One Thousand White Women (26 page)

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Authors: Jim Fergus

BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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My recent gloomy premonitions have come more horribly true than ever I could have imagined, for the worst catastrophe possible has befallen us. On this, our darkest day yet, I and several of my compatriots find ourselves in a desperate predicament.
The day began as peacefully and uneventfully as any other. At dawn I sat upon my rock overlooking the pool on the Tongue River near our camp. I was just preparing to unstrap my notebook from my back. Helen Flight sat on one side of me, waiting for the light of day to be favorable for sketching; Martha, Sara, and little Pretty Walker sat on my other side. The Kelly twins, too, had joined us and were squatting on the water’s edge about to toss a hook and line into the pool after trout for their breakfast. Gretchen had just lumbered down to fill her own water paunch and squatted now beside the stream.
We all sensed, I think, at exactly the same moment that something was amiss, for the birds which had already taken up their morning song went suddenly silent—a lull broken by the sound of several dozen ducks and geese getting up all at once off the water just downstream from us. We looked up from our respective tasks but no sooner had we done so, than in a heartbeat’s time we were each descended upon at once, filthy hands clamped over our mouths, knives held at our throats, arms like iron bounds rendering us immobile. The single sound that could be heard over the wingbeats of the rising waterfowl was a heavy thump from a stone war club and a miserable groan as our friend Gretchen collapsed in a heap at the water’s edge.
So well orchestrated was our abduction, that, as I look back on it now, I believe our attackers must have been watching us, perhaps for several days—assessing our comings and goings, gauging the force necessary to carry us off. And Gretchen, with her great size and obvious strength, must have appeared more to them than they believed one or even two men could comfortably handle, and thus they had rendered her, and her alone, unconscious.
So quickly, stealthily, and powerfully were we overcome, that there was no question of resisting. We knew that if we dared struggle or tried to cry out, our throats would be instantly cut. Now each of us, helpless and paralyzed with terror, was half-dragged, half-carried, downstream from whence our abductors must have come. One particularly large and fearsome-looking fellow hoisted Gretchen over his shoulder and carried her as if she were a sack of potatoes. I did not know yet to what tribe these men belonged, but they were as a rule taller and rather fairer-skinned than our own Cheyennes, were dressed some of them in flannel shirts of white man manufacture, and several wore black Army hats with the tops cut out and the sides wrapped in feathers and variously colored cloth.
At a shallow ford downstream they carried us across the river, where several younger boys waited in a grove of cottonwood trees, holding a string of horses. Among these I recognized a number of our own mounts. Here our hands and feet were bound with rawhide thongs and cloth gags tied over our mouths, and we were very roughly thrown across the pommels of the saddles like so many fresh-killed deer carcasses. One of our savage abductors then climbed up behind each of us.
I do not know exactly how long we traveled thus—it must have been several hours at least, but seemed far longer so great was our pain and discomfort. I was certain that they had killed poor Gretchen for she remained unconscious, and, from the little I could turn my head to look, appeared lifeless where she lay across the pommel. Not until what must have been a full hour had passed was I relieved to hear a moan of life issue from her.
After the hard and agonizing ride, during which we could do nothing but reflect helplessly upon our situation, we arrived at last at a small camp of a half dozen or so makeshift lodges—little more than stick lean-tos covered with canvas—clearly the temporary encampment of a hunting or war party, for there were no women about, only several more young men who met us when we rode in. Now once again we were handled with extreme roughness, thrown off the horses’ backs to sprawl in the dirt. This seemed to excite the savages to much laughter and taunting in their unfamiliar tongue.
At last they untied our hands and feet and removed the gags from our mouths. Mine had been so tightly bound that my mouth was split and bleeding at its corners. When free I scrambled on my hands and knees to attend to little Pretty Walker, the youngest and most terrified among us. The Cheyenne children are brought up on tales of being captured thus by other tribes—like the boogeyman stories of our own culture—and this was clearly the girl’s worst nightmare come true. “
Ooetaneo’o,
” she wailed in terror.
“Ooetaneo’o.”
So frightened was she that I could not understand what she was trying to say, until Sara spoke up. “Crow,” she translated. “She says that these men are Crow.” Only later did I realize that it was the first, and the last, time that I would ever hear our Sara speak a word of English.
We all knew the Crow to be the archenemy of the Cheyenne—and a loutish-looking bunch at that with their half-white man clothing and preposterous Army hats, they swaggered and gloated and made merry at our despair. Poor Martha, scared witless herself and in a state of evident shock, began repeating: “They’re going to kill us, they’re going to kill us all. I know they’re going to kill us … they’re going to kill us all …”
Finally, Meggie Kelly spoke sharply to her. “
Showt
up, Martha,” she said. “If they were plannin’ to kill us, they’d a
doon
so by now. They’d not have gone to all the trouble of carrying us away
loyke
this.”
