Two miles farther down an island split the river into two short but roaring chutes. One by one the vessels slid past the island. Drouillard, praying that the chief’s extra weight in the bow would not make the canoe run too deep, followed into the chute. At once the laden bow scooted onto a flat rock just under the surface and the stern was swung out across the current. In an instant it was broadside, tilting. Tetohoskee leaped into the water and swam, and the soldiers abandoned ship and jumped onto the rock, leaving Drouillard in the stern with no ability to steer. The soldiers grabbed the bow and held on. The stern rode up on another rock and the canoe listed into the current, quickly filled and sank in the chute, with Drouillard scrambling forward trying to grab the most valuable items before they floated away. He grabbed a few shot pouches and two rifles and threw them to the men on the rock, who were shin-deep on the slippery rock in the fast water. Some of the soldiers’ bedrolls, some hides being saved to make clothing, and two tomahawks went overboard before he could reach them. All the quamash roots recently bought for food went floating over the side. The men were yelling at the top of their lungs, and the canoe that had gone through just ahead turned toward shore, where its crew started heaving bundles onto the bank so they could try to come back up and rescue the men from the rock. Drouillard was too busy even to curse. Probably the most important thing in the vessel was gunpowder, in powder horns and in one of the lead canisters whose waterproof seal had already been broken. There were two unopened canisters in the bilge, but they had been tied down and were safe. But a great deal of gunpowder was already wet. The canoe paddles were floating down the river, and the crews of the boats below would probably pick them up.
When there was nothing left light enough to save, Drouillard at last clambered out over the bow onto the rock and helped the men hold the canoe steady so she wouldn’t roll over underwater and lose even more. He was fully soaked and chilled, and ashamed and furious with Captain Lewis for his reckless haste, which had caused this.
“Hey, skipper!” Private Shannon yelled in his ear over the rush of the water, “Why’d ye go an’ hit that rock?” The young man was grinning.
“Cap’n’s orders!” he yelled back.
And in the midst of the watery uproar, Shannon laughed.
* * *
Here was the smell of plenty again: decaying flesh. Now it was not buffalo carcasses rotting, but dead fish, dead fish in prodigal quantities in the water and along the banks. And even though Drouillard was by now thoroughly used to the smell of salmon in the fishing camps, where the Indians split them and hung them to dry in the arid breeze from the west, uncountable tons of fish drying, this fish-rot was overpowering.
Here was abundance greater than all the buffalo and antelope and elk of the plains, yet it was all in a desert. And it supported bigger populations than he had ever imagined. Even in the great gathering place of rivers on the Mississippi, near St. Louis and Cahokia and Kaskaskia and St. Genevieve and Cape Girardeau, where he had spent his youth, there were not populations to compare with these in their mat-covered shacks along the lower stretches of Lewis’s River. At every rapid there were scores of spectators lining the shores to watch the bearded strangers crash on the rocks, to help rescue them and pick up any unwatched item as their due toll. They were not afraid of the whitemen; Twisted Hair and Tetohoskee usually went ahead to explain who was coming, and any lingering apprehension was dispelled when Bird Woman and her baby came into view.
These fish people were different from the game-and-fish Nez Perce people. Their language was similar; the two chiefs could still speak with them without resorting to much signage, but they seemed to have little use for horses. Their lives were all about fish and they traveled by canoe. They made rock weirs at the rapids to narrow the channels, and with fish traps and gigging spears they simply scooped and snagged their food out of the water from morning to night. They didn’t have to go hunting. Their food came to them. And they said that was the way it always had been, from the beginning of the world.
And so, Drouillard thought, they probably believe that it will always be so. Why should they fear a few whitemen? How could a few hairy-faced people in five canoes change something that had been unchanged since the beginning of the world?
Once long ago on the east coast, when the Shawnee ancestors had seen a few whitemen coming in ships, they had thought that same way, and had welcomed them, as these people were welcoming these whitemen from the east. How were they to know?
