Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “Palefaces, our Great Spirit will watch over you. We trust you. Our hearts are bigger because we have seen you. We wait for you to return in peace.”

  Black Moccasin’s veined hand clasped the peace medal he wore proudly around his neck.

  The hushed silence was shattered with the crowd’s roar. Never again would Black Moccasin appear at such a large public gathering. Everyone seemed to sense this and already to feel the loss. The crowd surged as one person around the old chief.

  The Coyote moved through the crowd to stand before Captain Lewis. He was wrapped in a United States flag, with fifteen stripes and fifteen stars. He stood out in bright red, white, and blue contrast to the dull fur robes of the others. He made his hand signs high so that everyone might see them. “I will always be a loyal friend to the Americans.”

  Suddenly the crowd seemed to stop and stumble uncertainly. Chief Kakoakis in his war paint and regalia dashed through the people to the shoreline on a raven black horse. He surveyed the pirogues with his protruding one eye as they pushed off from the shore. He noted the mounted swivel gun on the prow of one of the pirogues, and his cruel, dissipated face broke into a ghastly grin.

  Sacajawea, sitting in the white pirogue, with Captain Clark, Drouillard, Cruzatte, and Charbonneau, trembled at the sight of Kakoakis and the abrupt change in mood he brought to the people. They shuffled after him to the center of the nearest village. The Coyote and Little Raven stood off by themselves. Black Moccasin moved his arm slowly, and a few of the people obeyed and shuffled off toward their own lodges. Then some came close to the shore to shout their farewells. Sacajawea noticed that soon there were not too many left to follow Kakoakis like sheep and stand around in a circle waiting for him to speak. She imagined she could hear him say, “They will not get far. The Sioux or Blackfeet will massacre the whole bunch.”

  And she imagined he spat upon the ground as his handful of followers shouted, “Ai!”

  The six canoes and two pirogues poled up the river that late afternoon as far as the Mandan village of Matootonha, where the Coyote lived. They camped for the night on the south side of the river. Both captains, Drouillard, Charbonneau, Sacajawea, and Pomp slept in the skin tent Charbonneau had brought along.

  Sacajawea breathed deeply of the cool spring air, and exhaled just as fully as though to get rid of the foul, smoked-filled air of the Minnetaree villages. Where would she go now? She found her mind full of thoughts. She knew well where she had been. She thought about the first time she had learned that Otter Woman was also a Shoshoni. Her thoughts took her back over the years, highlighting the events that had led to her being taken to the lodge of Toussaint Charbonneau as his woman.

  CHAPTER

  14

  A Sudden Squall

  Lewis’s Journal:

  Tuesday May 14th 1805.

  … I cannot recollect but with the utmost trepidation and horror; this is the upsetting and narrow escape of the white perogue. It happened unfortunately for us this evening that Charbono was at the helm of this Perogue, in stead of Drewyer,1 who had previously steered her; Charbono cannot swim and is perhaps the most timid waterman in the world… the Perogue was under sail when a sudon squawl of wind struck her obliquely, and turned her considerably, the steersman allarmed, in stead of puting, her before the wind, lufted her up into it, the wind was so violent that it drew the brace of the squarsail out of the hand of the man who was attending it, and instantly upset the perogue and would have turned her completely tosaturva, had it not have been from the resistance mad by the oarning [awning] against the water.

  Thursday May 16th

  … the ballance of our losses consisted of some gardin seeds, a small quantity of gunpowder, and a few culinary articles which fell overboard and sunk, the Indian woman to whom I ascribe equal fortitude and resolution, with any person onboard at the time of the accedent, caught and preserved most of the light articles which were washed overboard.

  BERNARD DEVOTO, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, pp. 109, 111.

  Charbonneau shivered, pushed the perspiration off his forehead with his red neckerchief, then wound it just above his eyebrows so that it would sop the wetness and keep it from stinging his eyes. Poling his canoe was work. Friendly shouts rang out from canoe to canoe as the expedition searched for a suitable camping site.

