Sign-Talker

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Meriwether Lewis, Journals

  “By the great fickle finger of fate, what a day!” Colter bellowed. “Drouillard! Come ’ere! Meet an old ’quaintance o’ mine, Joe Dickson. Joe, this here is George Drouillard, best hunter ever walked ground. Y’ oughter try to get him t’ come with us!”

  Dickson didn’t bother to stand or offer his hand. He was all whiskers and eyebrows, weathered brown skin, pale gray eyes appraising intently. There was no mistaking that appraisal. Drouillard wondered why Indian haters didn’t stay where there were no Indians.

  All around there was campfire smoke and a hubbub of happy voices as old comrades reunited after more than a month. All had tales they couldn’t wait to tell, and the biggest news to many of them was that their leader had been shot “where the sun don’t shine even as much as it do at Clatsop,” as Potts discreetly put it. Clark was in the white pirogue, cleaning and putting new dressings on Lewis’s wounds, being a doctor again. Lewis fainted from the pain, but soon came to. Clark’s men all came by and paid him their respects and sympathies. Nearby, Bird Woman’s baby, naked and giggling, stomp-danced in glee at the sight of the big black dog, which advanced and licked his face so forcefully that the toddler fell on his bottom, squealing with delight. His mother reached out and fondled the animal’s silky ears. York’s laughter was booming through the camp.

  Dickson and Hancock were the first people they had met from the States in two years. It was a remarkable coincidence that it was someone Colter knew.

  Drouillard said to Colter, “What d’ you mean, get me to go with you?”

  “Hunker down here. Now, y’see, just amongst us, mind ye … I, um, I want to go back up there.” He indicated with a tilt of his head the vast wilderness from which they had just come. “That’s the place for us. You know it as well as I do.”

  “Me too, eh?”

  Colter nodded. “I seen you out there. Your own man. Beaver enough to make you a fortune. Like you said, get to a place first. Which we done. Let’s turn around here and go back up with ’em.”

  “I’ve thought of it.” And he really had. “I got business back home first.”

  “Well, see, though, I got no business back home, don’t want to go back there. Stinkin’ towns, uppity folk, laws and rules about every damn little thing. White women so goddamn pinched and silly, I could never marry one …” Colter gazed westward toward the huge sky, and when he turned back, his eyes were swimming. “Think o’ wakin’ up every mornin’ with a mountain crick tricklin’ by, and meaderlarks ’stead o’ roosters.… These fellers ask me to go up with ’em, and that’s what I want to do.”

  “You’re in the army, don’t forget.”

  “Yeah, but. Here’s my plans. I’ll ask the cap’ns to muster me out and pay me off. Couple days we’ll be at the Mandan, pay off Charbonneau there, get chiefs hotted up t’ go to Warshington, and what-all. I can’t stand any more duties, doin’ Jefferson talks and all such bull pucky. I aim to ask ’em to muster me out. Then I’ll go back up on the Yeller Stone with Dickson an’ Hancock here. See, if you’d ask with me, say you want to turn around here too? Hey, they listen t’ you. They owe you. If we asked together? Offer to parley up th’ Indians for American trade an’ all that?”

  Drouillard didn’t want to go back to the whiteman world any more than Colter did. The place that had hold of his spirit was up near the eagle’s nest over the falls, and the three forks in Bird Woman’s homeland, wide valley ringed with blue mountains, water clear as air, more beaver than he had seen anywhere else on a whole continent.

  And those unspoiled people up there, the Shoshone, the Kootenai, the Nez Perce: free, honorable, generous, who had tolerated this little pushy band of whitemen, kept them from starving …

  Back in St. Louis and Cahokia he’d be just a métis again, a half-breed, who’d have to know his place and not look at certain people in certain ways.

  He heard Bird Woman laugh with her baby, and remembered the day she had discovered her brother Cameahwait, Never Walks. He thought of that gaunt, honorable man, trying so hard to meet the needs of his hungry people and fulfill the captains’ demands at the same time. If I went back up there, he thought, I’d stay a season or two, help him hunt, fatten up those poor people of his … if he’s still alive.

