One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

I kept wanting this book to be more than it was. The first 100 pages and the last 50 pages were more than engaging, but the 300 pages in between were torturous!

The premise of this fictional novel is based on what the author claims to be a historical fact in which a Northern Cheyenne chief, in hopes to assimilate his people and finally bring peace between the tribe and the U.S. gov't,  proposes to gift the U.S. 1,000 horses in exchange for 1,000 white women. Whether this is true or not (I couldn't find any evidence to support the author's claim), the story is a fascinating tale of the Native people's perseverance in the face of all the painful challenges dealt to them, as well as an insightful look of how the assimilation program might have shaped our world today. The book was engaging from beginning to end – so much so that I have taken up an interest in learning more about the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Crow. I didn't want the story to end and miss the characters dearly.

Story about May Dodd and her adventure of becoming a Cheyenne wife. This story is set in the 1800's. Chief Little Wolf had a meeting with President Grant proposing that they trade horses for 100 white women in order to mix the races thus becoming one people and bringing peace between the white people and the natives. This was all true. Of course President Grant didn't take the Chief's proposal seriously and that is where history ends and this story begins. In this story about 100(can't remember exactly) of the women are recruited and given as gifts to the Cheyenne, among these is May Dodd. Many of the women recruited to become Cheyenne wives are recruited from mental institutions and jails. May Dodd was in a mental institution for being promiscuous. Her family didn't like who she had chosen as a life partner and therefore institutionalized her. She starts writing about her adventures in a series of journals.

The book was well written and honestly led one to think these were real people and real historical facts. The book is mixed up with fictional characters as well as real people. So, I came to really like May Dodd and at times I thought she really was crazy, lol. You grow to like and care for all these women, for the Cheyenne husbands and hope that all turns out ok... it doesn't.

The ending was a bit tragic and left me kind of numb and sad.

Overall, good book, really well written, I didn't have a problem with the author being a man writing in a woman's voice(he did this well), EXTREMELY wordy a lot of the time.

I tend not to rest my estimation of the quality of a book on unsavory elements included, understanding that violence is sometimes necessary for realism, plot, theme or character development. However, in this case, Fergus abandoned realism and character integrity early on, stretching his historic setting with unrealistic and misplaced values (which I hesitate to call feminism, for reasons that I'll get to.) Therefore, there is little excuse for the repeated sexual assault scenes, especially given that Fergus seemed to expect the reader to casually forgive the assailants as easily as his protagonists did. (So easily that the narrator, who was expected to be a reliable, sympathetic narrator, refers to the rape of another character as “nonconsensual” in scare quotes.)

Similarly, there is little excuse for Fergus' rampant use of the N-word. It's supposed to be a historic piece? Thanks, I got that without the casual slurs. I don't agree with censoring (or self-censoring) literature, but if you're going to be throwing around loaded words/scenarios, do it for a reason.

Fantastic idea. Execution lacking.

This was an interesting book. Written in the form of a diary, the story follows the lives of 100 women who volunteer to become wives to warriors and chiefs of a Native American tribe. The characters are very compelling and well developed, and I thought reading the story in the form of a diary made it more interesting. The history of the US government's relations with the Native Americans is used as the backdrop for this story, which also makes for a fascinating narrative. I enjoyed this book, and might reread it in the future.

May is given the opportunity
to start over as part of a
US government experiment to
breed white women with Indians.
Clever premise doesn't disappoint.