One Thousand White Women ~: The Journals of May Dodd : a novel

One Thousand White Women ~: The Journals of May Dodd : a novel by Jim Fergus
Fiction, 1998, 302 pgs
Read : 9/08
Book Club : B&N Women’s Book Club
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Although this is fiction, I enjoyed the story and learning about the ways of the Cheyenne, and how the white women, “the brides” were able to become a part of their “tribe”. It was sad that the peace and harmony which the WOMEN were able to bring between the “whites” and the Indians was destroyed by the MEN of both cultures. I would recommend this book.
Summary : From Kirkus Reviews
Long, brisk, charming first novel about an 1875 treaty between Ulysses S. Grant and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, by the sports reporter and author of the memoir A Hunter's Road (1992). Little Wolf comes to Washington and suggests to President Grant that peace between the Whites and Cheyenne could be established if the Cheyenne were given white women as wives, and that the tribe would agree to raise the children from such unions. The thought of miscegenation naturally enough astounds Grant, but he sees a certain wisdom in trading 1,000 white women for 1,000 horses, and he secretly approves the Brides For Indians treaty. He recruits women from jails, penitentiaries, debtors' prisons, and mental institutionsoffering full pardons or unconditional release. May Dodd, born to wealth in Chicago in 1850, had left home in her teens and become the mistress of her father's grain-elevator foreman. Her outraged father had her kidnaped, imprisoning her in a monstrous lunatic asylum. When Grant's offer arrives, she leaps at it and soon finds herself traveling west with hundreds of white and black would-be brides. All are indentured to the Cheyenne for two years, must produce children, and then will have the option of leaving. May, who keeps the journal we read, marries Little Wolf and lives in a crowded tipi with his two other wives, their children, and an old crone who enforces the rules. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding, especially when the women show up the braves at arm-wrestling, foot-racing, bow-shooting, and gambling. Liquor raises its evil head, as it will, and reduces the braves to savagery. But the women recover, go out on the winter kill with their husbands, and accompany them to a trading post where they drive hard bargains and stop the usual cheating of the braves. Eventually, when the cavalry attacks the Cheyenne, mistakenly thinking they're Crazy Horse's Sioux, May is killed. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.
Favorite Passages:
There is beauty and brutality in the novel from both the Indians and the “White man”. As Brother Anthony concludes the journals of May Dodd, he relates the horrors of what happened to the Cheyenne community of Chief Little Wolfe after the village is destroyed and most are killed by the US Army. It is tragic what happened as he contemplates these tragedies.

Pg 293….Perhaps some scholars of religion might be tempted to find here a lesson in the vengeful hand of God. But God is not vengeful, my children. God is full of Grace, Light and infinite Mercy. God did not kill the Shoshone babies. Nor did he punish the Cheyennes in retribution by killing their babies. Misguided men on both sides slaughtered the infants. And God took the souls of His children to His Kingdom.