Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “You’se make the tea and I’se get him some cold elk roast we have left over,” said York, rushing around the cook fire.

  By the following evening the wound was so sore and Lewis’s legs so stiff that he would not leave the canoe. He slept there uncomfortably. Somehow he found the strength to write one last lengthy and technical botanical note about the Missouri cherry tree. From that evening on, he let Clark keep the only written journal for the last few weeks of the expedition.

  The next afternoon, the entire group started out in five canoes and the white pirogue Lewis had brought with his party, as well as two lashed-together canoes that Clark had built. The two bull boats were left behind. In two days the canoes came alongside the large village of their old friends, the Mandans. A firing of guns brought swarms of natives to the beach.

  Sacajawea felt as though she were awakening from a dream. It was hard to realize it was all over. She found herself in the midst of familiar landmarks as she stepped from the canoe. She was back far too soon. A part of her life was gone. From now on, she would not rise in the morning with an untrodden trail ahead holding new sights to see. This was a familiar village with familiar habits. She began to feel like a caged bird.

  Shouts, laughter, an involuntary cry, and then a sudden din rose from the natives who surrounded the returned men, who remained in a cluster, smiling, clinging together still. For a moment Sacajawea had an impulse to flee the cage of people surrounding her, and she sensed the same urge in her companions. Then the vision of hardship and hunger flashed through her mind, and she looked at the Mandans as people who could offer an enchanting world of warmth and lazy well-being. She seized the hands of the nearest squaws and suddenly laughed. She noticed the look of veiled timidity in their eyes and saw their expression change to startled wonder when she laughed. For the moment she did not try to understand or ponder or explain or hear explanations. She wanted only to enjoy her sensations.

  “Squash! Corn!” she shouted and continued laughing. “Lodges, people!” She waved her arms and embraced the women. But beyond the emotions of welcoming, a false heartiness was reflected in the eyes of these women. Their expressions seemed tinged with fear and apprehension.

  “Look!” Sacajawea shouted, now longing to see something more in their dark eyes. She pushed the hair back from the left side of her child’s head. “He almost went under! His whole body burned for many days. Chief Red Hair had healing salves. Others were sick. We ate our horses.”

  “When?” some disbelieving squaw asked.

  “During the winter.” She released Pomp. “We were afraid to sleep because of the cold.”

  “Ai, it was cold here last winter.”

  She shook her head emphatically. “Not like that. Some of the men froze their hands and feet. Some wanted to lie down and sleep on the trail.” She paused, looking from one to the other. “It is wonderful to see you.”

  A babble broke out, and the din of the villagers drowned her words. “What? What?” She seized the wife of a subchief whom she knew, pulling her closer. “Did you expect us? Have you wondered about us? I cannot hear you speak. What is wrong? Why do you look as though you do not believe what you see?” Suddenly Sacajawea felt so uneasy she turned and twisted to see over their heads.

  “Red Hair! Red Hair! Chief Red Hair!” she called. She pushed the squaws aside and elbowed her way to Captain Clark. In the crowd she saw some of the other men’s familiar faces. The noise was deafening. She grasped Clark’s arm and tiptoed to scream in his ear, but she hardly knew what she wanted to say. She wanted only to be near him, and near the others—Captain Lewis, York, Shannon, Cruzatte, Gass—all the familiar faces—for the Mandans had become strangers and she felt alone. Captain Lewis stood uneasily, supporting himself by makeshift crutches propped under his arms. The dog, Scannon, stood protectively near. York reached out and pulled her back into the group of men just as Charbonneau broke away and made for the crowd of squaws. He saw Otter Woman with the boy, Little Tess.

  “By Jésus,” Charbonneau shouted, “you look good!

  And is that my boy Tess? He is big.” He pointed excitedly to the youngster who stood barefoot alongside Otter Woman.

  When Otter Woman was close to Sacajawea, they stared at each other, and finally Sacajawea asked, “And where is Corn Woman? Didn’t she come with you?”

