The women came quickly to lift me on my bed and transport me to the birthing lodge—where all Cheyenne babies are born and which gratefully had already been erected in preparation for our group parturition.
The skies were clear as they carried me there, the night air windless and frigid. I lay on my back, borne aloft by the others, looking up toward the heavens at the millions of stars. A shooting star blazed across the sky at that moment. I took this to be a good omen, and I prayed upon the shooting star, prayed that my baby would be born healthy and strong.
A fire already burned in the birthing lodge, tended by Woman Who Moves Against the Wind. The tipi was very clean and beautifully appointed with fine, newly tanned, and exquisitely embroidered hides and blankets, the walls freshly painted with various symbols and a number of Helen Flight’s lovely bird designs. “In this way,” she had said while painting them, “each of you may choose in turn your own medicine bird for your child.” For mine I chose the mighty wren—ve’keseheso, little bird—for its beautiful song, its industriousness and courage.
Now the women laid me gently down on a bed. The Medicine Woman came to my side to examine me, much like one of our own doctors. “Eanetano,” she said to the others.
“Yes, I’m in labor!” I said. “And is the baby healthy?”
“Etonestoheese’hama?” the woman asked, turning to Martha.
“Why don’t you ask me that question?” I demanded. “I can tell you perfectly well how far along I am. Just as the others.”
“Enehestoheese’hama,” Martha answered.
“No, that is not correct, Martha,” I said, sharply, “I’m early. I can’t possibly be full term yet.”
“Close enough, dear,” she said, all efficiency now. “You’ve always been a leader among us, and now you lead us into motherhood. Perhaps your fever has brought on the labor early.”
I was still very weak from my recent illness and feared that I had little strength left to spare for the rigors of childbirth. But now the pains came sharply and regularly. The sweat poured from my face. I was certain that something must be wrong with my baby.
The women bathed my brow with damp cloths and spoke their encouragement to me while trying to make me as comfortable as possible. But when at last the time came, I was too exhausted, too weak, I had not the strength left to push; I felt myself fading away, losing consciousness, slipping back into the same wonderful dream I had had before … I longed so to go back there, where it was peaceful and green, to be with my little Sara …
I found myself in the same beautiful river bottom in the springtime, with the cottonwoods leafing out and the sweet clover blooming yellow in the meadows and up ahead my little Sara, waving to me. “Not yet Mesoke,” she called back. “You must stay a little longer, for your baby needs you.”
And coming from a great distance away, I heard the voice of Woman Who Moves Against the Wind. “Ena’tseane,” she said calmly. “She is dying in childbirth.” And I wondered who she was talking about.
Ahead of me Sara smiled and waved me back. I wanted so desperately to join her.
“No! No! She cannot be dying,” screamed Martha from the distance, “May, your baby is coming, May, you must wake up, you must help!”
And Sara said to me, “It is still not time, Mesoke. Another time I will bring you to Seano. But now you must go back and bring your daughter into the world.”
And then I came awake with a choke and I felt my baby’s struggle between my legs as she fought to gain the light.
“Oh, God,” I said, gasping for breath, “Oh, my God, name’esevotame, name’esevotame …”
“Yes, May!” Martha cried. “Yes, your baby is coming! Push, push hard, now, here it comes!”
And then I felt her come free, the wet slickness of her head sliding across the inside of my thigh, the sharp unbearable pain followed by the sweet release as Woman Who Moves Against the Wind took hold of the infant and brought her forward into the world. She lifted my daughter and smacked her on the rump, and my little Wren gave a hearty wail of indignation. Thank God, thank God …
I fought to remain conscious, but I felt myself slipping again into a deep exhausted slumber, too weak to raise my head, too weak even to look at my child.
“Ve’ho’me’esevotse,” said the woman with a tone of wonder in her voice, “Ve’ho’me’esevotse.”
“What does she mean, Martha?” I whispered, so spent that I was barely able to speak. “Gertie, tell me what does she mean? Why does she say that? Is my baby healthy?”
