Sign-Talker

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  For him, there would be no going this season to Detroit, or to the Shawnee Prophet’s holy town.

  Manuel Lisa had many enemies, some of the worst being men who worked for him. The murder charge against Drouillard appeared to have been instigated by Antoine DuBrueil, one of the rowers who had just brought Lisa and Drouillard down the Missouri. On learning that his friend Bissonnette had died, DuBrueil had gone to the authorities, apparently to have them charge Lisa with the slaying.

  Shootings were so common in the district that only unusual circumstances brought them to the attention of the courts. The shooting of a deserter, in a trading voyage as in a military expedition, was almost automatically excused.

  It must have been a disappointment to DuBrueil and his supporters that the justice of the peace chose to charge the shooter, not Lisa. Drouillard was a half-breed, and had shot a whiteman.

  Because Drouillard was a partner of Lisa and a veteran of Lewis’s expedition, his defense attracted St. Louis’s most eloquent and ambitious lawyers, who could anticipate that it would be one of the first murder trials to be reported in the fledgling Missouri Gazette. General Clark was glad to know that Drouillard had saved a considerable amount of money. Good lawyers were not cheap. Señor Lisa, being not directly indicted, did not imagine himself obligated to pay into the defense. The attorney general was making much of the fact that the fatal bullet had struck Bissonnette in the back. And, apparently, in his last hours Bissonnette had said that he had not provoked Drouillard.

  Louis Lorimier came up for the trial, which was scheduled for September 23. He expected that his own reputation would weigh in his nephew’s favor; half the jury knew him. The loss of his wife still showed on him. Still, it was comforting to Drouillard to see his old guardian and mentor sitting in the court in a tailored frock coat and using his long braid of hair to whisk away the flies that droned in the courtroom like the voices of the prosecution.

  Another reassuring presence was that of a handsome young gentleman sitting in the jury box, with his crutch resting against his shoulder in much the same way as he had used to sit with his rifle by their hunting campfires. George Shannon was a juror.

  MISSOURI GAZETTE, OCTOBER 12, 1808

  On Friday the 23d ultimo the trial of Geo. Druillard for the alledged murder of Antoine Bissonnette, came on before the Court of Oyer and Terminer: The hon. J.B.C. Lucas presiding Judge …

  The counsel for the prisoner contended, desertion from a voyage so peculiarly important … and a refusal of the deceased to be taken, was sufficient to do away the presumption of malice prepense. Mr. Easton maintained that the clandestine manner of deserting was a complete evidence of a felonious intent, that therefore the killing was perfectly justifiable, that if treachery be suffered with impunity, all commerce with that rich country would be frustrated forever. He pourtrayed with the liveliest animation, the persevering and unshaken fidelity of the prisoner in ascending the Missouri with the intrepid and brave captains Lewis and Clark …

  Mr. Carr endeavored to justify the defendant being used to implicit obedience, could not be charged with having a bad heart for fulfilling the commands of his superior; and that if anyone was to blame it was Mr. Lisa who ordered him to bring the deceased, “dead or alive!” …

  The defense attorney Mr. Hempstead spoke in a forcible and impressive manner. Mr. Easton spoke long, quoting law and HOLY WRIT. Mr. Carr spoke with his usual elegance of style and beauty of thought and expression.

  The Jury retired from the bar, and in about fifteen minutes returned a verdict of NOT GUILTY.

  He was free. The jury had unburdened him of the murder charge. And the lawyers, whose performance had been so glowingly reviewed by Governor Lewis’s newspaper, had unburdened him of almost all of his earnings and savings, to pay for their three-hour performance in the court. Drouillard was left with a little less than four hundred dollars, besides his shares tied up in Lisa’s fur company. It was at this time that Frederick Graeter’s claim for the money he had lent Drouillard came forth. It had been filed before Drouillard’s return to St. Louis, and had to wait until the murder case was finished. The amount of the loan, with interest and the costs of the suit, drained the last of his fortune.

