One Thousand White Women (17 page)

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Authors: Jim Fergus

BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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The creature was naked but for a breechclout. His skin was blackened with dirt and he was … he was in a state of arousal that was not concealed by this garment. When he saw that I had seen him he smiled at me, exposing blackened teeth like the fangs of the Devil’s own dog. Then he grasped himself and nodded at me with a disgusting familiarity. I sank back into the water to cover myself as the man stood, still holding himself thus, his intention quite clear. I was shocked to hear him speak to me not in a savage tongue, but in French.
“Salope,”
he said in a low voice,
“je vais t’enculer a sec!”
I will not … cannot translate this for the sheer depravity of it.
Now the wretch started into the water toward me, still grasping his manhood like a terrible weapon of violence. My heart rose in my throat, I could not move, my body frozen with fear. “Please, no,” I whispered. “Please don’t hurt me.” Never in my life have I felt more alone, or more terrified. I began to paddle frantically backwards from the man until I came up against the far bank of the pool. I pressed myself against a large boulder there, with no further to go as the creature approached me. Now I could smell him, even above the mineral odor of the water, could smell his filth, his stench of evil … He spoke again to me, words so unspeakably vulgar that I felt the bile rise in my throat, and I was certain that I was going to be sick. Just as the wretch reached out toward me I heard the voice of my husband. Yes, thank God! I looked up to see Little Wolf standing on the bank holding his quirt coiled in one hand. He spoke in a calm, even voice, and although I do not know what he said, I sensed from his tone that he knew this man. He addressed the wretch firmly but without a trace of rancor in his voice.
The man replied in Cheyenne, seemed to speak deferentially, almost obsequiously to the Chief, and began to back out of the pool. But then he stopped, as if he had just remembered something, and he turned back to me and smiled his rotten-toothed wolfish grin. This time he whispered in a guttural but surprisingly fluent English, “I am Jules Seminole,” he said, and his voice chilled me to the bone. “We will see each other again. And I will do to you those things I promised.” Then he waded from the pool without looking back.
Later I attempted to question Little Wolf about the identity of this horrible creature.
“Sas-sis-e-tas,”
he said, or so the word by which the Cheyennes refer to themselves as a people sounded to me. And then he made slashing motions with his right index finger across his left which is the sign they use to identify themselves. “Cheyenne?” I asked in English. “How could he be?” Perhaps Little Wolf understood the question in my voice, for he placed his hand in the center of his breast and made a motion across his left side and said again the word
“Sas-sis-e-tas,”
and then he drew his hand across his breast to his right and said,
“ve’ho’e,”
the Cheyenne word for white man. “He’s a half-breed, then,” I said.
“O’xeve’ho’e,”
the Chief answered.
 
We have stayed in the same campsite for the past several days. After my terrifying encounter with the half-breed Jules Seminole, I had fervently hoped that we would move to another place, or even return to the camp, but we have not. Although my fear has gradually begun to subside, I have taken the man’s threat to heart and I do not let my husband out of my sight. Now when he goes to hunt, I accompany him. If he goes to the creek, I follow him there. I have never been of a particularly timid nature, but for the moment, at least, I feel truly safe only in Little Wolf’s company. He does not seem to mind my constant presence and, indeed, the more time we spend together, the more genuinely fond we grow of one another. He is a gentle, solicitous man, and very patient with me.
Little Wolf’s hunting expeditions have been most successful. We have killed and dressed, and eaten of, pronghorn, elk, deer, and a variety of small game, including grouse, ducks, and rabbit—the savage’s life appears to be one of feast or famine, and when food is bountiful they eat almost constantly. I have been cooking over the fire. We have with us in one of the parfleches a few modern utensils obtained from the white man’s trading post and with these I attempt to prepare something more interesting than the standard fare of boiled meat. Besides wild onions and dandelion greens in the meadows, I have found morel mushrooms among the trees in the river bottom. These I recognize from Illinois, where they grew in some profusion in the spring and where I used to gather them with Mother and Hortense.
The rest of the meat has been hung in the cottonwoods well away from our camp, presumably lest bears or other wild creatures should be attracted to it. Besides my cooking duties I have been kept busy learning the finer points of skinning, dressing, and butchering an animal. This, too, is considered to be women’s work by the savages, and the Chief has instructed me in the various procedures until I have become, if not precisely expert, at least decently proficient. Fortunately, because Father was himself a hunter, I grew up around wild game and am not in the least bit squeamish about blood and offal. There are those among our group, including my poor friend Martha, who will have some real difficulty adapting to this chore.
