“Ahh-i.” Sacajawea pulled up a big sigh from way down inside herself. “Who will catch them when they fall in the middle of the night?”
“They’ll have to learn to stay under a blanket. There are other things they will need to know, and you have to help,” said Miss Judy, her eyes challenging Sacajawea.
“That’s right,” said Clark, moseying back inside. “The boys are here for an education. You don’t want them to be as ignorant as old Jussome, who needs someone to sign his own name, do you?”
“Mais non, merci.” Charbonneau, who could neither read nor write, shook his head. “Never will they be like that old weasel.”
Miss Judy plumped a battered coffeepot on the table. “I can boil some coffee. See, there is a box of sugar and a can of coffee on the shelf. Let’s hope it’s not stale and rancid.”
Even though she was tired from the trip and the excitement of meeting old friends, Sacajawea began laying a fire, using a substantial cone of sticks, the larger ones on the outside. Clark bent to light the fire with a phosphorus match. The small sticks blazed, burning quickly. Sacajawea pushed on larger sticks. Miss Judy set the big pot of water on the iron arm abovethe fire, then threw in coffee and sugar and let them boil.
“Say, speaking of writing, Charb, did you know that Pat Gass’s journal of the expedition was published early last year? An Irish schoolmaster, David McKeehan, corrected Pat’s spelling and grammar. I talked with him, and to hear him tell it, Pat needs schooling himself. His spelling must have been dreadful. Now Lewis and I have to get ours in shape. Jefferson asked about the journals last year.”
“Why don’t you send York after the other lady and her little boy and the Charbonneaus’ baggage?” asked Miss Judy.
“You have a fine femme,” said Charbonneau, who felt himself an expert in those things. He poured a third cup of coffee. It was strong and sweet.
“Yes,” agreed Clark. “That is a fine suggestion, Judy. And Charb, you still have a good eye, eh? Judy is an angel, she dances and talks too much, but she has not one mean, spiteful hair on her head.” Clark planted a soft kiss on his wife’s hair. Then he took her hand and led her out the door saying they would be back soon.
The two squaws worked for days drying the meat that was sent to them. They cut it in thin strips and hung it in the sun on a scaffolding made of cottonwood saplings. Miss Judy marveled at the stamina Sacajawea showed when she began a task. Otter Woman soon grew tired of drying meat and sat on the door stoop.
Often Miss Judy sat in the shade, telling nursery tales to the boys. Soon they were all singing together:
“I climbed up the apple tree
And all the apples fell on me.
Make a pudding, make a pie.
Did you ever tell a lie?
Yes, you did, you know you did,
You stole your mother’s teapot lid.”
“What’s a teapot lid?” asked Little Tess.
“The top of a teapot, silly,” answered Miss Judy.
“Do we have one?”
“I don’t know. Do you like tea?”
“I like mine with sugar, same as Papa. We don’t have any now.”
“Next time I’ll bring some and we’ll have a tea party,” said Miss Judy, swinging each boy around once or twice, then sitting down again, laughing.
Otter Woman stretched herself and moseyed over to sit beside the children and Miss Judy. She had on a gingham dress she’d made from some red-and-blue cloth Miss Judy had brought for window curtains.
“Why work so hard on that meat?” said Otter Woman, pointing a ragged fingernail toward Sacajawea. “There will only be more. Chief Red Hair will take care of us. We do not have to work our fingers to the bone. We don’t even have to gather the wood. We don’t have to work anymore. We can play with the papooses, like you do. We can wear our new blankets and walk along the river to see the boats and the pale-eyed ladies.”
Miss Judy laughed at Otter Woman; then, her eyes still twinkling, she said emphatically, “You’ll never appreciate anything if you do not work for it.” She moved her hands so that Otter Woman could understand, but she was slow with hand signs. “I will teach you how to sew if you promise to make curtains with the next gingham, and no more dresses stitched up the sides with leather string.”
“Ai”—Otter Woman kept her voice low and flat—“after window dresses, I make dress like white squaws. And so our man thinks he has a white woman, tee-hee-hee.”
