by Harmon, Amy
I describe why they were there and why they were alone and how far they’d traveled from the Bear River and Sheep Rock. He knows the places by different names but nods as I explain, describing the spring and the jutting black rocks and the distance to the river where we now sit.
When I have finished, he sits still, his hands on his thighs, his back straight. He doesn’t speak for several minutes, and I don’t press him. I sit in numb exhaustion. Hanabi’s daughter is awake, and Hanabi rises from the robes to go retrieve her and returns with the baby in her arms.
“Pocatello,” Hanabi says, looking at her husband, and her mouth is flat and hard. Pocatello. The chief of the Shoshoni thought responsible for the trouble with the soldiers. I remain silent, as does Washakie.
“Pocatello,” Hanabi insists when he doesn’t respond.
Washakie grunts, but he seems to be wrestling with a decision. Finally he raises his eyes back to mine.
“We go to the Gathering Place every three winters.”
Like the Pawnee, most tribes measure time in seasons, not years, when it is measured at all.
“All Shoshoni. North, east, and west,” he adds.
I remember Hanabi telling me this when we camped at the Green.
“You are going there now?”
“Yes.” He sighs heavily. “Pocatello will be there.”
“I do not know if it was Pocatello’s band,” I say.
“It was,” Washakie says simply. “These are his lands. He will take the animals he stole to the Great Gathering. He will trade them. He will trade your woman too . . . or kill her. And the white men will never know who is to blame.” He shrugs. “But word of the attack will spread among the whites, and it will cause trouble for all tribes. For all Shoshoni. For all the people.”
He is so certain, and he speaks of Naomi’s fate so emotionlessly.
“Will you take me there?” I choke, trying to control my rage.
“He will not give her back to you. You will be alone in a sea of Shoshoni.”
“He will not be alone,” Hanabi says, folding her arms and gazing at her husband fiercely. “He will have you,” she snaps. “He will have our people.”
Washakie doesn’t argue with her. He simply studies me.
“You want to kill Pocatello? You want to kill his men?” he asks.
William’s bubbling scalp and Warren’s face rise in my mind. Elsie Bingham with her cheerful smile and her adoration for her homely husband. Winifred. Winifred, who I loved. Wyatt and Webb and poor Will, who carries the weight of it all on his twelve-year-old shoulders.
“Yes. I want to kill him. I want to kill his men. And if my wife is dead when I find her, I will kill him, and I will take his scalp back to her brothers so they know I have not looked away from what was done,” I vow.
“And if she is not dead?” he asks. “If I can get her back for you?”
I do not know what he wants from me, and I wait, my jaw clenched over my fury and fear.
“I will take you to him,” Washakie says. “I will take you to the Gathering. But you must promise me that if your woman is alive, you will take her and the tua, the child, and go. No killing. No revenge.”
“And if she is not alive?” I have to whisper the words.
“If she is not alive, I will help you kill Pocatello.”
Hanabi bows her head, and I sit in stunned silence.
“But only him. Then you will go, and you will leave the white man out of it. You will not go to the white army and send them here. You will not show them the graves and point your finger.”
Hanabi raises her worried eyes to mine, waiting for my response.
“You understand?” Washakie asks, and now his voice is almost gentle.
“It won’t be just Pocatello and his men who suffer,” I say, understanding more than I’m willing to admit.
He nods. “Newe.” The people. “They will all pay.”
I cover my eyes with my hands, the way Will did, trying to erase the horrors he’d seen.
“Is your woman strong?” Washakie asks, still gentle.
“Yes,” I whisper. “She is very strong.”
“Then we will go and get her.”
NAOMI
The man who took Wolfe from my arms and gave her to his wife is named Biagwi. He is the only one who did not kill, but I wish he had. I wish he had killed me. I think the one who dragged me into his lodge by my hair is Beeya’s son. His name is Magwich. And he killed Pa.
That’s how I identify them: the one who took me and Wolfe. The one who killed Pa. The one who killed Warren. The one who stabbed Homer Bingham, and the one who took his scalp. I didn’t see Ma die. I didn’t see Elsie die, but I know who carries their scalps too. I know who burned the wagons. One of the men is their chief, but I do not know his name.
