Catherine Weldon Timeline and Summary

•  Back
• More 

• The narrator finds Weldon's letters and life story as he searches for characters. She was an advocate for Native American Indian rights and secretary to Sitting Bull.
• We see Weldon for the first time in the fall before the Ghost Dance of 1890—and the subsequent Wounded Knee Massacre.
• She reflects on her life in South Dakota and the difference from Boston.
• Weldon worked in Buffalo Bill Cody's Circus—it's where she fell in love with Native American culture.
• She thinks about the treachery behind the treaties offered and signed by the U.S. government, but she still hopes that they will hold.
• The narrator reads Weldon's last letter to the U.S. Indian Agent James McLaughlin (who is pretty hostile to the Plains Indians).
• We then see Weldon in the winter of the Ghost Dance/Wounded Knee Massacre; the U.S. Army is advancing on the plains.
• The falling red leaves and the oncoming whiteness of winter seem to Weldon to be omens that don't bode well for the Native American Indians.
• She witnesses the Ghost Dance but sees it melt into the violence of Wounded Knee.
• Like Achille in the African settlement, Weldon wanders through the Indian encampment decimated by violence—she sees Omeros amid the disaster (just as Achille sees Seven Seas).
• Weldon walks "like a Helen" through the slaughter. (Pro tip: Now might be a good time to read up on Helen elsewhere in this section if you haven't already.)
• The narrator speaks to Weldon through the ages, telling her the fight is over.
• He witnesses her withering alone in her house, pining out of grief. She learns to hate the snow, the whiteness that obliterated everything on the plains.