a remark. The fact is that we are none of us any
better than the next. We all entered into this for our own personal
reasons, none of which is superior to that of the others. Or
necessarily any of your concern.”
The Captain straightened his back and
clicked his heels together with smart military precision. He
inclined his head in a slight bow. “You’re quite right, madam,” he
said. “Please accept my apology. My intention was not to insult
your companions. I only meant that a pretty, intelligent, witty,
and obviously well-brought-up young lady such as yourself hardly
fits the description of the felons, lonely hearts, and mentally
deranged women that we had been notified by the government to
expect as volunteers in this bizarre experiment.”
“I see,” I said, and I laughed. “So
this is how our little troupe was billed; no wonder that we have
been treated with such disdain by all we encounter. Would it salve
your conscience, Captain, to know that you were handing over only
such misfits and riffraff to the savages?”
“Not in the least,” said the Captain.
“That isn’t at all what I meant.” And then Captain Bourke did a
peculiar thing. He took me by the elbow, grasped my arm lightly but
firmly in his hand. The gesture was at once oddly proprietary and
intimate, like the touch of a lover, and I felt again the pulse of
my own desire. He stepped closer to me, still holding my arm, close
enough that I could smell the aura of cigar smoke about him, could
smell his own rich manly odor. “It would still be possible for you
to refuse, madam,” he said.
I looked into his eyes, and stupidly,
as if in a kind of trance, as if paralyzed by his touch, I took his
words to mean that it would still be possible for me to refuse his
amorous advances.
“And why would I do that, Captain?” I
asked in a whisper. “How could I refuse you?”
And then it was the Captain’s turn to
laugh, releasing my arm suddenly and pulling away, clearly
embarrassed by this misunderstanding … or was it? “Forgive me, Miss
Dodd,” he said. “I meant … I only meant that it would still be
possible for you to refuse to participate in the Brides for Indians
program.”
I must have turned very red in the
face. I excused myself then and returned forthwith to my
quarters.
Captain Bourke was noticeably absent
at the dining table yesterday, as was his fiancée Miss Bradley … I
suspect that they must have dined privately, perhaps in the
Captain’s own quarters … Hah! It suddenly occurs to me that my
journal entries—like my entirely inappropriate romantic longings of
the past twenty-four hours—begin to sound like those of a lovesick
schoolgirl. I seem quite unable to get the good Captain out of my
mind. I must be insane! … betrothed to a man whom I have not met,
infatuated with a man whom I cannot have. Good God! Perhaps my
family was correct in committing me to the asylum for promiscuity
…
Dear Hortense,
It is very late at night, and I write
to you by the dim light of a single candle in our spartan Army
barracks at Fort Laramie. I am unable to sleep. A very strange
thing has happened tonight of which I can not breathe a word to any
of my fellow brides. Yet I am bursting to confide in someone, and
so I must write you, my sister … yes, it reminds me of when we were
little girls and still close, you and I, and I would come into your
room late at night and crawl into your bed and we would giggle and
tell each other our deepest secrets … how I miss you, dear Hortense
… miss the way we once were … do you remember?
Let me tell you my secret. At dinner
this evening I was seated once again, and I think not by accident,
at the table of one Captain John G. Bourke, who has been chosen to
escort us to Indian territory. Indeed, we are scheduled to depart
tomorrow for Camp Robinson, Nebraska Territory, where we are to
meet our new Indian husbands.
Although he is only twenty-seven years
of age, Captain Bourke is a very important officer, already a war
hero, having won the Medal of Honor at the bloody battle of Stones
River, Tennessee. He comes from a good middle-class family in
Philadelphia, is well-educated and a complete gentleman. He is at
once extremely witty, with a mischievous sense of humor, and truly
one of the handsomest men I’ve ever set eyes on—dark with
intelligent, piercing hazel eyes that seem able to gaze directly
into my heart. It is most disconcerting.
Under the circumstances you might
think that there is little opportunity for gaiety or flirtation
among our group of lambs off to slaughter, but this is not so.
Dinnertime especially offers us some diversion from the boredom and
inactivity of fort life, and in the manner natural to any group of
unmarried women, all have been vying for the Captain’s attentions.
And all are green with envy that he only has eyes for
me.
Our mutual, and perforce, perfectly
innocent attraction and good-natured banter has not been lost on
Miss Lydia Bradley, the post commander’s pretty, if vapid,
daughter, to whom Captain Bourke is engaged to be married this
summer. She watches her fiance like a hawk—as I would if he were
mine—and misses no opportunity to divert him from his attentions
toward me.
As a painfully obvious tactic toward
this end, Miss Bradley goes to great lengths to cast me in an
unfavorable light in the Captain’s eyes. Unfortunately she’s not a
terribly clever girl, and her efforts so far have been distinctly
unsuccessful. Tonight at table, for instance, she said: “Tell me,
Miss Dodd, as a member of the church missionary society, I am
curious to know with which denomination you are affiliated?” Ah, so
her first gambit would be to expose me as a Protestant in front of
the Captain who, is himself, as he had just informed us, Catholic,
having been educated as a boy by the Jesuits.
“Actually, Miss Bradley, I am neither
a member of the missionary society,” I said, “nor affiliated with
any particular denomination. Truth be told, I’m a bit of an
agnostic when it comes to organized religion.” I have found that
the best, and certainly simplest defense of one’s faith, or lack
thereof, is the truth. And while I hoped that this information did
not prejudice the good Captain against me, it has also been my
experience that the Roman Catholics often prefer those of no faith
to those of the wrong faith.
“Oh?” said the girl, feigning
confusion. “I would have thought that to go among the heathens as a
missionary, membership in the church would be the very first
requisite.”
It was again obvious where Miss
Bradley was trying so clumsily to lead me. I’m certain that the
Captain’s sense of duty and discretion would have prevented him
from discussing professional matters with his fiancée, but clearly
she had by now deduced the true nature of our
enterprise.
“That would depend,” I answered
lightly, “on what sort of mission one was fulfilling, Miss Bradley.
Of course, I am not at liberty to discuss the details of our
upcoming work among the savages, but suffice it to say that we are
… shall we say … ambassadors of peace.”