The savage life, it strikes me, and particularly a woman’s life among them, is one of nearly constant physical effort. There is little time for leisure. Nor has our excursion of the past few days been what most white women might consider an ideal honeymoon! Still it has been an instructive and useful experience.
Never have I been so grateful for my bath at the end of the day’s labors—especially in this hot spring. Not only does it give me the opportunity to wash myself of the blood of wild creatures in which I am quite literally “up to the elbows,” but it also allows me to scrub the damnable greasepaint from my skin. I and many of our other fair-skinned women have been forced to wear this concoction as protection against the blistering prairie sun. Indeed, many of the savages themselves use the paint for the same reason, and thus I have finally learned the origins of the term “redskin.” The paint is made from mixing a brownish red clay, common throughout this country, with fat or tallow. It stinks terribly, and makes one feel perfectly filthy.
Other times the greasepaint is made from a white clay material, which gives the wearer a kind of ghostly appearance. No one looks more ferocious than our Phemie in the white paint which she favors—although her already dark-pigmented skin requires considerably less than ours in the way of protection from the unremitting sun. My own Scottish ancestry and creamy complexion are a distinct disadvantage in this shadeless wilderness of prairie and sky—as it is for Helen Flight and the Kelly girls and nearly all the rest of us of “old world” ancestry. Thank God for the greasepaint, and for our little copse of trees in this campsite.
Per custom Little Wolf takes his bath in the morning when I, too, join him. In the afternoon, he sits on the bank, watching me as I wash again, guarding me I think from any further advances of the wretch Jules Seminole, who still lurks in my nightmares.
The warm water is a perfect temperature, like bathwater heated on the stove at home, and feels wonderful. This afternoon I swam out to the middle of the pool to float there for a few minutes as is my habit. I turned and beckoned to Little Wolf as I often do, making the sign for swim in the hopes of coaxing him into the water, trying to elicit from him some sense of play. I’m afraid that my husband is, if not exactly a dour fellow, a generally serious one, hardly given to displays of merriment. Perhaps this is only a function of his age and position. I had brought with me on our trip Lieutenant Clark’s pamphlet on the Indian sign language, which, while hardly complete, has been enormously valuable to us. We practice the gesture language in the evenings by the fire and the Chief has been quite patient with my efforts—trying to teach me a few words of Cheyenne in the bargain. It is slow going, and I still enjoy babbling away in English as a means of release from the frustration of being unable to communicate properly. Yes, well, it occurs to me that anyone who listens so attentively to my incessant ramblings must be a patient man, indeed!
Of course, because he cannot read, it is impossible for Little Wolf to comprehend the nature of a book, but he marvels at the thing, touches it and turns it over in his hands as if it has magical properties—which in a sense I suppose it does. We are able to engage in rudimentary communications (although to be sure we are hardly translating the Bard into sign language as Captain Bourke and I so amused ourselves in attempting!).
Now finally, after much cajoling on my part, Little Wolf slipped into the water himself. He is a physically graceful man. However, the Indians practice a decidedly rudimentary kind of dog paddle, and so I decided, then and there, to teach him a few swim strokes. First I demonstrated the overhand stroke, which, being an athletically inclined fellow, he picked up quickly. Then I showed him the breast stroke. It was great fun and soon we were laughing like … well, very much like a pair of honeymooners! I felt that I had “broken the ice.”
Impulsively, I put my arms around the Chief’s neck, and wrapped my legs around his waist—he looked terribly surprised, even mildly panicked; I do not know if he feared that I was trying to pull him under, or if he only considered it unseemly of a woman to be so forward, for he tried to pull away from me.
“Don’t worry,” I said in English, grasping him closer, “I am just playing.” But truly although I had indeed begun this wrestling entirely in a spirit of play, I found that I liked the touch of him, experienced an unmistakable stirring at the feel of his taut warm skin. Now I felt with my hands the small hard muscles of his shoulders and arms and with my feet explored the firmness of his legs. I found myself pressing more urgently against him. We have, I should mention, had no physical contact whatsoever since our dreamlike wedding night.
“Oh, dear,” I whispered now, “Oh my, I had not intended …” The Chief seemed to respond to my embrace; I could feel the tension and reluctance drain from his body. For a moment we floated together thus in the warm, buoyant waters of the spring, my legs wrapped lightly around his waist. Then I began to kiss him very softly about his neck and face and on his lips—the savages are not well versed in the art of kissing, and it was rather like kissing a child, but soon he responded in kind. “Isn’t that fine?” I whispered. “Yes, isn’t that nice, isn’t that just lovely?”
