Sign-Talker

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Private Willard stood trial looking like a pole-axed ox, stunned that this was happening to him. He knew he was a good soldier. He pleaded that maybe he had lain down, but he had not gone to sleep. But the captains believed Sergeant Ordway, who had caught him. They found Willard guilty, a serious offense here so deep in Indian country. They lectured him that he was to be spared the death sentence only because the party was so small and every man was needed. He was sentenced to a hundred lashes, to be meted out over the next four evenings. That meant welts upon fresh welts, enough pain, the captains hoped, to discourage any other sentry from lying down or shutting his eyes.

  So that evening Drouillard again flayed deerskins to the sound of the troops flaying a fellow soldier, and he didn’t watch. He smoked a final pipe that night facing up the Nemahaw River toward the mounds, thanking the Master of Life for guiding him not to enlist as a soldier. Drouillard knew he was their best sentry even though he was not required to stand guard. He knew how to sleep without turning off his senses. But damned if he would volunteer for it, because if he did, they would think they had the right to whip him for shutting his eyes. Sometimes the keenest guarding was done with eyes shut, and the ears and the nose doing the work.

  Chapter 6

  Above the Platte River

  Monday the 23rd of July 1804

  A fair morning. at 11 oClock Sent off George Drewyer & Peter Crousett with some tobacco to invite the Otteaus if at their town and Panies if they Saw them to Come and talk with us at our Camp &c.-&c. I commence Coppying a map of the river below to Send to the President US

  William Clark, Journals

  They had ridden a long way westward above the shallow, sandy Platte, over miles of fire-blackened, ashy grasslands, and crossed the Elk Horn Creek, to the Oto town Dorion had said was there. They had found it, the thatched huts and racks and tepee rings, shaded by willows, all abandoned. No smoke, no horses, no dogs. It was obvious that the whole band had gone out on the plains to hunt buffalo. Cruzatte, usually so cheerful, was in a slump on the long ride back. He told of the smallpox the traders had brought, which reduced the great Oto tribe so far that it had had to assimilate with the Missourias and Pawnees in order to deal with the bigger tribes to the north, such as his mother’s Omahas, and of course the Sioux. But finally Cruzatte cheered up. “It has been good to be off that damn boat for a day! Damn t’ing’s clumsy as a house in t’ water!”

  July 28, 1804

  Drouillard followed the spoor up the long slope through tall grass, leading his horse, which had a deer carcass tied across its rump. The tracks were easy to follow, and they told a story he already understood. The bent-down grass made a wavering line up the shoulder of a gentle rise; to him it was as plain as a road.

  In the ground at the roots of the grass were the hoofprints of the elk. They were distinct because the earth had been softened by a brief rain earlier in the day: tracks broader and more splayed than a deer’s, and each track with those rounded depressions at the back, like those made by a whiteman’s boot heels, deeper than the rest of the track. Only the elk, of all the Split-Hooves, left those marks.

  Then there was the spoor of blood drops, spattered and smeared on the grass stems. They were distinct, meaning they had been made since the rain, and the blood was a fresh new red. That freshness, and the fact that the bent grass was still straightening up, told him that the elk was not far ahead, perhaps still stumbling along, or perhaps fallen by now from weakness.

  And there were the moccasin tracks of the hunters who had shot the elk and were tracking it. They ran parallel to and sometimes crossed the elk’s trail, and he made it out that there were probably three. They were probably Oto or Missouria hunters. They were afoot, and there were no horse tracks.

  He had found this while hunting west of the river. He was about a league from it now. He had heard the shot a while ago: that dull boom of a smoothbore, different from the crack of an army rifle. So he had set out diagonally across the prairie until he came across this trail of the wounded elk and its pursuers. He carried his rifle in his right hand, by his hip, and led the horse with his left. He walked so fast that the horse sometimes broke into a trot. The sky was a cloudy gray, the air hazy.