October 16, 1805
In the afternoon the canoes were unloaded above a violent raceway of water and everything was carried almost a mile down below the rapids; the canoes were eased down through on elk-skin ropes and reloaded in the calm water. They then shot through four smaller rapids and passed three bare islands. Indians on horseback were watching them from the south bank. Stopping at another rapid, the party was joined by five horsemen. Drouillard talked sign with them and they smoked with the captains. Their dress and language were similar to the Nez Perce. Their horses were excellent, stout, with speckled coloration. The captains gave these horsemen some tobacco to take home and smoke with their people, and they rode off at full gallop, until they were out of sight.
One more hour in the canoes brought them around a bend and into a wide expanse of water and low, sloping desert land.
“Eeeaay-hah!” came Captain Clark’s mighty voice from ahead. “Columbia!” And a loud cheer rose up from all the crews. Drouillard knew this was one of those landmarks, like the divide, that the captains had fixed in their minds. Now when the afternoon sun peeked through windblown clouds of rose and lilac, its glare sparkled on the expanse of swift water. The stench of dead fish blew even stronger into their faces. Another shout was relayed back: “Put ashore starb’d, on the point! There’s our Indians!”
Twisted Hair and Tetohoskee had roused up a huge welcoming party of several hundred people from several villages around the confluence of rivers. A few miles above the mouth of the Snake, or Lewis’s, River, another flowed into the Columbia from the west, called the Yakima. The people had not seen whitemen before, but knew of them from tribes farther down the Columbia, and in fact wore brass trade ornaments and a few woolen blankets. They milled about, gawking at these strange men with their guns and bundles and strange devices, awed by the big black man York. Their dogs were similarly awed by the big black dog Seaman, whose intrusive cold nose made many of them go sidewinding away with their tails between their legs and fearful snarls on their lips.
The soldiers were that curious about the posteriors of some of the women in the crowd. Unlike the Nez Perce women, whose long, fringed dresses concealed their bodies to the ankles, some of these women wore no skirts at all. They had waist-length jackets, but were bare the rest of the way down, except for a leather thong tied around their hips and passed between their legs. Some of the soldiers couldn’t keep their eyes off the bare buttocks and the barely concealed crotches.
Not one tree was visible in any direction, but soldiers were sent along the riverbank and managed to gather enough driftwood for small fires. Then, as the camp took shape in the evening, a murmur of voices and a rhythmic drumming caught their attention.
Into the camp came a parade of two hundred men, beating on small drums with sticks and singing a wailing song, another of those songs in which Drouillard heard the sounds of the ancient ages, like those he had heard atop the mound by the faraway Mississippi, at that other gathering of rivers. He watched their chief, a tall, sturdy, stately man, lead them in a half circle between the soldier camp and the riverbank; there they halted and faced the campfire and continued to sing.
Later the chief, Cutssanem, and his subchiefs were given medals, handkerchiefs, and elegant shirts. A pipe was passed, and with Drouillard’s hand signs and the help of the Nez Perce chiefs, Cutssanem was given the usual Jefferson message. He gave no sign of being much impressed, perhaps because Twisted Hair and Tetohoskee themselves had such vague conceptions of the ideas they were trying
to convey to him. But he let it be known that he was happy to meet these whitemen and that some of his people wanted to present them with a little firewood and a large basket of good dried horse meat. Then Cutssanem took his men back up to their own camp, a short distance above, and the tired soldier camp settled down.
“B’ damn, these ones close down early, don’t they?” Cruzatte mused. He hadn’t even had an opportunity to show off his fiddling to these fishing people.
Drouillard glanced down at the dwindling campfire, which was made of driftwood sticks, weed-stalks, and any other combustible woody material anyone had been able to scrape up, which was very little. He said, “When the lights go out, it’s time for bed. I’d guess they’re used to it.”
