Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  That night, Charbonneau neglected to hobble his horses and lost one because it wandered off.11

  On April 22, Charbonneau’s other horse became frightened with an elk-hide saddle and wool robe on his back and ran full-speed down a hill, leaving Charbonneau wheezing behind on the trail. Near an Indian village the horse threw off the saddle and blanket. An alert Indian hid the blanket in his hut.

  Lewis sent Charbonneau to overtake the horse and baggage. He gathered up the baggage and found the saddle in the village, but not the blanket.

  Sacajawea had seen the Indian skulk off with it, and she told Lewis she would find it. “The blanket keeps my child warm at night.”

  Lewis turned to Clark. ‘Those pirates better deliver that blanket or I’ll burn their damned, flea-infested huts. I’ve had enough thieving. I’ll not forgive them the time their cousins, several villages back, tried to keep old Scannon for their camp dog.”

  While they were swearing at the Indians, Sacajawea was getting the blanket. She told a squaw in the hut where she saw the man take it that her baby was blue with cold. She let the squaw hold Pomp while she searched for the blanket. She found it under a pile of rush mats, and the squaw seemed pleased and smiled. She let Sacajawea hold her papoose, who had a runny nose and sores on his face and shoulders. Sacajawea was happy to take back Pomp and the blanket.

  “My papoose is the most handsome,” she told Clark.

  On the twenty-fourth, Lewis decided that the canoes were of no more use as the river was getting narrowerand the large boulders and swift water much too frequent. Lewis asked some river Indians if they would exchange horses for the canoes. The Indians shook their heads no. Instead, they held out strands of colored beads, the same the expedition had traded for salmon the year before, and indicated they would trade beads for the canoes.

  “We want horses,” said Drouillard in Chinook.

  “I do not think they will trade their horses at all,” said Sacajawea quietly behind Drouillard. “Maybe so, then, you take their beads and give them the canoes. You can use the beads later in trading. Take the beads.”

  Drouillard turned and scowled at Sacajawea. Her fine tanned tunic was worn and grease-stained. She held her back straight and looked directly at him. In a moment he decided she was right. He reached for the beads. Sacajawea barely seemed to move, yet she was standing in front of him putting out her hand, indicating that two strands of beads were not enough for the two well-made canoes. An old squaw with an opaque film over one eye added several more strands to the pile in Drouillard’s hand. Sacajawea made a low grunt inside her throat and stepped closer to the canoes. A large buck pulled a strand of blue beads from his neck, and several other men followed his gesture. Sacajawea nodded, but her face remained impassive. There was a pile of beads at Drouillard’s feet now. She walked around it once, examining it slowly. The expedition men stood in quiet wonder. A squaw added some bright pink seashells on a long thong. Sacajawea looked up and smiled at the Indians. She placed her palms together and held her hands under her chin.

  She looks like a child praying, thought Clark, looking around at the incongruous situation.

  The Indians smiled in return and seemed highly pleased with the canoes. They were pushed into the water and floated downriver faster and faster.

  Drouillard was overwhelmed by the actions of Sacajawea. That evening around the fire he told Clark, “She does not speak to me often, but when she does, she is eloquent.”

  They stored the beads in a leather pouch and tied it to the pack on a pinto pony.

  CHAPTER

  30

  The Sick Papoose

  Clark’s Journal:

  Thursday 22nd May 1806

  Shabonos son a small child is dangerously ill. his jaw and throat is much swelled, we apply a poltice of onions, after giveing him some creem of tartar etc. this day proved to be fine and fair which afforded us an oppertunety of drying our baggage which had got a little wet.

  Tuesday 27th May 1806

  Shabono’s child is much better today; tho’ the swelling on the side of his neck I believe will termonate in an ugly imposthume, 1 a little below the ear.

  R. G. THWAITES, ed., The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-1806, Vol. 5. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904-5. Reprinted by Arno Press, N.Y., 1969, pp. 57-8, 72.