  But Otter Woman was staring through Sacajawea. She hardly saw her; she had eyes only for her returned man, Charbonneau. He was a hero who had come home to her. Charbonneau put Tess on his shoulders and went through the crowd. He had been ordered by Captain Lewis to invite all the chiefs to a powwow with the white men.

  Clark turned to Drouillard. “Go to the lower village of the Mandans and ask René Jussome to come and do some interpreting for us. Let’s hope he is around.”

  Then Clark brushed a lock of black hair from Sacajawea’s forehead and clasped her shoulders with his hands, holding her firmly against him for several minutes before breaking away to walk through the crowd in the direction of Black Cat’s village, Rooptahee, in order to invite him personally to smoke the pipe and talk once again with the captains.

  “We are going to ask some of these village chiefs to accompany us to Washington,” said Captain Lewis, now sitting in the canoe where York had lifted him.

  York was going through some of the baggage, trying to get together the makings of a suitable pallet for Lewis to use while the men were camped on this beach. “That Kakoakis won’t,” said York, chuckling. “He’s fearful that the Sioux wait behind every tree for him with a tight bow.”

  Late in the afternoon, during the powwow, the captains found that the Minnetarees had broken their pledge and had continued raids against other tribes, especially the Sioux. Each tribe was ready to jump at the others’ scalps. President Jefferson’s peace plan is not working well, thought Captain Clark.

  Gass threw deadwood on the council fire, and the flames sprang up, lighting the faces in the ring around the fire.

  Sacajawea felt someone nudge her back and whisperin her ear, “Go to your mother in the lodge. She has lost all hope.” Turning she saw it was Fast Arrow. He was pointing in the direction of his lodge. “She does not believe you will ever return.”

  “Grasshopper does not know I am here?” she gasped.

  “She has been told but does not hear. Let her see you.”

  Sacajawea stood and embraced Fast Arrow. He pushed her aside roughly. “I have watched the river all winter.”

  She left the council and followed the path.

  Sacajawea pushed the plank door open, walked through the low entrance, and the familiar smells of a Minnetaree lodge overwhelmed her—leather, cooking meat and fat, drying squash, and cornhusks.

  “Mother?” she whispered. Cornhusks on a pallet rustled, and suddenly quiet weeping answered her. She bent down into Grasshopper’s outstretched arms and no longer felt like a stranger among familiar faces. For several minutes old Grasshopper could not stop weeping. Finally she dried her eyes, sniffed once or twice, and said, “Oh, my child, I did not believe I would ever see your face again.” Slowly Grasshopper began to talk of the things that never passed away from the heavens and earth, and after a while she was silent. There was a sadness such as Sacajawea had never known mixed with her love for this mother.

  For the first time in nearly two years, Sacajawea and Pomp did not spend the night in the camp of the expedition. She was in the lodge that Otter Woman had kept neat during the time they were gone. In the morning, Grasshopper felt well enough to venture from her lodge to come for a visit with Sacajawea. The old woman sat herself against a wooden lodge support and held the squirming Pomp in her lap, cooing and fussing over him. She smacked her lips over a bowl of stew and asked for another. Settling back against the wooden post, she slept for a while. Sacajawea and Otter Woman cleaned the lodge and smoothed out the sleeping couches. When she awoke, Grasshopper, with regret in her voice, told of the day the white men’s fort burned. This was notmany days after the exped
ition went up the Missouri to the west.

  Sacajawea stopped her work to listen.

  “Chief Kakoakis took some of his men and some supplies to the abandoned fort the same day the white men left. The British, under the leadership of Charles MacKenzie, had coveted the fort for a trading station and for living quarters for their men. There was some loud argument between MacKenzie and Kakoakis. MacKenzie took his men away, saying, ‘No one will use this fort.’”

  Grasshopper put her hand on her chest and rocked back and forth a few moments as though trying to catch her breath. “There was no more talk about the affair for many days. Then, on a hot, dry day, someone noticed ashes falling from the sky. Before that we had several days that were blazing hot and dry with high winds. But on the day the ashes fell, I can remember Fast Arrow coming into our lodge upset and covering his feeling with a shortness of speech.”

