“Oh, no May,” she said, “de men not allow women in de sweat lodge here. My husband he tells me dat.”
“Why not?”
“Because, it is only for de men,” Gretchen said. “It is just de way de People says so.
“Gretchen, what good reason is that?” I said. “Let’s you and I march right over there now and have a sweat bath ourselves!”
“Oh, no I don’t tink so, May,” Gretchen said, “I don’t tink dat be sech a goot idea …”
“Of course it is, it’s a wonderful idea,” I insisted. “And think how invigorating it will be! It is time we taught these people that any activity that is suitable for the men should also be enjoyed by the women. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!”
“Vell, OK, May, vhat de hell,” said Gretchen. “Vatch you going to wear in de sweat house, May?”
“I’m going to wear a towel, dear,” I answered. “What else would one wear in a sweat lodge?”
“Yah, May, me too,” said Gretchen, nodding. “Dat’s a goot idea.”
Many of us had brought cotton towels with us when we first came here, a luxury that the Indians have also discovered, and which item is now available at all the trading posts. Thus I fetched my towel from my lodge and went back to meet Gretchen so that we might make our assault on the male bastion of the sweat lodge together.
Truly, living in such close proximity, a sense of modesty regarding our physical bodies is hardly at issue among most of us any longer—and no one pays the slightest attention whether one is clothed from head to toe or half-naked. Going about with one’s breasts free seems quite natural. And so Gretchen and I stripped off our dresses, giggling like schoolgirls plotting a prank, wrapped our towels around our enormous pregnant waists, and dashed through the snow to the sweat lodge. We scratched on the covering to the opening. “Hurry up, it’s freezing out here!” I cried in my best Cheyenne. I believe now that the medicine man was so shocked to hear a woman’s voice demanding entrance, that he opened the flap just a crack out of pure curiosity to see who might have the audacity to challenge this “men only” institution. And when he did so, we did not hesitate for a moment but burst through the opening into the wonderful humid warmth of the sweat lodge, laughing and quite pleased with ourselves. At our sudden appearance, there arose from the men seated around the fire a great grunting of alarm. The medicine man himself, old White Bull, whom I find to be a tiresome and humorless old bag of wind, was not in the least bit amused by our uninvited entrance, and began to speak sternly to us, waving at us a rattle that the Cheyennes use to ward off evil spirits. “You women go away,” he said. “Leave here immediately. This is a very bad thing!”
“Not bad at all,” I answered. “It’s perfectly delightful. And we’re staying until we have ourselves a good sweat!” With which Gretchen and I sat ourselves down right in front of the fire.
Several of the men, the most stringent traditionalists, stood and left the sweat lodge, grumbling and grunting indignantly as they did so. Gretchen’s husband spoke sternly to her. “What are you doing here, wife? You shame me by coming here in this manner. This is no place for women. Go home!”
“You gest be quite you bick dope! she answered (we have all remarked on the fact that Gretchen even speaks Cheyenne with a Swiss accent!), shaking her finger at her husband, her enormous naked breasts flushed pink as scalded suckling pigs in the steamy heat.”A man don’t talk to his wife like dat, mister! You don’t like dat I come here dat gest too damn bad, den you can gest go home yourself!” The man was instantly cowed by his wife, and fell silent, much to the evident delight of a number of the other sweat bathers. “Hemomoonamo!” someone hissed. (“Henpecked husband!”) “Hou,” said another, nodding. “Hemomoonamo!” And they all nickered softly in amusement.
This bit of humor helped to settle the men, and the sweat-lodge ceremony continued much as if we were not there. Indeed, I think it served the men’s purpose simply to pretend that we were not there. After Gretchen and I had both broken into heavy perspiration, and the heat inside the lodge had become nearly unbearable, we crawled to the opening where old White Bull let us out and then we ran buck naked to the river, squealing like crazed children, Gretchen running with her heavy lumbering gait, her massive breasts swinging like well-loaded parfleches.
