One Thousand White Women/ Jim Fergus

In 1874, a Cheyenne Chief named Little Wolf and several other Chiefs met with President Grant and other officials and the Press to discuss a peace proposal. The Chief began by explaining that, among his tribe, it is tradition that every newborn baby belongs to the tribe of his mother. This is a good thing, he said, because the child will be brought up understanding the customs of the mother’s tribe but will be welcome in the tribe of his father. Little Wolf asked that the President give to the Cheyenne one thousand white women who would marry Cheyenne men and whose children would be brought up in the white man culture and thus creating an understanding and peace between the two peoples. The Cheyenne, in return, would pay one thousand horses for the women. The proposal which was an historical fact, was rejected and the press pandered to the outrage that Little Wolf’s proposal caused.

Our author, Jim Fergus, seized on the idea and created a fascinating historical, imaginative novel about what happened after the proposal was made:

When the public read about the outrageous proposal, the President started to receive thousands of letters from women from all walks of life stating that they would be willing to participate in the "Brides for Indians" program. So many, that President Grant finally decided that the program might just help the peace effort which was not going very well (the Cheyenne were attacking settlers going West) but the Government, in their wisdom(?), made it a secret project. There were many reasons that the women were willing to go and live with the Indians and the agency set out to interview the candidates. They were also willing to give the selected candidates release from jail and release from mental institutions (if the candidates were not too crazy).
The story is narrated through the journal of a woman named May Dodd who was wrongly placed in a mental institution by her parents because May left home to live with a man she loved and had two children out of wedlock causing her socialite parents much scandal. May was abandoned by her family, she lost her children and thought that she was destined to spend the rest of her life in asylum; she applied and was selected for the "BFI" program. The journal describes the very colorful collection of women that accompany her as the first group of brides and we learn the various reasons both sad and humorous as to why the women volunteered .

The journal begins with May’s release from the asylum and tells the story of the initial journey to an outpost in Kansas Territory and on to the Indian village where the women take up their lives in the Indian village as wives of Cheyenne braves.
Entertaining and funny descriptions of the women, their backgrounds, their strengths and their weaknesses, their hardships, intimate details of the lives they lead as wives in a communal lodge with their husbands’s other wives and the dishonesty and deception of the Government and the Army as they cheat the Indians out of their promised land and possessions in total disregard of their treaties. They even lie about the "BFI" program. The journal includes the hypocrisy of the clergy assigned to the project by the Government. While the clergy was supposed to support the women, they looked down upon the women and felt that their prime mission was to teach Christianity to the "heathen savages". They also had "special" and secret instructions from the Government.

The project, of course, was doomed to failure because the two races were too far apart; the situation in the Black Hills, the discovery of gold and the mad rush into Indian Territory resulted in a public outcry for the Army to protect the settlers and a massacre and rounding up of all Indians to a reservation resulted. The peaceful "BFI " village was invaded and devastated by a huge contingent of U.S. troops. May was fatally wounded while trying to escape but her journal is finally passed on to her children.