We walk all day. We go where wagons would never go, moving north. The morning of the second day we walk within a mile of high white adobe walls surrounded by circled wagons and clustered lodges, and I realize with a start that it must be Fort Hall. I wonder what they would do if I started to run toward the wagons. Would Magwich chase me on his horse? Would their chief put an arrow in my back? That would not be so bad, and maybe I would get away. But I cannot leave Wolfe, and I keep walking. We are too far for anyone to notice a white woman in the tribe, and I am dressed like an Indian.
Beeya took my yellow dress and brushed my hair with a block of wood bristled like a pine cone before braiding it down my back. My dress was in filthy tatters, but I was very angry with her when I discovered it was gone. The pale doeskin dress and leggings she gave me to wear are too warm for August, and the sun beats down on my face.
We are moving toward something. We are going somewhere. We have not made a permanent camp for days, and we don’t seem to be following a herd. Beeya has loaded me down like a pack mule, and she is always at my side. Beeya isn’t her name. It is the word for mother. Pia? Beeya? I can’t hear the difference. She is mother to Magwich, and now she considers herself mother to me. I understand when she points to Biagwi’s wife, who carries Wolfe upon her back, his white face and pale hair in stark contrast to the dark papoose.
“Weda beeya,” Beeya says, pointing, insisting. “Beeya.” She is telling me the woman, whose name is Weda, is now Wolfe’s mother.
I think she is trying to reassure me, to tell me he is being taken care of, but I cannot be grateful. I shake my head. “No. No Beeya,” I say.
Beeya wants me to draw for her, and I do, but I feel no joy in it. I have pulled every one of my old drawings from my book, every beloved face, and put them in my satchel. I leave only the blank sheets behind. I’m afraid Beeya will take it to show the other women or her sons, and I can’t lose the pictures. I’m afraid Magwich will toss it in the fire when I displease him. He is afraid of the color of my eyes and slaps me when I watch him. So I don’t watch him. I track him from the corner of my eye. He does not have a woman. Maybe he did. I only know that Beeya lives in his wickiup and takes care of him, and as long as I don’t look at him, he leaves me alone.
One night, while the men sit in the chief’s lodge, Beeya sits me among the women with my book and my pencil. She is very proud. Very excited. I don’t understand anything that is said, and no one understands me. It’s been five days, and it feels like five minutes. It feels like five years. Like five hours, like five decades. A part of me is waiting, and a part of me is dead.
I embrace the lifeless girl, the one who does not yearn for John or talk to Ma, the one who does not worry about my brothers. The lifeless girl walks and works and draws faces that I do not remember moments after I finish. Lifeless girl watches Weda feed Wolfe from her breasts and doesn’t flinch; I only wonder where Weda’s real baby has gone. Maybe he is with Ma.
17
DEER LODGE VALLEY
JOHN
Washakie tells me the river is called the Tobitapa. We leave it in the morning. The Shoshoni travel with the skins and poles for tipis, but when they reach the Gatherin
g Place, they will build their wickiups, the dome-shaped shelters covered in skins and sometimes brush for the longer stay. The Gathering lasts weeks at a time. When it is done, they will hunt buffalo one more time before they go to the winter range. It takes us days to reach the Snake River—the Shoshoni call it the Piupa—and I help the women make rafts from the bulrushes to get everything across. Some of the men ask if all Pawnee work like women.
“Only the good ones,” I say. Hanabi says I work as much as two squaws, which only makes them laugh harder.
Washakie sat in council with his war chiefs the night I arrived. I don’t know what was said when I left. I told my story sitting among them, and then they asked me to leave them alone to talk. I did not point fingers of blame or mention Pocatello, the Gathering, or the promise I made Chief Washakie and the promise he made me. I left that up to him. Hanabi tells me that even though the family group they travel with is small—250 people and seventy wickiups—Washakie is head chief over many bands of Shoshoni, and they will listen to him.