  The spring days were chilly with squalls. The air was sharp, and the water froze on the oars in the early morning. Now and then a flurry of snow came to whiten the April green. When the wind was kind, the sails were spread and tired arms rested. Cruzatte and Drouillard, and sometimes Lewis, took turns steering the pirogues. The captain’s old tricorn, jogging on his head, looked like a live, stubby-winged bird on a small perch, which was looking into the water; it took little swoops, as a bird would.

  The expedition passed a high bluff that seemed to be on fire, throwing out great puffs of smoke. The party choked and coughed on the sulfurous fumes.

  “Le sacré diable of the river!” called Charbonneau to the men on shore pulling the cordelles—the two ropes attached to the canoes—so that they moved off the sandbars and stayed out of the fast water with its hidden logs.

  Someone yelled back, “It’s a volcano!”

  “That is burning lignite,” corrected Captain Clark.

  Scannon rose from the bottom of the canoe and coughed. He looked as gigantic as a grizzly bear. Charbonneau moved a little out of the way of his tail, which was as big around as Charbonneau’s arm.

  Sacajawea called the dog to come sit beside her. As she did, Patrick Gass frowned. She wondered why Gass did not care for her. She had no way of knowing that he felt a woman had no business on a military expedition. She lay her hand on Scannon’s head as he wrapped himself around her feet in the bottom of the pirogue.

  By midafternoon the pirogues were beached in front of a meadow rounded into a hollow of a hill and rimmed about with black oaks.

  “I show you how to make Indian cakes in the ashes, eh?” Charbonneau suggested to Ben York as he brought out the brass kettles.

  “Ashes, eh? It grits my teeth just thinking about it. Why not on a hot stone?”

  “With good oak bark in the fire, the cake is clean.” Charbonneau had never thanked the captains for taking him back, and for him there was really no way—except that he could help York with the meals. He could make good corn cakes. He pulled one of the kettles aside, lifted the leather bag of cornmeal, and stood holding it, taken aback at his own brashness. He had no right to make free with York’s things. He began to apologize.

  “Go to it!” said York. “You’ve my leave, and more. If you can eat your cooking, I can.”

  While York got out the tin plates and spoons, Charbonneau took a swing through the woods and found a black oak with a hole in it. It was mostly dead where the hole was. Charbonneau stuck the handle of his ax underneath the bark and pried; the thick shags peeled off easily. He came back to the meadow with his shirt pulled up in front of him like an apron, full of bark, and made a small fire using one of Dr. Saugrain’s matches.

  York had given him a match and told him to break it over a bunch of dry buffalo grass. Charbonneau had never seen such an easy way to make a fire. Then York told Charbonneau exactly what Captain Clark had told him—that Dr. Antoine François Saugrain, a physician to the Spanish garrison at Saint Louis, had made them with phosphorous and sulfur tips. He had brought all the latest scientific lore from France. When all the world depended on flint and steel to make a fire, Paris and Dr. Saugrain made matches. They weren’t magic; they were only a chemical invention, but very handy.2

  The fire was going briskly when York came back with a kettle of clear water. The rest of the outfit was settling the gear for the night and turning the canoes over, backside up, on the beach.

  Charbonneau looked for a large piece of bark for a mixing board but could find none that suited him, so he pulled off his leather shirt and smoothed it on the ground. The back side looked clea
n enough. He poured the meal there from a tin cup in the bag. He found the small clay pot of drippings from the antelope ration they had had the night before, and he placed the pot near the fire until the drippings melted. He poured the grease into the meal, kneading as he poured, until the grainy stuff was wadded into a large, stiff ball. He dipped the pot into the water kettle. He could hear Captain Clark’s ax going whkk, whkk across the meadow, slashing saplings for the camp. When the ax strokes changed to a tssh, tssh sound, he knew that the captain had finished cutting and was trimming boughs off the young trees to make their beds more comfortable. He also knew that his woman was there helping the captain bring the boughs into camp.

  His knuckles worked the water into the big lump of meal until it felt about right. He portioned the lump into about three dozen pieces, setting them on a clean rise of green moss after he had patted each of them into a round cake the width of his hands and thicker than his thumb. The oak bark had burned down by then into a pile of gray ash with red underneath. He raked a hollow in the ashes with a stick and laid a dozen cakes wrapped in leaves into it, just so, with a deep layer of ash brushed over them. He built a wall of fresh bark all around them.