“I see,” said the girl, visibly
disappointed that she had elicited from me no hint of embarrassment
for being a wanton woman off to couple with heathens. Having spent
over a year in a lunatic asylum for roughly this same “sin,” I am
scarcely intimidated by the transparent interrogations of a twit
such as Miss Bradley. “Ambassadors of peace …” she added, trying
for a trace of sarcasm in her voice.
“That’s right,” I said, and I
quoted:
“‘A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdu’d,
And neither party loser.’
So saith the great
Shakespeare.”
“Henry
VI, Part Two, Act IV, Scene 2!” boomed the Captain,
with a broad smile. And then he quoted himself:
“‘You did know
How much you were my conqueror, and that
My sword, made weak by my affection, would
Obey it on all cause.’”
“Antony and
Cleopatra, Act III, Scene 11,” I said, with equal
pleasure.
“Wonderful!” the Captain said. “You’re
a student of the Bard, Miss Dodd!”
I laughed heartily. “And you, too,
sir!” And poor Miss Bradley, having inadvertently led us, like
horses to water, toward yet another common interest, fell silent
and brooding, as we embarked upon a lively discussion of the great
Shakespeare, joined enthusiastically by Miss Flight. The Captain is
bright and extremely well read—altogether a perfectly charming
dinner companion, and the evening was very gay, without further
mention of our rapidly approaching fate …
Yes, yes, I know, Hortense. I can hear
your objections already. I am fully aware that this is hardly the
time to be embarking upon romantic liaisons—especially as both
Captain Bourke and I are, shall we say, “bespoke.” On the other
hand, perhaps there is no better time for just such innocent
flirtation—which is certainly all that it can be. After my ghastly
ordeal in the asylum, where I fully expected to die lying in a
dark, sunless room, you cannot imagine how wonderful it is to be in
the company of a dashing Army officer who finds me … desirable. You
would have no way of knowing this dear, but often forbidden love is
the sweetest of all … ah yes, I can just hear you saying, “Good
Lord, now she speaks of love!”
After dinner, poor Miss Bradley was
“unwell”—the second time she has fallen ill since she’s dined with
our group. The Captain maintains that she is simply too delicate
for frontier life, but as we women well know, feigning illness is
the last refuge of one who lacks imagination.
I was already on the porch waiting for
him when, after escorting Miss Bradley home, Captain Bourke
returned to smoke his evening cigar. It was a lovely spring
evening, warm and mild. The days are lengthening and dusk was just
beginning to settle over the land, so that the bare rocky buttes of
this godforsaken country were softened in gentle outline against
the horizon. There was still a bit of color in the sky where the
sun had set over the western hills. I stood facing the day’s last
fading light when the Captain approached.
“Would you care to take a stroll
around the fort grounds, Miss Dodd?” he asked, stepping beside me
so that his arm brushed lightly against mine. His touch was like
that of flesh on flesh. It made my knees weak.
“I’d be delighted, Captain,” I said,
but I did not move away from his touch … indeed, could not. “Are
you certain that your fiancée would approve,” I added only
half-jokingly, “of your keeping company with another
woman?”
“Unquestionably she would not,” the
Captain said. “I’m sure you must find her to be a silly thing, Miss
Dodd.”
“No, not silly,” I said. “Quite
charming actually. Perhaps only rather young for her years … a bit
callow.”
“And yet she is not, I suspect, very
much younger than you, madam,” he said.
“Ah, tread cautiously, Captain!” I
said “—a delicate subject, a woman’s age. In any case, I am old for
my years. As you are for yours.”
“In what way old, Miss Dodd?” he
asked.
“In the way of experience, Captain
Bourke,” I said. “Perhaps you and I can more fully appreciate the
great Shakespeare because we have both lived enough of life to
understand the truth and wisdom of his words.”
“In my case war was a stern teacher of
truth, if not wisdom,” said the Captain. “But how is it that a
young woman of your obvious breeding knows so much of life,
madam?”
“Captain, it is quite likely that you
and I will not know each other long enough for my personal history
to matter,” I said.
“It matters to me already, Miss Dodd,”
he said. “Surely, you are aware of that.”
I still stared at the horizon, but I
could feel the Captain’s dark eyes on my face, the heat of his arm
against mine. My breath came in shallow draughts as if I could not
take sufficient air into my lungs. “It is late, Captain,” I managed
to say. “Perhaps we should take our stroll another time.” Where our
arms had touched and now parted it was like tearing my own flesh
from the bone.
My candle burns down, dear Hortense, I
must rest my pen …
I am,
Your loving sister, May
Under way at last, we ride in
mule-drawn wagons, escorted by a very snappy company of cavalry, at
the head of which Captain John G. Bourke, with perfect military
carriage, rides a smart-stepping white mare. That the army has
entrusted us to the care of such an illustrious Indian fighter as
the Captain is testament, I believe, to the fact that our safety is
of the utmost concern to the authorities.
A number of the fort residents have
gathered to watch our procession out the gates, including the
Captain’s pretty young fiancée, Lydia Bradley, who is dressed in a
lovely pale pink spring dress and a matching bonnet (noticeably
unadorned by feathers) and who smiles and waves a white handerchief
at her Captain as he passes. He tips his hat to her gallantly. How
I envy them, the life they will lead together. How drab she makes
me feel …
Then we are through the gates, and
beyond the fort and into the great prairie itself. Here the road
rapidly deteriorates until it is little more than two ruts and then
seems to disappear altogether. The ride is rough, the wagon itself
exceedingly uncomfortable, with only the most unforgiving benches
on which to sit. We are constantly jostled, often so violently that
it seems to shake our teeth loose in our heads. Dust seeps up
through the floorboards so that a perpetual cloud roils inside.
Poor Martha has been sneezing since we got under way. With fully a
fortnight yet to go I fear that it will be a long, desperately
unhappy journey for her.
Spring is in full bloom today, which
offers a bit of cheer to this otherwise difficult passage. Much to
the shock of some of the other ladies, I have decided to ride up on
the buckboard alongside our teamster, a rough-spoken young man
named Jimmy. I prefer the open air to choking on dust inside the
wagon, and I am able to see something of the countryside as we
pass, to enjoy a bit of the springtime.
Beyond the vastly improved view,
another advantage to riding up top with Jimmy is that he can
educate me about this new country of ours. While he is a rough lad,
he seems quite knowledgeable on the subject, and I think that
secretly he rather enjoys the feminine company.
