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

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
luluinphilly avatar reviewed on + 367 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


This is NOT a non-fiction book. The author notes this at the beginning of the book. The book grew from an actual historical event. In 1854 at a peace conference at Fort Laramie, a Cheyenne chief requested from the U.S. Army the gift of one thousand women as brides for his young warriors. The Cheyenne, like most Native American tribes, are a matrilineal society so any children born from these groupings would be part of the white man's world. The request was ignored, the peace conference ended, and the women never came. BUT in this novel, they do. It's a very detailed account of one woman's journey from insane asylum (because she married someone her parents did not approve of) to the Great Plains. The sad thing about the whole story is the fact that the Native Americans STILL get a raw deal! And, as you ge to the end, nothing has changed. They still live in poverty, in third-world type housing, being shunned. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. By the end of the book, I was crying and couldn't stop.