  Then I’d go up and see Cutnose. See if he really means to give me an eagle feather. Sure he does. He said so.

  But he had made a promise to Lewis and Clark. He had a debt to pay to Graeter, wanted to send money and gifts to his half siblings, wanted to visit Uncle Louis and tell him some tales.

  When he got home, he would have more money and land wealth than he had ever imagined he could obtain. Better yet, he had something no one else had yet: a knowledge of all that plains and mountain country, where beaver were, which Indians were friendly, what they had been promised. Chiefs and warriors knew and trusted him. He was rich in knowledge of a new country, and he really understood now that this knowledge was a kind of rare riches.

  Drouillard remembered Manuel Lisa, the Spanish trader, that cunning little bastard: Lisa had foreseen this kind of knowledge wealth. That’s why Lisa had asked him to come and see him when he returned. When this troop returned with all its descriptions and maps, whitemen would be spreading up into that country fast as a hot fart in a cold room, as Colter liked to put it. To be up there ahead of the coming crowd would be a rare chance, a rich life.

  He would go back up. But not now. Not with two Indian haters. “I’ll talk to the cap’n for you, Colter,” he said. “Maybe I’ll meet you back up there next year. But I promised them I was on for the whole way and back. I keep my word.”

  Dickson and Hancock had left the Illinois country in 1804 and had been on the Missouri ever since. They’d met Corporal Warfington going down with the keelboat in spring of 1805 with Dorion and the Arikara chief on board, going to see the President. They had also seen nothing but trouble among the Missouri River tribes. Mandans and Hidatsas were killing Arikaras. Assiniboines were at war with Mandans and had killed a North West Company trader. Hidatsa war parties still went west to prey on Shoshones. And the Sioux were still at war with everyone and plundering all trading boats. They had robbed these two men, and wounded Dickson—one reason, perhaps, why he hated Indians. The realization that all his peacemaking efforts had been in vain fell heavily on Lewis’s spirits, which were already low and aggravated by his pain and immobility.

  And so when the expedition reached the Knife River towns of the Hidatsas and Mandans, Captain Clark had to gather his interpreters and go visit and chastise all the chiefs for failing to keep their peace vows. The chiefs all blamed the other tribes, saying that they themselves had tried to obey the Great Father’s orders. They made their promises anew, and said they would keep trying. Drouillard could understand, though the captains surely couldn’t, that all these excuses were sincere, and that the promises were heartfelt for now, but not likely to last the season out, because the whitemen were extracting promises that couldn’t be kept.

  Several chiefs had also changed their minds about going to see their Great Father in the East. They said they still wanted to, but were afraid that if they went now, their enemies would kill them when they tried to return home without the protection of the soldiers’ long guns. And Hugh Heney of the North West Company, Captain Lewis’s last, faint hope for influencing the Sioux, wasn’t here.

  Lewis slumped into anger and despair.

  But for the soldiers and the people of the towns, all was joy. Despite high winds and blowing sand, whole populations came running, howling and waving their greetings. The blunderbusses boomed in salute. Skin bull-boats full of girls were launched to meet the canoes. When the soldiers landed, a few young Mandan women sought out last year’s lovers and proudly showed them half-breed babies.

  Charbonneau and Bird Woman were greeted in their town with warmth and curiosity, but the Frenchman was quickly called upon to summon and translate for the Hidatsa chiefs. Drouillard, meantime, was sent in
a small canoe down to Mittuta-Hanka Town to find Rene Jessaume and bring him up to translate for the Mandans at the upper town.

  When he got there, Drouillard gazed across the river at Fort Mandan. “What happened?” The structure was a blackened ruin.

  Jessaume shrugged. “Caught fire. Things do.”

  Drouillard thought, with hope, whiteman things won’t last long here. But he was saddened, remembering all the effort of building that fort, remembering the long, bitter-cold winter nights in those smoky little rooms, remembering the all-night Mandan and Hidatsa visitors helping Clark draw his maps, true maps, of the route ahead, remembering Captain Lewis doctoring venereal complaints and York’s frostbitten penis, remembering the amputation of a Mandan boy’s frozen toes. That had been a world in itself back then. He could even remember the evening whiskey rations, how they had tasted; it had been more than a year since the corps had run out of whiskey.