This is an indelicate matter … I know no other way to address it but directly. As John Bourke suggested the Cheyennes have not encouraged contact with the whites or with the missionaries until now, and although they have traded with them and know something of their ways, this has not included, at least in Little Wolf’s case, any knowledge of carnal matters. What the savages have learned on the subject of sexual intercourse between a man and woman they have learned from watching Nature, as John Bourke put it, from watching animals couple … and thus they make love … like animals …
While I am hardly the authority on the subject that Narcissa White would make me out, I am not ashamed to admit that Harry Ames and I enjoyed an active erotic life, or that I am a woman of powerful passions. Men boast of such feelings—women are sent to lunatic asylums for them. Counting my single indiscretion with the Captain and my own “wedding night,” I have now had three lovers in my short life. Does this make me a sinner? Perhaps … I do not feel like one … A harlot? I don’t believe so. Am I insane? Hardly.
Now we floated, entwined in the water, my husband and I, my arms wound round his neck, my legs about his waist, floated. Our bodies slid easily against each other, comfortable and familiar, the sulfurous water was warm and oily on our skins. Have we not been sent to instruct the savages in our way of life? Should this not include matters of the flesh? Yes, if the Chief can teach me the finer points of fleshing a hide, so perhaps I can reciprocate by teaching him a few secrets of the human flesh—a fair exchange it seems to me between our worlds.
I slid my hand down Little Wolf’s back to his buttocks which was smooth and muscled, hard as river rock, and around to stroke him, sleek as a stallion, slippery as a snake in the oily mineral waters. “Put your hands on me,” I whispered, although of course, he could not understand me, and I took his hand and placed it between our bodies and ran it over my belly to my breasts. He has very fine hands, strong but at the same time almost feminine, with a gentle touch unlike that of any I have ever known. I kissed him again and this time he kissed me back and I took him again in my hand, guiding him, settling my hips upon him, legs around his waist, the warmth of the springs entering me, filling me inside with heat and light …
 
This morning, as I make these hasty scribbles, we prepare to depart—I assume to rejoin the village, for Little Wolf is presently loading our packhorses with all of the meat and hides that we have gathered and prepared in our few days here together. With the exception of my terrifying encounter with the one named Jules Seminole, of whom, thank God, we have seen no further sign, it has been a fine excursion, which I am sorry to see come to an end. We have made, I believe, some valuable progress, Little Wolf and I, in beginning to bridge the gap between our cultures—I do not mean that only as a sly euphemism … although there is that, too. I am greatly encouraged and believe now more than ever that there is real hope for the success of our undertaking. Perhaps President Grant’s people are right, and the sheer power of American womanhood can knit these worlds together after all. Not only have my husband and I learned to converse on a rudimentary level but we have learned a new respect and a genuine affection for one another. The Chief will be my truest window to the lives of the savages, for within him resides all the qualities so prized by these simple people—courage, dignity, grace, selflessness— and something else of which I have only seen a glimpse, but that I think would be called fierceness. Little Wolf has the character of a natural leader in any culture, and I’m certain that even John Bourke would have a grudging respect for him—and he for Bourke. For truly it strikes me that they have much in common. Captain and Chief … heathen and Catholic. Soldier and warrior … tied together now by a woman’s love.
And yet, in spite of my best intentions I cannot pretend to have the same feelings for Little Wolf that I had for John Bourke, which was a passion such as I have never before known, a love of both intellect and flesh—body, mind, and soul … God I feel that I have lived three lives already, with three loves—my first, Harry Ames, a physical love like a spark, to be extinguished by the darkness of my asylum cell; only to be reignited by the implausible light of a new love like a shooting star. Yes, for if Harry Ames was the bright, erratic spark of my womanhood, then John Bourke was my shooting star, burning brilliantly and intensely. And this man Little Wolf, my lodge fire, offering warmth and security … he is my husband, I shall be a good and a faithful wife to him. I shall bear his children.
So Little Wolf and I rode back to the main camp on the Powder River, this morning, our last. I have tried to keep my bearings with the help of a compass and an Army map which Captain Bourke presented to me before our departure—I do not know how accurate the map is and I am far from being skilled as a cartographer, but I know at least the major water courses. The Chief and I rode side by side now—as equals, as it should be—and I chattered as we went, remarking on this and that, pointing to the birds and animals and plants, babbling away as is my wont.
Sometimes the Chief answered me, giving me the names for these things, and sometimes, I suspect, just talking himself, as has become our manner together. I think that I am finally beginning to absorb a bit of the language, though I am yet shy about attempting to speak it.