  Captain Lewis was almost desperate by now to find some Indians along this river and give them his grand message about their new Great White Father and his expectations. This was the freshest trace Drouillard had found yet, so he hurried to catch up.

  Meeting these Indians would be a delicate matter. He was a stranger, and a stranger could easily be shot at, approaching a wary party of hunters.

  Instinct told him he would find them over the next hill or two, and if he did, and didn’t get into a fight with them, he surely could persuade them to fetch their headmen to go and meet the captains. This, as much as the hunting, was what they had hired him for, and such a meeting was long overdue. Now the Master of Life had put his path onto this of the hunters, in this vast land, and the Master of Life arranged things when and as they were meant to be.

  As he came over the rise he saw smoke above the shrubbery in a draw, and there were the Indians, three of them, their long hair hanging loose, squatting and kneeling around their dead elk.

  They were butchering, piling meat cuts on the hide. He smelled cooking and saw that they had put the tongue, heart, and some innards on spits to roast over their little fire. One of them saw him and jumped to his feet with an exclamation. The other two crouched as if ready to flee into the shrubbery, glancing toward their weapons, which leaned in a bush out of immediate reach: lance, bow and quiver, and two rawhide shields. He knew they had to have at least one gun, and then he saw it, resting in the antlers of the elk’s head which lay a few feet away, severed from the rest of the animal. He had caught them fully off guard, and they were in that moment of deciding whether to fight or flee.

  He had to let them know at once that he had come in peace. He put his rifle over to rest in the crook of his left arm and thus freed his saluting hand. He raised it, palm forward. When he saw that they were reading his sign, he clasped his hands together, the left under the right, the sign for peace. Even at this distance he saw the tension leave them. One of the men held his right hand far out in front of himself and then drew it toward his chest, which meant for him to come closer. He led his horse, which was nervous, within a few yards of their fire, and stopped. He pointed his right thumb at his chest, then his index finger at them, then with the hand curved palm up made a motion from his mouth to them. I and you talk, it said. In the meantime he asked, first in English, then French, then Spanish, “Do you know this tongue?” It was plain that they knew none of them, but one of the hunters signed, Where we live, a whiteman knows those tongues.

  How far?

  Two days.

  Drouillard knew he had to let the captains know sooner than that about the Indians he’d found. So he signed: Question: Come with me? Meet my headmen. At the river. Half day walk up.

  The tall, slender, rather pretty-faced young man who was doing the signing for them, tilted his head, put two fingers over his heart and turned his wrist: Perhaps. Question: Eat now? He tilted his head toward the meats sizzling over the fire.

  Drouillard signed: Eat together. Pipe first.

  “A-huh!” said the young man, with an emphatic nod and a smile. Then he came around the fire, smiling warmly, his arms spread for an embrace. Drouillard nodded and reached for him, pleased but wary. If they intended any treachery, they would try to overpower him now. He pressed his cheek against the youth’s cheek and patted him on the back, meanwhile watching the other two over the young man’s shoulder. They were smiling and nodding.

  They sat together. He filled his pipe, lit it with a smoldering twig from their fire, presented it to all the spirit directions, then passed it to his left, and they took turns doing the same, all blowing smoke toward the sky. They were watching him keenly, noting the excellence of his rifle, the colorful silk of his headkerchief, the shining pistols in the sas
h around his waist. These men were in the plainest deer-hide shirts and leggings and elk-hide moccasins, grease-stained, much patched, the quillwork designs on the chest and shoulders faded and frayed, blood-spattered from this butchering. The old French fusil with which they had shot the elk seemed to be the only object they had of whitemen’s manufacture, other than the dingy red wool blankets of their bedrolls. As they divided and shared the savory delicacies of elk, Drouillard could tell they were full of questions about where he had come from and who his headman was, but their manners were too good to allow them to quiz him during the meal.