  “That sure do look like a little council house with a smoke vent all along the roof,” said York, smiling. The fire began to creep up through its walls.

  “By damn, it is too small,” said Charbonneau, putting on his shirt. The captain was coming out of the woods, his arms full of dry sticks. Sacajawea came trailing a few paces behind, her arms loaded high with the brush boughs.

  “We’ll be eating directly,” said York. It was getting dark fast in the glade. Charbonneau put another dozen cakes in the coals, carefully pushing aside the first batch.

  Then Charbonneau started gnawing at the hole in the oak trunk with an ax again. Long slabs came away—good dry stuff that had seasoned while the tree was dying. He’d come back and fell that tree after supper; it would keep them in wood all night. When he gathered up an armload of the splintery slabs and headed for the swale, he saw that Sacajawea was coming in again with more boughs to make the ground soft under the men’s blankets. “Hey, femme, don’t you forget my bed!” he yelled. He put the last batch of cakes in the red coals and piled more ash over them, then a layer of fresh bark, keeping the other cakes warm at the side.

  While he sat with his back against a tree, Clark munched his cake and looked over the large medicine box, taking a rough inventory. When Sacajawea was finished, she came to sit quietly and watch. Lewis brought his cake over and sat down counting out vials and boxes with Clark.

  “Say, Bill, look at this!” exclaimed Lewis, holding up a tiny vial. “I’d almost forgotten about these.” He took out five more small, thin glass bottles. “That royalist Saugrain gave them to me with explicit instructions on how to vaccinate. It’s something new from Paris, but I think Saugrain said it was first used last year—no, the year before, in London. Anyway, it is new, and according to the doc everybody is talking about it.”

  “I’ve not heard of it until now. What is it?” teased Clark.

  “It is something that might—will—change medicine.”

  “Aw, Lewis, Saugrain is enthusiastic about the simplest remedies. What is this? Some of his ‘electrified water’?”

  “Bill, it’s something we should have used before. Already it could have lost its virtue. It’s cowpox serum.”3

  “Cowpox? And who wants that?” But with intense interest Clark watched Lewis break the top of the fragile vial and motion to Sacajawea to hold out her leg. Just above the knee he made a tiny scratch with the broken glass. She pulled her leg back, making a face.

  “No, no—not yet,” said Lewis. Carefully he put a drop of the serum from the vial on the scratch and scratched over that again.

  Sacajawea frowned.

  “You’re hurting her, Lewis,” said Clark.

  “Good Lord, what’s a little hurt now if it keeps her face from getting deep scars. This will keep her from having smallpox.”

  Clark used hand signs to tell Sacajawea that the tiny scratch would keep her from having the dreaded smallpox and her face would always be smooth, not marked. Sacajawea put her hands on her face. It was impossible that a scratch could be so powerful as to stop such a killing sickness.

  “You should have used it on those Omahas who died like cattle in that plague of smallpox,” Clark continued.

  “I know I should have used this stuff before. Loses strength if it sits around. Hey, you want some? I ought to give it to the men just in case we run into an Indian camp that is infested.”

  “I’ll let you try it on me, but I’m not sure it works. Why don’t you use it on our boy Pomp?”

  “You hold Pomp firmly, and Lewis will make a scratch on him,” said Clark. Slowly Sacajawea nodded agreement, holding out the baby’s leg. Pomp’s eyes grew large and watery, but he did not whimper.

  “In a few days there will be a hard scab over the scratch,” explained Lewis. “Do not touch it. It will heal, and that will be a sign you will never have the pox.”

  For a long time Sacajawea stared at the scratch above her knee.

  Lewis took the handful of vials and went out after the men who had not had smallpox.

  “Hey,” called Clark after him, “hadn’t you better vaccinate yourself first?”

  “If there’s any left, I will!” yelled Lewis. “Lord, I’m glad I found this stuff before it spoiled.”

  The days became milder and the sun warmer. Hunters were sent ahead, who picked out campsites next to a spring or clump of trees. It never took long for the brass kettles to swing across gypsy poles, nor for Charbonneau to twist the dry buffalo grass into a round pile so that he could light it with a match.