“Ve’ho’me’esevotse,” repeated Woman Who Moves Against the Wind, as she wiped and swaddled the baby. The other Cheyenne women gathered curiously around and inspected the baby. “Hou,” they said in voices filled with astonishment, “Hou, ve’ho’me’esevotse, ve’ho’ka’kesoas!”
“Tell me!” I gasped with my last bit of strength. “Why do they keep saying that? What’s wrong with my baby?”
“Take it easy, honey, your baby’s just fine,” Gertie said, “a great big healthy girl baby. But, honey, the medicine woman is right, she ain’t no Indian baby, she’s a ve’ho’me’esevotse, just like she said, a white baby, like them others is saying—ve’ho’ka’kesoas, a little white girl if ever I seen one.”
“’Tis God’s own truth, May,” said Susie Kelly, “the lass is as pale and rosy-cheeked as an Irishman.”
“Scots-Irish, I’d say,” added her sister Meggie, wryly.
“That is to say, dear,” Helen Flight whispered, “your baby appears to be Caucasian.”
“Oh, my God,” I murmured, giving myself up at last to the death of sleep that dragged me down—and grateful for it I was, too. “Good God, I’ve had John Bourke’s child …”
For nearly two more days I slept, waking only long enough to nurse my baby, though sometimes I woke and the child was at my breast already, placed there by Woman Who Moves Against the Wind or one of the others. She was a beautiful child, and from the moment I first laid eyes on her there was never any question in my mind of her parentage. She had Bourke’s nose, Bourke’s deep-set intelligent eyes. She was John Bourke’s daughter, of that I was certain.
The women fed me broth until I had regained some of my strength, cared for me again as they had before, and finally today I am able to sit up for a time and record this experience in my journal.
Only minutes ago my husband Little Wolf came to see his daughter for the first time. It was a moment that, for obvious reasons, I have been dreading. He sat beside me and looked for the longest time at the baby in my arms. I could only imagine what he must be thinking; I was filled with shame and remorse at my infidelity to this great, kind man—although we had not yet even met at the time of my indiscretion with John Bourke.
Finally Little Wolf reached out and with the greatest tenderness put the back of his fingers against the baby’s cheek. “Nahtona,” he said, and it was not a question, but a simple statement.
“Hou,” I answered in a tiny, tentative voice. “Yes, my husband, your daughter.”
“Nahtona, emo’onahe,” Little Wolf said, smiling at her, his face filled with fatherly pride.
“Yes, she is, isn’t she?” I said. “Your daughter is very beautiful.”
“Epeheva’e,” he said, nodding with great satisfaction. “It is good that He’amaveho’e has given to me, the Sweet Medicine Chief, a white baby to teach us the new way. Woman Who Moves Against the Wind has explained this to me. It is just as the monk said it would be. This baby is the vo’estanevestomanehe, our Savior. Maheo has sent the white baby Jesus to lead our People to the promised land.”
I was deeply touched by Little Wolf’s naive acceptance of the child as his own, and I could not help but smile at his muddling of Biblical affairs. After months of listening first to Reverend Hare’s sermons, and then to Brother Anthony’s quiet explanations, the People have ended up with a strange hybridized religion based partly on their own beliefs and partly on those of Christianity. Perhaps this is as it should be and, sure
ly, makes as much sense as any other.
“My husband,” I said gently, “the baby Jesus was a boy child, not a girl. This is not the Savior, this is only our little baby girl. Our daughter. Your daughter and my daughter.”
“Hou,” he agreed, “I understand. This time the Savior is a girl child. That, too, is a good thing.”
I laughed then and spoke in English. “I’m not exactly the Virgin Mary,” I said, “but if that’s the way you want it, my husband, why the hell not!”
28 January 1876
And so it is that my baby girl, John Bourke’s daughter, is considered throughout the camp to be a sacred child—vo’estanevestomanehe,the Savior—given by Maheo, God Himself, as a gift to the Cheyenne people, a white baby who will lead the next generation of Cheyennes into the new world. A steady stream of visitors have come to see her, to marvel and hou approvingly at her milky white skin; many bear gifts for her. Surely Captain Bourke himself would appreciate the irony!
