Days Without End

“Handsome John Cole” is Thomas’s love interest in the novel. Though he is present throughout the text, John has very little influence on or voice in the narrative. Thomas will occasionally report what John has said about certain events or topics, but he often drifts to the edges of the narrative, there as a steady companion to Thomas but requiring little narrative attention. John has some Native American heritage, though he does not know the specifics of his ancestry; this sometimes leads to a sense of discomfort in his participation in the American Indian Wars, though this discomfort is not fully formed and appears only intermittently. This heritage sometimes leads John to be subjected to racist comments from his fellow soldiers, though the rarity of this suggests that John might be white-passing, which allows him certain freedoms within the highly racist society of 19th century America.

Like Thomas, John is motivated primarily by his family, especially once he and Thomas adopt their daughter, Winona. John quickly takes to the role of the proud father, and frequently insists that Winona is the smartest, best, kindest, and prettiest girl in America. Though Thomas is uncertain of the morality of keeping Winona with them when she is summoned back to the Sioux in exchange for Major Neale’s daughter, John has no such quandary; he is determined to keep his daughter, no matter what.

Major Neale (briefly promoted to Colonel Neale during the Civil War) is Thomas’s and John’s commanding officer throughout much of the novel. Major, as Thomas calls him, opposes the excess violence that many of the soldiers commit against Native Americans; when Watchorn rapes a Yurok woman, for example, Major arrests him and brings him in front of a military tribunal, which results in Watchorn being killed by firing squad. However, when opposing the status quo of unchecked racist violence toward Native peoples, Major still has a wavering commitment to his vision of justice: Even after Watchorn’s arrest, Major allows the man to take part in the celebration thrown by the townsfolk to celebrate the soldiers’s massacre.

Major is a devoted father and husband, a quality that leads to his moral downfall. After his wife and daughters are kidnapped by the Sioux (in revenge for the company’s murder of the family of the Sioux leader, Caught-His-Horse-First), and only one daughter left alive, Major loses any ideals he had about supposedly fair practices in warfare. Instead, he orders his men to kill everyone in the Sioux village, including children. When he is court-martialed for this offense (an ironic twist to his spearheading the court-martialing of Watchorn), Thomas suspects Major guilty of killing the man who accused him. This suspicion from a once-loyal soldier further indicates Major’s moral decline, though the novel does not reveal if Major is, in fact, guilty of this particular crime.