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.