Whereas the country on our first day
of travel was flat, tedious, and largely without vegetation of
interest, we seem today to be gaining a more varied topography of
gently rolling hills intersected by rivers and creeks.
It has been a damp spring and the
grass is as green as mother always described Scotland to be when
she was a girt—the prairie wildflowers are just now coming into
bloom, the birds everywhere in full song, the meadowlarks trilling
joyously as if announcing our passage. There are ducks and geese by
the thousands in every pothole of water and upon every flooded
plain. Helen Flight is terribly pleased with the fecundity of bird
life, and periodically begs the Captain to halt our procession so
that she may descend with her shotgun to shoot one of the poor
things—which she first sketches and then expertly skins to keep as
a specimen for her work.
The Captain, a sportsman himself, so
enjoys watching Miss Flight’s prowess with the shotgun that he
hardly objects to the delays caused by our frequent stops. Jimmy,
my new muleskinner friend, is equally admiring of our accomplished
gunner, and takes every opportunity to halt the wagon when birds
are in range so that Miss Flight can display her considerable
skills.
Thus she swings to the ground with
masculine authority, all business, standing with her legs firmly
planted, slightly apart, toes pointing out, to charge her muzzle
loader. Even though the weather is warming daily, Miss Flight still
wears her knickerbocker suit and particularly from the rear looks
far more like a man than a woman. From a flask she carries in her
jacket, she pours gunpowder into the barrel; this she rams home
using wadded cotton from discarded petticoats. This is followed by
a measure of very fine shot and then another wad made of card,
which prevents the shot from rolling out the gun barrel. To her
credit Miss Flight will only shoot the birds on the wing—believing
it “unsporting” to do otherwise.
Not only does she collect her
specimens in this manner, but she is filling our larder with all
manner of game birds and waterfowl, which we surprise out of the
plum thickets or spring potholes along the route. These include
ducks, geese, grouse, snipe, and plover—which fare will undoubtedly
provide a much welcome addition to our Army rations.
In only the first two days out from
Fort Laramie, we have also seen deer, elk, antelope, and a small
herd of bison grazing, and while the Captain will not permit the
soldiers to hunt at too great a distance from the wagon train owing
to the threat of Indians, we should have no want of fresh game en
route.
Because of the spring floodwaters, we
try to keep to the higher ground, though sometimes we are forced to
drop down into the bottoms to ford the rivers and streams. It is
hard going for the mules, who do not like to walk in thick mud, or
even to get their feet wet. “There ain’t nothin’ an old mule hates
worse,” Jimmy instructs me, “than to put their goddamn feet down in water. They ain’t like
a horse that way. They’s just goddamn prissy about water is all. But in
every other way, you can give me an old mule over a horse any day.
Any day.” A strange, rough
boy, Jimmy, but he seems to have a good heart.
Traversing these drainages is a wet,
muddy experience for us all. Several times already today we have
had to descend to lighten the mules’ load, hike our dresses up, and
make our own way across the streams on foot, soaking our feet
through to the bone.
And yet the river bottoms strike me as
the loveliest country, for everything lives here, or passes by here
or comes to water here from the long empty reaches of desert plains
between.
At night we make camp as near to the
water as possible while still being on dry ground. The mules are
hobbled or picketed in the grass meadow, which is already lush with
tender green shoots. It is very pretty. I think that one day I
should like to live in such a place … perhaps one day I shall
return home to reclaim my dear babies and we shall all come here
together … to live in a little house on the banks of a creek, on
the edge of a meadow, surrounded by a grove of cottonwood trees …
ah, sweet dreams keep me alive …
Yes, indeed, and instead I shall soon
be living in a tent! Think of it! Camped out like a nomad, a gypsy!
What an astonishing adventure we have embarked upon!
To my great disappointment, Captain
Bourke has hardly met my eye and barely spoken to me since we
departed Fort Laramie. I sense that he is intentionally avoiding
me. Perhaps because he is officially “on duty” now, his strict,
military deportment appears to have completely supplanted his
charming social demeanor. I confess to preferring the
latter.
Tonight at dinner in the “mess” tent
as the Army insists upon calling it, the conversation turned as it
does with ever greater frequency to the subject of our Cheyennes.
The Captain admitted, if rather grudgingly, that the tribe is a
superior race as the American Indians go—a handsome, proud, and
independent people, who have kept to themselves as much as they
have been able in these times, avoiding the missionaries, the
agencies, and general commerce with the whites more than any of the
other tribes. This, the Captain stated, has allowed them to remain
less “spoiled” than the others.
“I find that to be an unfortunate
choice of words, Captain,” objected our official church
representative Narcissa White, “for it implies that contact with
Christian civilization is the root cause of the spoilation of
heathens, rather than the ladder by which they might climb from the
muck of paganism.”
“I consider myself to be a devout man,
Miss White,” answered the Captain. “But I am also a military man.
It is the lesson of history that in order for Christian
civilization to extend her noble boundaries, barbarians must first
be roundly defeated on the battlefield. By spoiled I mean only that
in giving the Red Man gifts—rations and charity that are not earned
by the sweat of his own brow—our government has never accomplished
anything other than to encourage him, like a dog fed scraps at
table, to beg more gifts, rations, and charity.”
“And brides,” I interjected
good-naturedly. “Give the damn heathens one thousand white women,
and soon they’ll want a thousand more!”
“Although I think you mock me, Miss
Dodd,” said the Captain with an amused glint in his eye, “that is
exactly correct. Such well-intentioned gifts will only make them
bolder in their demands. The savages will never be convinced of the
benefits of civilization until they are first subdued by superior
force.”
“Yes, and isn’t that why the
government is sending us among them?” I said, with a bit of false
bravado.
“Yah, May, I tink so,” Gretchen Fathauer said. “I
tink dey not seen superior
force until dey seen us!”
And we all laughed. For what else is there to do?
This evening after dinner our
muleskinner Jimmy called at the tent in which I share extremely
close quarters with Phemie, Martha, Gretchen, and the girl Sara.
