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Authors: Jim Fergus

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We have reached our first destination, and are being lodged in officers’ homes while we await transportation on the next leg of our journey. Martha and I have been separated, and I am staying with the family of an officer named Lieutenant James. His wife Abigail is tight-lipped and cool and seems to have adopted the superior attitude with which those of us enrolled in this program have been treated by virtually everyone with whom we have come in contact since the beginning of our journey. Although “officially” we are going among the heathens as missionaries, everyone seems to know the real truth of our mission, and everyone seems to despise us for it. Perhaps I am naive to expect otherwise—that we might be accorded some measure of respect as volunteers in an important social and political experiment but of course small-minded souls like the Lieutenant’s wife must have someone to look down upon, and so they have cast us in the role of whores.
Shortly after our arrival, my hostess knocked on the door to my room, and when I answered, refused to enter but demanded in a haughty tone that I not speak of our mission in front of her children at the dining table.
“As our mission is a secret one,” I answered, “I had no intention of discussing it. May I ask why you make such a request, madam?”
“The children have been exposed to the drunken, degenerate savages who frequent the fort,” the woman replied. “They are a filthy people whom I would not invite into my home, let alone allow to sit at my dinner table. Nor will I permit my children to fraternize with the savage urchins. We have been ordered by the fort commander to house you women and to feed you, but it is not by our choice, nor does it reflect our own moral judgment against you. I shall not have my children corrupted by any discussion of the shameful matter. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” I answered. “And may I add that I would rather starve to death than to sit at your dining table.”
Thus I spent my short time at Mrs. James’s home in my room. I did not eat. Early one morning I went out to walk on the fort grounds, but even then I was leered at by a group of soldiers and by some very rough-looking brigands in buckskin clothes who frequent the fort. Their lewd remarks caused me, however reluctantly, to give up even the small diversion of walking. Our mission appears to be the worst-kept secret on the frontier, and seems to threaten and terrify all who know of it. Ah, well, this is of scant consequence to me; I am rather accustomed to doing the unconventional, the unpopular … clearly to a fault … Frankly, from the way I have been treated by the so-called “civilized” people in my life, I rather look forward to residency among the savages. I should hope that at the very least they might appreciate us.
 
We are under way again, on a military train to Fort Laramie. We have lost several more of our number at Sidney. They must have had a change of heart with our destination now so close, or perhaps the army families with whom they were lodged convinced them to abandon this “immoral” program.
Or perhaps—and most likely of all—they took to heart the pathetic sight of the poor savages who inhabit the environs of the fort. I must admit that these are as scurvy a lot of beggars and drunkards as ever I’ve witnessed. Filthy and dressed in rags, they fall down in the dirt and sleep in their own filth. My God, if I were told that one of these poor unfortunates was to be my new husband, I, too, would reconsider. How they must stink!
While at Fort Sidney, my friend Phemie was put up by the Negro blacksmith and his wife. Many of our women have refused to be housed with Phemie during our journey because she is a Negro. As we are all of us off to live and procreate with heathens of a different race and a darker color, such fine distinctions strike me as especially pointless—and I wager that they will become less and less pronounced once we are among the savages themselves. Indeed, I suspect that Phemie will come to seem more and more like one of us … like a white person.
The blacksmith and his wife were very kind to Phemie and gave her extra clothing for her journey. They told her that the “free” Indians with whom we will be living are not at all like these “fort sitters,” and that the Cheyennes are regarded as among the most handsome and cleanly of the various plains tribes, and their women considered to be the very most virtuous. We were all greatly relieved by this news.
The new train is a considerably more spartan affair, the seats mere benches of rough wood; it is as if we are being slowly stripped of the luxuries of civilization. Martha seems increasingly anxious; the poor mute child Sara practically hysterical with anxiety—she has chewed her finger nearly raw … even the usually boisterous and cheerful Gretchen has fallen oddly silent and apprehensive. And all the others are in various states of distress. The Lovelace woman drinks her “medicine” furtively and silently from her flask, clutching her old white poodle to her bosom. Miss Flight still wears her perpetual expression of surprise, but it is now tinged with a certain anxiety. Our woman in black, Ada Ware, who rarely speaks, looks more than ever like an angel of death. The Kelly sisters, too, seem to have lost a good measure of their street-urchin cheekiness in the face of these endless, desolate prairies. The twins have stopped prowling the train and sit across from each other like mirror images, quietly staring out the window. Of great relief to all, the evangelist, Narcissa White, who is usually preaching loudly enough for everyone to hear, is now lost in fervent, silent prayer.
Only Phemie, God bless her, remains, as always, calm, unperturbed, her head held high, a slight smile at her lips. I think the trials and tribulations of her life have given her a nearly unshakable strength; she is a force to behold.
And just now she has done a very fine thing. Just as we have all sunk to our lowest ebb, exhausted from the long journey, discouraged and frightened of what lies ahead; riding silently, and staring out the window of the train, and seeing nothing but the most dreadfully barren landscape—dry, rocky, treeless—truly country with nothing to recommend it, country that increases our anxieties and seems to presage this terrible new world to which we are being born away. Just then Phemie began to sing, in her low melodic voice, a Negro slave song about the underground railroad:
This train is bound for glory, this train.
This train is bound for glory, this train.
This train is bound for glory,
Get on board and tell your story
This train is bound for glory, this train.
 
And now all eyes were watching Phemie, and some of our women smiled timidly, listening spellbound while she sang:
This train don’t pull no extras, this train,
This train don’t pull no extras, this train,
This train don’t pull no extras,
Don’t pull nothing but the midnight special,
This train don’t pull no extras, this train …
 
The proud brave sorrow in Phemie’s lovely voice gave us courage, and when she took up the first verse again:
“This
train
is bound for glory, this train”
… I, too, began to sing with her …
“This train is bound for glory, this train … .”
And a few others joined in,
“This train is bound for glory, Get on board and tell your
story”
… and soon, nearly all the women—even I noticed “Black Ada”—were singing a rousing and joyous chorus,
“This train is bound for glory, this train”
Ah, yes, glory … isn’t it fine to think so …
 
 
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.”

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