Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  Captain Clark found her standing by a giant white pine, clinging to it for support.

  “Janey, you’ll catch cold out here,” he said. “We’ve all been looking for you. Pomp is beginning to think that York is his mother. Come—” He stopped, surprised at her sobbing. “What is it?”

  Sacajawea pushed herself back hard against the tree. She straightenec so she faced the rain, ashamed of her emotion.

  Captain Clark understood as soon as he looked at her loose, unshapely tunic, once held so snugly around her graceful form by the beaded belt. She is a girl, little more than fifteen or sixteen, with a yearning for feminine finery that all lovely women have. Regret struck Captain Clark. He had not dreamed that he would feel, standing with a Shoshoni girl at the edge of a camp where they were surrounded with a choking scramble of vegetation, as if he were in the middle of a city that boiled and roared with a different kind of life from this. This life fought and destroyed itself in a million different forms and paid no more attention to her than people in the heart of a busy city do to a shade tree or a vacant lot.

  “I’ll remember what you did this day,” he said, too shaken now to think of a better way to put it.

  Sacajawea tried to free herself from his arms.

  “Janey, are you sorry that you gave me your belt?”

  She looked into the gray mist.

  “I can see you are. I should not have taken it from you. I am a fool sometimes. What can I do to make it up? Can I give you something to take its place? What would you like from the supplies? Anything you choose.”

  “Nothing,” she said in English in a small voice.

  He pulled her head against his shoulder to console her. She shut her eyes against the rain, and he told her that she must not mind, that he would fix it so everything would be all right. He moved his head so that hislips were close to brushing hers, and he noticed that her skin was damp and a sprinkling of green-white moss from the tree bark stuck to it. The thick brush walled them off from everything except themselves—the earth under their feet, the gray sky overhead. He knew that a moment’s decision could mean something dangerous and dishonest, and that it would have to be paid for. It would be worse to stay and in an unguarded moment let her release all holds on herself, and let go his check on himself. Short-breathed, unable to speak, he released her, not daring to risk looking back.

  When she was breathing quietly again, she started back to camp. She slipped in beside Charbonneau, who was talking in a loud voice to a Chinook chief, Delashelwilt. Neither man paid any attention to her until Charbonneau stopped his bragging and hand signaling with the chief.

  “What is eating you? Jésus, a cheval sur une grenouille! I do not like bragging bourgeois Chinooks.”

  She did not answer.

  “I thought you liked excitement,” he said. “Listen to this. The chief says his own grandpère lived in the dirty hut he now lives in. He thinks that is class. Now you help me be the big man around this camp and we show him who’s got class.”

  “The men know you are not such a big man,” she said softly.

  Charbonneau hissed at her angrily, and turned toward the chief.

  “Chief, your woman is one smart squaw. Your daughters are smart also.”

  Sacajawea lifted her eyes, wondering when Charbonneau had seen the chief’s woman.

  “Jésus, if she brings pretty young squaws to our camp, she is smart. She will get white men’s goods.” His hands moved swiftly.

  What is he talking about, thought Sacajawea, as she watched Chief Delashelwilt jump up and hurry off with a limpy gait to his own village.

  “Bonheur, ami!” Charbonneau yelled. “I like them plenty young—no old trade goods for Charbonneau.” And he broke into loud laughter.

  “My man, what are you planning?” she asked.

  “Squaw, it is best you keep out of this. It is something only for the men. Chief Del’s woman will help me be the big man in this camp. So—now you do not be so inquisitive.”

  He left her sitting alone under the canopy of tattered old elk skins with her confusion of emotion and thoughts.

  Sacajawea did not like these Chinooks and wondered why they were so dirty and infested with fleas, lice, and filth. Worse than the Hidatsas, she thought. Anyone could see that once they had been a powerful people who had managed to maintain a distinct language, religion, culture, and set of taboos and traditions against the encroachment of surrounding tribes. But that had all gone to pieces. Was it the few years of casual trading with palefaces that had proved so destructive, or was it outright hostility from other tribes? That would take some thinking, she knew.