  At last they finished, wiped their hands clean in the grass, smoked again, and leaned forward to hear about him and his people. He had as many questions to ask about them, but since they had fed him, he owed them answers first. So he began signing. He said he was Shawanoe, of the People of the South Wind, which they seemed to recognize, and that he was with boats going to the far end of this river. Their eyes widened. He signed: They are Men Who Wear Hats, which meant whitemen. They had fine goods to show, and very strong talk for the Oto headmen. Could the Oto headmen be brought to hear the talk?

  The tall, pretty young man began signing. He was a Missouria, the other two Otoes. Their people were far out on the plains, hunting buffalo. These men had no horses for such hunting, so they had stayed near home to hunt food for about twenty lodges of people who had stayed behind. This young man laughed and said he was not a very good hunter. He had had the Woman Dreams, and was living and studying to become a Man Who Lives as a Woman, which was a role of good medicine and great esteem. Drouillard had heard of such a role among plains people. This youth had obvious intelligence and a promising brightness about him, and these two Otoes apparently respected him very much. He was a keen signer and sign-reader, able to perceive all the meanings of the hand signals themselves, but also feelings and nuances between the signals. Since this was Drouillard’s especial talent as well, their conversation of flying hands was very satisfying, and it was more and more natural for them to trust each other.

  At length the Missouria agreed to go with him to the boats, this afternoon, while the other two would take the elk hide and meat back to their people, and tell them of the whitemen’s boat. As they could not carry all the elk on their backs, they gave him the rest of the meat to take as their gift to his headman. He secured it over the saddle. He gave them a carrot of tobacco for their headman, then with his newfound friend alongside, set off walking, leading the horse toward the river. They went along in good cheer. This had been a gift, this meeting. Drouillard had never met a man before who was going to be a woman, but he felt he had found a most pleasant and able first ambassador to meet the captains.

  The young Indian was awed and delighted by the big boat and the busy soldier camp, but the captains were even more delighted with Drouillard for having finally found them an Indian. They fed the young man and showed him watches and instruments, gave him a glimpse of the kinds of treasure the Americans could bring to his people, and plied him with sweetened coffee served by York, whose appearance clearly mystified him. Seaman the black dog followed him around and licked his hands, probably because they still smelled of elk blood.

  The voyageur called La Liberté was brought into the cheerful parley because he spoke Oto fluently. The visit went long into the night by a campfire with a dozen or more of the soldiers and voyageurs standing and sitting in a circle gazing on this first “wild Indian,” as they referred to him, in their midst. The youth kept turning to Drouillard, not wanting him to leave his side, perhaps because he was the one who had first won the young man’s trust, or because he was the only other man in this whole crowd who was obviously an Indian. Even while talking to or listening to La Liberté, the youth would turn a fond gaze on Drouillard, and often would reach over and hold his wrist. The captains and some of the soldiers looked at each other with raised eyebrows or smirks. Drouillard was annoyed at them for their presumptions, and thought of explaining the youth’s demeanor in terms of his Woman Dreams, but decided that would only make matters worse. This was an unsettling matter for Drouillard, who both respected the young man’s dream path and was embarrassed by it. It reminded him of Black Robe things he had long since covered up in his memory.

  A chilly, damp wind had been blowing all evening, making the campfire dance and flutter, giving them a welcome reprieve from the torment of mosquitoes. The captains made plans. They decided that La Liberté and the Missouria youth should set out for the Oto town early the next day with an invitation to the Oto and Missouria chiefs and some of their headmen to come up and council, if they could be summoned in from their buffalo hunt on the plains. If the French-speaking trader among them could be brought in, he should be, the captains said. The youth asked if Drouillard could go with him to the village, but the captains insisted on sending the man La Liberté, because he spoke Oto. Drouillard was their best hunter, the captains explained, and was needed to bring in meat for all these men. The lad seemed to accept that, with a sad countenance, and leaned against Drouillard’s shoulder for a moment, which caused some of the soldiers to murmur and snicker. “Better not let them two sleep in the same tent,” Collins’s voice came from beyond the fire, and some men laughed. Drouillard fixed his unbearable stare on Collins and lightly touched the haft of his hunting knife. Captain Lewis sighed, and sent angry looks at both Collins and Drouillard. In the awkward silence that ensued, Cruzatte volunteered in a cheery voice to play his fiddle.

