Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear — Story, Setting & Ideas

Two Voices, Two Paces

The book is divided into two parts, each authored by a different Theresa. Part I, by Theresa Gowanlock, moves quickly through the massacre and her time in Big Bear’s camp, with short, event-driven chapters titled “The Massacre,” “With the Indians,” and “Rescued.” The prose is urgent, often breathless: “a sudden commotion attracted my attention and in less time than it takes to write it, I was free.” Part II, by Theresa Delaney, adopts a slower, more reflective pace. She devotes entire chapters to her youth and marriage, describing her early life as “uniform” and “uneventful,” with seasons flowing “into weeks, weeks into months.” The contrast is stark: Gowanlock’s narrative is a sprint; Delaney’s is a deliberate walk through memory before reaching the crisis.

The Grammar of Waiting

Both women use temporal markers to structure suspense, but in different ways. Gowanlock’s chapters often end with a cliffhanger or a forward-looking statement: “Hope almost deferred” is a chapter title that signals delayed resolution. Inside the camp, she notes the passage of time through tasks: cooking for “a large family,” observing “dancing parties.” Delaney, by contrast, slows time by cataloguing the past. She describes her life before the Northwest Troubles as a “panorama never ending, ever shifting,” but the actual events of 1885 occupy only the final chapter. The effect is that the reader waits with her, feeling the weight of ordinary days before the rupture.

Shifting Distance from the Reader

The narrative voice moves between intimate confession and public testimony. Gowanlock’s introduction addresses a general audience, justifying the publication: “It is not the desire of the author … to gratify a morbid craving for notoriety.” Yet later she uses direct address and emotional appeals: “the hope that nerved me to struggle on.” Delaney’s part is more introspective, written as if for herself. She describes her father’s death and her own “three distinct lives” with a reflective distance that contrasts with Gowanlock’s immediacy. This alternation between outward-facing justification and inward-looking memoir creates an uneven but revealing rhythm, as the authors negotiate how much of themselves to expose.

Readers should attend to the editorial framing: the introduction and conclusion were likely added after the events, shaping how the story is told. The two parts were written separately and then combined; noticing where the voice shifts—from Gowanlock’s action to Delaney’s retrospection—can help distinguish between immediate experience and later reflection. The book is best read as a layered document, not a single, seamless account.

There’s a certain quiet ache in how those two women paced their story—rushing through terror, then slowing to sit with what survived. It reminded me of another kind of endurance, the one in Reminiscences of my life in camp with the 33d United States colored troops, late 1st S. C. Volunteers — Background and Themes, where memory holds its own uneven rhythm. I keep thinking about that.