Book Review: One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




Publisher's Summary

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the Western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians.

The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world.

Toward that end, May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetimes.

Author Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

©1998 Jim Fergus; (P)2006 BBC Audiobooks America

What the Critics Say

"Fergus lets his imagination go wild and creates a journal of one of his ancestors who became one of those brides in 1875. Laura Hicks renders this imaginative work splendidly. She is vivacious and expressive as May Dodd." (Audiofile)

My Thoughts

I stumbled onto this one in Audible.com. I read the above and listed to a snippet. I knew I had to know this story as it was a bit of history I knew nothing about.

The narrator was a grand voice for Mary Dodd.

What heroic women these were to agree to the plan and travel so far to meet and marry Indians for two years. When you think about the time and the articles in newspapers about the 'red man', how, why would they even consider such an adventure?

I not only learned about the women but also about life in one Cheyenne village.

This is indeed a book I would recommend to anyone else who doesn't know the history behind it, who wonder about some of the roles of women in the west, and life of a group of Indians of the plains! I think this would be a good book  for teachers and home schoolers to recommend to  students or school book clubs.

Even my husband found it intriguing.