Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “I was just thinking that in case there is no water passage through the mountains, or if we have to portage for any distance, it would be much easier to have horses to carry our supplies. And I’m in favor of riding whenever I can, instead of walking.”

  “All right, that does make sense, but I thought you were going to get sentimental and go on about how a pretty squaw would be something enjoyable for the men to have around on the rest of the journey. Or how she’d give you all her family secrets about how her ‘Aunt Pokeberry’ or ‘Granny Gingerseed’ made tea and tonic with mustard flowers or lupins and buttercups. Instead, you’re mercenary. You want to trade friendship for horses. You want a reward for friendship.”

  “Hire horses, yes. I told you I was thinking in a straight line. I’m serious. And there will be wild plants—ferns, and mushrooms, roots, bark, and leaves—that have medicinal uses. A squaw does know about these things, and that could be helpful to us. Just suppose you and the medicine boxes go overboard because a pirogue overturns? We’d be in a hell of a fix without those drugs and medical supplies that Doc Saugrain and Ben Rush packed for us in Saint Louis.”

  “What about me? Clark, I swear you’re impossible this morning.”

  Both men laughed and walked together outside to look at the thermometer on the side of their quarters. The morning was clear and the sun shone bright; the snow crunched underfoot. The thermometer stood at twenty degrees below zero.

  Lewis jogged around to keep warm. “Clark, are you wearing my extra woolen socks? They’re not in my foot locker where I laid them last.” Lewis led the way back inside their quarters. Their breath made vapor puffs in the cold air.

  Clark sat on a packing crate and pulled at his pipe; the tobacco was cold. “Look, at the very least it is up to me to decide whether we want that old rascal Jussome or the Squawman, Charbonneau, with us as interpreter. I’ve thought some, and I say Charbonneau. He’s not as bright as Jussome, but he’s not as scheming, either, and I like the looks of his young wife.”

  Lewis looked out of the corner of one eye at Clark. “You’re not—surely not! You’re not really thinking of taking that Frenchman’s woman! Who ever heard of any military expedition going into unknown land, into a foreign country, up an uncharted river, guided by a female—a pregnant squaw! Lord, that’s ridiculous. We’d never be able to hold up our heads in front of President Jefferson!”

  Clark filled his pipe with fresh tobacco and lit it with a stick from the fireplace in the room. “We’ll do this with our eyes open. Nothing to be ashamed of. By spring the child will be here. You can record in your journals the plants she gathers and what she uses them for—mullein for cough syrup; crabapple bark for asthma and sneezing. She’ll be helping in a scientific way.”

  Lewis bent down to look at the woolen socks Clark was wearing. ‘Those are mine. And those remedies aren’t new. Your grandmother knew all that. So did mine, and I’ve had my fill of each. We can find out from the various tribes we meet what they do with this grass or that twig, and I’ll write the information down for the President. I’ve already got enough information on the Mandans and Minnetarees for a book.”

  “Lewis, I’ll give you back your socks if you’ll hear me out. That young squaw of Charbonneau’s is brighter than the usual. Look at the way she helped us today. What would you do if your dog, Scannon, had a snakebite? I’ll bet you she’d know how to save him. You wouldn’t want Scannon to die, would you?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t. I’d be willing to let her advise me on what to do. But what do you think Jefferson would say to such a plan?”

  Pulling off his moccasins, Clark took the outer pair of gray woolen socks from his feet and threw them at Lewis. “It’s a wonder I haven’t been frostbitten. Wish my moccasins were fur-lined. I bet those mountain folks, the Shoshonis, know how to keep the cold out. They haven’t seen many white men. Even the British are afraid of a Shoshoni brave, and those savages don’t even have guns. Our men would be at their mercy in the mountains. They are masters with a bow and arrow. An arrow could whang itself into your chest before you even knew they were around. You know that Charbonneau’s young squaw is a Shoshoni, don’t you?”

  “Oh, Lordy, how could I forget when you keep mentioning it?”

  “You saw how her eyes lit up when she spoke of her mountain home. She could help us restore our supplies, and if her people do have horses, we could make a deal.”

