Free One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus Page A

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 …

 
    NOTEBOOK II
     
    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)
     

    13 April 1875
     
    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 …
    13 April 1875
     
    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