Now as we came in off the vast silent prairie, the village suddenly seemed by comparison to our last few days of solitude to be a veritable city, bustling with human energy and activity. Indeed, a whole new village had sprung up the opposite bank of the river from ours during our absence—nearly one hundred new lodges had been erected since we left.
The camp dogs came out to bark at us as we approached, and then to sniff and nip harmlessly at our heels as we rode through camp. Packs of small children followed us excitedly; some of the little imps I recognized and was happy to see again. How I love the children! How I look forward to having another of my own!
Several of our ladies greeted me by their lodges as we rode in. I was amused to see that in only the few days of my absence it was becoming more and more difficult to tell some of “our” brides from the natives. Since the wedding ceremony many others have adopted savage garb, and indeed some of the Cheyenne women are now wearing “civilized” attire given them by our women.
Gretchen, attired in a buckskin dress, was carrying a pail of water to her lodge, and she stopped to greet me and to admire our game-laden packhorses.
“Yah,
you got a
goot
man there, May!” she said. “I can hardly get
dat
lazy bum of mine to leave
de
tent,” but she spoke with some genuine affection in her voice. “All
de
big
galloop
wants to do is ‘wrestle’ with me on
de
buffalo robes.
Yah,
you know what I mean, May?
Dat
damn savage of mine can hardly get enough of it! I come see you later,
yah?
I wish to speak to you.”
Now we rode past Reverend Hare and Dog Woman’s lodge, just in time to witness the latter exit the tipi wearing one of our white women’s dresses. He is really rather a sweet old fellow and I couldn’t help letting a bark of astonished laughter escape at the sight of him. Hah! Dog Woman glared at me, tugging on his bodice with which he seemed to be having some difficulty. I covered my mouth.
“Je suis désolée,”
I apologized, for the hermaphroditic medicine man speaks a bit of French.
“Alors vous êtes très belle
! You look perfectly beautiful.” This seemed to placate Dog Woman somewhat, and indeed, he/she looked rather proud of her new attire.
“Dites-moi, où est le grand lapin blanc?”
I asked.
“Reverend,” I called out, “if you are inside there, you must help your roommate arrange her new dress.”
“Is that you, Miss Dodd?” the Reverend’s oracular voice boomed from inside the tent. “May I remind that you have missed Sunday services again this week. We’ve got half the camp coming now. We’ll make Christians of the heathens yet!”
“Good for you, Reverend!” I answered. “But you’d best hurry before they make heathens of us. I’ve been thinking myself of converting to the religion of the Great Medicine. It’s beginning to make great good sense to me.”
Now the Reverend thrust his bald head, pink as a newborn baby, through the opening of his lodge and blinked in the sunlight. “You are a Godless young woman, Miss Dodd,” he scolded me. Then he spoke in Cheyenne to Dog Woman, who answered him.
“Reverend, please ask Dog Woman to tell you the new Cheyenne name the Chief and I have given you,” I called mischievously as we rode away. “It came about, as these things do, quite naturally on our trip when I was trying to explain to my husband in the sign language the literal meaning of your Christian name.”
The Reverend spoke again to Dog Woman, who again replied. In this way, Reverend Hare first learned his new Cheyenne name, which I predict will spread like a prairie fire through the village.
“You’re a Godless young woman, May Dodd!” called
Ma’vohkoohe ohvo’omaestse
—the Big White Rabbit—as we rode on through camp. “A Godless young woman! I shall pray for your salvation! And for that of your artist friend Helen Flight, as well. I urge you go to see her immediately, for she has become in your absence Satan’s disciple and beguiles the savages with her wicked arts of conjuring, witchcraft, and thaumaturgy!” I began to wonder if perhaps the Reverend hadn’t been getting too much sun on his bald pate.
How disappointed I was to discover that my wedding lodge had been dismantled during our absence, and my possessions moved back into the “family” tipi. Thus the honeymoon really is over. Having already grown accustomed to the privacy of my own lodge, I can hardly abide living in such proximity to all the others again.
As I had expected, Martha was the first to come visit me at the lodge, arriving just after I had made this unhappy discovery. She was full of excitement, inquiries, and news.
“Thank God you have returned safely!” she said, breathlessly. Our Horse Boy appeared at that moment, true to his name, to lead my horse away. He’s a dear little thing, brown and lithe as an elf. I patted him on the head, and he grinned at me lovingly. “I have so much to tell you, May, but first I must hear about your honeymoon. How was it? Where did you go? Was it terribly romantic?”
