53
FALL HAD ARRIVED. The clear slanting light, the bull elks bugling in the mountains, the aspens turning yellow along the river—all were signs of the turning season. Cameahwait was now warning us every day of the severe September blizzards common in the Bitterroots. He explained that we would have to travel north for several sleeps just to strike the pass through the mountains and that the trail through the Bitterroots was faint and uncertain, and game very scarce.
Yellow Sage seemed no more anxious over the impending crossing than over the fate of Franklin whom I continued to mourn. She sewed for herself and my uncle and me large buffalo-skin parfleches to carry extra food and gear; made each of us several pairs of spare moccasins; and dried some elk and venison jerky to take with us. But while she was a capable planner, like my uncle she seemed not to worry much about what lay ahead, but rather to live for today.
Sage loved to play with Sacagawea’s little son, Jean Baptiste, or Pomp, as the men of the expedition called him. At our encampment in the Land of the Shoshone she ran about with him in her arms by the hour, chasing the cottonwood fluff blowing in the air. “Look, Pomp, it’s snowing,” she cried. “Catch a snowflake!”
At first the Shoshone were suspicious of Sage, since they and the Blackfeet were ancient and bitter enemies. But soon enough they were won over. For their littlest girls she made birchen dolls, and for the boys she fashioned hobby-horses from crooked-trunk firs. She taught the older boys a Blackfoot game similar to snap-the-whip and showed them a contest called walking arrow. She would shoot an arrow into a tree, then each of the boys would shoot at it, and the boy whose arrow came closest would claim all of the other arrows; then she would shoot at another tree, and the game would continue, sometimes for hours on end. She showed the older Shoshone girls how to play a Cree game in which they kept a fist-sized ball stuffed with elk hair and wrapped in tanned buffalo hide aloft with their fists for minutes at a time. In another game a short pole was thrown through a small rolling hoop segmented with rawhide spokes.
From willow sticks Sage made my uncle a handsome backrest, and from the gray shale abundant near the No Return River a new hemp-pipe. One morning she surprised a lumbering porcupine and tossed a deer hide over it, which it immediately filled with quills from its lashing tail. After releasing the indignant animal, she colored the quills red, green, and blue and made a beautiful star-shaped medallion for Sacagawea to wear on her best robe. Sage’s method of dyeing the quills fascinated me. She wrapped them in dampened dye-plants, then placed the little packages under her sleeping robe for several nights until the weight of her body pressed colors into the quills.
“Oh, to be a package of quills,” I teased her. Whereupon she made me a spoon from the horn of a mountain sheep “to eat buffalo brains with and get smart.”
Before leaving for the Columbia, Captain Lewis wished to compile some notes on the customs and manners of the Shoshone. One evening over supper he remarked that Shoshone men, while honest and generous, had little respect for their women, of whom they were “sole proprietors.” Also, he accused them of being lazy, stating that their horsemen refused to walk anyplace, even the shortest distance. And they frequently boasted of heroic deeds that they had never performed. Lewis glumly concluded that there was little hope of persuading them, or any of the other Indians we had encountered, of abandoning war for peace, since in their society no man could rise to become a chief without having first proved his bravery in war.
“Why, sir,” my uncle objected, “but think. What is your crony the President, and every other slaveholding American, but ‘sole proprietor’ of all the women in their quarters, and the men and children as well? As for the Shoshone’s preference for riding, when did you ever, at home in Virginia, see any gentleman planter walk so much as fifty paces out-of-doors afoot? So far as exaggerated boasting is concerned, have you listened lately to your men bragging around the campfire of their conquests among the Shoshone women? You would suppose yourself the captain of a party of satyrs. As for the Indians’ custom of choosing their leaders from their best warriors, what say you to America’s choice for first President? George Washington was hardly elected for his Quaker sentiments. Human nature is human nature, sir, in a Shoshone tepee or a Philadelphia drawing room.”