Jimmy asked me to step outside for a word, and then proceeded to
inform me that Captain Bourke should like to see me in his own
quarters. There is little opportunity for privacy in our camps at
the end of the day’s travels, and I must say his request startled
me, especially given the Captain’s recent coolness toward me. The
lad led me there. He is such a strange boy … I cannot put a finger
on it …
The Captain greeted me at the entrance
to his tent, and seemed genuinely pleased that I had come. “I hope
you will not consider my invitation to be too forward, Miss Dodd,”
he said, “but evening bivouacs in the field can be exceptionally
dull, particularly to an old Army man such as myself who has
endured so many of them. I always carry with me in the field my
cherished volume of Shakespeare, which I amuse myself by reading at
night. I thought this evening you might be willing to join me—far
more interesting to read aloud with a fellow
enthusiast.”
“Why thank you, Captain, I’d love to,”
I answered. “And shall I invite Helen Flight to join us, to play
yet a third part?”
I had set this small trap for the
Captain, just to gauge his reaction. And I was not displeased to
see that he was unable to mask the flicker of disappointment that
crossed his brow. But he recovered quickly and was, as usual, the
perfect gentleman. “Yes … yes, by all means, Miss Dodd, a fine
idea, do please ask Miss Flight to please join us. Shall I send
Jimmy to fetch her?”
And then our eyes met and we stared
for some time at one another, and the charade melted away in the
heat of our gaze like parchment paper held over a candle flame. “Or
possibly, John,” I said in a low voice, “may I call you
John?—possibly, John, it might, after all, be more amusing if it
were just the two of us reading tonight.”
“Yes, May,” he whispered, “I was
thinking so myself. Though I fear to expose you in any way to the
appearance of impropriety.”
“Ah, yes, the appearance of
impropriety,” I said. “Certainly that dreadfully sanctimonious
woman Narcissa White will have her spies abroad. She misses
nothing, and no opportunity to meddle in the affairs of others. But
truthfully, Captain, at this point the appearance of impropriety is
quite low on my list of immediate concerns.”
And so I entered John Bourke’s tent,
an event which caused, as we had both suspected, no small scandal
among our traveling party—although the evening was passed in
perfect … I should say near perfect … innocence, for both of us are
well aware of the other’s feelings and to. spend such time alone in
company is only to fan the embers of that which cannot be. But this
night we read Shakespeare together—nothing more. Nothing less. The
fact is that nothing else has transpired between us besides a
mutual but unspoken longing. It hangs between us, as palpable as a
spider’s web connecting our fates. Possibly it is simply due to the
bizarre circumstances, or the fact that we must be denied one
another, but I have never in my life known such a powerful stirring
of feelings …
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.”
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.
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
…
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.
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
…
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 sounds 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.
I looked about trying to ascertain
who, if anyone, had claimed me, when my eyes met the averted glance
of the one who had ridden in at the head of this contingent, and
now sat on his horse, perfectly motionless and silent. He held a
lance and an elaborately decorated shield, and wore a magnificent
headdress of eagle feathers that spilled down his back and across
his horse’s rump. White zigzag lightning bolts ran down the legs of
his black horse, but he wore no paint on his own face. He looked
somewhat older than most of the others, or perhaps more accurately
only seemed older, for he owned a certain stillness and confidence
that suggested maturity. He had dark skin and very fine features
with a fierce set to his jaw. Nor did he call out as the others
had, but sat his mount like a statue. Now he raised his lance, and
made with it a single short shake toward me, an imperious, kinglike
gesture of taking, a kind of feudal ownership by right, and I knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt that this one, the headman, had chosen
me to be his bride. I nodded … less to my future husband
personally, than in simple resignation, a kind of final acceptance
of this terrible bargain we have struck, and I confess that I
thought to myself with pure womanly calculation and my bedrock
sense of practicality: I could do worse
than this one.
At that precise moment I looked across
the yard at the company of mounted soldiers who watched over these
strange proceedings in nervous formation. They were trying to
control their nervous horses, who snorted and whinnied, pranced and
pawed—the air pungent and dangerous with the foreign scents and
sights of their wild counterparts. And there at the head of his
battalion, standing straight in his stirrups as his own white mount
slipped sideways, Captain John Bourke stared at me with a look of
unbearable sadness in his eyes.
As suddenly as they had ridden in and
as if by some unknown signal, the savages wheeled all as one in
perfect synchronization, like a covey of blackbirds rising from the
ground, and galloped off as they had come …
This morning, Colonel Bradley, the
post commander, came to see us, accompanied by Captain Bourke—the
purpose of their visit, to explain to us the procedures of our
impending “transfer.” How little romance there is in that word!
This is to be effected in the morning. The Cheyennes will come for
us just past daybreak; we are advised to travel with as little
luggage as possible—trunks are not a thing understood by the
savages, and they have no practical means of transporting them.
They have not yet, as the Captain points out wryly, invented the
wheel.
More in our group have had
eleventh-hour changes of heart—I’m certain from having viewed the
aboriginals yesterday. Indeed, one poor girl, who like me was
recruited from an institution in Chicago—to which she had been
committed for “Nervousness”—seems to have had a complete mental
breakdown, sobbing and uttering gibberish. She has been taken to
the camp hospital tent. I suppose this behavior may be expected of
one who did, after all, come from an asylum. Truly this is no place
for the Nervous. Several others deserted in the middle of the
night, but soldiers returned them to us this morning. The women had
been found by the Indian scouts wandering in the hills, dazed and
half-dead from exposure—for it is still quite cool at night. I do
not know what is to become of them now. As far as I’m concerned, we
have struck our bargain and now must live with it. God knows we’ve
all had second thoughts …
Yes, tomorrow they come for us … Good
God … what have we done?
A postscript to this day’s entry: Late this evening “Jimmy” came again to our quarters and called me outside.
“Capn’ needs to see you at his tent,
honey,” Gertie said to me. “I better warn you, he’s in a terrible
state.”
I had noticed earlier at our briefing
with Colonel Smith that the Captain seemed silent and preoccupied,
but I had never seen him so agitated as when I arrived at his tent.
He was seated in a chair with a glass and a bottle of whiskey
before him, and when I arrived he stood and began to pace the floor
like an angry caged lion.
“Do you know why I have sent for you?”
he asked, without any of his usual civility.
“Presumably not to read Shakespeare,”
I answered.
“You may mock me all you like, May,”
he snapped angrily, “for you are a proud and foolish girl. But this
is not a game. You are no longer an actor in a farce.”
“I resent your words, John,” I said.