Every day Washakie asks me if my woman is strong.
Every day I answer that she is.
I wish he wouldn’t ask. It makes me wonder exactly how strong she will have to be. He does not ask like he needs to know. He asks like he is trying to remind me, to make me say the words out loud. He asks me many things, and the conversations distract me from the snakes, hissing and writhing, so big and loud now that there is no room for anything else. I lie awake in my tent at night, among the tipis, convinced I will keep the families awake with the rattling. I rest because I must, but even in sleep my stomach is not free from the coils.
Washakie wants to know about my white father and my Pawnee mother. So I tell him. I talk and he listens, and then he presses for more. He is hungry to know, and I answer every question forthrightly, restricted only by my limited Shoshoni vocabulary.
“You were not raised by your people?” he asks, and I know he means the Pawnee.
“They did not like me. I was a two-feet. Pítku ásu’.”
He waits for more explanation.
“My mother brought me to my father. I never thought he liked me either, but maybe I was wrong. I don’t know anymore.”
“He was a good father?”
I am reminded of the time I asked Charlie if Dog Tooth was a good chief and his response: “What is a good chief?” What is a good father? I’m not sure I know.
“He never . . . shunned . . .” I’m not sure I am using the right word, but Washakie nods like he understands. “He never shunned me. He worked hard. Made sure I knew how to fight. And I am . . . loved.” It is an admission I have never made before, but I have come to believe it is true.
“My father was not one of the people,” Washakie says after a moment of silence. “I am a two-feet like you.”
“He was not Shoshoni?” I ask, surprised.
“He was Flathead. He died when I was a young boy. When he died, my mother returned to her people, the Lemhi Shoshoni, and I was raised Shoshoni.” He points to a woman riding an old horse. “That is my mother. Her name is Lost Woman. I am the only family she has left.”
I have noticed her before. She was with Hanabi by the Green River. But she keeps herself apart, and Washakie has made no move to introduce us. Hanabi rides beside her now, and the contrast between them is marked. Hanabi is young and straight, her hair heavy and dark. The woman beside her is bent, her hair is white, and she shares a weary long-suffering with the horse she rides.
“Why is she called Lost Woman?” I ask, my heart aching for her.
“It is what she has always been called.” He shrugs. “And that is what she is. A lost woman. She is lost in grief. A husband, a daughter, two sons. All gone. My brothers died not long ago. They were hunting in the snow along the hillside. The snow began to slide and fall, and they were buried in it. My mother went looking for them. She knew they had been buried. She dug all over the hill with her hands. She would not listen to reason when I begged her to stop. We found them when the snow melted.”
We move far more quickly than the wagons would have, but each day is torture. I am plagued with worry and strain, and the distance we must travel is not insignificant. We move steadily north, and though Washakie’s people seem eager for the Gathering, there is no sense of haste or hurry to arrive. We see some buffalo a ways off, but when the men yelp and want to hunt, Washakie shakes his head. It will take too much time to dry the meat and treat the hides, and we continue on. If there are a few resentful looks cast my way, I do not see them, and I am grateful. It is all I can do not to gallop ahead, to seek Naomi by myself, but I know how foolish that would be, how futile. And I endure the snakes.
“Someday we will all look like you,” Washakie says to me one day, almost a week since we left the Tobitapa. He has been morose and has not spoken to me all morning, though he insists I ride at his side. His sudden comment startles me.
“What do I look like?” I ask, not understanding his meaning.
“Like an Indian dressed as a white man.”
After a moment he continues. “The blood of the Indian and the blood of the white people will flow together. One people. I have seen it.” He does not sound happy about it. He sounds resigned, and I don’t know what to say.
I tell him about the turtle, about living on both the land and the water, like Naomi told me to do. He smiles, but he shakes his head.
“We will have to become entirely new creatures. Then we will all be lost people . . . like my mother.”
NAOMI
Beeya is excited. All the women are. We’ve quickened our step, and everyone is smiling and chattering. The men move ahead, scanning the wide valley and pointing as they argue. The chief—Beeya calls him Pocatello—has the final word, and the people spill down behind him as he chooses a spot where the ground is flat and the creek runs through it. This is not a temporary encampment; we have arrived.