Sacajawea’s head went from side to side, and her voice had a dry harshness. “Otter Woman, you could help finish cutting this meat today. Do you want our man to throw firewood at us because there is no jerky?” Sacajawea’s hands were blistered from the cutting knife, but finally she had all the meat cut and hung in the sun to dry.
Otter Woman’s shoulders hunched together, and she coughed. “Much smoke in the air. I hope it rains.”
“Oh, me, too,” said Miss Judy. “Something has to put out these brushfires. I don’t want them moving close to town. This smoke is bad enough.”
“When the wind is right, my eyes sting and I can’t stop the coughing,” said Otter Woman.
The next morning, Sacajawea surprised Otter Woman by saying, “Let’s take the boys walking along the riverbank.” Despite the heat, Sacajawea took her blanket so that she could carry Pomp on her back easily if he became tired.
Otter Woman talked a stream of inane chatter because she was so excited about going out to look at the new sights. She coughed as she combed her hair until it shone; then she put on her red-and-blue gingham. Little Tess skipped from the cabin and threw sticks down the trail.
Saint Louis was about fifty years old. It had begun as a French trading post, and only in the last four years, since the United States had acquired it from France with the Louisiana Purchase, had it really grown. At one time it had been a Spanish possession, and so now people from both Spain and France lived on the banks of the Mississippi River. There were also a few people from England, some Canadians, Indians from many tribes, métis, halfbreeds, Creoles, Americans, and blacks living in or near the village.2
The two squaws watched, and as they learned about these people, their wonderment grew. “It is like a Mandan summer fair,” said Otter Woman. “So many people in this village.”
There were about a thousand people living in Saint Louis at this time.
A few scattered log huts, warehouses, and docks were strung out along the river’s edge. They walked slowly through the French quarter, with its narrow, crooked streets, and high-balconied houses with ladders reaching up from the ground to the top rooms. Everything seemed tilted at crazy angles, as if the dirt had settled one way, then another, leaving the buildings leaning sideways, or more often just forward, like the heads of gossiping old ladies.
Then they walked slowly uphill from the river to some new board houses and warehouses, all raw and ugly in the late-afternoon sun. They were surrounded by the noises of hammering and banging, dogs barking, and near-naked, dirty-faced children yelling.
“It is not like the sleepy Minnetaree village,” said Sacajawea.
After a few more turns, they went straight up a long street and came to a very broad store building with two galleries and warehouses to either side and behind; the whole was advertised by a split-log sign that had a white birch rim all around.
“I wish that I could speak those words that the white man writes,” said Sacajawea, pointing to the sign.
“The board is large and the markings deep. That is some important person in that lodge,” said Otter Woman.
Men pushed through the doors carrying supplies, other men ran from warehouse to warehouse, wagons were loading at side doors, and a dozen horses were tied to hitching posts out front. A black boy, about the age of Little Tess, dressed in a beautiful scarlet jacket and black-silk top hat, was watering the horses from a wooden trough, then tying them up again. Some men threw the boy coins and poked him playfully as he bent to pick them up.
When the men wer
e inside, Sacajawea went up to the boy and asked in her best English, “Whose beautiful lodge is this? What is the chief that lives here called?”
The boy’s face broke into a grin. “They is no chief. But it sure enough is a beautiful lodge. This am the trading post of Mr. Chouteau. You gals want to borrow a mule?”
“No.” Sacajawea smiled. “We are walking. Thank you.”
“Don’t fret, you ain’t the only ones walking,” said the boy. Then he went back to watering the horses.
“Even so,” sighed Otter Woman, lifting her blanket from her face on the way home, “I miss our village. Things were more convenient there, and the river not so far away.”
Sacajawea had put Pomp into the blanket and hoisted him on her back. Little Tess ran along ahead of the squaws. “Did you notice these men always busy, never sitting in the sun or loafing around?”
“I saw only the fine stitching on the women’s dresses,” said Otter Woman, coughing in the smoky late-summer air. “It is as neatly done as our quillwork.”