“No one knows that better than I. Let me restate my answer to your
question: I suspect that you have asked me here in order to entreat
me not to participate in tomorrow’s transfer.”
He stopped pacing and turned to face
me. “To entreat?” he bellowed. “To entreat? No, madam, not to
entreat—to forbid! You must not go through with this insanity! I
will not permit it.”
I confess that I did laugh then at the
Captain’s distress … but mine was purely the false bravado of a
desperate woman. For if the truth be told, I, too, was beginning to
lose heart for this venture, was nearly paralyzed with fear and
apprehension for myself and my fellow travelers. Ever since we have
seen the savages in the flesh, our morale has been shaken to its
core. But I could not let the others, or the Captain, see my loss
of faith, my failure of courage.
“My dear Captain,” I answered. “May I
remind you that I am not one of your soldiers, that it is hardly
your position to forbid me to do anything. In any case, our orders
come from a higher authority.”
The Captain shook his head in
something like disbelief, but his anger seemed to drain away. “How
can you still laugh, May?” he asked in a soft voice of
wonder.
“Do you honestly believe, John, that
my laughter is lighthearted?” I said, “That I mock you? That I
consider this to be a game, or myself a player on a stage? Don’t
you know that I laugh because it is my last defense against tears?”
I quoted: “‘I will instruct my sorrows to be proud—’”
“‘For grief is proud and makes his
owner stoop,’” John Bourke finished for me. And then he knelt
beside me. “Listen to me, May,” he said, taking my hands and
pressing them hard in his. “You cannot imagine the hardship that
will be yours. You will not survive the life these people
live—cannot survive—any more than you could survive life with a
pack of wolves or in a den of bears. This is how different they are
from us. You must believe me when I tell you this. The savages are
not just a race separate from ours; they are a species
distinct.”
“Are they not human beings, John?” I
asked. “May we not at least hope to find some common ground as
fellow men and women?”
“They are Stone Age people, May,” said
the Captain, “pagans who have never evolved beyond their original
place in the animal kingdom, have never been uplifted by the beauty
and nobility of civilization. They have no religion beyond
superstition, no art beyond stick figures scratched on rock, no
music besides that made by beating a drum. They do not read or
write. I ask you this: Where is the savages’ Shakespeare? Their
Mozart? Their Plato? They are a wild, indolent race of men. Their
history is written in blood, centuries of unrelieved savagery,
thievery, and butchery, murder and degeneracy. Listen to me, May:
they do not think as we do. They do not live as we do …” He
hesitated, and seemed to struggle for the words … “They do not …
love as we do.”
The breath caught in my throat in
terror and apprehension at the starkness of the Captain’s words.
“Love?” I asked, nearer than ever to breaking down completely.
“Tell me, John, in what way do the savages not love as we
do?”
Now he could only shake his head and
avert his eyes from mine. “Like animals …” he finally murmured.
“They make love like animals.”
“Good God, John …” I said softly, with
a sense of despair as complete as any I have ever known … or so I
allowed myself to think for a brief moment. But then I remembered
again the despair that I had escaped—and this brought me back from
the abyss of my own cowardice.
“You wondered once why I had agreed to
participate in this program,” I said, “and now I must tell you,
Captain. Perhaps it will help to put your mind to rest. I was
recruited by our government from a lunatic asylum—given the choice
between the very real possibility of spending the rest of my life
locked up in that place, or going to live among the savages. Which
would you have done, John, given such a choice?”
“Why you’re no more insane than I,
May,” the Captain protested. “What was the nature of your illness
if I may be so forward as to ask?”
“Love,” I answered. “I was in love
with a man whom my family found unsuitable. I bore his children out
of wedlock.”
I did not miss the flicker of
disappointment that crossed John Bourke’s face at this moment—his
good Catholic rectitude clearly offended by news of my “sin.” He
looked away from me in some confusion. “People are not committed to
lunatic asylums for making such mistakes,” he said at
last.
“Mistakes, John?” I said, “Love is no
mistake. My dearest children, with whom I pray nightly to be
reunited after this present adventure is over, were not
mistakes.”
“And what official diagnosis of your
illness did the doctors give in order to have you committed?” he
asked.
“Moral perversion,” I answered
directly. “Promiscuity, my family called it.”
Now the Captain released my hand and
stood from his kneeling position. He turned away from me again, a
look of even greater distress on his face. I knew what he must be
thinking.
“John,” I said, “I feel no need to
defend myself again against such lies, or to justify my behavior,
past or present. You and I are friends, are we not? We have become,
I think, in a short time, dear friends. Unless my feelings deceive
me, had the circumstances of our meeting been different, we might
have been much more than that. I may be a woman of strong passions,
but I am not promiscuous. I have been with only one man in my life.
He is the father of my children, Harry Ames.”
“I could intervene with the
authorities on your behalf, May,” the Captain interrupted, turning
back to me. “Perhaps I could arrange that you be excused from the
program.”
“Even if you could do so,” I said,
“you could not prevent my family from putting me back in that
ghastly place. Just as you tell me that I cannot imagine life among
the savages, so you cannot imagine the life that was mine there.
Where every day was exactly like the last—an endless string of
sunless, hopeless days, one after another after another. Whatever
is to come in this strange new world we enter, cannot be worse than
the tedium and monotony of existence in the asylum. I will never go
back, John. I will die first.”
Now I stood and went to him. I put my
arms around his waist and my head on his chest. I held him, felt
his beating heart. “Perhaps you hate me now, John,” I said, “now
that you have learned the truth. Perhaps you think that I deserve
to be sent off to live with savages.”
The Captain closed his arms around me,
and for that moment and for the first time in longer than I could
remember I felt completely safe, as if I had found there against
his chest sanctuary at last from the tumult and heartbreak of my
life. I smelled his strong man’s scent like a forest in the fall
and felt the muscles of his back and arms like the sturdy walls of
a well-made house. The rhythmic beat of his heart against my own
breast was like the pulse of the earth itself. Would that I could
rest there forever, I thought, in the safe haven of this good man’s
arms.
“You must know that I am in love with
you, May,” he said, “that I could never hate you, or judge you. If
I were able to stop this madness, I would. I would do anything to
save you.”
“You are engaged to marry another,
John,” I said. “As I am. Even if I required saving, it is too
late.”