  “Well, sir,” Drouillard said to General Clark, “looks like I’ll be starting up the Missouri next spring just the way I did when you hired me five years ago: broke, and hoping I’ll live long enough to collect a few years’ wages.”

  “Yes, but the big difference is, it won’t be just wages this trip. Furs and profits!” Clark was a partner in the fur company.

  “No, the big difference is, your soldiers didn’t have to wonder if your hunter might shoot ’em in the back.”

  He remembered just how the shooting of Bissonnette had happened. He did not remember going out with a desire to kill Bissonnette.

  But in the courtroom he had heard the lawyers talking their whiteman words about malice and evil forethought, and he had been thinking about it ever since.

  Lisa had wanted the man killed, he was that angry. Lisa’s fury had grown from his presumption that as employer he was in charge of his employees’ free will. They had agreed to serve him, and had been like slaves or soldiers, not entitled to a change of heart.

  With his own promise to serve Lisa, had he become too much of one heart with him? Drouillard wondered. Had he ever promised Lisa he would shoot a man for him? If he had, would that be what the lawyer had called “prepense”? No. It had apparently been something Lisa expected because he was his “partner,” another of those whitemen words that had so many meanings lying in ambush.

  Drouillard had had a good conscience before he went to court and heard the lawyers. They had taken more than his money. They had taken his clear soul and made it as muddy as the Missouri River. He had never had to concern himself with such complexities until he started working with whitemen, whitemen who presumed to control other men’s souls, and had all kinds of words with which to do so.

  I am an Indian, he thought. I should not be doing what white people tell me to do.

  A few weeks ago he had walked out of Clark’s house believing he had put all whiteman things behind him. Now he would have to go up with them again in May, as their chief interpreter, because he was still held as partner by Lisa in ways he didn’t understand, some kind of promise he didn’t really know he had given. This, the biggest expedition ever on these rivers, was to commence in May: thirteen keelboats and barges; $40,000 in trade goods; 250 white hunters, trappers, and fighters, fifty of them expert riflemen; and 300 Indians recruited from Missouri River tribes with grudges against the Sioux and Arikaras. The United States would pay the St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company $7,000 to deliver Big White and his family to the Mandans. Lewis said that if the Arikaras interfered, they were to be wiped out and the expedition Indians could plunder them. Even if they made no trouble, the Arikaras would be forced to give up three warriors for public execution, in retaliation for the three soldiers they had killed last year. This was the plan of Gov. Lewis, whose spirit had become such a shrill whirl that sometimes Drouillard would have to leave a room Lewis was in, and go out and look at the sky and breathe. He always dreamed of Lewis and the woman with bloody arms, in the same dreams. He yearned to go to the town of the Shawnee Prophet and help him, but now he had no money, and was tied with words to Manuel Lisa, and couldn’t do that. Lorimier had said that even his Cape Girardeau Indians were now going to the Prophet’s town for his preaching. Drouillard knew he couldn’t go. Not yet.

  There was a new Great White Father in Washington now, one named Madison. Governor Lewis’s patient and indulgent friend Jefferson was no longer in that place of power, and Lewis seemed desperate to get the new great mission off up the river while it still had momentum. Even though Lewis had named a branch of the Missouri for Madison three years ago, he worried that the new President might not have enough interest in exploiting the land toward the west, and he was desperate. Lewis in desperation was a very bad thin
g.

  But Drouillard still hoped he could put whitemen behind him. This expedition was his way up to the mountains again.

  Up there was Moves Behind. Up there was Cutnose. Up there was still enough of the world the Master of Life had given the Indians, so much world that one could forget there were whitemen.

  And yet …

  * * *

  Lorimier’s secretary for many years had been Bartolomeo Cousin, who wrote in a beautiful hand, and could take a statement and phrase it with elegance. As the great convoy made preparation in the spring of 1809 for its departure, Drouillard imposed upon Cousin to write a letter for him to his half sister Marie Louise in Ontario.

