Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “So, you are still speaking out,” Sun Woman said softly, when the speeches continued.

  Sacajawea dared raise her eyes somewhat. None of the chiefs was looking at her. “Ai,” she sighed. “My heart lies on the ground. My tongue burns.”

  Another squaw standing beside Sun Woman whispered, “It is true, what you said. But none of us has the courage to speak as you did. I hope your family is not too hard on you. They may only cut the tip of your nose off.”

  “They would not,” said Sun Woman. “She is the squaw of a white man. But she must stay out of Ka-koakis’s sight.” She turned to shield Sacajawea from the eyes of the two Minnetaree subchiefs who had taken the time to deliberate and had deduced it was correct manners to follow their leader. They had dropped their medals and were pushing through the crowd, past the women, and returning to their village lodges. Sun Woman then pushed Sacajawea to the edge of the crowd. “I believe these white men want us to live in peace with all tribes as they say. They show it by marks on a shining stone.” Sun Woman’s hand opened a little so that Sacajawea could see the shine of the silver.

  “This is great medicine. You can see your own face in it,” said Sacajawea.

  “If it is learned that Kakoakis means to have you punished, I will send you this stone to keep you from harm. Then you must find a way to escape to the Shoshonis, your own people, that day,” said Sun Woman. Her eyes were wide and serious.

  “You are a friend. But it is foolish. I have thought of it many times. I could not find the People now. It is nearly winter, and I have been gone too long. To take that trail would pull my heart out and leave it on the ground to be picked at by the crows and hawks, and risk the papoose I carry. If Kakoakis comes for me and Charbonneau is not here, I must take the punishment I surely deserve.”

  “If your nose is cut off, I will not bar our lodge door to you. You will always be welcome to visit at the lodge of Four Bears.”

  Earth Woman began to cry. Sun Woman pulled the cradleboard from her back, untied the child, then began to nurse her. Sacajawea helped straighten the empty board and pulled the old buffalo robe around her friend and the papoose. Sun Woman was still young, but already her face had the lines that come from hard work in the hot sun and cold snow. Her clothing was plain, with very little beadwork, and her only jewelry was white shells hanging from her ears. Her tunic was bleached from the weather, and her knee-high moccasins were patched. When there are seven wives and many children, there are not so many things to go around, Sacajawea thought.

  When Earth Woman finished nursing, Sacajawea helped her friend arrange the child on her back. Then Sun Woman took the warm silver medal from Sacajawea and dropped it safely into the cradleboard.

  Reluctantly, Sacajawea found Otter Woman and Corn Woman and set her moccasins in the direction of their lodge. Her mind flew over the trails of memory to the time she was not called Sacajawea and not known as the youngest woman of the white Squawman who traded pelts to Indians and other white men from the north. Her name had been Boinaiv, Grass Child. She wondered why. She tried to recall. Her memory pushed back into the past. She smelled the pungent burning pine of the Shoshoni morning cooking fires. She promised herself to talk to Otter Woman in their Shoshoni tongue more often.

  Charbonneau had been gone for nearly half a moon, and so much had happened that Sacajawea no longer worried that he would not believe. The presence of the white men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition had become a reality of day-to-day life, for they would stay until the spring. The Mandans told the white chiefs that there was no longer fun in killing the Arikaras— they had killed so many—and agreed to make peace. The news that the white men would build a camp of wood and that fifty lodges of Assiniboins would winter in peace with the Minnetarees spread through the village like a prairie fire. They brought many parfleches of wild rice to exchange for dried pumpkin and squash. Crees and Ojibwas from the north began to appear about the villages. They had all heard of the white men and were curious.

  Winter was coming fast. The wind blew colder, and the snow became thicker. Sacajawea and Otter Woman put extra clay around the sides of their lodge to keep it warm during the time of the Snow Moon. Sacajawea listened to the honkings of Canada geese moving south. She rubbed her fingers over the blue stone dangling from the thong around her neck. She had thrown off her fear of punishment by Kakoakis and spent what free time she had watching the strange activities of the white men who were using the Indian’s land, his trees, his river, and his game. Mandan men came and squatted over their pipes along the new walls in the afternoon sunshine. Women with children on their backs came and worked rawhide or sinew or beading. Sometimes several men played a little game of chance, shaking a gourd bowl with marked stones or plum pits while they kept an eye on all that was going on. Sometimes Sacajawea watched, but never if they played a game of hands. When mess call came, the Indians expected to eat, too, for they were guests.

