One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd (published by St. Martin's Press in 1998) is the first novel by journalist Jim Fergus. The novel is written as a series of journals chronicling the fictitious adventures of an "J. Will Dodd's" ostensibly real ancestor in an imagined "Brides for Indians" program of the United States government.
An introduction by "J. Will Dodd" places the journals in a contemporary context, and lends an air of realism.
The book won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association. It has since sold over 250,000 copies in the United States, and its French translation was on the French bestseller list for 57 weeks and has sold over 400,000 copies in that country.
The premise of the story is that the Northern Cheyenne Indians are shrinking in numbers and seek a way to assimilate into white society. They decide to marry white women and have half-blood children, enabling the two cultures to blend naturally. The Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf approaches President Ulysses Grant with the proposal to trade 1000 white women for 1000 horses, an offer publicly refused by the government.
However, the government sees the placating of the Indians as being to their benefit, so they begin the "Brides for Indians" program in which women who are physically healthy and of child rearing age may volunteer to go. However, in order to keep the plan unpublished, they offer the trip to women in prison, asylums, and other restrictive situations.
In Chicago, May Dodd was born into a wealthy family but she fell in love with a man who was "beneath" her, and bore his two children out of wedlock, so her family had her institutionalized in a mental asylum and had her children taken away. The "Brides for Indians" program sounded like a way out of the asylum, so she joined and started a life of adventure.
The story does meet with some non-fictional characters and situations, including Chief Little Wolf of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, description of many Cheyenne beliefs, and the military forced move to the reservations. Some other situations are adapted from real life, including Little Wolf's murder of a tribe member and exile.
Famous quotes containing the words white women, thousand, white and/or women:
“I am so tired of taking to others
translating my life for the deaf, the blind,
the “I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges
to live it” white women
the “I want to live my white life with Third World women’s style and keep my skin
class privileges” dykes”
—Lorraine Bethel, African American lesbian feminist poet. “What Chou Mean We, White Girl?” Lines 49-54 (1979)
“That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touches me and I say: “One must not hide that!” Then someone tells you: “The shoulder is on the back.” I’ve never seen women with shoulders on their backs.”
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971)