Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  Four Bears could not pull Redpipe’s mouth open; his jaws were snapped together like a sprung beaver’s trap. The men shrank back. Redpipe’s breathing became shallow. Four Bears called for help to carry Redpipe to his lodge.

  Jussome’s knife flashed in the firelight toward Four Bears’s chest. “He will not move away. Leave him here. We are still in the game,” said Jussome.

  Like the other Mandan men, Four Bears had come in good faith, unarmed. Now he could do nothing for Redpipe, but must sit quietly between Jussome and Charbonneau, two of the three armed men in the game.

  Sacajawea saw only one thing to do. She stood on her feet. She did not attempt to run away, but stood very still. Her head ached, and her hands were damp. She could feel a little river of sweat beginning to flow down the center of her back. She sucked in a deep breath of air to steady herself. To speak was an unheard-of thing, she knew that. Women never spoke up in front of a group of men. But if she did speak, if she were able to say anything, surely Charbonneau would see how completely undesirable she was. For a Shoshoni woman, or any woman of nearly thirteen summers, this was a brave and bold step. She would try this shameful thing. She would be scorned for a time, but in the lodge of Redpipe and Grasshopper there would be understanding and solace.

  Her first sound was barely audible, and her knees shook; then a shrill roar from deep within her chest came with such a shattering explosion that the men sat with their eyes popping out as she found her voice.

  “My father, Redpipe, is ill. Are you cowards? My father’s friend, Chief Four Bears, is held down. Are you no braver than weak squaws crawling in the sage, or dying coyotes with their heads in holes? It takes no bravery to give me to a man who is the winner in a game of hands. You are no more than rabbits, a nationof magpies with broken wings. If the fur-faced one wants a woman, why don’t you let him find one for himself— one who is willing to sleep with a furry buffalo.”

  There was some sniggering, and Charbonneau sat stock-still, his mouth open, listening to the Minnetaree words of this bold young girl. If someone had told him that an Indian female had that many words in her head, he would not have believed it.

  “Since a child, I was promised to a great Shoshoni warrior with no hair to speak of, except on his head, where the Great Spirit intended man’s hair should be. This great warrior gave many horses for me. The man who takes me as his woman should pay much to my Minnetaree family. I cook, sew, and clean, and keep a neat lodge. I do not speak out much.”

  Most of the men roared and guffawed and slapped each other on the back, as though she had told some great joke.

  “God almighty!” Charbonneau said in disbelief; he had lowered his knife.

  Kakoakis’s face was contorted with anger, but Sacajawea saw that she had aroused some of the men to her side; Four Bears and the Wolf Chief were now talking with three other men close to the place where Red-pipe rested in a pool of his own urine. His fine leggings were stained and the paint on his chest smeared. No one stopped Sacajawea as she moved toward Redpipe. His words were incoherent. He was speaking in the world of spirits. His breathing was stertorous. Someone had placed a heavy buffalo paunch filled with water nearby.

  “I will get him out of here,” Four Bears said. The men made a move to help.

  “No!” said the Wolf Chief. “This man who speaks with spirits could bring us a message—perhaps the spirits will tell what should be done with the overbold young squaw.”

  “It is settled!” Charbonneau said. “What should be done is to start the game.”

  “It is not settled,” Sacajawea said. “Perhaps the spirits will be angered by the thought of men arguing about a woman when the worthy Redpipe is left to lie on the ground!”

  Jussome snorted. “She is the right age for you, but her tongue is like a knife,” he said to Charbonneau.

  “She is full of fire. She is what I want. I am going to be the man to tame the Girl That Loved a Dog.”

  Jussome perked up. “Are you saying that she is the Dog Girl?”

  “Yes, that is her, right there. I saw her with the Hidatsas.”

  “When did you see her with the Hidatsas? Where?” Jussome asked.

  “I saw her in the spring gathering rotten buffalo. I saw her with the dog.”

  “You mean she is the Dog Girl?” the Wolf Chief exclaimed.

  “She is.”