But now I believe that perhaps it was
John Bourke, after all, who required saving from me, from my own
terrible need, my desire to disappear within him, and him within
me, as one being together, inseparable. Who falls swifter or harder
from grace and with such splendid soul-rending agony than an Irish
Catholic boy raised by Jesuits? An honorable soldier engaged to
another? What sweeter love is there than that which cannot
be?
When John Bourke kissed me, I tasted
the faint sweetness of whiskey on his lips, and felt his deep moral
reluctance giving itself up to my more powerful need for him. I
felt us both being swept away together, and I held tight, held on
for dear life, as if only the contact of our bodies could fix me in
this time and place, as if only when his flesh and mine became
seamless, seared together as one, would I be truly anchored to this
world, the only world I know. “Will you show me now, John,” I
whispered into his mouth, “dear John, will you show me now,” I
implored, “how a civilized man makes love?”
My Dear Harry,
I must try to write you the breeziest,
the chattiest letter possible this evening, for if ever I am to go
completely mad it will be on this strange night, our first in
Indian country. And if I write to you and imagine that you will
actually read this letter, perhaps I can pretend for this one
moment longer that all is well, that I am simply having a dream
from which I will awaken in your arms, in our apartment, our babies
sleeping beside us … and all will be well … yes … all will be well
…
I am to be a Chief’s wife. That’s
right, the head savage has chosen me to be his bride. His rank
being the savage equivalent of royalty, this will make me something
like a Queen, I should think … Hah! And what would you think of
that, Harry, if you could only know where our actions have led me?
A Chieftain’s wife, Queen of the Cheyennes, future mother of the
royal savage children … .
The man’s name is Little Wolf—he is
much celebrated among the Plains Indians and has had a personal
audience in Washington, D.C., with President Ulysses S. Grant
himself. Even my Captain admits that the Chief is by reputation a
fearless warrior and a great leader of his people. And I must say,
as savages go he is not altogether unpleasant to look upon. It is
impossible to guess how old he is. Not a young man, certainly, and
quite a bit older than I, but not old either … perhaps near forty
years of age. But very fit and healthy-looking, with dark, almost
black eyes, and strong features set in a kind of wolflike demeanor.
Yet he strikes me as a gentle man with a soft pleasant manner of
speaking that makes even the hideous Indian language seem less
ugly.
They came early this morning, Harry,
driving a herd of horses ahead of them with unimaginable fanfare,
making strange yipping, animal-like sounds—exactly the noises one
might expect savages to make. The horses were herded into the camp
corral, where they were counted by the camp
comptroller.
Yes, well, naturally, I have mixed
feelings about being traded for a horse … although I suppose I
should take some consolation from the fact that the mount Little
Wolf presented to the post commander for my hand was, by all
accounts, one of the finest in the string … not that I, personally,
am any great judge of horseflesh, but so said my new muleskinner
friend “Jimmy.”
So perhaps I can take some solace in
knowing that I have been traded for a particularly excellent
specimen of equine flesh … does that sound better?
My true friend, Martha, is to marry a
fearsome-looking fellow, aptly named Tangle Hair, whose wildly
unkempt hair causes him to look quite like one of the maddest of
the mad inmates from the asylum. But he, too, is by all accounts a
distinguished warrior.
In one of the oddest circumstances of
this bizarre situation our brave Negress Phemie has been chosen by
a black man among the savages. Indeed, that is his name—Black Man.
It was explained to us by the camp interpreter, a half-breed
Frenchman-Sioux named Bruyere, that Phemie’s prospective husband
was captured from a wagon train of escaped Negro slaves when he was
only a child. Brought up among the Cheyennes, he is considered to
be as much one of them as if he were natural born to the tribe. He
speaks no English and is treated in all ways as an equal. Perhaps
in this regard the savages are more civilized than we. He is a
handsome fellow, quite a bit taller than most of the others, well
over six feet I should guess, and I must say he seems to be a fine
match for our Phemie … forgive me if I appear to ramble on Harry …
exhaustion and terror will do that to a girl … I try only to give
some order and definition to this desperate affair …
Helen Elizabeth Flight, our artiste in
residence, has been chosen by a famous Cheyenne warrior named Hog.
“Yes, well I expect I’ll keep my professional name,” she says with
great good humor. “That is to say, Helen Hog has rather a
disagreeable ring to it, don’t you agree?” However unattractive his
name, Mr. Hog is a fine-looking fellow, taller and broader of
shoulder than most of the others.
Sweet little Sara is to wed a slender
young man named Yellow Wolf, a youth who appears to have barely
reached adolescence. But again I must say that the Cheyennes seem
to have chosen wisely, for the boy is extremely shy of countenance
and altogether smitten with the girl—can hardly take his eyes off
her. Perhaps he will succeed where we have failed in bringing Sara
out of her silent, fearful world.
Captain Bourke tells us that among the
savages madness is considered a gift from the gods, and as such the
insane are accorded great respect, even reverence in their society.
Thus some of our group should be held in very high esteem by our
hosts, possibly even regarded as idols! Indeed, there was spirited
competition among several of the savage men over which of them gets
poor Ada Ware as his wife. A former asylum inmate herself,
suffering from Melancholia, Ada would hardly be considered a
“catch” by men in our own society. But according to the
interpreter, Bruyere, the savages believe that she is some kind of
holy woman because of her black attire. They have had just enough
exposure to our sundry religions to have things all in a
muddle.
Our valises were objects of great
mirth to the Indians. Those less dignified among them, grasped them
by the handles and made quite an exaggerated show of carrying them
around for the amusement of their foolish compatriots, and then all
fell down laughing and rolling on the ground. Truly these people
are like unruly children! I was pleased to see that my own intended
did not participate in this nonsense, but merely watched
sternly.
Poor Daisy Lovelace was involved in a
terrible scene with the fellow who chose her to be his bride. As
the man was collecting her belongings, he tried to take from her
her beloved pet poodle, Fern Louise. Daisy, who I suspect had been
taking her “medicine,” clutched the little dog to her breast, and
said, “No you don’t, suh,
you do not so much as touch my Feeern
Louuuise. Evah. You heah me? Nevah,
evah do you lay a finger on my darlin’ dawg.”
