One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus (2010)

Subtitle: The Journals of May Dodd.

Fantastic book. I did not realize that this was going to be about exactly about the area I was going to visit.If I understood the premise correctly, this book was based on a small historical fact. I believe that the Cheyenne Chief might have really come to the US President with the proposal to send a thousand white women to get married to the Cheyenne and then the children would be US citizens and would help integrate the cultures. The author went on to imagine what it would have been like, if this really happened - at least with a few women.

May Dodd is the main character, who has been put in an insane asylum for being promiscuous, because she chose a man that was not in the same class as her family, though she had two kids with him and was monogamous. When the government offers her a way out by going out west to marry a savage and bring the white culture to the heathens, she takes it. There is a trainload of women, who are escaping something to take on this adventure - two Irish twin sisters who get an out of jail free card, an English bird watcher who has run out of money, a former slave, a southern belle who has been jilted by her fiance when her father loses everything after the Civil War. They volunteer to be wives to the Indians and to bear a child with them.

I wish I had more time to do this book justice. In a sense it was one of those white person gets raised by the Indians story and takes on their wisdom, but this was a whole group of women, who became part of the Cheyenne tribe and most integrated quite well. Though they were supposed to "civilize" the Indians, they learn that the Indian way of life makes a lot of sense. Of course this story doesn't end well, as the US government renigs on the promises it has made the Indians, and they are all forced to live on reservations. I saw the current reservation outlines in the map of Montana, when I visited last week, and some of the Crow and Cheyenne history at a museum in Billings, MT.

Very touching, a good sense of Indian daily life, the historical time period and the injustices of the white US government. It included the role religious teachers played and the difficulty of women to adjust to the wild west. Custer was the only historical figure who's name I recognized, though I later found out May's husband - Chief Little Wolf was also a historical figure.

Definitely a candidate for gifting to others.