“
Aye,
Meggie’s right,” said her sister in a low voice, “They’ll not
moorder
us yet. First they’re going to
folk
us. Look at that one there. He’s
sportin’
a wood, he is.”
It was true that one of the men was in a state of erection beneath his breechclout, and the other men, now noticing his condition, laughed and urged him on.
Now the wretch grabbed my little Sara by her hair, and began to drag her toward one of the crude huts. It was less a conscious selection of the girl than that she happened to be in the nearest proximity to him. “No,” I screamed, and I grasped the attacker’s leg, “not her, please, not her. Take me.”
“
Aye
, ya filthy beggar,” said Susie Kelly, taking ahold of the man’s other leg, “or me! Let that child go, goddamn
ya!
”
Our pathetic entreaties seemed to elicit much further merriment among the man’s cohorts. After a short struggle the savage shook loose of Susie’s grasp and then caught me square in the jaw with a kick that sent me sprawling. All but Martha, who was too frightened to move, and poor Gretchen, who lay upon the ground half-conscious and groaning, tried to come to our aid, but the savages held them back.
The fiend who dragged her now released his grasp on Sara’s hair, fell atop her, and began to force apart her legs. The girl wept and struggled against him. Never as long as I live will I forget the look of silent intensity on her young face, the tears of sorrow that ran down her cheeks. I knew in that instant that this same unspeakable fate must have befallen her as a child growing up in that awful asylum—that her muteness had been her final strength, her final testimony to the cruelty of this world. Held on the ground now by another of them and helpless to stop the crime, I began to weep myself, to plead, to beg, to pray to God …
I do not know where the knife came from. Some said later that it belonged to the Crow and that Sara took it from his belt, others that she had it concealed all along beneath her dress. But I saw the flash of steel as it came up in her hand and she plunged the blade into the man’s neck as he lay atop her. He made a surprised gurgling sound and clawed wildly at the knife handle, finally pulling the blade free as a great geyser of blood shot like a fountain from his neck. But with his last breath before he bled to death and fell lifeless atop her, he drew the knife across our dear Sara’s throat, and in a terrible instant the life drained from her eyes.
Now darkness falls and we sit huddled together upon the ground inside one of the rude stick shelters. Here we try to console one another, weeping softly and whispering together. Several of the younger savages squat in front of the entrance, guarding us, but they have not bothered to bind our hands again for all fight has left us. After they murdered Sara, the filthy brutes violated the rest of us in turn … we all simply endured, silently, their vicious assaults … I managed only to save the child Pretty Walker from this fate, distracting her would-be assailant by offering myself a second time in her stead … I have my notebook, strapped all along to my back, open in my lap and here I make these wretched and perhaps final entries …
“Why do you still write in your journal, May?” Martha asked me a moment ago in a small, hopeless voice. “What difference does any of it make now?”
“I don’t know, Martha,” I said. “Perhaps I write to stay alive, to keep us all alive.”
Helen Flight laughed bleakly. “Yes,” she said, “I understand perfectly, May. Your pen is your medicine and as long as you’re exercising it, you are elsewhere engaged, you are alive. In spite of everything, we are all still alive … that is to say, except, of course, for dear little Sara.”
We all looked at the child’s body, which lay cold and stiffening, where we had dragged her to the rear of the hut.
“I do not wish to live any longer,” Martha said. “Perhaps Sara was the lucky one. Surely death would be a blessing after what has befallen us … and what we have to look forward to.”
“Aw stop
yer
damn whinin’, Martha,” said Meggie Kelly. “Susie and me are going to
’ave
our babies, and we plan to be alive for that event. Isn’t that so, sister?”
“Right, Meggie,” said Susie. “We’re goin’ to be mothers we are. The lads are goin’ to come for us, I just know they will.”
“Yes, I believe so myself,” said Helen. “Chin up, Martha. We’ve been used abominably ill, it’s true, but our husbands aren’t going to allow the Crows to just walk off with their wives. Your own husband, Tangle Hair, is, after all, head man of the Crazy Dog soldiers—May’s husband, Little Wolf, head man of the Elk warriors, of which society my own Mr. Hog is second-in-command—and a most capable fellow he is, too, if I may say so. I’m quite certain the chaps have already set out to rescue us. That they will swoop down at any moment and exact their vengeance against these criminals.”