  Grasshopper clicked her tongue rapidly. “Fast Arrow said the white men’s lodges were in the middle of a red blaze. It was those high winds that kept the flames on the move. The wind leaped over the walls and spilled the flame out onto the prairie. The wind swirled this way and that as the Great Spirit moved it. The people from all the villages came to watch, and the flames moved beyond the fire line made two winters ago by the white men. The fire-killed trees standing gaunt and gray, tinder-dry, became ashes on the blackened ground. The humus around the tree roots smoldered, and when the roots weakened and released boulders sitting on them, the boulders leaped downward, gaining speed, jumping, smashing their way through brush, dislodging others that were larger than themselves.” Grasshopper twirled her hands around each other to show how the boulders rolled downhill, gaining speed. “Red-hot rocks leaped across the creek, hummed in the air, and buried themselves in the drifts of fireweed. There was much smoke by now, so that the whole sky was hidden and there was no sun. An unnatural darkness settled on the Five Villages at midday. The Great Spirit was angry—even Kakoakis could see that. Grasshopper shifted her weight.

  Charbonneau had come in while she was talking, but had not paid much attention to the women at first. Now he slid a little farther down on his spine. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “Who started it?”

  “No one knows. But the women in this village say the man called Mackenzie went north behind the hills.” Grasshopper’s chin pointed. “He is no good?”

  “Maybe,” said Charbonneau. “What does it matter now? We’ll have to keep an eye peeled, is all. It was not very clever of Mackenzie, maybe. The time will come when either Kakoakis or the Americans will catch him out.”

  Grasshopper was talking again. “The villages braced themselves, much as a man does who expects to receive a blow. That is it, they thought. The darkness seemed to thicken, and who could tell that above the smoke the rain clouds were gathering? Then the first great drops came down through the smoke, and all the Minnetarees and the Northwesters looked up and wondered if this were real or part of some terrible dream. The skies opened, and soon the rain was drumming down in blinding torrents. Everyone ran for shelter, and gradually the smoke was washed down out of the air and the prairie appeared once again. The fire choked and steamed and spluttered, and slowly died. That was the end of it.” Grasshopper clucked and thought that she should add something. “I am sorry the white men’s lodges were eaten by fire. It leaves a scar on our land and on our hearts.”

  The expedition had set up their temporary camp opposite the village of Rooptahee, where old Black Cat was chief.

  After a few days of rest, Clark asked Jussome to try to talk one of the important men of the villages into going to Washington. Jussome left grumbling that maybe Charbonneau ought to do some of this hard work also. But soon he was back in a cheerful mood with good news. One subchief had consented to go. It was Sheheke—Big White, as the Northwesters called him because of his blue eyes and nearly white hair. Big Whitehad agreed to go if he could take along his woman, Yellow Corn, and his youngest son, White Painted Horse, and if Jussome and his woman. Broken Tooth, and their two children, Toussaint and Jeanette, went.

  Captain Lewis limped around his camp pondering on those terms. No other chief would go downriver with the expedition. Finally Lewis said, “This is probably the only way the expedition is going to get a member of the five Upper Missouri tribes to meet Jefferson.”

  When Sacajawea heard that Jussome and Broken Tooth were going to Washington, she knew Charbonneau would not be needed as interpreter on the downriver trip. She knew, too, that Jussome had seen the grand welcoming given Charbonneau, who was now a big man with the Mandans, and that Jussome was jealous. So—what else? He had arranged with Big White so that he could also be thought of as a big man.

  A few days later, Sacajawea learned of one of the men from the expedition taking advantage of opportunity. John Colter asked Clark if he could leave the expedition to go with two trappers, Joe Dickson, from Illinois country, and Forest Hancock, from Daniel Boone’s settlement on the Lower Missouri, back to the Yellowstone.1 Dickson and Hancock were glad to have Colter accompany them and share their trappings. He would be a useful guide, having just come from that country, which was all new to them.

  Colter had gotten used to being called Seehkheeda, White Eyebrows, by the Indians of the Five Villages, and he knew he would be politely considered eccentric by the whites in any city. He had become “bushed,” meaning that he was used to the unending struggle against the elements and the hard physical work it took to live in the beauty of the unspoiled wilderness. He could not live away from the majesty and dignity of plains and mountains, the greatness of it, nor its challenge.