  These Chinooks were friendly, easy to get acquainted with when treated courteously. But what was Charbonneau so interested in peace, friendship, and understanding for? What had he been talking about? Why should the women of the chief interest him? She had seen these Chinook women stir their pots with their hair hanging loose in every direction and even falling into the stew. They cleaned the children’s bottoms with their fingers, then, without a wiping or a wash, dug out hunks of fish from the pot and popped them into their mouths.

  They had many white man’s goods: brass pots, bright red, blue, and green blankets, ribbons for their hair, brass bracelets. One squaw even had a pair of high-top black shoes, and she looked quite ridiculous with her pigeon-toed gait in those unwieldly hard-soled shoes. Her legs were tattooed with different figures, and on her left arm were some letters of the white man’s writing: “J. Bowman.”

  The following day, Sacajawea washed some of Pomp’s garments in a clear, fresh stream. She heard angry women’s voices. Then she heard the voice of her man shouting something to Captain Clark. Curiosity made her hurry back to camp to see what was happening.

  Standing very close to Charbonneau was an old woman whose nose was long and pointed. Her hair matted and stuck out in every direction, and her dress was red trader’s cloth wrapped loosely around her sagging form. She shook her fists in the face of Captain Clark. Sacajawea counted six young women with only woven rush skirts on, tossing coquettish challenges at the men who stood about.

  Clark raised both his hands.

  “Now just one moment! Charbonneau, both Captain Lewis and myself have told you before there will be none of this going on in our camp. You have seen the state of filthy unwash these people are in. You have this mother and her daughters packing out of here immediately. And see they stay in their own village. Our men have enough temptations without this!”

  “But, Capitaine,” pleaded Charbonneau. “These redskinned maids have pleasing features. They will comfort the men. Madame Del, here, will find you one that will make your blood fairly boil. Maybe she will make them wash up a little. Eh, what do you say?”

  “I say you’ll be horsewhipped by myself and then by Captain Lewis if these women are not removed from our camp within ten minutes. Only a very desperate man would look twice at these stinking squaws.”

  One of the young girls, who had many strands of colored beads and string drawn tightly around her legs, began to reach out toward Captain Clark. He pushed her aside in disgust and slapped at his itching wrist.1

  “The morals of these women may be nature’s way of evening things up,” said Clark to Charbonneau. “Any man who falls, I’m willing to bet, will pack away a tangible memento of the occasion, which might and might not get cured.”

  “You could go to their village as rabbits under the grass,” suggested Charbonneau to several men around him.

  Bob Frazier flapped his arms. “I’m turning into a bird. I’ll get there fast.”

  “We can put on buffalo skins,” said Hugh Hall, laughing, “and sneak over.”

  Captain Clark shook a finger at them. “You heard me.”

  “I wonder sometimes how you ever got out of your hole, Charb,” said Ordway.

  “He has big feet to dig with,” Gass said.

  Sacajawea felt humiliated by the action and words of her man. She thought, Why does he think only of thi
s one thing? He is lazy and unclean, and he thinks everyone is like him. If he worked harder, he would not have the time or the energy to behave this way. Why can’t he be more like Chief Red Hair?

  She tried to hide herself in extra work for her baby all day. She pretended to play cheerfully with him, letting him crawl and pull himself up to walk with the help of Captain Lewis’s supply chest. When he became tired and his fat legs wobbled, she laughed and picked him up.

  “Janey, I wondered where you were,” said Captain Clark, coming beside her, squatting on his heels so that he could watch the baby walk by holding on to anything he could reach.2

  “I think he’ll be walking home,” Captain Clark said, winking.

  “With such short legs?” said Sacajawea.

  Captain Clark began spreading some trinkets for Indian trading on the ground. There was a hide scraper, a couple of long-handled knives, an awl, a pewter cup and spoon, several colored handkerchiefs, Indian bracelets and necklaces, and tins of red beads. This would have been a tempting assortment to any squaw. He tossed aside his faded old blue coat in which he had wrapped these things.