Colter scooted in by the fire. Reubin and Joe Field appeared out of the darkness and sat looking at the last little flames. Fortunately, it was not cold. The captains’ lodge stood a little way up the bank, its skin covering aglow with candlelight from within, where they were writing. Colter said: “Did y’ ever see the likes of those women? Hams! Hams! Man, I miss ham and bacon!” The soldiers laughed.
“Hams, was it?” said Reubin. “Smelt more like fish t’me, when them ladies was squattin’ ’round here.”
“Still does,” Drouillard said.
“Yeah, but I mean to say you know what I mean to say.”
Joe Field looked upriver into the darkness. Stars were brilliant and the great river rushed by. “Tell ye,” he said, “I don’t know whether I’m glad them ladies went home or wish they’d stayed. Y’ have to admit, they ain’t very perty. It was all I could do to git up a cockstand. But it’s like John said, when y’ ain’t had ham for so long … Those other women, up the river, was a lot better looking, but I was too sick to give ’em a passing hard-on.”
“Passin’, yeah. Passin’ gas,” Reubin said.
“But now these,” Joe went on. “Frankly, they’re ugly. They smile and it’s just gums. But when they just willingly show you a half-acre o’ hams …”
“You al’ays liked fat women, Joe,” Reubin said with a snort.
Drouillard raised his nose to the wind. He was sorting out odors. And he was remembering some things he thought these people had said in sign. He said, “I’ve been wondering how they could eat all the fish they take out o’ this river. I even saw ’em scoopin’ up the dead ones. Tell you something I just figured out. I think they eat some, trade some, and the dead ones I bet they just dry them and burn them for fuel, since there’s no wood anywhere.”
This had drawn the men’s thoughts away from those other yearnings. “Burn?” Reubin said.
Drouillard was remembering all the uses the plains Indians made of their buffalo. He remembered the grassy, smoky smell of dried buffalo dung burning on a campfire. “Think of all the oil in a salmon. Look.” He produced a small slab of the dried fish from his shoulder bag, tore a strip off the edge and leaned forward to touch it to the flames. It caught and burned like a candlewick.
It was the same odor as on the night breeze over the river.
Gifts from the Creator, he thought.
October 18th 1805
The Great Chief Cuts Sah nim gave me a Sketch of the rivers & Tribes above on the great river & its waters on which he put great numbers of villages of his nation & friends—The fish which was offerd to us we had every reason to believe was taken up on the Shore dead, we thought proper not to purchase any, we purchased forty dogs for which we gave articles of little value, Such as beeds, bell, & thimbles, of which they appeared verry fond, at 4 O’Clock we Set out down the Great Columbia accompand by our two old Chiefs.
William Clark, Journals
Drouillard listened to Captain Lewis venting his indignation about the bad fish “those wretches” had tried to sell, and smiled and shook his head. He was pretty certain they had meant to sell it as fuel, not food. But Lewis seemed to enjoy being contemptuous of Indians and scornful of their ways, whether he understood them or not. Whiteman has to look down his nose at somebody, Drouillard reminded himself. So he said nothing about it, and steered down the curving course of the great river toward the sea.
Chapter 19
On the Columbia River
October 19, 1805
Drouillard at day’s first light took off his clothes and waded into the cold river, taking the clothes with him. It was the only way to keep from being overwhelmed by the fleas. The soldiers didn’t bathe or rinse their clothes in the mornings, so they had more and more fleas every day, and complained, and scratched, and slept poorly.
He went down into the clear water over his head and scrubbed at his scalp with his fingernails and then around his genitals and under his arms. Then he stood in the shallows and scrubbed at the seams of his deer-hide shirt and leggings, and worked his loincloth back and forth over a rock, rinsed it again and wrung it out. He got on shore to wring out the rest of his clothes, which he would have to wear damp and clammy until they dried from the exertions of the day and the desert air. He saw that Indians from the fishing villages were already gathering along the riverbank in the early light to go and watch the soldier camp. Some of them were watching him.