  There would be plenty of whiskey in St. Louis and he would be able to afford it. Another good reason to fear going back.

  In a long council, Captain Clark failed to persuade any Hidatsa chiefs to go see the President. But the Mandan chief Big White agreed to go, as he had promised more than a year ago. It was obvious he was fearful, but he said he would go if his wife and son could go with him, and if Rene Jessaume could go with him as his interpreter. Because of the chief’s size, it would be necessary to lash two of the corps’ canoes side by side for stability. Jessaume then said he would go only if he could take his wife and two sons. Also, the Mandans had collected a large quantity of corn as a gift for the whitemen, to feed them on their way home, so the loads were approaching capacity.

  The old pirogue’s foredeck was too rotten to withstand any firing of the swivel gun, so Clark presented the gun to the one-eyed Hidatsa chief, LeBourgne, as a symbol of their friendship. That relieved the load a little. Clark was still pondering how to get rid of another two hundred pounds, and now Drouillard saw his chance to speak on behalf of Colter. “He wants to go back up with those two. Trap on the Yellow Stone. His enlistment’s up next month. He and his gear off, that’ll make you some room.”

  And so Colter was paid, discharged with thanks for his excellent service. He was let go on condition that nobody else would ask to go. Some of the troops thought he was crazy to turn his back on the civilization they were so anxious to reach, but a few said they envied him, and all wished him safety and good fortune.

  Colter came and took Drouillard’s hand and looked deep into his eyes. “Chief, thankee. Nothin’d please me more than trampin’ those mountains again … with the best damn Indian I ever met.”

  “Might do that yet. Tanakia, Colter.” It was Shawnee for “Till then.” He hoped it could happen. Colter was one of the best.

  In French, Drouillard explained to Charbonneau the accounting of his pay. Bird Woman sat nearby with the baby. For his services as interpreter and for the tepee lodge he had provided, Charbonneau was due five hundred dollars and thirty-three cents. He would have liked to go on down, to St. Louis, but since no Hidatsas were to be going, he was not needed anymore as interpreter.

  Captain Clark kept looking from Charbonneau to Bird Woman and the baby, and blinking and swallowing. Finally he said, “Drouillard, tell them this: that little boy Jean Baptiste—my little dancing boy, Pompey—I would like to take him, and see he gets as good a schooling as can be got.”

  Drouillard translated. From Charbonneau’s expression, he presumed that they had already discussed this at some time, maybe while they were coming down the Yellow Stone together. Charbonneau talked to Bird Woman in the Hidatsa tongue, and she replied without looking up.

  “She says, in a year he will be weaned. Then they will bring him to you. They will be grateful if you will teach their son all the many things you know.” Drouillard liked to think of Clark teaching the boy. But teaching in St. Louis was likely to mean Black Robes. He would pray it wouldn’t be a religious education.

  Bird Woman sat with the baby, a fist tight against her mouth, blinking, rocking to and fro. Clark reached, and she handed Pompey up to him. Clark tossed him up, caught him, and when the baby squealed and grinned, tossed him up again, then handed him back to her. He squeezed her hand hard. Then he wiped his wrist under his nose and said, “Let’s go, Drouillard.” Drouillard signed to her, My heart is on the ground. She nodded. He turned and followed Clark into the crowd.

  At Mittuta-Hanka Town, Drouillard watched for the couple whose child might be his own. He suddenly, intensely, wanted to see that child.

  But they didn’t appear.

  Saturday 17th of August 1806

  we dropped down to the Big whites Mandan village I walked to the lodge of the Chief whome I found Sorounded by his friends the men were Setting in a circle Smokeing and the womin Crying. After Smoking one pipe, he informed me that he was ready and we were acompd to the Canoes by all the Village. Maney of them Cried out aloud. as I was about to Shake with the Grand Cheifs of all the Villages there assembled they requested me to Set one minit longer with them which I readily agreed to and directed a pipe to be lit. the Cheifs informed me that when we first came to their Country they did not believe all we Said. but they were now Convinced that every thing we had told them were true. that they Should keep in memory everything which we had Said to them. we then Saluted them with a gun and Set out and Proceded on to Fort Mandan where I landed and went to view the old works the houses except one in the rear bastion was burnt by accident. Some pickets were Standing in front next to the river. we proceeded on.