  “Now, you choose whatever you wish, Janey,” he said. A smile of amusement played across his freckled face as he watched her hold the baby close to her breast so that he would not get into the gay array. Then she picked up some of the articles, feeling and testing them. It was a momentous decision. She wished to take something that would please Chief Red Hair, but on the other hand, she found nothing she really wanted. Nothing could replace the blue belt. Then suddenly she knew. To his surprise she pointed to his old blue coat. He’d worn it out on the long journey to the Pacific Coast.

  “That coat,” she said.

  “That old coat?”

  “Ai”

  “But it is worn out. I threw it away. Find something new.”

  “The coat was worn by you. It is like a part of Chief Red Hair,” she said shyly. “That is what I want.”

  Captain Clark looked at Sacajawea and felt humble in the presence of this girl who could not have shed her conscience so offhandedly. When anything bothered her, she showed it. A flood of compassion engulfed him.

  “If that is what you want—” His hands trembled as he picked up his blue coat. God, he thought, what have I done now? First I unwittingly took her beaded belt and traded it for a gift for young Judy Hancock, and now I have taken her heart and tossed it out along with my old coat.

  With a woman’s innate intuition, Sacajawea sensed his thoughts. She put her fingers over his mouth, so that his words turned into a kind of confused whaw-whaw-whawing. “You are a boy,” she said. “Nobody but a boy would be so hesitant about giving something so old and worn to a squaw.”

  She pressed the coat to her breast and quietly walked, with her back straight and her toes pointed forward, not inward, out of the circle of the camp.

  She walked slowly and deliberately, her head high, until she came to the sandy beach. She put Pomp down by the side of a sheltered embankment and gave him a pretty shell to play with. Waves were pounding and beating the shore with as cruel a force as that of her own emotions, and between this turbulent sea and her heart she felt a deep common bond. Her eyes searched the gray sea far out over the vast expanse of water where there was only infinite grayness and the soft falling mist. This was her future—infinite grayness with no definite pattern. She put one arm into the coat, then the other. She pressed the worn sleeve against her cheek, wetting it with her tears. There was a strange comfort in the familiar scent of the garment. She whispered into the wide folds of the coat, much too large for her small body, the familiar words he had taught her.

  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

  Almost involuntarily, her arms fell crossed against her breast in order that the sleeves might stay up past her hands—the Shoshoni sign for love.

  CHAPTER

  27

  Weasel Tails

  Clark’s Journal:

  Christmas Wednesday 25th December 1805

  at day light this morning we we[re] awoke by the discharge of the fire arm[s] of all our party and a Selute, Shouts and a Song which the whole party joined in under our windows, after which they retired to their rooms were cheerful all the morning, after brackfast we divided our Tobacco which amounted to twelve carrots one half of which we gave to the men of the party who used tobacco, and to those1 who doe not use it we make a present of a handkerchief, The Indians leave us in the evening all the party Snugly fixed in their huts. I reeved a pres[e]nt from Capt. L.of a fleece hosrie [hosiery] Shirt Draws and Socks, a pr. Mockersons of Whitehouse a Small Indian basket of Gutherich, two Dozen white weazils tails of the Indian woman, and some black root of the Indians before their departure.

  BERNARD DEVOTO, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, p. 294.

  “Umbea, umbea, um-be-a!” called the toddling papoose. His feet were bare, and his knees bruised and scratched. He wore only a small leather shirt with a single row of red and white beads across the front yoke.

  “Here I am,” called Sacajawea, brushing the sand from her brown-leather skirt and the large old blue coat. Her hair was neatly braided and wound about her head. She wore no ornament except the small, sky blue stone on the thin thong of her throat. To wear many ornaments was the prerogative of the male, she believed. Her baby laughed as she grasped him about the middle and swung him into her arms. Her son clung to her and snuggled himself into the folds of the coat. He put his arms deep into the wide pockets.