Lewis kicked the fire; then, citing the long hard crossing of the Bitterroots, which we must begin as soon as we had obtained enough pack horses through trade with the Indians, he turned in for the night. I could see that my uncle had made no headway with him on the subject of the Shoshone. As Yellow Sage remarked afterward, while we walked on the edge of the camp and watched the moon rise, Lewis was as sure of the superiority of Virginians as she was of the Blackfeet’s.
“I have a question for you, Sage. Your mother was a Piegan, your father British. Is that right?”
“Yes. I hope that’s not the question.”
“It’s not. The question is, are you more Piegan or English?”
“Worse and worse. For I can’t and don’t believe that at the heart of the matter, there’s a particle of difference between the two. When it comes to ways and stays, however”—this with a sidelong look at me—“I am sure that all the interesting parts of me are Piegan. If you want the truth, your wonderful uncle is the only really interesting person I’ve ever met who wasn’t a Piegan.”
“I suppose you think Smoke is interesting,” I said.
“He is. And has a great many good points as well.”
“Such as?”
“He’s the most generous member of our nation. Piegans value generosity above any other trait.”
I was about to ask her to prove her point by giving me a kiss. But just then we were startled by a crashing in the nearby woods. Out of the trees about one hundred paces away stepped a pure white elk with a massive set of antlers containing seven points on one side and eight on the other.
“Oh, Ti,” Yellow Sage exclaimed. “The legendary White Elk of the Mountains!”
She whistled to him and he bugled back, then vanished into the evergreens. Sage told me excitedly that White Elk, who had been created by Napi ten thousand years ago, was as immortal as her grandfather. I was happy enough to have been vouchsafed a glimpse of this ancient gentleman, but I was quite annoyed with him for spoiling my chance at a kiss.
Each evening White Elk appeared for a few minutes just at twilight in the meadow on the mountainside above the Shoshone camp, though he never allowed anyone to approach him. On the fourth morning after we first sighted him, two days before the expedition was to leave for the Columbia, Sage learned from Sacagawea, who had heard it from her husband, Charbonneau, that the Shoshone were planning to slip away that night for their annual buffalo hunt, leaving the captains horseless and without a guide, since Cameahwait was angry that they would obtain no guns in the trade. When we alerted Captain Lewis, he was furious with Charbonneau for not telling him this disturbing news immediately, and with Cameahwait for planning to betray him.
My uncle then went to the captain and explained that many years ago when he was in Spain on summer holiday, retracing the epic journey of Don Quixote with his Oxford tutor and mentor, the great Scholia Scholasticus Aristotle, they had concluded their journey in the city of Seville. And there they had witnessed a wonderful event called a rodear, a competition to see which of the most famous Andalusian horsemen could stay on the wildest horses and bulls the longest. Recalling this competition, True said he had wagered with Cameahwait and some other Shoshone leaders that the captains’ men could easily best theirs at this sport; and the Indians had agreed that if Lewis’s men won, they would provide him with all the horses he desired.
“Oh, sir,” I interjected, “just yesterday Sage and I saw a party of young Shoshone ride down two grown mule deer in a show of horsemanship unlike anything ever dreamed of in the United States. What can you be thinking?”
My uncle said he knew very well what he was thinking, and that by tonight, the captains would have their horses and a good guide
into the bargain—not that the guide was so very necessary, since he and I had come through these same mountains just the year before. But I, remembering all too well the unfortunate outcome of the Flying Dutchman at the Great Falls on the Missouri, anticipated the rodear with considerable concern.
That afternoon everyone convened in the natural bowl where, a fortnight before, my uncle had held his play and drawn the Indians out of the forest. There, under his supervision, a corral of lodge poles, about two hundred feet on a side, had been erected, within which the rodear would take place.