One day Sacajawea shyly asked Miss Judy to show her how to embroider.
“You don’t want to do that on window curtains!” Miss Judy was amused. “They look fine with their red roses.”
“I want to make a shirt for Pomp. I want to make a shirt like the white boys wear,” Sacajawea explained. “A shirt with prairie flowers down the front.”
“A white shirt with full sleeves? The kind the French children wear?”
“Ai, that is it,” said Sacajawea. “He can have it for school.”
Miss Judy helped Sacajawea, who painstakingly made a white shirt for Pomp with pink roses on the front. Otter Woman, not to be outdone, made a pair of white trousers for Little Tess, with a cotton drawstring at the waist.
“Ah, wouldn’t Grasshopper exclaim over these garments. She’d feel the fine texture and the smoothness of the flowers,” said Sacajawea proudly, her eyes shining.
Ben York brought venison and left the two deer hams on the kitchen table. He stopped to admire the sewing. “You gals can do anything you puts your minds to. I’d sure enough like one if you have nothing else left to do someday, Janey. One of them shirts, fancy trim and all, uumm. When I go to Kentucky, people’s eyes will sure enough pop out looking at that on me.”
At first Sacajawea thought he was teasing, but watching him look at Pomp, she knew he meant it. She wondered if she would be able to get enough white muslin to make a shirt for York.
“Why do you make things for others?” asked Otter Woman, putting a hand to her mouth to stifle a cough.
“Oh, Otter Woman”—Sacajawea’s breath grunted out—“it’s doing something for a friend.”
“Pah! Make something for yourself. Don’t you want to look fancy like the white squaws?”
“I don’t think about them too much,” said Sacajawea. “Only about Miss Judy and her kindness to us.”
“Well”—Otter Woman’s mind was working slowly—“I am making a dress to wear when I sit in the shade against a fence and watch the white squaws pass along Rue Royale. Wouldn’t you like to wear a white squaw’s dress and come with me?” Otter Woman’s eyes beamed admiration as she held up the red-and-yellow cottonprint she had been stitching. It had very little shape—a hole for the head and two for the arms. She would not follow the pattern Miss Judy had laid out. “Too hard to follow,” she complained.
“There is much learning before I wear a dress in the manner of the white squaw. It is hard yet to eat with a knife and fork. I want to teach our sons not to eat with the fingers. At school they will eat the way the white boys do.”
Otter Woman snorted. “That is a long way off.”
“They will sleep on beds with many pieces of cloth. And they will wear a shirt when they sleep.”
“A shirt?” Otter Woman said it with some heat. “Whoever heard of such a thing! Will they be on guard for the enemy to strike at any moment and so must sleep with moccasins also?”
“No, but it is the way of whites to have a shirt for sleeping.”
“What a waste. Shirts should be worn during the daylight. Besides, at night a shirt would keep one too warm,” Otter Woman said stubbornly. “I will tell Little Tess to wear his shirts for day, and nothing for night. Maybe he can teach white boys a sensible thing or two.”
“Little Tess teach the white boys—you think—ah—” Sacajawea cut it short—what was the use, she thought.
That night, Otter Woman tossed on her pallet of pine branches thinking of other things she had noticed. White women could not make peace inside their lodges. Day after day they fought dust and dirt. They made war on everything—clothes, pots, floors; fighting with lye soap, scouring ashes, straw brooms, and feather dusters. Otter Woman felt sorry for these white squaws who did not realize that dust and dirt were just a part of life to be endured like a bad cold, hunger, or mosquitoes.
As the months in Saint Louis slipped away, Sacajawea came to realize there was another change within herself. The beating of her heart had calmed when she was near Clark. Her tongue was no longer tied. The gnawing pain of living close to him had eased. She was fond of his woman, Miss Judy, and felt no resentment, no bitterness, but now a soft affection and adoration forthe man, such as had possessed her during the first winter with the white men at Fort Mandan. Clark was a great man; he was someone to be respected and to serve. She was growing wiser, more mature. She realized they could not share a bond of love between them as man and woman could, and as he surely did with Miss Judy, but she knew she would always have a special place in his heart. It is now a good road that we walk together, she thought. There are times I think I am wise and can see the foolishness of others. I put myself above the passions of youth. But I do not believe wisdom is what throws off passions; it is age.