  One clear night, long, brilliant tongues of cold flame licked over the Indian villages and the white men’s camp. The northern lights had returned to stream and shimmer over the plains, and in the morning Charbonneau returned.

  “Sacré diable! Is it true the Americans are here? People get gifts? About these fellers—they build huts with cottonwood for winter?” Charbonneau came bursting into the lodge.

  “Ai,” said Sacajawea.

  Otter Woman and Corn Woman were busy at the cooking kettle. “She can tell you about it,” said Corn Woman. “She heard them talk with the chiefs.”

  Sacajawea scowled at Corn Woman and flushed, fearing she would tell how she had loosened her tongue at Chief Kakoakis.

  “Je ne sais pas!” Charbonneau said. “There’s talk; talk everywhere. Big boats there; I don’t happen to see. Jussome is not home. Can anyone tell me?”

  Speaking with hand signs and much Minnetaree, Sacajawea tried to explain. “The pale eyes are downriver by the village of Chief Black Cat making their own village from great logs. I have never seen anything like it. I heard they asked Jussome to tell them what the Minnetarees and Mandans say, so Jussome works for the pale eyes now.”

  Both Otter Woman and Corn Woman nodded in agreement. Sacajawea had told him the truth.

  “That sneaking cheat, that mean, dirty louse, that pissant! I stop to visit, and he goes off to the strangers to take work with them. Zut!”

  “It is also said that Jussome and his squaw and children will live the winter with the pale eyes in their camp,” said Sacajawea, hoping that by now the day of the council of the chiefs had been forgotten and Charbonneau would never learn how outspoken she had been. Maybe Corn Woman and Otter Woman would keep their mouths shut and not hint about her humiliation and the tongue she had wagged at Chief Kakoakis.

  “Our Chief Kakoakis does not trust the white men or Chief Red Hair,” said Otter Woman, shooting a sidelong glance at Sacajawea.

  “Rouge?”

  “Ai, it is true, hair as bright as red war paint. And the greatest wonder of all—they have a man who is black all over, with hair like burned prairie grass.” Otter Woman felt important with her information, and a certain loyalty made her give it all to her man.

  “Charred wood used as paint,” sniffed Corn Woman, who had seen the man but could not believe her eyes.

  “No, I heard that Four Bears rubbed his arm and face. The black did not come off, even when he licked it with his wet tongue,” announced Otter Woman, significantly licking the back of her hand.

  “Oui, the noire people, called Negro. I have seen them. They can do the work of three men. These fellers, they are like the giant. By dang, these fellers make a trading post here?”

  “I hear they come to make peace between enemy nations so that they can all live as one family under the hand of a white chief who lives far down the river in a place called Washington,” said Otter Woman.

  Sacajawea and Corn Woman had heard this also, and had laughed behind their hands. Imagine all the nations living under the leadership of one chief! Otter
Woman scowled at them.

  “One family?” Charbonneau threw back his shaggy black head and laughed so that his yellow teeth showed. “There is always somebody who wants to be the chief. No tribe lives peaceably forever. There is always chief somewhere who wants to get even with some enemy.” He kicked off his boots and held out his feet for Sacajawea to put on his moccasins. “They come to get ideas from Hudson’s Bay and the Northwesters and get the Indians’ help. They think what they hear is the thing. Zut! I got plenty know-how. I go visit those men in the morning. I will take four packhorses loaded with pelts and meat to trade. I will show Jussome! I can interpret for them, too. Now, feed Charbonneau! He is hungry.”

  Next morning, Corn Woman rose early to take extra hay out to the four packhorses. Otter Woman rolled the pelts and called Sacajawea to pack the meat to carry on the horses.

  “Can we all go?” asked Sacajawea, curious to see the inside of the pale eye’s camp.

