Free One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus

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