As impoverished as these mountain Indians were, it was amazing to see how richly they decorated themselves when the occasion required, with colored beads, seashells, elk-tooth necklaces and bracelets, richly dyed quills along their leggings, mother-of-pearl earrings, and tippets of otter pelts embellished with ermine tails. Their moccasins were ornamented with skunk tails trailing from the heels. And though I had heard Captain Lewis disparage the Shoshone for being “diminutive, with crooked legs and flat feet,” on horseback they were a nation of princes.
The rodear began with Cameahwait driving twenty young, unbroken horses into a chute adjacent to the corral, where they milled about, biting and kicking at each other and whinnying angrily. To ensure fairness, each of the ten Americans who had entered the contest was asked to pick a horse. A Shoshone brave would mount it, while my uncle and Cameahwait counted off the seconds the rider stayed aboard. The American contestant would then ride the same horse. The animals had been fitted with bridles and reins but no saddles, which the Shoshone disdained.
What can I say? The men of the expedition were fine riders, especially Drouillard, Labiche, and Shannon. But no one could compete with the Shoshone, who usually stayed mounted until the horses were entirely fatigued and stood with their tongues lolling out and their heads down—though they recovered quickly enough to dislodge most of our riders within six or seven seconds.
Captain Lewis rode last, galloping into the corral aboard a vicious little walleyed, hammer-headed stallion that had thrown its Shoshone rider after half a minute. Lewis spent more time in the air than on the pony, which spun, plunged, twisted, and reared. Well before fifteen seconds had elapsed, the wretch twisted its ugly head back upon the captain, savagely bit his calf, and unseated him.
It appeared that the rodear was over and the expedition still without its horses. But my uncle again spoke with Cameahwait—showing him his arquebus as if he would trade that—and then announced that we would reconvene at sundown for a winner-take-all finale.
When the sun was sitting on top of the mountains to the west, we assembled at the amphitheater once again. As the sun sank, bathing the entire wild scene in a luminous orange glow, the great White Elk stepped into the clearing on the mountainside.
“Now, Ti,” my uncle said in a hushed voice, “the precise nature of the wager I’ve made is that a member of our party will rope, ride, and break that splendid animal this very evening. If I win, Cameahwait will supply us with all the horses we need.”
“And if we lose?”
“We won’t.”
“But if we should happen to?”
“Well, if we should happen to, I was under the necessity of promising the Shoshone the party’s guns.”
“Uncle, for God’s sake. For Jehovah’s sake. The captains will never relinquish their rifles. What have you done?”
“Watch and see,” said he, handing me his spyglass.
Through the telescope I watched the elk walk proudly into the center of the lofty clearing. As he surveyed us from on high, a figure emerged from the opposite side of the opening—Lewis, dressed in his best coat, uniform trousers, and cocked hat.
The elk whistled and tossed his massive rack. The captain took several measured steps, angling away from the animal as if indifferent to its presence. He reached down and picked some wild grasses. Then he stood stock-still looking out over the valley. The elk began to pace nervously back and forth across the meadow, coming closer to the captain with each pass, the way the young Indian who stole Bucephalus had approached me at my easel on the lower Missouri River. Though they were too far away to hear, Lewis seemed to be talking to the animal. I handed the glass back to my uncle, who peered through it once, nodded, and lighted half a pipeful of hemp.
As the elk approached him, the captain held out the grasses, then withdrew them a little, then extended his hand again. The Shoshone in the amphitheater drew in their breath in unison; no man had ever been this close to White Elk before. The animal bent his head to take the grass and, so quickly I could scarcely follow his motions, the captain grasped his antlers and vaulted over his head onto his back.
“Ha ha!” cried my uncle. “Let the bobsled ride begin.”