But the fellow reached out again,
quick as a cat, and snatched the little thing from Daisy’s arms,
then held it up by the scruff of its neck and made quite a show of
displaying it to the others, who gathered laughing to watch as the
poor thing flailed the air helplessly. I confess that I do not much
care for Miss Lovelace, and care even less for her wretched little
poodle, but I hate to see any animal mistreated, and when Daisy
tried to take back her pet, I went to her aid. “Give her back that
dog!” I demanded of the savage. The fellow seemed to understand
what I was after and only shrugged and dropped the poor old thing
in the dirt as casually as one discards a piece of trash. The
little dog sprawled to the ground but quickly regained its feet and
began to run round and round in circles, which only made the
savages laugh harder. But as if by centrifugal force, Fern Louise
suddenly shot out of her circle in a straight line toward the
savage who had so rudely abused her, latched on to the man’s foot,
snarling viciously and shaking her head like a tiny demon from
Hell. Now the savage began hopping about comically and hollering in
pain, trying without success to shake the tenacious little poodle
loose, which scene caused the others ever greater
mirth.
“Hang
on, Feeern
Louueeesse!” Daisy Lovelace called out triumphantly,
“That’s right, honey, hang on to the
niggah! You teach the damn heathen not to fool with you
darlin’.” Finally
exhausted from its efforts, the little dog released its hold on the
savage, and trotted, panting and slavering pink bloody foam, back
to her mistress. Meanwhile, the savage had fallen to the ground,
clutching his wounded foot and making piteous howling noises—which
elicted no sympathy whatsoever from his compatriots, who found his
distress hilarious beyond compare. Indeed, the episode provided
much needed comic relief for all of us, and the poodle Fern Louise
has gained immeasurably in our esteem.
Because the horse trade was merely a
formality to the authorities, the Army has supplied each of us with
a good American horse to ride into Indian country, and with proper
Army saddles to which we strapped our bags and the few small
luxuries which we were permitted to carry with us. Anticipating the
difficulty that we would encounter riding any great distance
astride such saddles wearing dresses, the soldiers have also
thoughtfully outfitted those of us who accepted them with
specially, if hastily, tailored cavalrymans’ breeches. Suffice it
to say that in matters of fit some of us were more fortunate than
others. In any case, those among our women who refused these came
to regret their vanity almost immediately once we were under way.
For their part, the savage men were as agitated by our breeches as
they were amused by our valises and made much disproving grunting
on the subject. As they don’t wear trousers themselves, one can
only assume that they’ve never before seen women so
attired.
I have my precious notebooks and a
good supply of sturdy lead pencils that Captain Bourke presented to
me—for he wisely felt that ink would be a difficult commodity to
obtain where we are bound. The Captain has also lent me his
cherished copy of Shakespeare to carry with me into the wilderness.
Knowing what it means to him, I could hardly accept it, but the
Captain insisted. Together we wept, Harry, wept and held each other
in the sorrow of our parting, a luxury you and I were never
allowed.
Yes, this I offer as a final
confession to you Harry—my first love, father of my children,
wherever you are, whatever has became of you … you to whom, until
last night, I have remained faithful … Yes, the Captain and I were
quite swept away by passion, our emotions raw … we could not help
ourselves, nor did I wish to … what strange propensity is it of
mine, Harry, to involve myself with unsuitable men—a factory
foreman, an engaged Catholic Army Captain, and now a savage
chieftain. Good God, perhaps I really am mad …
As a desperate eleventh-hour attempt
to forestall the inevitable, a hastily formed committee of our
women called upon Colonel Bradley to see if we might be permitted
to spend one last night at the camp. Emotions were running high,
and I feared a mass defection. The Colonel in turn passed along our
request to Chief Little Wolf, and he and several of the other head
Indians conferred over the matter. Finally the great Chief returned
and announced their decision: the horses had been delivered as
agreed upon and now we must accompany them. There was still plenty
of daylight left in which to reach their camp, and apparently the
Indians saw no reason to delay our departure for another day.
Colonel Bradley explained that if he did not release us to them as
agreed upon his actions might be construed by the Cheyennes as an
attempt to renege on the bargain we have struck. In which case,
there would almost certainly be trouble. As the entire purpose of
this bold venture is to try to avoid further trouble with the
savages, the Colonel regretfully denied our request for one final
night in the bosom of civilization. Well, this is what we signed on
for, isn’t it?
We have been joined at the last minute
by one Reverend Hare, a corpulent Episcopal missionary who arrived
here only yesterday from Fort Fetterman, and who is to accompany us
into the wilderness. He is a most unusual-looking fellow who must
weigh at least 350 pounds, and bald as a billiard ball. In his
white clerical gowns, the Reverend looks like nothing so much as an
enormous swaddled infant. He rode in on a huge white mule that
fairly groaned under the missionary’s weight.
Captain Bourke could only shake his
head at the Episcopalian’s arrival and mutter something under his
breath about the “well-fed Protestants.” The Captain is evidently
familiar with the Reverend’s evangelical activities among the
savages, and has complained privately that the President’s Indian
Peace Plan has all the various denominations squabbling over the
souls of the savages like dogs over a steak bone. Accordingly, the
Reverend, a “White Robe,” as the Indians refer to the
Episcopalians, has been dispatched by his church to bring the
Cheyennes into the fold, thus preventing their souls from being
captured by the “Black Robes” as the Romanists are known. One of
the first pronouncements that the enormous Reverend made was to
voice his opinion in front of Colonel Bradley and Captain Bourke
that it would be preferable in the eyes of his church for the
savages to remain heathens than to be converted by the Catholics, a
remark that, believe me, did not sit well with my
Captain.
Still, we have been informed that
Reverend Hare has worked among the Indians for a number of years
and is something of a linguist, speaking several of the native
tongues fluently, including Cheyenne. His function then will be to
serve as both translator and spiritual advisor to our strange
assembly of lambs going off to slaughter.
And it was in just such a spirit that
we rode out from Camp Robinson with our prospective husbands. Some
of our women were wailing as though this were a funeral procession
rather than a wedding march. For my part, I tried to maintain my
composure—in spite of Captain Bourke’s disapproval I have vowed to
keep a positive face on this adventure, to keep foremost in my mind
the thought that this is a temporary posting; we are soldiers off
to do duty for our country and can at least look forward to the day
when we might return home. Closest of all to my heart, Harry, I
keep the memory of our precious children, the dream I shall harbor
forever in my breast of one day returning to them; this dream will
keep me alive and strong. I have tried from the start to hearten
the others with the same comforting thought: that one day we shall
return again to the bosom of civilization—free women at
last.