  “Mon dieu!” Jussome swung himself around. “You hear, Kakoakis? If we had known, we could have taken her without any game of hands. That settles things.”

  “It settles nothing,” Four Bears said. “It does not change the facts.”

  “I will give you rings for your ears, and metal rings like those you find in the north!” Charbonneau said suddenly to Sacajawea. “And a long string of colored beads! The rings and beads will make you feel like a woman. I will teach you passion, and you shall learn desire.”

  Jussome laughed out loud.

  “A bargain?” Charbonneau asked eagerly.

  “No.” Four Bears’s monosyllable was abrupt and clear.

  Charbonneau started as if burned. His eyes flashed, and his mood became untamed and wild, like a caged mountain lion’s. The rum had destroyed his caution and inflamed him. His hand went for his knife. Just as suddenly, Four Bears’s hand slapped across Jussome’s back and slipped deftly downward to the knife in the leather sheath at Jussome’s side.

  He had the knife, but Jussome tripped him. Char-bonneau’s hunting knife hung above the nape of Four Bears’s neck like an ax.

  Sacajawea’s stomach churned. The frozen feeling that had come upon her broke suddenly, like spring water gushing through a covering of ice. She did not think.

  There was no time. It seemed the churning boil inside her lifted and moved her. She lifted the full, heavy water paunch from the ground and swung it backward, back behind her hipbone. A shudder that she could not stop went through her, but she heaved the paunch, harder than she’d heaved one at the dog long ago, and her aim was good. The shudder had not come in time to spoil it. All the water in the paunch struck Charbonneau in the face. His knife slashed down, but it missed Four Bears’s neck. It grazed him on the thick meat of his left shoulder, and Four Bears squirmed around and got hold of the knife with his left hand, driving the point upward into Charbonneau’s right shoulder. Charbonneau let go and put his fists up to his eyes to dig the water out.

  Four Bears took two steps backward, toward the circle drawn in the earth for the game of hands. He had both Jussome’s and Charbonneau’s knives. He leveled both, waist-high, the butts clamped against his body and his hands tucked around the hilts.

  The whole thing had not taken half a minute. The men still sitting in the rows had not moved. They had had no time to, and although they were close enough to see what had happened, they looked as if they were not sure they had seen it.

  Charbonneau sat on the ground. Blood seeped through the cut in his leather shirt. He felt it and winced at the blood on his fingers. He looked at Four Bears pointing the knives.

  “I do not want trouble,” he said. “I would not like it if someone got hurt.” He shook his head.

  “Jésus,” Jussome said. “Here you are bleeding and causing trouble and you say ? do not want trouble.’” He said it the same way Charbonneau had said it.

  Chief Black Cat laughed. Grins broke out on the clustered faces. It was good to have the tension gone.

  Kakoakis walked over to Charbonneau and ripped off his leather shirt in one fast, sweeping motion. He threw the shredded shirt to Sacajawea. “Tie the shoulder,” he said.

  But Sacajawea was past the point of caring. All caution was gone. She was being treated as if the matterhad been decided, as if she were, in fact, already the woman of Charbonneau.

  “No,” she said. “He is not my man. I will tend to my father, Redpipe.”

  “He is your man,” Kakoakis said in a rage. “I gave you to him. Forget the old man. His blood is cold.”

  “You cannot do that,” Four Bears said. �
��She is to be wagered in the hands game.”

  Then Kakoakis laughed, an evil laugh, and he said, “Good. The matter is settled. Let us play.”

  In all the sky there was nothing but coolness; the air was washed and fresh. The rays of the sun shot far out from under a cloud, the last vestige of the roaring thunderheads that had come with the end of the night, floating like a tuft of sage on the clearest of water. The mist lifted, revealing lone hackberry trees, cotton-woods, and above the river course, miles of flat prairie.

  “You will pull the moccasins from your man’s feet, Sacajawea,” said Charbonneau, taking her hand to pull her across a spring with a bottom of black muck.

