A Council of Dolls

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of racism, death, graphic violence, illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, and child death.

Cora narrates the story of her childhood in the 1900s. She was born during a blizzard and views the storm as her twin. Her earliest memory is of her doll, Winona, being carried with her in her cradleboard. Winona is older, having been made some time ago from deer hide, indigo beads, and tusk shells. Thirty years prior to Cora’s birth, Winona witnessed the Whitestone Hill Massacre, in which federal troops attacked and killed entire Dakhóta families. When she tells Cora about it, she calls it “the day the world ended” (135).

Cora’s earliest experience of sorrow comes with the death of Sitting Bull when she’s only three. Her father, an interpreter for Sitting Bull, hears of the death and takes Cora with him to see if the news is true. In town, they find a pile of more than 12 men who had been killed that day, including several members of the police force that arrested Sitting Bull. Fearing that Sitting Bull’s influence would lead to an uprising, Agent James McLaughlin of the US Army had convinced the Indian Agency Police—who enforced US government policies on reservations—to arrest Sitting Bull. McLaughlin also sent a force of his own soldiers to assist with the arrest. A clash between police and supporters of Sitting Bull led to the gunfight that killed him and several others. Cora’s mother explains to her why white people hate the Ghost Dance and other aspects of their culture. In short, she attributes the cause to greed for land and resources.

When Cora is 12, her parents are urged to send her to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Winona warns Cora that it’s part of an effort to control her people’s leaders by persuading them to “hand over their children” (143); they can’t have an effective rebellion with their children’s safety in the hands of the enemy. Cora is somewhat less skeptical and wants to embark courageously on a new adventure. She meets Jack, a boy whose mother is Dakhóta but whose father is a white soldier in the army, on the train to Pennsylvania. Jack tells Cora he hates his father because he’s mean to his mother and sister and because, despite marrying a Dakhóta woman, he’s “against Indians.” Cora likes Jack right away, but Winona has misgivings.

Immediately after they arrive at Carlisle, the school administrators take away all the students’ clothes and belongings. They dress them in uncomfortable clothes unlike those of their culture and cut their hair against their will. Then they line the students up outside and ceremonially burn all their personal belongings, including Winona. Cora burns her hands in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue her doll from the fire. Jack and the other boys are made to dig a trench afterward and bury the burned items. He finds a black stone among the remains of the doll and returns the stone to Cora, saying it’s what’s left of Winona’s heart. Cora begins carrying Winona’s heart around in her pocket and hears Winona’s voice emanate from it.

Cora becomes very ill with pneumonia after being at the school for a month. While she’s in the infirmary, struggling to breathe, she has a vision of a woman who she senses is her ancestor. The woman has gunshot and knife wounds all over her body. She was killed in a massacre and wants to show Cora how the killers desecrated her body. The woman frightens Cora at first, but then her presence becomes a comfort and helps Cora to breathe easier.

In addition to gaining an education at the school, students are made to labor at a trade that is chosen for them. Cora is assigned to sewing and tatting—a thread-weaving technique used to create lace. Jack wants to work for the student publication but is made to do carpentry instead. He makes Cora a necklace of stars carved from wood, after which Winona pronounces him to be trouble.

As students in good standing, Jack and Cora are given the opportunity to take a field trip to Gettysburg. They decide against going due to President Lincoln’s condemnation of 38 Dakhóta men who were hanged six months prior to the Battle of Gettysburg. Another factor in their decision is that the Union men who fought at Gettysburg were the same men who tried to annihilate Cora and Jack’s people at Whitestone Hill two months after the battle.

In the summer, students are sent to live with white families as part of the school’s “Outing Program.” The intent, Cora knows, is to keep them from returning home, where they’ll be re-exposed to their own cultures. For many families, the program serves as a source of cheap labor. Many even find excuses to withhold the students’ wages altogether. Cora goes to stay with the Greeveses, a Quaker family that runs a small school. Jack is placed in the same county but on a potato farm outside the town, with a mean man named Mr. Taylor. Cora finds that the Greeveses are very kind and fair. They have a daughter Cora’s age named Susanna, and the two girls immediately become best friends. However, later in the summer a dream visit from Cora’s massacred ancestor somehow drives a subtle wedge between the girls.