  When the hunters dressed a buffalo they had killed one morning, Charbonneau, now acting as cook, called, “Keep all the guts! Two bobs and a flirt in the muddy Missouri and she is ready for stuffing and the fine meal.”

  Charbonneau held fast to one end of the six-foot-long piece of large gut with his right hand, while the thumb and forefinger of his left hand compressed to discharge, as he explained, “That which we’d choke on.” He stuffed the gut with fillets and kidney suet, salt, pepper, and flour, calling it “Bon pour manger.” Then he tied both ends of the gut, boiled it, and fried it to a golden brown in bear’s oil over a fire of buffalo chips.

  Sacajawea licked her fingers when she had finished her sausage, then wiped her fingers in her hair to make it shine from the bear’s oil.

  One evening Lewis set himself up as cook and made a suet dumpling for each man. But generally he was off in the hills with Clark, taking a look at the country, finding plant and mineral specimens, or recording temperatures and wind directions and measuring the terrain, noting the information later on his maps.

  Sacajawea often brought in cress and other greens for an evening salad. She studied the ground, searching for things that were edible. In sunny spots the white stars of the bunchberry were already opening, and bluebeard lily buds swelled at the tops of their tall stems. Wild strawberry blooms hid under sprouting ferns and grasses like bits of leftover snow. She saw brown toads blink in the damp shade and brightly spotted green frogs hop away from her. Once a tiny chipmunk fled with a squeak and watched her from the top of a stump that was garlanded with trailing strands of dark green, soon to be covered with paired, pale pink twinflower bells. She stopped at some driftwood and saw the holes that field mice had made. She poked into the holes and then dug deeply as she found the clean white artichoke roots the mice had stored. She made several piles of the wild roots, then ran to find Clark.

  “Eat.” She indicated they should be boiled and eaten.

  “It seems to me,” Clark said, “if they are good, we should have them for dinner.” He helped her take them back to the camp.

  York and Charbonneau served the boiled roots on the tin mess plates with roast venison.

  “Hey,” said Pat Gass, “these here wild potatoes ain’t bad.”

&n
bsp; “That’s a treat from Sacajawea, here,” said Clark.

  Gass glanced quickly in her direction and spat on the dirt.

  Drouillard laughed. “Once she gets to your belly, you’ll think the woman is wonderful.”

  Some of the men guffawed and slapped their knees.

  “Never!” snapped Gass. “It is not my idea of a military outfit to let a squaw gather its food.”

  Around the evening fire the captains brought out stub quill pens and inkhorns so that they and the others could record the day’s adventures. Ben York sang a spiritual, soft and low, and Scannon howled at the night sky.

  Sacajawea, who was never idle, bathed Pomp with warm water from the cooking fire, and filled his cradleboard with clean moss. Then she mended several of the men’s moccasins, fortifying the shoes with hard, dried buffalo skin so that the sharp stones and prickly pear thorns would not so easily penetrate them.

  Shannon sat shyly beside her. Using hand signs and the words of Minnetaree he had learned from Otter Woman, he told Sacajawea the words in York’s songs. Then he began to talk of Otter Woman. “She is quiet and not bossy like the white girls back home.” Sacajawea smiled, understanding that the boy felt a tenderness toward the sad-eyed Shoshoni girl. She put her hand over her mouth so that Shannon would not talk more, for Charbonneau had come to sit close by. His jealous nature would not permit another man to admire his women.

  “Hey, this soldier is still hungry!” yelled LePage, who was sitting beside the cradleboard, contentedly watching his namesake make sucking noises in his sleep.

  “He be mostly belly!” yelled Charbonneau back at him.

  Sacajawea reached for the baby to put him to her breast.

  The men gradually rolled up cocoonlike in their Mackinaw blankets, with their feet to the fires, while one man stood guard, listening to the melancholy wail of coyotes and humming insects. Sacajawea, with Pomp, the two captains, Drouillard, and Charbonneau, slept on the soft boughs in the skin tent. The wind rose off the prairie grass and roared among the cottonwoods.