  Sacajawea thought back to the time when she had taken off Redpipe’s moccasins and washed his old, wrinkled feet, rubbing them with sage and sweet-smelling grasses. She thought of Grasshopper and Fast Arrow and Rosebud. Her heart was in her moccasins. She thought that one of the most terrifying things about nature was its complete disinterest in a human’s fate. She wondered if Grasshopper would mourn for her, if Sweet Clover would miss her. And as she followed Charbonneau walking toward the sun, like a wing fluttering open, Sacajawea could no longer keep her anguish buried. A long cry broke from her throat, a long, shuddering, keening cry.

  Charbonneau turned his head to look at her, her cry penetrating some dim inner consciousness. Her head was thrown back; she was tearing her hair over her face, and her mouth was twisted. She drew in a sobbing breath and cried again, clawing at her face. It was a high, horrible animal sound, tremulous, concerted, thin as birchbark but piercing as a high-pitched bone whistle.

  Charbonneau flew into a rage at the woman. Hecuffed Sacajawea, sending her sprawling. “Son of a bitch, shut up! Shut up that crazy yowling! Shut it up, now. You hear?”

  Sacajawea rolled over and sat up, clutching at her heart; she scooted out of his reach, with no pause in her ululating howl. Charbonneau caught her and clapped a hand over her mouth, pinching her nostrils shut with the fingers of his other hand. She clawed and fought.

  “I’ll lodgepole you!” he warned. “That is no way to sound on your wedding day!”

  She did not understand all of his broken Minnetaree, but her crying had softened. She would bury her life as the daughter of Redpipe and Grasshopper in her own way, with her imaginings and memories.

  When white traders lived with Indians, they adopted many Indian ways. They stopped, for instance, having any set time for eating. Among the Indians, food was always cooking and ready to eat, and each person ate when he was hungry or when it suited him. There was no gathering together for meals, except when there were visitors to be honored. So, late that morning, as if they had expected a new woman, Corn Woman and Otter Woman had built up the fire in Charbonneau’s lodge and filled a bowl for him and one for Sacajawea. Then they waited to see what would happen. Corn Woman returned Charbonneau’s grunts with bawdy and ribald remarks. Otter Woman brought his bowl of stew.

  When he finished eating, Charbonneau made a flat, downward, cutting-off motion with his hand.

  “Today there is just me and the little Bird Woman,” Charbonneau said bluntly. “You are in the way. Go out! Go find some willow and weave a basket,” he said.

  Behind him, Sacajawea’s eyes were round and frightened. But she would not cry out before the others. She would accept this, absorb it, and sink quickly into her role. She would not disgrace Grasshopper by being a bad squaw. Charbonneau had won the game fairly, and he had paid trade goods to Redpipe’s lodge in addition.

  “Bring me water, Sacajawea.”

  She found the drinking water and brought some tohim in the tin mug. He made a motion, and she tugged at his moccasins until they fell to the floor. Then she rubbed his feet gently with warm water and crushed sage. The lodge was set straight. It was dry, warm, and good-smelling. There was plenty of wood and meat here.

  She sat for a long time watching Charbonneau blow smoke from his pipe. Then he came to her slowly, and pulled her tunic over her head. His eyes assayed her body, the white scars on her straight back, her small, brown breast points. He did not touch her, but dropped a robe around her shoulders.

  She drew the robe close around herself. She was tired. At times rage and despair swept over her. She knew she was beginning another life. She sat waiting, silent, an immobile figure inside the fur robe, watching the curling blue pipe smoke.

  When the pipe was dead, he carried her to his couch. She lay beside him, her hands touching the robe over them, trembling, withdrawing not so much from Charbonneau as from life itself pressing toward her.

  “You don’t really like me,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Ai, maybe,” Sacajawea answered, “maybe I do, some.”

  She could have moved closer to the wall, but she only glanced up at him with a scared smile. She was perhaps thirteen years old. Charbonneau was forty-three.

  He pressed her tightly against the couch. “Maybe I’ve liked you for a long time.”