  “Ai. Otter, carry these buffalo robes, then help Sacajawea with the meat. Her load is getting plenty large!” he added, extending his arms suggestively around his belly. “Corn, stay and take care of Charbonneau’s lodge and my son.” He bent in front of his boy. “Little Tess, shake hands with your papa.”

  The boy hung back against Corn Woman’s skirt. “Mother,” the child called, looking pleadingly at Corn Woman. He felt as secure with Corn Woman and Sacajawea as he did with Otter Woman, for Indian children were raised so that any of the women in the lodge where the child lived would act as the mother.

  “Mon dieu! L’enfant believes his own papa is actually the Bear of the Forest. I put a scare in him!” His head rolled back and he laughed. “He knows his papa is boss.” Charbonneau grabbed the little boy’s hand and shook it wildly. “That’s au revoir.”

  “Do I ride?” asked Sacajawea. “Horses walk faster than I with all this to carry.”

  “Bonne nuit!” said Charbonneau. “Squaws, they are lazy.” Finally he relented. Charbonneau, Sacajawea, and Otter Woman rode to where the big sandbar showed itself in the middle of the river. There they forded, letting the horses swim in the cold water until they could touch bottom again. Crossing the sandbar, they had only a few yards to ford and the water was not deep.

  The white men’s camp was being built in the form of a triangle. Stout log cabins formed two sides, opening inward. The base of the triangle was closed by a semicircular stockade of large pickets. The cabins were not finished. Everywhere men were working—sawing, hammering, fitting logs.

  Sacajawea deliberately slowed her walk after dismounting and tending the horses. She looked and listened. One man called Pat seemed to be the chief in charge of raising the strange wooden lodges. This was Patrick Gass, the head carpenter. Among the enlisted men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Gass was outstanding. He was a barrel-chested Irishman from Pennsylvania. Ruddy-faced like so many Irishmen, he hid the fact behind a bushy beard. As a civilian he had helped build a house for the father of the future President James Buchanan. Although uneducated, having had only nineteen days of formal schooling, he was nevertheless intelligent and an experienced Indian fighter. While stationed at Kaskaskia, Illinois, he had applied for Lewis’s expedition, but his commander—not wanting to lose his best carpenter—had refused. Gass had then gone directly to Lewis, who had persuaded Captain Russell Bissell to let him go west.

  There were other Indians standing off in little groups watching. They had never seen such industry before. Sacajawea tried not to miss a thing. Once in a while she would pull at Otter Woman to show her something, such as the men drying strips of meat and working pelts and skins into leather for clothing. “These men have no squaws?” asked Otter Woman.

  “White man, he can do anything,” boasted Charbonneau.

  “Squaws’ work?” questioned Otter Woman. “Men cannot be happy if they must stay in camp for cooking and sewing like soft women. Men should hunt and fish.”

  “Oui,” answered Charbonneau. “These men, they hunt and fish, too.”

  Sacajawea shook her head. It was hard to understand. Then she pulled on the arm of Otter Woman again, showing her a lodge that held large round pots with covers.

  “Those canisters of ammunition are for guns,” said Charbonneau. “She would be enough for two, three wars between us and the Sioux. Pow! Pow!”

  Sacajawea had never seen so many guns. Charbonneau’s gun was the only one she had really ever seen. The Agaidükas did not have guns. How powerful these white men must be, thought Sacajawea. The People would be better fed and more secure if they had all these guns.

  “Your people could shoot off the Blackfeet with those guns,” said Charbonneau, seeming to read Sacajawea’s thoughts.

  “Ai, hunt much better,” she answered, misunderstanding Charbonneau, for the point of fighting between Indians was usually not to kill opponents but only to embarrass them, to steal horses or dogs or women. It was only once in a while that raiding got out of hand and Indians killed each other.

  Otter Woman pointed to some large cooking kettles made of metal like the guns, not copper like those which the northern tribes had brought in. And they saw that the spoons were not made of horn or bone, but a shiny metal. The women’s eyes grew large in wonderment at all they saw.