  The gear and baggage were now carried by horses. Bratton, still not able to walk well, and several others with bad stone bruises on their feet, rode the few horses the expedition had. The rest walked. The stones along the river’s edge were hard, and the sand between was soft. This caused aching feet and legs. Sacajawea took Pomp to the water for a bath one evening and found York bathing his aching feet.

  “My feet is plumb worn down to my legs,” he said. “Janey, we’se on our ways home. We’se homeward bound.”

  “Ai.” More and more she heard the word “home” in the men’s conversation. “Home.” They said the word tenderly, as though they had good memories to go back to. Sacajawea dried Pomp with soft doeskin and hugged him close in her arms. This was “home” to her—the best home she had known since she was a tiny girl. She slipped from her moccasins and eased her own bruised feet into the cool water.

  “This little fella will sure have a lot to tell his little friends.”

  “Will he remember?”

  “Naw, not rightly. But you and I will. Some men would give a whole lot to have been on this here trip. I wouldn’t mind staying with some of the natives we seen. For instance, those Nez Percés or even your Shoshonis and them Mandans.”

  Sacajawea smiled. “You would miss home.”

  “Home—that’s where the heart is. Say, this stream is mortal cold, ain’t it?”

  She saw that he had on only a torn leather shirt and short leggings.

  “I have a robe if you want it.”

  “Thank you just the same, Janey,” he said. He chuckled a little sadly. “It takes all my hands to cook supper, and I never did learn the knack of keeping a robe held on.”

  “You will learn if you become chief of some tribe,” she teased.

  “I never thought of that.” He chuckled to himself. “You’se got a way of teasing that makes it easy to take.”

  She left her moccasins and ran to the camp bouncing Pomp on her hip. She rummaged through her bundle of clothing, then sat Pomp on a leather robe and ran back to where York was pulling his feet from the water and letting them dry off on a rock.

  “Here.” She held a blue two-point blanket out to him. “I would rather have a lighter robe. This is too warm for me.”

  “I’m all used to the cold now, and you’ll catch your death not wearing something on your shoulders.” He was shivering and wanted the blanket. His blanket had long ago been traded for the favors of some pretty squaw to keep him warm one night.

  Sacajawea wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. He protested, but she talked cheerfully and he let her put it on him.

  “Sure’s a fine blanket,” he said happily. “I’ll learn to hold it on and cook at the same time. I’m getting warmed up a mite. You really think I could be a chief?”

  “Ai.”

  “I’ve argued that with myself, but it don’t help the feeling I owe Master Clark my services. If he set me free, then I’ll be an Indian chief. I’ll be like something you never knew.” He said it as if he were joking. “I’ll be a black man that’s looked up to and leads his people to prosperity.”

  “The Great Spirit will look at you pleased,” she said, wondering if he were still joking or a little serious.

  “God is in us, Janey,” he said seriously. “He works through us.”

  She’d miss Ben York when this trail came to an end. Sadly, she slipped on her moccasins.

  On April 27, the expedition met Yellept, chief of the Walla Wallas, waiting in the green hills, wrapped in the United States flag Lewis had given him.

  “Come to my village for food and horses,” he said, happy to see these white men once again.
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  The expedition was happy to see Yellept and his people at the mouth of the Walla Walla River. The squaws began to unpack the horses and sort out cookingpots. Sacajawea tried to catch up to them, but the streaming of squaws, dogs, and children forced her back. She stumbled up beside Clark, whose pack had been snatched off his back.

  “These people don’t know what stealing is,” Clark said encouragingly, waving his hairy arm. “Not like Chinooks. We’ll get everything back.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Sacajawea shouted back.

  Chief Yellept brought the first armful of wood for the cook fires as the women cut up mullets for the kettles. Several bucks brought in four dogs for the feast.

  Clark and Sacajawea gorged themselves on the mullets, then laughed at each other, remembering their vow not to eat any more stinking fish. But under no circumstances would either eat the dog meat.

  Sacajawea wondered why these Walla Wallas were willing to exhaust their own food supply, even their wood and clothing, in a day or two of feasting, never replenishing the stock until they were shivering and hungry again. Was it a sense of sport, a contest against fate and each other? Or was it simply laziness? She did not extend her thinking beyond the mountains to her people or any of the other tribes she’d been with. She’d just now noticed this fact of Indian living.