  “If this pretty man tell his chiefs ’bout the good-time music and dancin’ we have, they will all want to come, maybe bring some women too!” he urged. The men cheered that idea. But then a cold, spitting rain began, and they could hear the hush of a heavier rain coming over the river. Cruzatte exclaimed, “Ooop! Ooop! Oubliez ça! Rain ruin t’ feedle!”

  That night the rain on the canvas was soothing. Drouillard lay looking up at the candlelit canvas while the captains sat murmuring to each other and finishing the last of their day’s writings. They were talking about sending one of the small boats back with a few men to take the maps, papers, and specimens they had been preparing for the President. He presumed they would send back some of the troublesome men, such as Collins. Also Drouillard had sensed something bad with two privates, named Newman and Reed, who always hung off by themselves whenever they could. He had come upon them several times talking fast and angry, and they would nudge each other and fall silent when they realized he was near. Plainly they were up to something, and were among those who should be sent back. But Drouillard didn’t consider it his duty to report suspicions. There was serious discontent among the voyageurs too, but that was Deschamps’s concern, not his.

  He heard Sergeant Floyd groan in the darkness a few feet away. That man, a very good man, had been very sick for several days. He was scarcely over twenty, but as wise, fair, and strong as any whiteman Drouillard had ever known. Maybe he should be sent back, where he could be doctored.

  Drouillard’s mind turned back to his encounter today with the Indians. How good it had been to smoke and eat with just Indians, without a white soldier or officer anywhere around. He imagined himself turning his back on these busy, driven officers and their complicated mission, and just wandering away to some Indian town, to live the way an Indian was born to live. He had often thought of that. It had been so comfortable today, sitting by a fire eating elk with just the horizons all around, without time measured by watches, without a constantly pressing purpose cutting hard and straight across the roundness of the world. It was the way his days used to be when he was a hunter alone in the woods, before he got involved with these officers and this mission of theirs which let no one rest.

  La Liberté and the young Indian were talking softly. That was one way spoken language was better than hand language: you could talk in the dark. But you had to understand words of the same language to do that.

  The young man’s name was Wetheah. La Liberté had told Drouillard that it meant something like Good We
lcome, or Hospitality. When he remembered how the young man had greeted him, it seemed appropriate. And it was more like a woman’s name than a warrior’s.

  Drouillard smiled at the memory of something. When Wetheah had asked him what his name meant, he had replied, Followed by Buzzards.

  The Council Bluffs

  August 2, 1804

  John Colter grinned his thin-lipped mocking grin and said, “By God, George, for every damn mile this damn outfit goes for’ard, you and me go back twenty or thirty fetchin’ what-all they’ve lost!” They were riding along the east bank of the Missouri, leading two horses that the Field brothers had lost two days before while deer hunting on the rolling plains. Drouillard and Colter had backtracked a dozen miles or so to find the horses. In bringing them back up, they had shot a cow elk; its meat was now on the backs of the two led horses.

  Drouillard snorted a laugh. “Palefaces never look back. Like poor old Willard. And now we’re picking up after Rube, who picked up after Willard.” They rode along laughing. It had been a comedy: The daydreamer Willard had left his tomahawk somewhere at a stopping place and was sent back afoot to fetch it. On his return, trying to cross a creek on a fallen log, he tottered and dropped his rifle in the creek. Willard was a poor swimmer, so a pirogue had been dispatched back to the creek, and from it Reubin Field had dived to retrieve the weapon. Now it was Reubin’s lost horse carrying the hind quarters of the elk.