Book Review - One Thousand White Woman

The book is interesting but contains a lot of stereotypes. The Native Americans are contaminated by the whites and the reader is left with the impression that the whites are responsible for every bad thing that happened to the tribes. This is really a frontier novel. The author takes an actual event, a Native American chief offering to trade 1,000 horses for 1,000 white women to have as brides, and bases his novel on what could have happened had the offer been accepted.

Jim Fergus got the idea for this novel from an actual historical event; at a peace conference at Fort Laramie, a prominent Northern Cheyenne chief requested of the U.S. Army authorities the gift of 1,000 white women as brides for his young warriors. His hope was that by marrying the two cultures peace would be achieved. Jim Fergus picks up this event and creates a cast of colorful, strong female characters around what might have been if this had come to pass.

The central character, May, was an optimist after living in abusive circumstances all because she loved a person of the lower class. Through the abuse of the mental institution inflicted upon her by her own family, she retains a higher sense of self and regard for the human condition. Survival was utmost and even rape could not affect ones daily life. The women in this book were trying to make a change for the better. It was their belief that they could cross the class and racial barrier by bearing children, thus assimilating into the Native American culture and becoming a better society all around.

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd's journey west in 1874. Committed to an insane asylum by her blueblood family for an affair with a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope of freedom is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from the "civilized" world become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. She soon falls in love with John Bourke, a gallant young army captain, even though she has promised to marry the great chief Little Wolf.

This was a quick, entertaining read that ends, as do all tales of the Native experience in America, with much sorrow and tragedy. Fergus ventures perilously close to bawdy romance novel territory at times, the soldier that May falls in love with is not an entirely likeable fellow. I found myself thoroughly enjoying this book, and was captivated up to the very last page.