June 2011

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

Jim Fergus

An American western with a most unusual twist, this is an imaginative fictional account of the participation of May Dodd and others in the controversial "Brides for Indians" program.  In the year 1874, the head of the Cheyenne Sweet Medicine tribe, Chief Little Wolf, journeyed to Washington D.C. with a proposal for President Grant.  Dressed in full, colorful Indian regalia, Chief Little Wolf presented his plan to give the government one thousand horses in exchange for one thousand white women.  Hoping to end the fighting between the white man and the Indians on the American plains, Little Wolf felt that if white women could merge with his tribe and bear children of mixed blood, the new children might bond the two races.  Indians and whites would then begin to truly assimilate and learn to live together peacefully. 

May's personal journals, loaded with humor and intelligent reflection, describe the adventures of some very colorful white brides (including one black one), their marriages to Cheyenne warriors, and the natural abundance of life on the prairie before the final press of the white man's civilization.  Fergus is gifted in his ability to portray the perceptions and emotions of women.  He writes with tremendous insight and sensitivity about the individual community and the political and religious issues of the time, many of which are still relevant today.  This book is artistically rendered with meticulous attention to small details that bring to life the daily concerns of a group of hardy souls at a pivotal time in U.S. history.