One day Mr. Taylor comes to the Greeveses’ home and reports Jack has run away. He says the boy will undoubtedly be telling stories about him that aren’t true. Jack isn’t found by the time Cora returns to school. The police catch him in Pittsburgh trying to get home, and they return him to the school. He ran away from the Taylor farm, Cora learns, because they treated him like a farm animal and drove him to exhaustion. He won’t tell Cora or anyone else, however, what served as a final straw and made him sneak off in the night. He’s punished for running away by being brutally whipped and locked in the guardhouse for several days and nights. While writing about this in her journal, Cora admits that she loves Jack and is sure he loves her.

Cora’s roommate at school is a girl from Alaska. They’re never allowed to room with anyone from their own tribes because the school’s aim is to splinter tribal bonds. The girl from Alaska can’t keep down the food they serve there, and she’s wasting away. When she’s finally able to communicate that she’s craving fish, Cora and Jack convince an older boy to help get some for her from the stream. He sneaks fish to her regularly, and her health greatly improves.

Students aren’t allowed to go home for Christmas. Jack carves bookends as a gift for Cora. She gives him a copy of Wuthering Heights. In early spring, Jack runs away after giving Cora a note that says he has to do something important and telling her not to worry. Eight days later he’s found in Ohio and returned to the school in manacles. When he arrives, he breaks out in a war cry. Cora joins in with a “Dakhóta-style ululation,” resulting in her own punishment. She’s locked up in the guardhouse in a cell next to Jack’s. While there, she’s forced to listen to Jack being whipped.

At night they converse with each other through the cell walls. Jack tells Cora about the dream that prompted his escape. In it, he was back home with his mother and sister when lightning struck. He looked into the pit that the lighting created and saw himself curled up at the bottom, holding a pipe. Bits of paper from English texts poured on them like rain, but they were sucked back up into the sky after the version of him in the pit made an offering of the pipe to the spirits.

Jack says the dream was a calling for him to perform a ceremony called haŋbdéčheya. He ran away in order to do so. When he found a proper location, he went four days and nights without food or water. He stood in a pit he’d made, praying, offering a pipe, and asking for guidance. On the final night, he had a vision. An ancestor held open a book that contained every text in history. The pages turned into white birds. Then he saw his future self talking to white men of power, and they were listening to him. The ancestor sang Jack a love song and then showed him a vision of Cora’s face. Jack says he and Cora are meant to be together to help restore their world.

After completing his punishment, Jack becomes the school’s most improved student. He gets excellent grades, becomes the debate team champion, and impresses the school’s founder, Captain Pratt, with his ability to discuss literature by Dickens, Irving, and Hawthorne. One day he has an episode in which he’s convulsing and clutching his throat. Afterward, he says something happened to his sister Alice and that he was feeling her pain. At Jack’s request, Captain Pratt telegraphs to have someone check on the family. Sometime later, he tells Jack his sister choked on a piece of stew beef and died. Jack doesn’t believe that was the cause because he could feel that she was strangled. He believes his father killed Alice.

Students aren’t allowed to return home for funerals, so Jack runs away again. Cora learns that he made it home and saw his mother’s and his sister’s graves. Then he fought with his father and was arrested. His father charged him with assault and attempted murder. Both his parents say he is incorrigible and should go to prison, and he’s sentenced to one year in a prison in Minnesota. During his incarceration, Cora writes him letters regularly to help keep him from breaking.

Cora stays with the Greeveses again over the summer. Her friendship with Susanna is no longer strained, and they promise to stay in touch after the summer ends. Cora neglects her journal for many months, until Jack’s yearlong sentence is almost up. She’s nervous on the day of his return. She loves him more than ever but worries he won’t love her anymore. When Jack arrives, he barely acknowledges Cora. His spirit seems to be broken.