The day is spent erecting wickiups and staking out territory. We are the first, but we are not the only. Another band comes in from the north midday. Another from the west not long after. Each stakes out a position in the valley, and by the end of the day there are easily a thousand lodges and twice that many horses and dogs. And they keep coming.
At nightfall, the celebrations begin. It is like the shrieking from the night I carried Wolfe into camp, but this is not mourning, and it goes on for hours. The leaders of each band make up the inner ring around their scalps, which are strung from small poles. The warriors dance around the leaders, and the women and children take the outside. Around and around, dancing and singing songs I have never heard and hope to never hear again. Beeya does not dance, but she enjoys herself, swaying and yelping softly, sitting at my side in the grass beyond the wide circle where all the activities take place.
There are far more horses than people, and when the morning comes, the races begin. The men race all day long, betting on the outcomes and bartering when they lose. Beeya and I watch as Magwich loses five of his horses and wins five more from someone else, only to lose them again. His mood is black, and Beeya keeps me away from the wickiup much of the day. She has dressed me like a doll. Feathers hang from my braids, and beads hang from my ears. When Beeya came to me with a rock, a fishhook, and a chunk of wood the size of a cork, tugging at my ears, I let her have her way. I have no fight in me. The pain was sharp, but it didn’t last. I almost missed it when it fled.
The women move among the camps and congregate around the clearing, visiting and displaying their wares: beaded clothes and moccasins, painted pots and feathered headpieces, armbands, belts, and cuffs. Some women cluster and string beads onto long strands of what appears to be hair from a horse’s mane, keeping their hands busy as they chatter. No language barrier exists among them; they are the same nation, if not the same tribe.
Some of the women wear cloth instead of skins, simple tunics and long skirts sashed at the waists and decorated in the style of their people, but I do not blend in. I am stared at with wide ey
es and open mouths, but Beeya likes the attention. She tugs at my arm and makes me sit, spreading a skin in front of me along with little pots of paint. She pats the skin and says my name, “Nayohmee,” and pats it again. Then she pulls a woman forward through the crowd, pointing from the woman’s face to the skin in front of me.
The woman is someone of importance or esteem, because the other women part immediately. The woman stares down at me, hostile but curious, and Beeya motions for me to begin. I paint obediently, long black hair parted down the center, scowling eyes, bangled ears, simple lines. I have made her more beautiful than she is. I am not a fool. When I am finished, the women watching murmur and shift, and the haughty woman stoops to study it closer.
“Att,” she says to Beeya, ignoring me. The woman takes off several strands of beads from around her neck and puts them over Beeya’s head before she picks up her portrait, holding it gingerly to protect the wet paint. The women murmur again, and Beeya beams.
I am a novelty, and I draw for hours, making pictures on hides with the paints Beeya brings me. My fingers are stained from knuckle to tip, but I do not mind. It is easier to draw than to drown, and I am drowning. I paint one skin, one face, and then another. Beeya collects her pay and basks in the warmth of attention. After a while, the haughty woman comes back with a man. A thick scar runs from his forehead to his ear, but it only enhances his face. He wears a neck plate of bones, and his long hair is drawn back from his face. Red and yellow tassels hang from each temple and brush his prominent cheekbones.
I paint his image on a white skin that his wife lays down before me. I accentuate his scar and the harsh lines of his face, creating a portrait both startling and severe, and he is pleased. He says something to Beeya, something about Magwich, and Beeya doesn’t like what he says. She shakes her head, adamant, and begins gathering the paints and her prizes in a rush, shoving them into my arms to help her carry them. She is suddenly ready to leave, though others still await their turns around us and complain loudly. I follow her obediently, relieved to be done, but the man calls after her, insistent. She doesn’t answer this time but hurries away. We return to Magwich’s wickiup and dump Beeya’s treasures by the door. She pushes me down on the buffalo robes and barks a command—stay?—before she rushes out again.