Now ensued an incredible performance on the part of beast and man. As Lewis cartwheeled over his antlers, White Elk was already in the air, shrieking his fighting cry. With the captain clinging to his horns, he spun completely around, arching his great muscled back. Then he rushed into the woods. We could hear his antlers splintering dead limbs off the trees like rifle shots. I was terrified that he would scrape the captain from his back, crushing him against a tree like a deer fly. But moments later, with Lewis still aboard, the elk reappeared in the clearing and came charging straight down the mountainside toward us, while the Shoshone and the men of the expedition cheered madly and my uncle puffed away complacently in a haze of blue-gray smoke. As they approached at a full gallop, the rider stood up and threw off first the brocade uniform coat, then the trousers, then the cocked hat. It was Yellow Sage Flower in her white antelope dress, with her raven hair streaming out behind her.
She rode up to us and jumped lightly off her mount, and I ran to embrace her. Cameahwait spoke to Clark. “He says to pick your horses, sir,” my uncle told the captain. “And he’ll supply you with a good guide, though I think we will accompany you as well. This remarkable young woman has made it possible for us all to continue together. I only hope that our nation remembers Yellow Sage’s good service and that of many other Indians who have helped us, in treating with these people in years to come.”
Clark looked at my uncle for a long moment, then at Sage, then at the Indians already rounding up horses from which the captains would select their mounts. Finally he nodded and said soberly, “I do, too, Private Kinneson. I do, too.”
CROSSING THE BITTERROOTS
54
“WELL, TI,” said my uncle through chattering teeth, “Old Toby has seen fit to conduct us a-sightseeing.”
“That is a very kind way to put it, uncle. An extremely generous construction.”
In fact, our elderly Shoshone guide, whom the men called Toby, had blundered off the trail and led us into the worst sink of jack-straw deadfalls, chasms, precipices, and blind canyons that ever existed. Thanks to the good offices of this fellow—who continued to assure us with the greatest confidence that it would be very strange indeed if he were lost, having been over the same route fifty years ago as a boy—we now found ourselves beside an utterly unnavigable torrent of whitewater at the bottom of a terrible pitch. To enliven this detour we had thick snow, driving rain, and pelting hail. Nevertheless, my uncle immediately strung up his fly-rod and stood in the blizzard for the better part of an hour casting for salmon, though by then the snow was flying so fast that his fly and line were indistinguishable, and I doubted that there were any salmon in the river at that time of year anyway. Except for a few grouse, we had seen no game of any kind for a week.
For supper that night we regaled ourselves with candles and boiled moccasins. Afterward we huddled around the campfire, more tired, cold, wet, and hungry than at any other time on our trip. Sage had saved a little of the elk pemmican she had made back at the Shoshone camp, which she now gave to Sacagawea and Pomp. I told her I was very touched that she would give away the last of her food. She replied that so long as she had a single morsel, she would never let a dear sister and her child go without. Then she told me the tale of Pla
ying Dead Beside the Buffalo, a selfish young Piegan who had pretended to be dead to avoid having to share a buffalo he had killed.
Noting how keenly the men of the expedition were listening to this story, my uncle dragged several large drift-logs onto the fire and, standing so close to the flames that we could see their dancing reflections on his chain mail, he called out in his booming theatrical voice, “Expeditionaries! When Hannibal crossed the snowy Alps with his army, and they were near starvation, he designated the worst nights of the crossing as ‘Truth Nights,’ on which his soldiers could ask him any question and receive a full and candid answer. This he did as a means of holding his men’s interest in life and providing incentive—for there is no greater incentive than curiosity—to survive their journey. I have calculated with my astrolabe that it will take us three more days to get through these horrid Bitterroots. Therefore I will designate each of the next three nights, starting tonight, as Truth Night. In the tradition of Hannibal Africanus, I invite you to put the first question to me. Any question at all, gentlemen. I promise to answer it truthfully.”
The men edged closer to the fire. After a short pause Captain Lewis said, “I have noticed, sir, that you husband your hemp tobacco very carefully. Half a pipeful is all you take of an evening.”
“Moderation in all things save love and chivalry,” my uncle replied.
“I have also remarked that your excellent nephew does not seem to smoke hemp at all,” Lewis continued. “No doubt you deem him too young to use it?”
The True Account Page 21