  St. Louis, May 23, 1809

  My Dear Marie Louise:

  You have without doubt learned of the misfortune which happened to me last time on my way to the Upper Missouri … I would have you observe without trying to excuse myself, that this was not done through malice, hatred or any evil intent … and moreover was encouraged and urged by my partner, Manuel Lisa, who we ought to consider in this affair as guilty as myself for without him the thing would never have taken place. The recollection of this unhappy affair throws me very often in the most profound reflections, and certainly I think it has caused a great deal of grief to my family for which I am very sorry and very much mortified. That I have not lost the affection of my old friends proves that they did not believe me capable of an action so terrible through malice and bad intent.

  I would have had the pleasure of seeing you all last winter if it had not been for the lack of money to cover the expenses of such a voyage. The expenses which I had through my lawsuit have absorbed all my savings that I had made in the Upper Missouri; this obliges me now to return to that part of the country with the brother of Governor Lewis, who continues to employ me as before for the United States.

  I do not think I can return from the Upper Missouri before three years and just as soon as I return I shall be delighted to see you all. If some of my family will be kind enough to write to me they will address their letters to Monsieur Pascal Cerré at St. Louis. He and his wife although not known to my family beg you to accept their civilities. They are the best friends I possess in this country. My respects to our Mother who I embrace well, also all my brothers and sisters who I would very much like to see.

  Your very affectionate brother,

  GEORGE DROUILLARD

  Chapter 29

  The Three Forks of the Missouri

  May 1810

  Drouillard waded in the edge of the beaver pond, carrying a trap and a trap-stake, and a bait stick scented with beaver gland, clove, and cinnamon. Being in the cold water reminded him of bathing in the mornings with Moves Behind. Remembering her made his heart heavy. When he had come back up the Yellow Stone last year, he found that she had caught some disease by going to the trading fort, and had died. Her son Split Hoof had died of it too, and several of the people in her Crow village. And so George Drouillard did not have a wife and family to roam in the mountains with as he had dreamed of doing. Instead he lived with a crowd of Manuel Lisa’s trappers and hunters and a few Indians in a new stockade fort just above the three forks, between the Madison and Jefferson rivers. The fort had been finished just last month. Within two days it was besieged by large bands of Blackfeet, and five trappers were killed, many horses and forty beaver traps stolen. Eighty of Lisa’s men, who had come more than two thousand miles to trap in the Three Forks Valley, had now been confined in that fort for weeks, afraid to come out and trap, even afraid to go out hunting. John Colter, as brave a man as Drouillard had ever met, had quit the country a few days ago and headed downriver, afraid he had run out of miraculous escapes.

  Drouillard had stayed in the fort with the cringing whitemen as long as he could stand it. Finally, two days ago, he had told them, “I came to trap beaver, and I sure can’t trap them in a stockade.” Despite their warnings, he had come out with his horse and traps, up the river here a few miles, and returned to the fort the next day with several fine skins. The same yesterday.

  This morning two Delaware Indian hunters had asked to come out with him so they could kill some fresh meat. Again the trappers in the fort had warned that it was too dangerous.

  “I’m too much an Indian to be caught by Indians,” he had mocked them in English, the bragging language. He and the hunters had come several miles up the Jefferson, seeing no new sign of Blackfeet. He had left the hunters by a watering place along the river, and come up this creek to place traps. He had tied his mare in a stand of willow slips that hid her from view and waded up to this beaver pond, thus leaving no tracks or scent on the bank, and had set several traps. It was a beautiful, bright morning with a cold wind. Each time he waded offshore to place a trap, he left his rifle in a carefully noted place on the bank, never more than a few feet out of reach, and constantly observed in every direction with eyes, ears, and nose. Not just because of Blackfeet, but also because there was much sign of grizzly bears along the river.

  Manuel Lisa’s hopes of tempting or taming the Blackfeet had been in vain. Building his first post in Crow country at the mouth of the Bighorn had convinced the Blackfeet that the whitemen were enemies, as they had surely surmised from the fight with Lewis on the Maria’s River three years ago. And then, in the last two years, Colter had killed several Blackfeet warriors, once while conspicuously allied with their enemies the Kootenai and Crows in a fierce battle involving hundreds. Not far from this place last year, John Potts had killed a Blackfeet warrior, and had been killed and cut to pieces, as foretold in his dream. Colter had narrowly escaped a similar fate by outrunning a large band of them, killing one in his flight. The Americans so far had riled the Blackfeet as thoroughly as they had the grizzly bears, and there was little hope for peace or mercy.