  “The baby—what do we do with a baby on this expedition?”

  Clark looked at Lewis in astonishment. “You’ve got to put your moccasins on right and think Indian. A papoose is no trouble. The squaw stuffs him in the cradleboard and shifts it to her back. Indian women are strong creatures, and they can fend for themselves. They are never ill, and they don’t complain. They are cheerful about taking orders and never talk back. You know how they behave.”

  “Lord, you’re actually serious about this.”

  Clark paused to relight his pipe. “Out here, among a different kind of people and a different way of living, values are not the same. Look — in an office in Washington or Saint Louis, this would be funny. I’d be the first to admit it, the first to laugh. But right now, here, it is the most logical thing in the world.”

  “You want us—me—to hire a pregnant squaw to be counted in our expedition?”

  Clark thought a moment. “I could give you half a dozen situations where a military operation has not always gone by the book. You know as well as I that sometimes it is impossible.”

  “Maybe we could take Charbonneau’s older woman.”

  “That’s the way! At least now you’re thinking, Lewis! But we want someone with spirit, not just a follower. Someone to follow orders cheerfully, but to be a bit creative and more than just a slave; someone useful as well as helpful. That other one won’t do, but Sacajawea has spunk. She is not afraid to speak out. Her people would be friends, and we could trade for supplies. She could speak to them for us. We might even leave her with her people until we return from the Pacific. Then we wouldn’t have a woman and child along for the whole expedition.”

  Lewis looked at Clark in consternation, as if he wanted to argue but didn’t dare. Clark’s words had hit home. He thought, Maybe this young woman has some knowledge of the northern territory that would lead to the Saskatchewan territory from her homeland in the mountains. Jefferson had privately directed Lewis to solve this problem. Then he thought of trade with the Shoshonis in the mountains. A trading post in the heart of the Rockies was not a bad idea—or, better yet, a post in the Saskatchewan territory.

  “This young woman will be a token of friendship. The tribes will not mistake our motives and always know we come in peace,” continued Clark.

  “If we could develop trading posts, maybe at first east of the Continental Divide, in American Louisiana, perhaps her people would come down to them. Later we could set one up in the mountains for them, and then still later, when the system has grown in strength, posts could be established west of the Divide, in the home country of other tribes that would be our customers.”

  Clark rose to his feet and stretched his big frame. “Lewis,” he said, “you’re a realist, and you know that that country isn’t American yet—you old son of a gun.”

  “And you’re a sentimentalist! A broad-shouldered, red-haired, emotional sentimentalist.”

  “And we both have to be smart, like the Indians. They have a way of thinking that pushes all trifles aside. From them comes a wisdom that we often overlook. So, that’s settled—we’ll take Toussaint Charbonneau as our interpreter and his young squaw to interpret in the homeland of her own people, the Shoshonis. Her papoose could be our talisman.”

  “A baby for a good-luck charm? I see I was only half-right—you are sentimental, but you are also superstitious,” said Lewis with a twinkle in his eyes. “All right,” he said then, giving in, “I’ll talk to Charbonneau.”

  Charbonneau entered the tepee, tossed his cap on the floor, and assumed a swaggering a
ir. “I am going with the Americans in the spring. We plan the trip together. I am their chief interpreter.” He was pleased with the sound of these words.

  The three women looked at him, their work interrupted.

  “I will miss you,” sighed Corn Woman barely audibly.

  Sacajawea looked at her bulging belly and thought, So, this is the way it will be. I will have a papoose but no man. There was nothing else to think about.

  Otter Woman sprang to her feet, letting the nursing Little Tess slide to the floor. “You go to the land of the Shoshonis? Maybe I go, too?”

  “Les capitaines disent non. I tell them I take you — you are the best squaw, I say—but it is they who say non.” It was this part of the arrangement with Lewis and Clark that he did not like. It hurt him to think of leaving Otter Woman behind. “I must take the other one,” he said.

  “So, then they want me to keep you fed and comfortable?” said Corn Woman, all smiles now.

  “Non, not you, and not anyone but Sacajawea. They make it clear.”