I had not intended to encourage the deceit, but neither have I disabused my husband of his superstitions. I have spoken to Brother Anthony at some length about this, having confessed everything to him. He agrees, as do the others, that to tell Little Wolf the truth of our daughter’s parentage would serve no purpose, and that, indeed, this great event can only further encourage the remaining free Cheyennes to go into the agency. “There are no accidents in the Kingdom of God,” Anthony said. “Perhaps your child, May, has been chosen to continue His work on Earth, to spread the word of God among the heathens.”
“Don’t tell me you believe it yourself, Anthony?” I said, with a laugh. “Can’t she just be my daughter? That’s enough for me.”
Of course, some of my white friends, especially the always irreverent Gertie and Daisy Lovelace, tease me mercilessly about the child, upon whom all dote. Any speculation among the general population about the nature of my relationship with the Captain has been finally laid to rest—but none seem to hold it against me, or even be particularly surprised.
Daisy, herself very pregnant, came the first time to see the child, looked at her with her wry hooded eyes, smiled slyly, and said in her purring Southern voice, “Why if it idn’t the lil’ baby Jesus, herself. A’ve huurd so much about you, mah deah. Everyone in camp is talkin’ about you.” And she shook her head in amusement. “May, you are the only guuurl I have eveh known, who after havin’ committed, if not exactly udultery, at least an act of waaalld and passionate promiscuity on practically the eve of hur weddin’ naght, is rewarded for hur sins by givin’ buuurth to a bastaaad whaate chaald believed baah all to be the baby Jesus. This is an extraordinary stroke of good fortune, mah deah. How did you eveh manage it?”
“Just lucky, Daisy,” I admitted with a laugh. “Pure, dumb luck.”
“And are you goin’ to infohm the good Captain that he is a daddy?” she asked.
“If ever he has occasion to see this child, he will certainly know,” I replied. “But I am married now to the great Chief Little Wolf, and as far as I’m concerned this child is officially his daughter … In any case, imagine how the situation would embarrass the good Catholic Captain among his military friends and cohorts?”
“Idn’t that just the way of alll men?” Daisy said, and she let loose a bark of raw laughter. “It nevah occurs to them that they are the very ones who damaged the guuuuds in the fust place, does it? That was jest exactly the attitude of the cad Mr. Wesley Chestnut … and all along I thought we were goin’ to be married …”
“You became with child by him, Daisy?” I asked. “I never knew that.”
“Yes I did, and gave her away for adoption,” Daisy said, “a decision I’ve regretted every day of mah life since. But this baby Ah’m carryin’ now? This little niggah baby. Ah’m keepin’ this one come Hell or high water.”
29 January 1876
Yesterday offered me the first opportunity since my recovery to speak privately with Gertie, to ask her the question I have been pondering since the first night I saw her here after my accident.
“You rarely come to pay strictly social calls, Gertie,” I said, coming right to the point, “and as this is dead of winter, reaching us must have been extremely difficult for you—and a matter of some urgency. Tell me what news you bring.”
“Honey, I was just waitin’ for things to quiet down some before I was goin’ to tell you,” Gertie said. “You know, what with your sickness and then the baby comin’ the way it did … maybe you lost sight of it, but you folks have come right up against the Army’s deadline.”
“I’ve had other things on my mind,” I said.
“Course ya have, honey,” she said, “an’ that’s why I ain’t said nothin’ about it. I got news from the Cap’n. I brung you a letter from him. Before you read it, I’d better explain what’s up. Crook’s army left Fort Fetterman at the beginnin’ of the month, headin’ for this country. Of course, the Cap’n is with ‘em. No telling where they is right now on account of the poor weather, which probably caused them to bivouac up somewhere, but even so they can’t be more’n a few weeks away from here. It’s a big detachment, honey—this time they ain’t foolin’ around. They got sixty-one officers with’em, and over fourteen hunert enlisted men. And they’re well provisioned, too—they got four hunert pack mules, sixty-five packers, a hunert and sixty-eight wagons, and seven ambulances. Not only that but they got better n’ three hunert and fifty Injun scouts with’em—‘wolves’ the Injuns call’em when they go over to the other side. You never seen nothin’ like it, honey. It’s an army itself. They got big bands of Shoshone, Crows, Pawnees—they got Sioux, Arapahos, Cheyennes. Yup, some a your own folks is with’em. Take a wild guess who’s head a the Cheyenne wolves.”