  She struggled against him then, but his left arm was an iron cage, and his heart pounded against hers. He nuzzled his face into her neck. His right shoulder, which Four Bears had stabbed, was stiff and hurt him. He fingered her neck and shoulders, and soon, without understanding how, he found himself kissing her, blindly, smotheringly, like a man sinking underwater. He kissed her neck, her shoulders, her throat, her chin, her mouth, sucking at her lips. His hands did the duty imposed on them by a million years of human lovemaking. His hands moved to her just-obvious breast swellings, and then on down, stroking closely, past her thin, flat belly, her hips, and her thighs. His hard, work-firm palms were startled at the smoothness and softness of her legs, and paused awhile to speculate on the wonderof femininity. Then his hands moved up to her hips again, where one came to rest on the warmth between her legs and the other went up and around her back to her shoulders. He wet her small breasts with his tongue and fumbled stupidly with the knot in his belt as if it were some horrible mechanism too complex for his fingers to understand. When it was loose at last, and the eternal pain pushed toward refuge, she sighed and moved and put her hands hard on his breast.

  “Do not hurt me!” she cried.

  He answered, shivering, “Oui, un moment we become un deux-dos cheval.” Fiercely he pinned her arms beneath his and brutally buried his face in her breasts, writhing in helpless ecstasy. When release came at last, he pushed her aside and drew on his trousers, leaving off his shirt because his shoulder throbbed. He was hot, and there was perspiration on his narrow forehead.

  Book Two

  RETURN TO THE PEOPLE

  Washington

  June 19th 1803

  To William Clark:

  Herewith inclosed you will receive the papers belonging to your brother Genl. (George Rogers) Clark, which sometime since you requested me to procure and forward to you…

  From the long and uninterrupted friendship and confidence which has subsisted between us I feel no hesitation in making to you the following communication under the fulest impression that it will be held by you inviolably secret…

  During the last session of Congress a law was passed in conformity to a private message of the President of the United States, intitled “An Act making an appropriation for extending the external commerce of the United States.” The object of this Act as understood by its fram-ers was to give the sanction of the government to exploring the interior of the continent of North America, or that part of it bordering on the Missourie, and Columbia Rivers I am armed with the authority of the Government of the U. States for my protection, so far as its authority or influence extends; in addition to which, the further aid has been given me of liberal passports from the Ministers both of France and England I shall embark at Pittsburgh with a party of recruits eight or nine in number, intended only to manage the boat and are not calculated on as a permanent part of my detatchment; when descending the Ohio it shall be my duty by enquiry to find out and engage some good hunters, stout, healthy, unmarried men, accustomed to the wood
s, and capable of bearing bodily fatigue in a pretty considerable degree; should any young men answering this description be found in your neighborhood I would, thank you to give information of them on my arivall at the falls of the Ohio The present season being already so far advanced, I do not calculate on getting further than two or three hundred miles up the Missourie before the commencement of the ensuing winter You must know in the first place that very sanguine expectations are at this time formed by our Government that the whole of that immense country wartered by the Mississippi and it’s tributary streams, Missourie inclusive, will be the property of the U. States in less than 12 Months from this date; but here let me again impress you with the necessity of keeping this matter a perfect secret…

  Thus my friend you have so far as leasure will at this time permit me to give it you, a summary view of the plan, the means and the objects of this expedition, if therefore there is anything under those circumstances, in this enterprise, which would induce you to participate with me in it’s fatiegues, it’s dangers and it’s honors, believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself; I make this communication to you with the privity of the President, who expresses an anxious wish that you would consent to join me in this enterprise; he has authorized me to say that in the event of your accepting this proposition he will grant you a Captain’s commission which of course will intitle you to the pay and emoluments attached to that office and will equally with myself intitle you to such portion of land as was granted to [officers] of similar rank for their Revolutionary services; the commission with which he proposes to furnish you is not to be considered temporary but permanent if you wish it; your situation if joined with me in this mission will in all respects be precisely such as my own. Pray write to me on this subject as early as possible and direct to me at Pittsburgh…