  Charbonneau tugged at the women and urged them to follow him. Otter Woman was carrying two of the buffalo robes, and Sacajawea carried the other two. The meat packs had been left on the horses. Charbonneau stopped to ask a white man if he could speak to the patron, the chief, the headman.

  “You want Captain Lewis or Captain Clark?” asked the man working on a door to one of the cabins. He was George Shannon, a blue-eyed Pennsylvanian of only seventeen years, the youngest man in the party. He was a likable young Irishman, handsome, clean-shaven in a hirsute age, intelligent, and well educated for his youth. “I think both of them are in that tent over there.”

  “Oui, that’s him, Capitaine Clark. I come to work for him,” said Charbonneau.

  The women followed behind Charbonneau. He motioned for them to wait while he went inside. They squatted against the outer tent wall. Sacajawea moved her bundle of robes so that she could watch the men talking. Charbonneau soon motioned for them to bring in the robes. He nodded and smiled as they handed the captains the fine hides. The white men seemed pleased. The red-haired one, Captain Clark, tall, rawboned, and powerful, put one across his knees and felt the fine thick fur. Sacajawea said nothing as the keen eyes of both captains studied Charbonneau, Otter Woman, and then herself. Then the captains exchanged glances and Captain Lewis came around a table and shook hands with Charbonneau. This man was younger than the red-haired one, and he did not smile. There was rock in him. Sacajawea sensed at once the force he possessed. She would never want to make this sandy-haired, blue-eyed man angry. His face was oval, like the egg of an owl. Small of mouth and long and slender of nose, he was neither handsome nor attractive.

  “Capitaine, these robes were made by the hands of my two femmes. This is Otter Woman, and this is Sacajawea, Bird Woman. They wish for a small trinket in return. Not much, but something they can show off.”

  “York,” said Lewis, “will you find two looking glasses for these young ladies, please?”

  Ben York, whose mother, Rose, had worked for the Clark family as long as she could remember, had been Clark’s body servant since boyhood. He had been standing out of the line of Sacajawea’s vision, and now Sacajawea felt a strange excitement as she glimpsed the huge dark man for the first time close up.

  Otter Woman sat down on the floor at the sight of him. Captain Clark laughed, which effected an amazing transformation in his personality. Unlike Captain Lewis, in Clark it was the softer side of his nature that remained hidden. He motioned for Sacajawea to sit down on some packing crates.

  “Assieds-toi,” ordered Charbonneau.

  Neither woman had ever sat on anything but the ground or a log or a hide couch in a lodge. Gingerly, Sacajawea sat on the box. It was strange. She looked down—her f
eet just touched the ground.

  York handed something to Charbonneau, who grunted his thanks. “Here,” he said, giving a small square looking glass to each woman. “This is a mirror like the white women use in Capitaine Red Hair’s village, Saint Louis. Perhaps it is so. Who knows these things?”

  Sacajawea took the pewter looking glass, aware instantly that she saw her own image in it. She had never before held such a thing in her hand. It seemed alive. It danced in a light of its own, like a hard bit of smooth water hole.

  Sacajawea could not understand what the white chiefs were saying to her man. Then Charbonneau spoke in Minnetaree. ‘They want to ask you questions,” he said. “They will ask me, and I will ask you and then tell them what you say. Tell them about your people and where they live.”

  At first Sacajawea did not understand. “My people are the Minnetaree, and they live here in the village. I belong to the big Hidatsa village.”

  “Sacré coeur!” said Charbonneau. “They want to know about them Shoshoni. The Snakes.” He made a wiggling motion with his hands. “Tell them about your maman and papa, where they lived, what they did, how many horses they have in camp.” Turning to Captain Lewis, he explained, “They give me plenty trouble, them filles. It’s exasperate to me!”

  Again she looked at her man, puzzled. She could not talk about her mother and father; they were dead. Then she looked at Chief Red Hair. He was smoking, and, to her relief, he smiled. She looked at the other chief, and he was smiling, too. It was not that they were amused by Charbonneau’s exasperation; rather, they were completely warmed by Sacajawea’s round, childlike face, her huge, intelligent eyes, her graceful hands as she made signs while speaking, and the incongruity of her obvious pregnancy at the age of only twelve or thirteen.