  In that village there was a captive Shoshoni woman. The captive and Sacajawea were invited to a council. The captains explained who they were and the object of their journey. The prisoner translated the words given her in Shoshoni by Sacajawea into the Walla Walla tongue. The woman was short and fat and wore nothing more than a long leather dress with no sleeves and the sides open. The dress was held together with a woven grass belt. She was highly honored by being invited to a council, and she felt that Sacajawea had reached a height of esteem never before dreamed of by women. She believed that the great medicine of these white men had been transferred to Sacajawea, making her something great, not only to the white men but to all Indian nations as well.

  Sacajawea showed Clark an infected slash made by the captive woman’s digging knife as she dug roots. “I’ll clean it and dress it with linen strips soaked in borax water,” promised Clark.

  The woman excitedly told Chief Yellept about the healing powers of the white chief.

  “Opposite our village is a short route to the Kooskooskee.”2 The chief waved his arms in gratitude for the white chiefs. “A road of grass and water and plenty of game.”

  Clark estimated that this cutoff would actually save eighty miles if they left the rest of the canoes behind, detoured the Celilo Falls, and traveled on the high land above the canyon.

  “But don’t leave yet,” begged Chief Yellept. “Stay a little longer.” He had sent out invitations to the Yakimas, the Cayuses, and the Salish. The healing power of the white chiefs was talked about all along the rivers. The lame, sick, and blind began to press around the expedition’s camp. The number of unfortunates was prodigious, reminders of Indian battles, hunts, neglect, damp weather, and exposure to the constant blowing of fine sand.

  Clark was the physician, and Sacajawea the nurse. They distributed solutions of lead and zinc salts, eyewash, splinted broken bones, gave out emetic pills, and used sulfur ointment for skin ulcers. They employed camphor liniment and quick massaging to relieve rheumatism.

  In gratitude Chief Yellept offered a beautiful white horse in trade for a single blackened cooking kettle one of the women had not returned to the camp.

  “This here is the only large kettle with no hole in its bottom,” said York. “If this goes, we can cook like the Indians in grass baskets.”

  Clark looked at York and gave him the beat-up kettle. “If you like it that much, keep it,” he said.

  Then Clark gave the bewildered Yellept his sword, together with one hundred bullets and some powder for an old musket Yellept had and some pieces of red ribbon for his squaws.

  That evening the Walla Wallas formed a half circle around the white men and watched them dance. Cruzatte brought out his violin, and York sang some songs in Chinook that tickled the Walla Wallas so much that they rolled on the ground holding their sides as they laughed.

  Yellept hung his new sword at his side and danced around the ring.3

  The next day, following their chief’s example, two minor chiefs gave a horse apiece in return for medals, pistols, and ammunition.

  Lewis wrote in his journal: “I think we can justly affirm to the honor of these people that they are the most hospitable, honest, and sincere people that we have met with in our voyage.”

  For three beautiful days the expedition traveled through new grass beside small streams. It was so warm that most of the men were stripped to the waist, tying coats and shirts in a bundle on the horses. Yet the nights were still and cold, with stars that shimmered brilliantly.

  On May 7, Red Robe, the brother of the Nez Percé chief, Twisted Hair, visited the expedition and took them to a large lodge housing six families. Lewis invited all six families to accompany him back to his camp for a dinner of horse beef. One of the men of the lodge brought along two canisters of powder, which he claimed his dog had led him to. “It was buried in a bottomland near the river only a few miles away.”

  “They are canisters we buried ourselves as we came downstream last fall!” exclaimed Lewis. He gave the man a steel firemaker for being honest. The man was pleased with himself and followed Captain Lewis around for half a day grinning and indicating by hand signs that his tongue was not forked.