  “So, you take the one big as a cow buffalo?” snapped Otter Woman. “The white men would not want her!”

  Sacajawea looked up. She felt her child give a push inside her. It was a good sign. He was eager to begin his new life.

  Otter Woman directed a couple of spitting shots at Sacajawea, but when she and Charbonneau seemed to ignore her, she spit again.

  He leaped to his feet. “Diable! Why do that? I am not to blame, it is les capitaines.”

  “But they called for me to interpret for them,” shouted Otter Woman.

  “And now they call for me and Sacajawea to come live in a wood hut,” Charbonneau said.

  Otter Woman’s jealous rage mounted. She upset the stew kettle and tore Sacajawea’s bed, tossing the soft cornhusks here and there, like a gopher pushing the dirt high in the air so he can get into his burrow.

  That evening, Sacajawea left the leather tepee and returned to the old earthen lodge. She built herself a fire to keep off the chill and lay near it on a buffalo robe. She wanted to think, to plan and dream. She knew she had won the contest, but she did not think about the cost. She owed thanks to the Great Spirit, yet she kept seeing the face with the summer-sky eyes and red hair. She was going back to the People, back to the Shining Mountains. She was dizzy with her championship.

  February was a cold month. Men went hunting and came in with frozen fingers and toes. The northwest wind howled around the fort and kept the men busy chopping wood for the fireplaces.

  Sacajawea stayed close to the fireplace in the room given to her and her man for sleeping quarters. She softened thin deerskin for a warm, soft robe for her coming papoose. York brought her stewed fruits and tea with plenty of sugar cubes. Women were never treated thus by the Indians. At first she was shy, but soon she began to like the attention.

  Then one morning, she sat up, sobered. There was something oddly out of key. Instead of being famished, she felt dull and depressed. Her back ached, and she bent in the middle with a cramp. She looked for Charbonneau, then for Clark, but both men had gone on a hunting trip with Sergeant Gass and another man.

  Patrick Gass was an old Army Regular who had fought Indians, had known Daniel Boone, and had become acquainted with the Clark family as early as 1793. He was a little man, standing only five feet seven, but broad-chested and sturdy. He was a good soldier and an experienced carpenter and had built the ladder to the loft with extra-wide rungs so that Sacajawea could go up to her sleeping couch more easily. However, he was quite resentful toward the captains for taking a woman on a trip with military men. But his sense of fairness won out when he saw the thick mat of dried grasses and hay under Charbonneau’s sleeping robe and nothing under Sacajawea’s. With a burst of spunk he pulled out much of the soft matting and arranged it under Sacajawea’s sleeping robe.

  Sacajawea tried to lift the kettle from the fire, but had to set it back and bend over to ease the pain. York came in with an armload of wood for the fireplace.

  “Oho, missy, I’m going to get Captain Lewis if it’s the last act—if your time has come.” The huge dark fellow helped her climb to the loft and to her buffalo robe. He spoke softly to her, saying that he would return right away. She answered with a spasm that spread to her face, and her body writhed under the robe. When the spasm passed, her small brown face seemed loose and tired. Sacajawea opened her eyes, and in that instant, in that second of knowing, Ben York saw not a little Indian squaw; he saw his mother and his sister, he saw Mrs. Clark, mother of the captain, the mothers of all the men on the expedition. He saw womankind. Then he saw himself and knew her look was the humble, hurtful, anxious look that was hope and bone-deep in all of mankind.

  York climbed down, meeting Lewis coming in. York pulled the big kettle off the wall hook, filled it with snow, and hung it over the fire. “Always heat the water to boiling.” He smiled at Lewis. “I’se seen birth an’ dying long before either was a shock, so I reckon I’m going to help with this here birthing. Biemby I ‘spect I’ll have to sing lullabies.”

  They sat near the door wondering if they should get some Indian woman to help, but Lewis reasoned that Indian women can take care of these things by themselves. They heard Sacajawea calling, her voice low and indistinct at first, then rising in shrill terror. She was afraid to be alone. Her own body frightened her. It had turned and set itself against her. It gripped her with such a building up of one agony on top of another that she was afraid to trust herself with it alone, as if its system of torturing her was something secretive and intimate that the presence of somebody else could hold back.