“Jules Seminole,” I said, without hesitation.
“None other, honey,” Gertie confirmed, “an’ he’s got others with him who are right from this here camp, that got family still here. You know some of’em on accounta some of’em just came into the agency this past fall with their white wives. You know that little French gal that was with you, Marie Blanche?—well her husband is one of the wolves, and so is the one they exiled, you know the fella who’s married to the gal who always wears black.”
“Ada Ware,” I said.
“Yup, that’s the one—her husband, the one they call Stinkin’ Flesh. A course, they won’t have no trouble finding you here. They know right where you are. Like I say, honey, the Army don’t send out a force like this unless they really mean business. Too many miners and settlers have been getting picked off in the Black Hills, and folks is startin’ to really holler for military protection from the Injuns. They been sendin’ petitions to General Sheridan in Chicago and to the President hisself in Washington. Crook’s orders are to clean out any hostiles they find in this country. And any Injun who ain’t enrolled in the agency as of the first of February is a hostile Injun. And that means you, honey.”
The irony of having gone from being a volunteer in the service of my government to being considered a “hostile Indian” did not escape my attention. “But with the weather we couldn’t have complied if we’d tried, Gertie,” I said. “You know that. Especially with all of our pregnant women.”
“Sure, honey, I know that,” Gertie said. “But what I’m tryin’ to tell ya is that this has all been set in motion already. Listen to me on this: A military campaign, once it’s set in motion, has a life of its own.”
“We can’t leave now,” I said. “I have a newborn infant. The others are about to have their babies. These are innocent people. We are innocent people. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Honey, I was at Sand Creek in ‘64,” Gertie reminded me. “Those folks weren’t doin’ nothin’ wrong, neither. Last year Captain Henely and the buffalo hunters jumped the Southern Cheyenne on the Sappa, burned the camp, killed everyone in it. Threw the bodies of the smallest babies in the fire. The Army’ll do anything it wants. You put a bunch of raw recruits together in hard conditions in winter, fightin?
?? an enemy they don’t understand an’ that scares the piss out of ‘em—anything can happen. Especially when they got orders.”
“That’s madness, Gertie,” I said.
“I know it is, honey,” Gertie said softly. “Cap’n knows it is. But it don’t make no difference. That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. Them settlers that the Injuns are killin’, those are innocent folks, too. What it all comes down to, honey—always comes down to—is that there ain’t enough room for the Injuns and the whites in this country. One thing you can be sure of is that the whites ain’t goin’ to go away. And the other thing is that the Injuns ain’t goin’ to win this one, either.”
Gertie dug into the front of her shirt and brought out Captain Bourke’s letter. “Here, honey,” she said handing it to me, “I imagine this letter’ll tell you pretty much the same thing as I have.”
Fort Fetterman, Wyoming Territory
26 December 1875
Madam: I pray that this correspondence finds you in good health. I have news of the most urgent nature to convey to you, and to the other women with you. Thus I have once again dispatched our loyal intermediary “Jimmy” as messenger.
Your people must decamp with as much dispatch as possible and move immediately south toward Fort Fetterman. You must fly a white flag at all times so that your band may be identified as peaceful by Army troops who will intercept you en route. You will be provided safe escort the remaining distance to the fort where arrangements for your future settlement will be made. As I pen this correspondence, General Crook prepares to dispatch the largest winter campaign in the history of the Plains Indian wars. As a member of the General’s personal staff, I myself will be traveling with a force that included eleven companies of cavalry under the command of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. Taking into account vagaries of weather and engagements with hostiles along the way, we expect to reach the Powder River country no later than the middle of February. We have been advised by our scouts of the general location of your camp and the number of people contained within it.