  William Clark, Journals

  Boys from Big White’s town ran along the shore a long way, following the canoes, waving, calling farewell. Drouillard glanced back from the tiller of the pirogue and saw something flashing. “Look, Cap’n Clark,” he said.

  Clark looked back. “Aha! I gave that boy a mirror last year. I remember him. And he gave me this.” The captain took an eagle-bone whistle out of his pocket and blew a perfect eagle’s cry in response to the boy’s sun signal. The boy, tiny on the distant shore, stopped and waved. “I think his name was Four Bears,” Clark said.

  Drouillard clenched his jaw. How good it was that this captain remembered the name of an Indian boy. And how good that he had sent him a reply in the eagle’s voice, the best sound for an Indian boy to hear. That boy would never forget this whiteman.

  Chapter 25

  Mouth of the Missouri River

  September 23, 1806

  a wet disagreeable morning. we Set out after Breakfast and procd. on Soon arived at the Mouth of the Missourie entered the Mississippi River and landed at River deboise where we wintered in 1804. here we found a widdow woman our laundress who we left here & has a plantation under tollarable good way Since we have been on the Expedition. we delayed a Short time and about 12 o’Clock we arrived in Site of St. Louis fired three Rounds as we approached the Town and landed oppocit the center of the Town, the people gathred on the Shore and Huzzared three cheers. we unloaded the canoes and carried the baggage all up to a Store house in Town. drew out the canoes then the party all considerable much rejoiced that we have the Expedition Completed and now we look for boarding in Town and wait for our Settlement and then we entend to return to our native homes to See our parents once more as we have been So long from them. finis.

  Sergeant John Ordway, Journals

  The town of St. Louis was swirling with excitement and celebration. Young officers long since given up for dead had appeared alive and well; though they looked more like savage barbarians than civilized men, they were indeed the officers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who had been here three years before, provisioning themselves for a trip across the continent. At once the Chouteau family of town founders and fur traders invited the captains to be guests in their home. They did not, of course, invite George Drouillard or the enlisted men, but many other residents of the town did so. And an old boyhood neighbor and fellow soldier of Captain Clark’s, a Major Christy, had settled in St. Louis
as a tavern keeper; he provided storerooms for their tons of moldy, smelly cargoes, and lodging for Drouillard.

  Captain Lewis was eager to dispatch a letter to the President, but as the post had already left St. Louis, he sent a note across the Mississippi to the postmaster at Cahokia to hold the mail until noon the next day. He told Drouillard to come to Chouteau’s house after breakfast next day to take letters across to Cahokia before noon.

  The innkeeper gave Drouillard a small jug of brandy on credit, and he carried it to his room, which was the size of a closet, containing a cot and a washbasin. He was determined to get clean, but not drunk. He took a dram, sipped it, undressed and bathed with a rag and soap, stretched out on the cot with a sheet over him and listened to the noises of the town outside the window. St. Louis looked as if it had doubled in size and population in the three years of his absence, mostly Americans and due probably to the purchase of Louisiana from France. The sounds had changed. There was wagon traffic, wheels rumbling and grinding. Less singing, more shouting. He had noticed remarkable numbers of trading boats at the riverside.

  Coming down from the Mandan country, a fast journey of less than forty days, the expedition had met many trading boats going up, two of them Chouteau company parties, two of them old army friends of both captains, one carrying old Pierre Dorion and the trader and interpreter Gravelines, another carrying the voyageur François Rivet, their old confrère who danced on his hands. They had picked up much news in those encounters: that Jefferson was still President, having been reelected; that James Wilkinson, who had served with Clark in Anthony Wayne’s army, was now the governor of the Louisiana Territory; that Aaron Burr, the former Vice President, had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel; that William Henry Harrison, another old army comrade of Clark’s and now governor of the Indiana Territory, had taken most of the lands east of the Mississippi away from their Indian inhabitants by treaties, while the expedition was away.