  She began to feel better, watching the carefree baby. He poked one wiggly brown foot into a pocket. His round face was solemn. She knew he was playing a game and enjoying himself immensely, yet he was not loud or riproarish. He played entirely for the fun of it, because he had nothing but the present moment to worry him. She spoke aloud to herself: “Like my son—I’ll take each sunrise as it comes.” In her resolve she must have squeezed her baby, for he gave a little yelp.

  She sat with Pomp in her lap on the damp sand and looked over the expedition’s camp. It was a good place even with the sand in the clothing, bedding, and food Pomp’s eyes were heavy with sleep. He stubbornly refused to lie on the big blue coat, denying that he was sleepy. Sacajawea coaxed him to curl up in her lap; one arm was still in a pocket.

  The day was still, and she felt drowsy. She though of the latest talk among the men. They wanted salt for their food. Chief Red Hair had spoken of it more than once. And they wanted a better campsite for the winte months. She knew the expedition was going to stay in this area through the winter because no one would survive the trip back upstream and over the mountains a this time of year. Anyway, the men were exhausted Sacajawea could see the fatigue in their eyes. Their clothing was in shreds and they all needed red meat in their diet.

  Shannon came out on the sand and sat beside her. He was quiet for a time; then he said, “I hope a trading ship or two come before spring. Maybe we wouldn’t have to go up the Columbia and over those blasted mountains if it did. We could all get on that ship and sail home.”

  Sacajawea looked at Shannon in disbelief.

  “Well, I heard the captains talking about it. You know Captain Lewis has a letter of credit from the American government, so there would be no trouble in dealing with traders who might come to our camp from some seagoing vessel. I think the captains hope the traders can supply them with trade goods, trinkets, for the different tribes on our return trip. You know there’s a shortage of colored beads, looking glasses, and combs. The captains just gave away too much. And to make it worse, these Chinooks ask for too many fish hooks and awls for their wormy salmon.”

  “Shannon,” she said seriously, “we will collect all the seashells to use for trading. The river tribes love them.” She picked up two small pink shells and handed them to Shannon.

  “That’s an idea!” He made a heap of them beyond the tide line. “Hey, I almost forgot, there’s some Chinooks in camp. Let’s see what they are talkin
g about.”

  Everyone seemed to be talking at once, using hand signs, to find where the best hunting was. “Deer,” one Chinookian answered, “is most plentiful farther up the river.” “Elk,” another Chinookian said, “are found on the south shore of the bay. Everyone knows elk are larger, give better meat, and are easier to kill.”

  After the evening meal there was a council. The men discussed the best site for the winter camp. Each member of the expedition was given a chance to talk if he wished. Ben York suggested laying in a large supply of elk hides so that he and Janey could sew moccasins, so there would be enough for the return trip. Shannon spoke up and said he would be willing to help Sacajawea make trousers if they could be stored in a dry place so that they would not have green mold when they were ready to be worn. “Damn damp climate,” the nineteen-year-old snorted.

  “Would you rather camp in them mountains?” hooted Pete Wiser.

  “If they are drier,” said Shannon.

  “We get to them mountains and there’s bound to be ten, fifteen feet of snow. I had enough of froze feet, myself,” said York.

  “A camp on the south shore would be best for making contact with a trading ship that might come by,” offered Sacajawea, surprising everyone. “And I’m in favor of a camp where plenty of quamash roots can be dug for bread and beer.”

  “Hooray!” shouted Pat Gass. He was on his feet hopping around in a show-offish manner, and the men laughed, waking Pomp.

  Pomp climbed off his mother’s lap and trotted after his father, then with a giggle seated himself in Captain Clark’s lap.

  Gass knocked a toe against a rock, hopped around, holding his toe with both hands and cutting loose with curse words. “Something in that damn rock got it in for me!” He eased his foot down. “Damned ambusher, that rock!”

  Captain Lewis raised his arms, announcing that there would be a vote on the place for the winter campsite. “For a yes, raise your right hand. Who would like to stay here?”