A thin skin of new ice had already formed on the opening of the water hole and through this we plunged, gasping and trying to catch our breaths, exiting again as quickly as we could and running back lickety-split to the sweat lodge. An ill-advised activity perhaps, for pregnant women, but Indian babies must be hardy to the elements.
But this time, of course, stodgy old White Bull did not answer our entreaties at the entrance, would not untie the lodge flap. “We are freezing out here!” I cried. “You, old man, let us in there right now!” But he did not answer and finally, lest we really did freeze, we ran back to Gretchen’s lodge, where we dried ourselves by her fire.
“You know what we shall do, Gretchen?” I suggested. “We shall build our own sweat lodge for the women. Yes, it promises to be a long winter, and we have plenty of hides and nothing but time, so we shall all band together to sew our own sweat lodge, and when we are finished, there will be no men allowed! It will be strictly a girls’ club.”
“Goot idea, May!” Gretchen concurred. “Dat’s a damn goot idea. No men allowt! Girls only!”
And so this is how we shall pass the winter. Making what diversions for ourselves that we can, pranks and make-work projects like our sweat lodge, anything to keep ourselves active. For the days, shorter each in their stingy measure of daylight, can seem interminable if one spends them sitting in the dim lodge. We have our chores, of course, going for the living water in the early morning, and gathering firewood—neither of which activity I object to as at least they get me out of the damn tent. And there is always cooking to be done and food preparation and cleaning and sewing and all the other, sometimes dreary projects of wifedom. But these, too, also serve to prevent idleness.
We remaining white women have become, if anything, even closer in our sisterhood. Without the constant activities of traveling—dismantling and reassembling the lodge, packing and unpacking—we have more time to meet regularly in one or another of our lodges, where we consult each other on the progress or lack thereof that we each make in our efforts to convince our families to go into the agency before February.
In our daily meetings we also compare our respective pregnancies, plan our upcoming births, and offer each other what moral support we can. We gossip and argue, laugh and weep, and sometimes we just sit quietly together around the fire, holding hands, staring into the flames and embers, and wondering at the mystery of our lives, wondering what is to come … happy that we have one another, for the winter promises to be long and lonely …
We are all much comforted by the presence of Brother Anthony of the Prairie and frequently meet with him in his own spare lodge, which he has erected on the edge of the village. It is a very simple, immaculately clean affair, as befits a monk, and often we sit by his fire and recite the daily liturgy with him.
“In this place I shall build my hermitage in the spring,” says Anthony in his soft soothing voice. “In these hills above the river I shall be blessed to have everything I require, for a man needs little to commune with God, but a humble shelter and a pure heart. Later with my hands I shall begin the work of building my abbey. I shall be blessed to have other men of humble minds and simple hearts follow me here, and here we shall pray and study and share the word of God with all who come to us.”
It’s a lovely image and often we all sit together in contemplative silence and imagine it. I can almost see Brother Anthony’s abbey in the hills, can imagine us all worshiping quietly there, can imagine our children and our children’s children after us coming to this place … it is a fine comforting thought.
Beside reading, reciting the liturgies and instructing us in his Bible, Anthony is teaching us and the native women t
o bake bread—a fine occupation in the winter and one that fills our tents with wonderful aromas.
The weather continues mostly clear and crisp, with thankfully little wind, and when the sun is up and shining off the pure white prairie, all is very beautiful.
10 December 1875
Nearly a month has passed since my last entry. Time, of course, is not the issue, rather the general torpor of the season and the corresponding lack of interesting occurrences has caused me to rest my pen—to husband and store what little I have to report. Would that we could hibernate like the bears! How wise they are to take their long winter naps and not awake until spring.
The Cheyennes themselves do not appear to suffer from boredom. How lucky they are, for they possess a kind of unlimited patience so that if we are tentbound for days in blizzards, they wait them out without complaint, with a kind of perfect animal-like stillness. Besides simple games that they play, and a bit of gambling among the men, there is little in the way of entertainment—other than storytelling, from which we learn something of the history of these fine people. Of course, they do not read books.