Brave Gretchen, who was still barely sensible from the terrible blow she took, and whom the savages had at least spared in their ravishment, now raised her head weakly from where she lay beside us. “
Yah
and don’t forget my
hustband
No Brains, either,” she said. “He come for me. I know he
vill.
”
We are allowed no fire and the night air is chilly and so we close in together for warmth and what little comfort we can offer one another …
 
Yes, thank God! Helen was correct, we have been saved, delivered to safety, returned to our own people! The Crow thieves—kidnappers, murderers, rapists, fiends—are dead. Our warriors killed even some of the young men among them … of that I am sorry, for they were little more than boys, though I believe that several escaped in the ensuing melee …
The attack came just at dawn after the darkest twenty-four hours of our lives. The Crow guards must have first been silently eliminated, for our other captors were still asleep inside their huts when our brave warriors stormed the camp. The Crows had barely time to exit their shelters before they were struck down, butchered amidst their own cries of surprise and the bloodcurdling shrieks of our men. My husband Little Wolf himself led the charge, seemed not like a man at all but like a God of vengeance, an animal, a bear, fearless, without mercy. He carried a shield and a lance as he rode, striking down the enemy like the wrath of God itself. Truly he was, at that moment, my knight in shining armor.
We women stayed huddled in our shelter but could see the terrible carnage from the open entranceway. Riding right alongside the men, but for her breechclout naked atop her white horse, was our own brave Phemie. The Crows must have been paralyzed with terror at the sight of this howling warrior woman bearing down upon them, drawing her bow like a mythic goddess of war to drive an arrow through the heart of an enemy and then with another bloodcurdling cry, to smote a second with her club. Good God, what a vision …
All of our husbands had come for us, just as Helen had predicted, yes, even No Brains, who was finely dressed for battle in an elaborately ornamented war shirt but whom I feel certain held back until the initial charge was over and then came in to count coup upon the already dead and stricken enemy.
The boy Yellow Wolf was the very first to enter our hut and when he saw his beloved bride laid out there cold and dead, a more piteous howling of grief I have never before heard. He went to her, gathered her corpse in his arms, and pressed her to his chest. All of us wept anew for our friend and for her young husband’s splendid grief.
Leaving the boy to his private mourning, we exited the shelter to search out our own husbands amidst the chaos of death and dying. The scalps of enemies were being taken … other mutilations occurring … the scene had an unreal, dreamlike quality to it—as if we were there and yet not there … truly we are all of us savages now … anointed together in this bloody sacrament of revenge … for we took pleasure in our enemies’ death and mutilations, and shall never be the same for it … we have seen the savagery in our own hearts … have exulted in blood and vengeance … have danced over the scalps of enemies … all that we have done, God help us …
The Cheyenne men tend not to be demonstrative in matters of conjugal affection, but when the Kelly girls saw their own twin husbands they ran to them in joy, leapt upon their ponies like sprites, wrapping their legs about the young men’s waists, hugging them about the shoulders and kissing them wildly on their faces and necks. “God bless
ya,
lads,” they said. “God bless
ya.
We knew
ya’d
come for us. We knew you’d save
yore
dear blessed wives.”
Gretchen, much recovered from her injury, but still wobbly and weak-kneed, found her own buffoonish husband, who was afoot leading his horse. No Brains was all puffed up like a cock with his recent coups and himself waved a bloody enemy scalp for all to see.
My husband Little Wolf sat his mount, quiet and still as is his way, watchful and surveying the scene like the dominant wolf of the pack. When he spied me with his daughter Pretty Walker beside me, he rode directly to us and slipped from his horse.
The child began immediately to weep, threw herself into her father’s arms.
“Neve’ea’xaeme
,
nahtona,
” Little Wolf said, holding her.
“Neve’ea’xaeme, nahtona.
Do not cry, my daughter.”
And then he looked over the child’s shoulder at me.
“Ena’so’eehovo, Mesoke?
They raped her, Swallow?”
I shook my head, no, and to the next question in my husband’s eyes, I cast my own eyes to the ground, and began to weep myself,
“Nisaatone’oetohe, naehame,
I could not stop him, my husband.
Nasaatone’oetohe.”
Little Wolf smiled gently at me, and nodded and when he spoke, I think, it was for the comfort of us both.
“Eesepeheva’e,
” he said.
“Eesepeheva’e.
It is all right now.”
Riding back into our camp this afternoon, we were greeted by the joyful trilling of our women as all ran out to meet us. But when the family of Yellow Wolf saw him bringing up the rear, leading a horse with the body of
Ve’ho’a’o’ke
laid across it, a high keening arose from some of the women, and spread throughout the camp.

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