  York suggested they make a couch by the fireplace and bring her down from the loft. “Too hard going up and down that ladder,” he said.

  York dipped cloths in boiling water and laid them on Sacajawea’s distended abdomen. Once, for a breath, he dared look into her eyes again, and again he knew that she was kin to him and to all other men—red, black, or white, it did not matter. Their entrance into this world was the same.

  The pain did not seem to increase much, but the sudden blasts of it stiffened her body for two or three minutes at a time, leaving her weak. The sun moved up and down the roofs on the fort. Toward evening, she felt the sharp spasms closer together, one almost on top of the other. The constant pushing—the pushing she could not stop—was doing no good; the papoose did not come. York wiped her face with a cool cloth, then her hands and arms. Lewis smoked his pipe wishing that Clark were here—maybe he could think of something to do to help.

  Suddenly there was a yipping and a loud “Whoa there,” and Jussome came bursting into the cabin, letting in the frosty air. His sled dogs yipped and growled, then quieted.

  “Dieu, I looked everywhere for you,” he said to Lewis. “I wanted to ask if we could keep that grinding machine here after you leave in the spring. We could get a lot of cornmeal from it.”

  “Ssshhh! Cain’t you see this little squaw is having a monstrous time?” hushed York. “Don’t you know some native potion hereabouts that hastens this here business?” he asked anxiously.

  “Monsieur York, you have asked the right man. Snake rattles. Make a powder of them, and le bébé, he will come within un moment. Make a tea from rattles. Have her drink it. The Assiniboins and Arikaras use it.”

  “Rattles! That sounds like voodoo,” said York sarcastically.

  “Try it,” urged Jussome, taking off his blanket coat and stomping his boots on the hearth.

  Lewis remembered some huge rattles he had collected a little way out of Saint Charles. He went to his cabin to look among the bottles and jars and boxes. He found them wrapped in some writing paper.

  Jussome took two rings, put them in a tin cup, and with his fingers broke them into little pieces. He put hot water into the cup and stirred. York held Sacajawea’s head up so that she could drink the concoction. Jussome explained to her what it was supposed to do. Sacajawea’s hands grabbed for York. Lewis looked out the door at the sinking sun and wondered ho
w long this could go on.1

  Sacajawea knew that this was the time she must make the push count. She was beyond calling out or speaking. Her thoughts were her own, but she was one of a million women before her, and a sister to every woman who had been along this path. Her feelings were as primitive and as civilized as any woman’s. There was no distinction between primitive and civilized in the event of birth. This was an involuntary thing. It possessed her. She was not in control. She felt herself sinking into a black void; then, from far off, she heard York’s excited voice.

  “I can see! It is a boy! His face is as round as his belly. He is just as lively as a cricket in the embers.”

  When she opened her eyes, Lewis was holding the baby awkwardly as York washed him in warm water. The baby was yowling like a little coyote. York wrapped him in the soft skin robe she’d made. His eyes closed, and his fist came up beside his mouth.

  “Black hair—no red,” she sighed.

  “What?” asked York. But she was asleep, secure and safe, hardly stirring with the afterbirth. She dreamed of her child bronze and shining with golden-red hair, playing happily at the foot of snow-topped mountains. She dreamed of the many trails that had brought her here to the white men’s village.

  In the morning Charbonneau came in with the other hunters, to learn the news of his new papoose. The men were tired from tramping through knee-deep snow and carried in two antelope and one buffalo.

  Looking deep among the robes around Sacajawea, he found his son and put a big hand near the baby’s face. “Oooom, she is nice. I call her Jeannette.”

  York laughed, showing white teeth. “When she asks you why and craves to raise Cain ‘cause of her name, don’t come crying to me. This here ain’t no little gal.”

  “She is a boy?” asked Charbonneau, his face falling. “I already have a boy.”

  “Give him a good name,” suggested Lewis. “One he can handle when he’s a man. One that spells easily, like—Jean.”