So I rode at the head of our
procession, proudly alongside my intended, nodding slightly to
Captain Bourke, whose own consternation with the occasion was
written clearly in his countenance. I started to lift my hand to
him in a farewell wave but I saw that he had cast his dark eyes to
the ground and did not look at me. Did I detect shame in his
averted gaze? Catholic self-flagellation? That in our one moment of
passion he had betrayed his God, his fiancée, his military duty?
Did I detect, perhaps, even a glimmer of relief that the wanton
instrument of his temptation, the Devil’s own temptress, was being
taken away to live with savages—the fitting punishment of a
vengeful God for our sweet sins of the night. Yes, all that I
witnessed in John Bourke’s downcast eyes. This is a woman’s lot on
earth, Harry, that man’s atonement can only be purchased by our
banishment.
But I did not bow my head. I intend at
all costs to maintain my dignity in this strange new life, and if I
am to be the wife of a Chief, I shall fulfill that role with the
utmost decorum. Thus before our departure I instructed my friend
Martha and those of the others who seemed most fearful—instructed
them with the advice given me by my muleskinner friend, Jimmy, aka
Dirty Gertie, who herself has experience among the heathens: “Keep
your head high, honey, and never let them see you cry,” but, of
course, this advice was more difficult for some to implement than
others. I, personally, have resolved never to display weakness, to
be always strong and firm and forthright, to show neither fear nor
uncertainty—no matter how fearful and uncertain I may be inside; I
see no other way to survive this ordeal.
Within a short time most of our women
seemed to resign themselves to our fate. Their wailings subsided to
an occasional choked whimper and there was very little conversation
among us; we were like children, speechless and awestruck, being
led passively, meekly into the wilderness.
What a strange procession we must have
made, riding in a long lazy line—nearly one hundred strong,
counting Indians and brides—our passage winding and undisciplined
compared to our recent military processions. To God, if he should
be watching over us, we must have resembled a trail of ants as we
rode across the hills. Up into the pine timber on the slopes and
down again through densely overgrown river bottoms, where our
horses forded streams swollen with spring runoff, the muddy rushing
water tapping our stirrups. My horse, a stout bay whom I have named
Soldier after my Captain, is calm and surefooted, and picked
deliberately through the deadfall and then broke into a gentle trot
up the rocky slopes to gain the ridges above, where the going was
easier.
It was a lovely spring afternoon, and
we were all somewhat consoled by that, by the notion that no matter
how foreign and uncertain our future we still lived under the same
sky, the same sun still shone down upon us, our own God, if such we
believed in, still watched over us …
The faint sweet acrid scent of
woodsmoke on the air announced the Indian encampment long before we
reached it. Soon we could see a light haze from its fires in the
sky above, marking the camp. A group of small boys greeted us on
the trail, chattering and making weird cooing noises of amazement.
Some of the smallest of the children rode enormous leggy dogs the
likes of which I have never before seen—shaggy wolfish beasts that
more closely resembled Shetland ponies than they did canines. The
dogs were decorated with feathers and beads, bells and trinkets,
and painted to mimic the men’s war ponies. Now I felt more than
ever that we were entering some other world, one possessing its own
race of men, its own creatures … and so we were … a fairy-tale
world existing in the shadows of our own, or perhaps it is our
world living in the shadow of this one … who can say? A few of the
bolder boys ran up to furtively touch our feet, and then scampered
off chattering like chipmunks.
The pack of urchins ran ahead to
announce our arrival to the camp, and then we could hear a great
commotion of rising voices and barking dogs—a cacophony of village
sounds, all of it foreign to us, and, I confess, all of it
terrifying.
Throngs of curious women, children,
and old people gathered as we entered the camp. The tents—tipis,
they are called—appear to be set in roughly circular formations,
groups of four or five of them forming half circles which in turn
form a larger circle. It was a colorful, noisy place— a feast for
the eyes—but so strange that we were unable to take it all in and
were further distracted by the hordes of people who approached us
babbling in their strange tongue and all trying to touch us gently
about the legs and feet. Thus we rode the whole length of the camp,
as if on parade for the residents, then turned at the end and rode
back again. There rose such shouting and chattering among the
heathens, such noise and chaos that my head began to whirl, I
hardly knew what was happening to me. Soon we were separated from
one another and I heard some of our women calling out in confused
desperation. I attempted to call back to them, but my words were
lost in the din. I even lost sight of poor Martha as the families
of the savages claimed us, absorbed us, one by one, into their
being. My head spun, all was a blur of unfamiliar motion, color,
and sound … I seemed to lose myself.
Now I write to you, my Harry, no
longer from the safety of an Army tent, but by the last fading
light of day and by the faintest glow from the dying embers of a
tipi fire in the center of a Cheyenne warrior’s lodge. Yes, I have
entered this strange dream life, a life that cannot be real, cannot
be taking place in our world, a dream that perhaps only the insane
might truly understand …
I sit now in this primitive tent, by
the failing fire, surrounded by sullen squatting savages, and the
reality of our situation becomes finally quite inescapable. Riding
out of Camp Robinson this afternoon, it occurred to me for the
first time that I may very well die out here in the vast emptiness
of this prairie, surrounded by this strange, godforsaken people … a
people truly like trolls out of a fairy tale, not human beings as I
know them, but creatures from a different earth, an older one. John
Bourke was right. As I look around the circle of this tipi, even
the chokingly close walls of my old room at the asylum suddenly
seem in memory to be somehow comforting, familiar … a square, solid
room with four walls … but, no, these thoughts I banish. I live in
a new world, on a new earth, among new people.
Courage!
Good-bye, Harry, wherever you may be …
never has it been more clear to me that the part of my life which
you occupied is over forever … I could not be further away from you
if I were on the moon … how odd to think of one’s life not as
chapters in a book but as complete volumes, separate and distinct.
In this spirit, tomorrow I shall begin a new notebook. This next
volume to be entitled: My Life as an
Indian Squaw. I will not write to you again, Harry …
for you are dead to me now, and I to you. But I did love you once
…