  In the evening a Shoshoni man who had been captured as a small boy by the Chopunnish, a tribe of Nez Percés, came to the expedition’s camp because he had heard there was a young woman of his nation. The man was called Shadow. He talked most of the evening with Sacajawea, asking about her nation in the mountains. He told her he was of the Kogohue tribe of Shoshonis and he thought his people now lived south in the plains, feasting on the buffalo every day.4 He said, “My people never come north anymore, but now they stay where the summers are hot and dry because there is more food and even more horses to be raided from villages still farther south.”5

  Led by Red Robe and Shadow, the expedition moved on toward the larger Nez Percé villages. The mountain peaks were still covered with snow, and even some sides were covered below the tree line. No one could get through the passes until more snow melted. “After the next full moon,” said Red Robe.

  During the next several nights, the coarsened drifts turned to stony hardness and trees began to fall, torn in half by their loads of ice and snow. Twisted Hair’s village had black snow around the lodges, where layers of soot concentrated.

  Everyone in the expedition was surprised to find Chief Twisted Hair cool and distant, breaking into violent tirades with another chief, Neeshneeparkeook, Cut Nose.

  Drouillard was unable to translate the fast-flying Nez Percé words of either chief. There seemed no way of finding where the horses were that the expedition had left in Twisted Hair’s care.

  Drouillard tried frantic hand signs. Charbonneau tried hand signs. Both Lewis and Clark tried hand signs and Chinook jargon. Everything seemed useless as the chiefs spat out Nez Percé faster and louder than anyone could understand.

  Sacajawea appealed to old Shadow, who knew the Nez Percé language, and through her could interpret the angry words of the chiefs. But to her disappointment Shadow was a stickler for etiquette. He explained, “It is improper for me to interpret a private quarrel between two important chiefs. Even for the friendly white chiefs I cannot repeat those words, nor try to interrupt and pacify them.”

  The expedition’s men hoped that the quarreling did not mean trouble for them, and finally went to make their camp. After supper, Lewis sent Drouillard back to Chief Twisted Hair’s village in hopes that the quarreling was over and the chief would come to smoke with him. While Drouillard was gone, York strutted around the relaxed party mimicking the angry chiefs. Pomp jumped up and down laughing. Clark picked the child up and sat him on his shoulde
rs, then danced around with York, shouting shrill, incomprehensible, guttural sounds, stomping the blackened snow.

  Shannon rolled in the hard snow, holding his sides laughing. Sacajawea laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks. At this moment, Twisted Hair arrived in their camp. Lewis had to quiet the men because he was fearful the situation could become less than a laughing matter. But Twisted Hair acted as if nothing had happened. He smoked a pipe with Lewis and told through hand signs that his two subchiefs, Cut Nose and Tunnachemooltoolt, Broken Arm, had grown jealous. To make them feel important he had let the two of them care for the white men’s horses. They had had free use of the horses, who were nearby, munching tender blades of spring grass. But if the white men wanted the horses right away, it would take some time to round them up. Twisted Hair said, “And your packsaddles are no longer in the cache because it was poorly made.” He pushed his hands downward to show how some of the earth had fallen in. “I buried them in a new cache, which I made myself.”

  Suddenly Cut Nose and Broken Arm appeared before the captains. They shoved and pushed Twisted Hair to one side.

  Cut Nose said, “He is bad and wears two faces.”

  “He did not really let us take care of your horses. He let his young warriors ride them fast and hard,” said Broken Arm. “But now the two good friends of the white chiefs have intervened and saved your horses from careless use, which would spoil them. You, white chiefs, are fortunate to have such good friends as us, who can tell you about the bad old man. Chief Twisted Hair.”

  Chief Twisted Hair said nothing. He kept his face averted and remained sitting with his back against a stone. Soon all the horses were returned to the captains. Then Twisted Hair invited them to his lodge. There he told them that two horses were missing, but they were the two Old Toby and his son, Cut Worm, had taken back to the Shoshoni nation with them. Then he invited the captains, Drouillard, Charbonneau, and Sacajawea to eat with them. Sacajawea sat back against the wall with the other squaws, who passed Pomp from one to the other. Each examined his beaded shirt and moccasins and stared in wonderment at his winter’s growth.