We white women have all read countless times the few volumes that we brought with us or were able to obtain on our last trip to Fort Laramie. I have nearly reduced the Captain’s cherished volume of Shakespeare to tatters from my many readings of it, and, of course, much as I may have wished to hoard it for myself, I have made it freely available to the others. Besides our daily visits with Anthony one of our few recreations has been to meet in groups in one or another of our lodges and read the Bard together, passing the book around the circle, each of us reading a different part. But the light is poor in the lodges, especially with the days now so short.
Our women’s sweat lodge is now complete and in full operation! It is a perfect delight and we white women have been holding our “councils” there. Hah! We have even encouraged some of the younger and bolder Cheyenne women to join us. Both my tentmates, Pretty Walker and Feather on Head, have attended, with extreme shyness at first, but now more enthusiatically. We have a little girl who tends our fire and keeps a supply of water in the buckets to pour on the hot rocks, and all are welcome—if they are women, that is! We sit, for the most part naked, sweating freely and then dashing for the river. Helen Flight often smokes her pipe and sometimes passes it among the others in a kind of pantomime of the men’s dour councils. The Cheyenne women, when they join us, consider this smoking to be quite scandalous, even sacriligious, and will scarcely touch the pipe let alone partake of it.
12 December 1875
I am huge with my baby! Big as a house! I believe that mine is by far the biggest belly in our group! Even Gretchen, herself a hefty woman to begin with, does not seem nearly as large as I. Surely this savage baby of mine is going to be a giant! Fortunately, in spite of the additional bulk I am carrying, I have had a very uneventful pregnancy, almost no illness and, other than the simple act of packing the enormous thing around, very little discomfort. The Cheyennes have all sorts of remedies—teas which they brew from various roots, herbs, flowers, leaves, and grasses—some of which are not disagreeable to the taste; these they give to pregnant women—who are doted over and cared for by the other women, really to the point of distraction.
Much game remains in the vicinity, and the clear weather has been conducive to the hunt, so that we continue to have a steady supply of fresh meat. All of which makes for plenty of work for both men and women so that at least there is less idleness among us—there is always skinning and butchering and tanning to be done.
I have learned to embroider hides with trade beads, and this activity I enjoy—It is a pleasant, time-consuming craft, often peacefully pursued in a group. We sit by the fire, chatting and gossiping and passing the time. Now that most of us white women are so much more proficient in our use of the native tongue, we have achieved a greater intimacy with our fellow Cheyenne wives. Although they have a quite different way of looking at the world than Caucasians, I find that as women we have nearly as much in common as separates us by culture; every day we learn more about one another and have a greater mutual appreciation and respect. Thus we all share the same daily cares and worries, the same labors. And with our pregnancies—for some of the Indian wives are also pregnant—we share the burdens, the responsibilities, and the joys of impending motherhood.
And in our increasing ability to better communicate we also share the fresh glue of humor. At first the Cheyenne women found our white women’s irreverence toward the men to be quite scandalous. But now our small jests and banter about the male race in general seems to delight them, seems to unite us all in a new bond of sisterhood. Together we nod and “how” and giggle enthusiastically as, with a little prompting from us, the Indian women discover … no, not “discover” … I mean to say, “acknowledge” the female’s natural superiority to the male.
In spite of her reserve, I am sometimes even able to elicit a tiny sly smile from Quiet One. Like many who speak sparingly she is keenly observant of all that takes place around her. The other day, for example, Little Wolf was holding council in the lodge with several other heads of state in attendance, including the old Chief Dull Knife, and a fellow named Masehaeke, or Crazy Mule (he was named this by our Sioux neighbors because one time he rode into their camp on a mule, and one of them said, “Here comes that crazy Cheyenne who rides the mule.”). Crazy Mule is a tiresomely long-winded fellow and I always dread when he attends the councils because on he drones—on and on—the only good thing about it, I suppose, being that his voice has the effect of a sleeping potion and instantly puts the children into a deep slumber. I have even sometimes observed Little Wolf and others among the council dozing off while the man is speaking. In any case, the other day, Crazy Mule was going on in his usual fashion and I noticed that Quiet One was looking at me in the shy way she has of observing people from the periphery. I smiled at her and held my hand up to the fire to cast a shadow puppet on the lodge covering above old Crazy Mule’s head. Opening and closing my thumb and fingers I made my shadow puppet to be yakking on like the man himself. This woke up the assemblage! There was much stifling of laughter from those who could observe my chattering shadow puppet, and even Quiet One allowed herself a smile large enough to warrant covering her mouth demurely with her hand.