Standing naked in the cold air, he braided his hair into a queue at the back, then signaled to the Indians, Day sunrise good, a morning greeting. Some answered with hand signs, others with cheerful voices. His greeting would be about all the cheer they would get. The captains and soldiers were grouchy because of the fleas, which they blamed on the Indians, and because the Indians were always around watching the camp and picking up untended articles.
Drouillard put on his wet clothes and climbed the riverbank. He watched the sky fill with pale light above the stark, craggy canyon walls. Looking downstream he saw, ghostly in this early light, one of the faraway, snow-topped mountains that could be seen before them sometimes even from the canoes, depending on the course of the Columbia between its cliffs. The captains called one of the mountains Mount St. Helens and another Mount Hood, names given them by a ship captain who had seen them years ago. The Columbia River, they said, was named after an American ship that had charted its mouth thirteen years ago. The mountains had been named by an English captain who had sailed a distance up the river from the Pacific later the same year. This meant, as Lewis liked to say, they were at last reentering the known world. Even before they left the Mississippi, they knew they would eventually see these mountains, and now they saw them.
The captains were impatient. Everyone was sick of salmon and more salmon, and some were even getting tired of dog meat. The fishing places all along this river were piled with unbelievable quantities of dried salmon, in stacks, in baskets, buried in lined pits. The ground at those places was littered with fish skins. The riverbanks were strewn with dead fish, which drew countless pelicans and ravens. At the rapids, salmon jumped out of the water to get above, sometimes almost leaping into the canoes. In deep water, the river was so clear that salmon could be seen swimming twenty feet below the canoes.
The salmon were an encouragement to the captains. They felt that if salmon could come up from the ocean, the waterfalls must be only a few feet high, nothing like those on the Missouri that had required weeks of portage.
As Drouillard went up the riverbank toward the camp, he was greeted with toothless smiles by some of the Indians. He had hardly ever known a toothless Indian of any age, but by middle age many of these salmon-eaters were. Clark guessed their teeth were worn down to the gums by grit from stones with which they pounded their dried fish and roots, and also perhaps by the considerable amount of fish scale they took in with their salmon. That seemed likely. Drouillard had ground his own teeth on plenty of grit and scale lately.
He had also known very few fat Indians; Big White the Mandan chief had been one. But many of these river Indians were thick in girth, with chubby faces and thick legs, and jowls that quaked when they walked. They were a slow-moving people; only youngsters were quick. Some of the women had so much fat on their lower bodies that their little
crotch thongs were invisible within the folds of flesh. He wondered if they were fat because there was so much food all the time and they scarcely had to exert themselves to obtain it.
These unattractive characteristics only increased the disdain the captains felt for them, much of which was due to their “thieving” tendencies and their intrusiveness about the camp. Drouillard sometimes seethed when Captain Lewis complained about their intrusiveness, he who had come uninvited into their country. All the soldiers, irritated by fleas and flies, vented their wrath in ferocious language about the “filthy Indians.” Drouillard had observed that the Indians bathed more and stank less than the soldiers. But their living environs were so permeated with fish and fish waste that the people must be helpless against the fleas and flies. It seemed as if fleas lived even in the ground and in the poles and mats of the lodge-houses. He knew that merely by sleeping on the ground in this land, he got fleas. The only way these people could get rid of fleas would be by moving away. And they couldn’t do that. They were salmon people and always had been here. How could they even imagine life without fleas? And their ancestors were here, buried on islands in family or community graves surrounded by picket fences and covered by wooden houses and elaborately carved canoes. The captains had stopped and examined many such burial places, poking about, making notes for Jefferson. Drouillard stayed back, as he had last year at the hill of the little devils. There were countless skulls, and signs of even older burials. These people must have been here since the Beginning Times; thus they had become the way they were. It mattered little, Drouillard thought, if these whitemen coming through found them disagreeable.
Sign-Talker Page 36