In June 1809, the Missouri Fur Trading Company’s barges and keelboats left Saint Louis outfitted to establish posts all along the Missouri. Clark made a special trip to the cabin in the woods to visit Sacajawea. “The largest post will be at the Three Forks. Close to your people, Janey. This will give them regular food and some protection from the Blackfeet,” he said.
“I have been thinking,” she said, “that it is really you who represent the image of the Great White Father to my people. You are a hero.”
In Saint Louis, hero worship was at its height. Here the ideals were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who had been west, traced the Missouri to its source in the mountains, and carried the United States flag to the Pacific and back.
Hero worship is characteristic of youthful, progressive peoples. George Shannon was a hero. He had been shot in the knee by an Ankara’s flintlock while he was with the crew taking Sheheke back to his Mandan village. Dr. Saugrain saw blood poisoning in Shannon’s leg and together with Dr. Farrar performed the first thigh amputation in this region—without anesthetic.3 Shannon lay at the point of death for eighteen months, but he rallied and regained his strength so that he could go to Lexington. There he studied law, finally becoming an eminent jurist and judge, and was known as Pegleg Shannon.
Ben York was a hero. Trappers, flatboatmen, frontiersmen, and Frenchmen spun long yarns at the Green Tree Inn, but York outdid them all with thrilling incidents that never failed to inspire an audience. He had been to the Pacific Ocean and seen the great whale, sturgeon, and porpoise; that put all inland fish stories in the shade. Once, Auguste Chouteau’s manservant said, “Me and the colonel met in Ben York for the first time someone greater than myself.”
Sacajawea and Otter Woman often explored Saint Louis shops while Charbonneau was away trapping. There were things they had never seen before and whose use they could not imagine—things like flatirons, butter churns, cigar rollers. They were constantly amazed. They watched men trade pelts and hides for food in tins. Others traded paper money for clothing. This paper was the white man’s magic. Both women decided to make moccasins and trade them for money or food in tins.
Several weeks after that decision, Sacajawea was up in the gray-
lavender light of false dawn. She had moccasins in a parfleche. She didn’t hurry, but she didn’t loiter either until she came in sight of the trading post on the corner of First and Washington. She went inside the stone wall that surrounded the store. The Chouteau family lived on the second floor. Reaching nearly to the second story were tall fruit trees—some with apples, others with pears.
A good many bearded, tobacco-chewing men had congregated in the big room downstairs. They talked, laughed, and spit upon the floor; sometimes they hit one another on the back. Sacajawea saw piles of skins—shiny blue, black, and brown—tied up carelessly with string, lying on both counters and floor. There was a little balcony office in the rear where Pierre Chouteau sat and wrote in his books. Sacajawea had a glimpse of him when an old trader, wearing a patchy coonskin cap with one ear flap hanging down, left the office door open.
With the money she received for the moccasins, Sacajawea bought three yards of snow white linen to make York a shirt. She held out her hand. “Is that enough money?”
The red-faced clerk moistened his pencil in his mouth and did some figuring on a piece of paper, then gaveher back some change. She found some packets of bright pink floss to make roses on the shirt and again held out her hand. “Is that enough?” She bought white thread, then needles, paying for one thing at a time to be sure she had enough to buy the next item.
The clerk became uneasy as she looked and fingered the new things. Once he spoke to her sharply. She answered him in French, which surprised him. She told him she knew that some people took things that did not belong to them, but she, never. She told him she had as her friend Chief Red Hair and that she lived in his town because he had invited her there. The clerk did not seem impressed—in fact, he did not really believe her—yet he did think it strange that this squaw could speak both French and English. She continued to explain to the clerk that she would teach her people that it was wrong to take things, but now her people thought all white men were like themselves—whatever belonged to one man belonged to all.
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