According to Captain Bourke in an opinion expressed to me during our brief meeting at Fort Laramie, the only true hope for the advancement of the savage is to teach him that he must give up this allegiance to the tribe and look toward his own individual welfare. This is necessary, Bourke claims, in order that he may function effectively in the “individualized civilization” of the Caucasian world. To the Cheyenne such a concept remains completely foreign—the needs of the People, the tribe, and above all the family within the tribe are placed always before those of the individual. In this regard they live somewhat like the ancient clans of Scotland. The selflessness of my husband, Little Wolf, for instance, strikes me as most noble and something that hardly requires “correction” by civilized society. In support of his own thesis, the Captain uses the unfortunate example of the Indians who have been pressed into service as scouts for the U.S. Army. These men are rewarded for their efforts as good law-abiding citizens—paid wages, fed, clothed, and generally cared for. The only requirement of their employment, their allegiance to the white father, is that they betray their own people and their own families … I fail to see the nobility or the advantage of such individualized private initiative …
18 December 1875
A disturbing accident has occurred. Yesterday our Quiet One invited several people to our lodge to partake of a feast of bread that she had just baked. Somehow she confused a bag of arsenic powder for that of baking soda. The Cheyennes obtain the arsenic from the trading post and use it to poison wolves.
The results of this mix-up can be readily imagined. By the grace of God, or perhaps, the grace of the Great Medicine, no one died—but for a pair of hapless dogs who were given bites
of the bread in order to confirm the fact that it was indeed poisoned. By then several of the guests had already been stricken. I sent Horse Boy to summon Anthony and some of the others, and together we prevailed upon the afflicted to vomit. Thank God I and none of the other pregnant women had ourselves partaken of the bread, for it would surely have cost us our babies.
All have now recovered, although for everyone, it was a long and painful ordeal. Little Wolf himself became deathly ill. I feared deeply for his life and sat up all night with him. Of course, poor Quiet One was completely distraught at her part in the near catastrophe; and I have tried to comfort her as much as I could.
The event has served as a catalyst to a council being called to discuss this question of poisoning the wolves—a practice the Cheyennes only recently learned from the white agents, who have advised them that by poisoning the wolves, there will be more game for the people. Since its use has become more widespread among the Indians, all have noticed across the prairie the carcasses not only of wolves, but also of coyotes, eagles, hawks, ravens, raccoons, skunks, and even bears, for the poison kills everything that partakes of the arsenic-laced meat or that feeds off the carcasses of its victims.
Our lodge was crowded with a number of prominent chiefs, dignitaries from the various warrior societies, esteemed medicine men, and our own Brother Anthony. Several of our women were also in attendance, the latter, along with a number of Cheyenne women, seated as usual outside the council circle of men.
After the ceremonial pipe had been smoked by the men, the first fellow to speak up was an old medicine man, Vo’aa’ohmese’aestse, whose name, unless my Cheyenne is worse than I think, translates to something like, Antelope Bowels Moving.
“It is unfortunate,” began the old man, “that Little Wolf’s wife confused the wolf poison with the soda for making bread.” At this there was much assorted “houing” from the assemblage.”Wolf poison is not something that the People should eat in their bread,“he continued with a great deal of pomposity.”However, properly used, the poison is a good thing, for it kills the wolves so that there will be more game for the People.“Now the old man nodded smugly, and looking extremely self-satisfied with this reasoning, as those assembled ”houed” enthusiastically.