  Still, Drouillard believed that the Blackfeet could be won over by persuasion, if only they would come and talk. But they didn’t talk, they attacked. Sometimes he dreamed of talking peace with them.

  “I could parley with them, if I could get one or two to sit still with me,” he had told the fort’s commanders, Andrew Henry and Pierre Menard. In his three years with Lewis and Clark, he had with hand language, reason, and appeals to honor, resolved disputes between Indians who were jealous of each other. This was something like that.

  In their desperation, Henry and Menard had dreamed up a plan to get the Blackfeet to sit down with Drouillard and listen: if the Flatheads at the fort could capture and bring in just one Blackfeet warrior, treat him kindly, and let Drouillard persuade him about the whitemen’s desire for peace, trade for good guns, and cooperation in trapping, then free him to carry home that goodwill message to his people, a truce and even a friendship could be achieved. Why not use Flatheads to bring in a captive listener?

  “No, you don’t understand,” Drouillard had told them. “The Flatheads won’t cooperate in any trick that will put more guns in the hands of the Blackfeet. You might as well forget that. No. Somehow, one day, I’ll get a chance to make talk sign face-to-face with Blackfeet. Without any Flatheads or Crows or whitemen standing around making them distrust me.”

  “Alone?” Henry had exclaimed. “They’d kill you on the spot!”

  “They might not. I’m not a whiteman, or a Flathead or Crow or Shoshone. What grudge do they have against a Shawnee? Blackfeet are people. You think they just kill everyone they see?”

  “They killed your friend John Potts.”

  “Because he killed one of them.”

  “They tried to kill Colter!”

  “They had him and gave him a chance to run. He got away. He’s proof that they don’t just kill everybody.”

  “Well, they’re trying to kill us all!”

  He had shrugged. “I hope to talk ’em out of that.”

  And so Drouillard came out alone to trap while a whole company of whitemen cowered in their stinking fort. Those who could read were killing time with Sergeant Gass’s book. Drouillard found that amusing.
/>   He stood a little way out from the creek bank, stuck the pointed end of the bait stick in the soft bottom and pressed it in at an angle until it stood firm. Then he put the trap just under the baited end and straightened its chain, outward from the bank, and drove the chain-stake into the bottom to anchor it. A beaver standing in the shallows to sniff the bait stick would step on the cocked trap and it would snap shut, and the beaver couldn’t swim away with it because of the stake, and would drown. Drouillard would come checking his traps in a day or two, skin the beaver, scrape the flesh out of the skin, and take it back down to the fort folded fur side in to dry. Then somewhere thousands of miles away in Europe or Asia the fur would be made into a felt hat for which some fancy gentleman would pay a great deal of money. He knew this had been going on ever since whitemen had come to Turtle Island, more than two hundred years ago. Indians everywhere in the East and Canada had been catching beaver to trade for kettles and knives, needles and awls, mirrors and ribbon, beads and brooches, guns and liquor, so that men elsewhere could have elegant hats. Many tribes, in fact, knew whitemen simply by words which meant, “Men who wear hats.” His uncle, Lorimier, had told him all about that while he was growing up, and sometimes while he was setting traps he would wonder how many millions of beavers had been trapped to make hats for people in far parts of the world, and fortunes for people like Manuel Lisa and the Chouteaus, and Lewis and Clark, and the British of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was a good thing the Creator had made plenty of beavers. And it was good that beavers lived in communities where they were easy to find, by their dams and lodges, instead of running all over the countryside like buffalo and other Four-Leggeds.

  He had heard that in places in the east, around the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence, even around Ontario where his brothers and sisters lived, so many beaver had been trapped for so long that there were few left, and then the whitemen didn’t have much use for Indians, except to hire them to fight their wars for them.