“Let’s see …” I mused, “ … we traveled by first-class coach into the city where we stayed in the bridal suite of the finest hotel … took all of our meals by room service, made love on a feather bed …”
“Oh, stop teasing me, May!” Martha said, giggling. “Where did you go, really?”
“We simply roamed the countryside, Martha,” I answered. “We camped for several days in a cottonwood copse along a creek, where we bathed in a pool formed by a hot springs … in which we made passionate love—”
“Truly?” Martha interrupted. “Is that true? I never know when you are only teasing me, May.”
“Tell me news of the camp, dear,” I asked. “To whom do the lodges on the other side of the river belong?”
“To the Southern Cheyennes,” Martha said, “our ‘relatives’ who have come visiting from Oklahoma Territory.”
“Yes, that would explain the appearance of the wretch Jules Seminole,” I said. And I told Martha of my encounter.
“The southerners have got our men all puffed up and strutting about like roosters,” Martha said. “Soon they’re off to make war against their enemies the Crows. They’ve enlisted Helen Flight to paint birds on their bodies and on their horses in preparation. She’s become very ‘big medicine,’ quite the
Artiste
-in-residence.”
“Ah, so that’s what the Reverend was referring to,” I said.
We determined to go straightaway to Helen Flight’s lodge, where we found the artist sitting outside on a stool in the sun painting the image of a kingfisher on the chest of a young man. The kingfisher was exquisitely rendered just in the act of diving into the water. Seated cross-legged on the ground next to Helen, watching her work, was an elderly fellow with long white braids and a dark, deeply furrowed complexion that resembled ancient, cracked saddle leather.
Helen beamed at our arrival, pausing in her work and removing her pipe from her mouth. “Welcome home, May!” she said, enthusiastically. “We’ve missed you. My goodness, how pleased I am that you’ve both come! Do sit down. You must keep me company as I work … I’ve been at it all day. I seem to have been ‘discovered’ by the savages! I can hardly keep up with the demand for my services.
“Ah, but do please excuse me for failing to make proper introductions,” she said. “Have you ladies had the pleasure of meeting the esteemed medicine man, Dr. White Bull?”
“I’m afraid we haven’t,” I said. “Please don’t get up, sir,” I joked. The old fellow was much unamused, implacable, rather grumpy, in fact. Both he and the young man wore deathly serious expressions on their faces, and barely glanced at us.
Helen popped her short, beautifully engraved stone pipe back into her mouth and took up her brush again. She has fashioned for herself a very cunning palette made from a rawhide shield, upon which the stretched leather has dried as hard as wood. Here she mixes her colors from an assortment of powders and emulsions made from pounding different-colored stones, earth, grasses, berries, clays, and animal bones, according to ancient savage formulas about which Miss Flight could scarcely be more enthusiastic—for she has available to her nearly the entire color spectrum.
“A fine likeness, Helen,” I said with true admiration. Indeed Audubon himself would have been envious, for Helen’s kingfisher was a work of art, the colors iridescent, flashing from the boy’s taut brown skin as if the bird itself were alive.
“Why thank you,” Helen said, pipe clenched firmly between her teeth. “Last night young Walking Whirlwind here had a dream. In his dream he was struck by bullets in battle, but his flesh closed up around the bullet holes and he remained unscathed. The boy has never before been to war, and he is naturally anxious about his prospects. Therefore, this morning he went directly to the medicine man, Dr. White Bull, to tell him of his dream—the interpretation of dreams being a major function of the medicine man.” At this point Martha and I both looked again at White Bull, who watched intently and rather critically, as Miss Flight applied her paint to the boy’s chest.
“Dr. White Bull,” Helen continued, “told the young man that his dream was intended to inform him that the kingfisher was his ‘medicine’ animal. For when that bird dives under the surface of the water, the water closes up behind it, just as in the boy’s dream, the wounds in his flesh closed up after the bullets entered. Bloody ingenious concept, isn’t it? Thus this painting, which I am presently executing upon the boy’s chest, is intended to protect him from harm. Of course,” Helen said, pausing from her work, and removing the pipe from her mouth, her eyebrows raised in ironic surprise, “I offer no guarantees of magic properties with my work!”
“I should certainly hope not!” I said. “Why it’s pure superstition, Helen. And quite useless against real bullets.”
“I expect so, May,” Helen said. “But I am only an artist fulfilling a commission. Guarantees of magic properties are strictly the province of Dr. White Bull here.”
At just this point, and as if on cue, the old medicine man started chanting in a low, rhythmic voice.

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