  Captain Clark explained to the other men that they would grant this special privilege to Colter only if all the others agreed to finish the journey into Saint Louis—except Charbonneau, who had made arrangements to stay in his old lodge in the Minnetaree village where the captains had found him.

  The men agreed. They were all eager to go home.

  When Colter got around to leaving, there was none of the ritual of formal farewells. The men all came to say good-bye. Sacajawea was there with Pomp and Charbonneau. A handshake, a “So long,” an occasional “au revoir,” or even a casual nod or wave of the hand sufficed. These men and the woman and child were his close friends, and by now they had become as taciturn and undemonstrative as any native, so Colter understood their sincerity thoroughly, regardless of fanfare or display. He needed no other proof that they were his friends than the fact that they had made an effort to see him off.

  “I have not forgotten the most important lesson of the expedition.” Colter nudged Charbonneau. “An outfit never takes a woman with them except on peaceful business. I think we need to find a woman to accompany us. Do you think she’d go?” He bent his head toward Sacajawea.

  The men guffawed. Sacajawea suppressed her grin. Charbonneau shifted restlessly, and his bright, pinpoint eyes searched every face to make sure no one was making sport of him.

  All day Otter Woman asked endless questions. She asked about the Shoshonis and the Blackfeet. She asked about the mountains, trees, and water. She barely listened as Sacajawea told of the men so hungry they ate horsemeat and even dogs. Otter Woman was thinking what to ask next when Sacajawea told about the water people, the seals, sliding up and off the rocks. Then she told of the skeleton of the great whale. Otter Woman did not know what things to believe, and so she asked more questions. To her these events were unimaginable.

  Pomp seemed happy to have an older brother and followed Tess around like a shadow.

  Charbonneau was happy to be back in his old lodge where Otter Woman would take off his boots and bathe his feet. “By gar, one of these days I am going to Big White’s village and give him some advice for living with the white men, and then I will see if Corn is willing to leave her maman and papa to come back here with me.”

  The next day was hot; by afternoon it was depressing. Charbonneau opened the lodge door and called inside, “Les capitaines will leave, and you will not have said
your last merci, femme. Come on out here.”

  Sacajawea scooped up Pomp and followed Charbonneau, who was winding his way through the curving streets to the water’s edge. Charbonneau wore a dark scowl on his fat, bearded face. He was obviously disappointed over Clark’s decision to take Jussome as interpreter on the Saint Louis-bound trip, so that Big White would go along.2 He did not think how he had told Clark he planned to stay in the Minnetaree village and trap and act as interpreter for the incoming traders, a life he was already accustomed to.

  On the street of the village they were joined by some Minnetarees, some Mandan warriors, women, and children—who all looked at Charbonneau and chanted in unison, “Whoohoo, whoohoo!” Charbonneau stopped, and his worried face lost its scowl, his features forming a great half-moon reaching from the bottom of his ears to his chin, all wrinkled with laughter. He waved and tossed his head in the sunlight. “They are glad I am back! They call me Chief of the White Men’s Canoes. I told them how I poled to keep the canoes on a straight path and how I prevented them from shipping water by keeping out of rapids. See, I am a big man among these Five Villages!” Others ran past calling, “Whoohoo!” They waved to Charbonneau, who continued along ahead of his woman as the crowd at their heels cried happily, “Whoohoo!”

  They passed the village of Mahawha and walked across the freshly broken camp of the expedition. Sacajawea was not sure she could keep her tears back. They went to the canoes, which were almost loaded. Sacajawea could see Captain Lewis half reclining in one canoe with an account book in one hand. Pomp pulled away and ran toward Captain Clark, who was supervising the last-minute loading. He caught the child and tossed him in the air, catching him with a kiss as he fell back into his arms. “Go, go, good-bye,” the child squealed in English. Clark put him down and began explaining sadly that Pomp would not be able to go on this trip.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Good-Byes