Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  The boy looked sullen.

  Sacajawea ran her finger over the harmonica. She smiled at José and his father. She pointed the instrument toward the north, east, south, and west, then with a wide flourish of her arm, toward heaven and down to the earth. She felt it necessary to show appreciation to the Great Spirit for this lucky opportunity. She was also thankful Jerk Meat was not around, because she was working on a plan. If she could attract some attention, maybe one of the Mexicans would listen to her, then she could ask him a question, and he would listen and give an answer.

  “She makes the sign of the cross,” said José with surprise. “You said they are heathens.”

  “Well,” the elder Mexican stuffed more meat in his mustached mouth to give himself time to think. “Hell, it is some si, some no with these people. Some are, some not.” He motioned with his hands.

  Sacajawea was still rubbing her hands on the smooth, hard, warm brass. She noted the worn, dirty reeds and their wet, fetid odor. She slipped the braided wire loop over her head and placed the harmonica up to her mouth.

  She puffed and made a long, sustaining, plaintive note in the night. Then she inhaled for a longer, deeper note. The low, gurgling sounds startled her and she pulled the wire back over her head and tapped the harmonica on her skirt in order to drain it.

  She sat down on the sandy red earth not far from José, tucked her moccasined feet under her skirt, and slowly started to play “Skip to My Lou.” The rhythm was not right. She stopped, hummed a little to herself, licked her lips, and started again. Her throat was tight, her breathing was hard to control, her hands shook, but after a few minutes she relaxed. Her tongue moved over the holes more easily. She inhaled and exhaled and darted her tongue here and there to cover the wind channels. Old tunes came back to her. Suddenly she was playing the mountain men’s and traders’ songs taught her by York and Cruzatte.

  Someone started to keep time on a skin-covered, hollowed-out section of a log. Others were dancing the heel-toe step. José stared in disbelief, as if he had never heard the harmonica played. Sacajawea’s breath hummed its way into whistlelike music, and with a fluttering of her hands cupped around the harmonica, out came the song of a jay, a catbird, a meadowlark, a mockingbird.

  Big Badger came to the edge of the crowd and stared as if he half expected the harmonica to explode in Sacajawea’s hands and the big Comanche cannibal owl, Piamuhmpits, to fly out. Soon he was caught up in the rhythm. He swayed on the balls of his feet, the quillwork on his leggings glittered in the flickering firelight.

  Sacajawea recognized Spring, Hides Well, Kicking Horse, Flower, Bear Woman, and Hawk Feather.

  Sacajawea finished with a flourish, paused, and stood up clasping the harmonica in her hands. She turned to Jose’s father and spoke in her simple Spanish, always using hand signs. “I look for Baptiste Charbonneau. He is with white men. I am mother—” She hesitated, looking at the man’s blank face, then in a burst of desperation said, “The Chief Red Hair, he knows. You know him?”

  “I do not know Red Hair.” The man’s mustache quivered.

  José dropped a handful of hawk’s bells in her lap. Each bell was no larger than the cap on a post oak’s acorn. As Sacajawea nodded her appreciation and lifted one for admiration, she felt a tug on the copper wire around her neck. She figured José was demanding his harmonica be given back. All at once the wire was pulled tighter. It cut into her throat, shutting off the air to her windpipe. She tried to call out, “Aiaught.” Sacajawea clawed, fighting with outstretched arms. She could not breathe and her face darkened to almost purple. She wondered if she were going to suffocate. In one last effort she concentrated all her energy on the act of pulling herself backward and down to get away from the cutting wire. She felt someone grab her arms. She twisted her body and brought her head down. The wire slipped up over the back of her head. She gulped in deep breaths of air and recognized Gray Bone’s cackle and She Cat’s snicker.

  Gray Bone pushed She Cat out of the way, picked the harmonica off the ground, pitched it down against a flat stone and pounced on it with all her weight. It crunched and crumpled beneath her moccasins.

  “White man’s squaw!” spat Gray Bone. “You are not Comanche!”

  Sacajawea pulled away from She Cat’s grasp and jumped toward the broad Gray Bone like a coyote leaping after a gopher. The Mexicans shrank back. This was a fight between squaws. They gathered up their belongings, loading the carts and mules fast.

  Hatred blazed in Gray Bone’s face. She grabbed a stone and pounded Sacajawea. Sacajawea tried to callout to José or his father, but no matter where she looked there was no one to help. Her throat hurt from the strangling as much as her body did from the beating she took.

  But this beating and near fatal choking was not the only price she paid for her few moments of music. Next morning as she came up the path from the bathing place she met Gray Bone with her two companions, She Cat and Kianceta, Weasel Woman. She Cat, a large, old woman, wore jangling circles of silver wire in a half dozen holes along the rim of one ear. Weasel Woman’s hair was cut short. Sacajawea thought perhaps she was in mourning for a lost relative, and felt pity for the woman. Even outdoors their bodies smelled of smoke, dogs, and rancid grease. Most Comanche women morning-bathed frequently, but it was obvious these two either slept too late or did not bother with the washing ritual.

  The three women walked close to Sacajawea and pushed her toward a grove of scrub oaks. She struggled to free herself, but they threw her in the sand, holding her arms and legs. Wild fear gushed through her. They began staking her arms out, then her legs. She strained against the bonds, but they held. She called out to them asking what they were doing and why. They were silent.

  Gray Bone drew her bone-handled knife out of a small parfleche she had tied on her belt and stared down at Sacajawea, her eyes glittering mercilessly. She wiped her knife once across her tunic and motioned to her two assistants. Obediently they crowded, one pushing her hand firmly over Sacajawea’s eyes to block her view of the proceedings, the other lying heavily across her stomach to pin her securely to the ground. A wad of soft leather was pushed tightly into her mouth.

  Sacajawea’s body felt hot as fire despite the coolness in the ground under her, despite the morning breeze. She wondered what they were going to do. She thought she felt a rawhide band being slipped around her head. “No, no!” she tried to cry out. She imagined that next they would throw water on her head and then the bandage would feel tight. She knew that dying of a rawhide band around her head would be slow. She would feelonly a small headache at first, growing, growing, until—She screamed silently until she ran out of breath. Wouldn’t anyone look for her? No one knew she’d gone for her bath; the others in Pronghorn’s lodge were yet asleep.

  The morning sun was just topping the nearby ridge, throwing off hues of pale orange, pink, and the glistening yellow. It gave more light. Gray Bone, knife in hand, stepped to Sacajawea’s head and squatted. In an agony of despair Sacajawea mumbled through the wad of leather, “Great Spirit, take the cloud from their eyes. They do not see what they are doing.”

  Coolly Gray Bone went to work. She adjusted the headband so that Sacajawea’s hair would not get in the way. Now Sacajawea knew what she was doing. For she felt an excruciating pain in the area of her nose. This was the Comanche way of branding a woman a prostitute for life. It was over in half a minute. Gray Bone knew what she was doing. She did not fully sever the nose, thereby giving her the mark of a loose woman. Gray Bone wanted only to disfigure Sacajawea so that no one could be sure if she were an upstanding woman or one of questionable quality. Her disfigured face would leave her life a question to others; it would leave her a nothing; no one would pay her any attention.

  Sacajawea lay writhing in pain as the two fat, stinking assistants cut the bonds on her arms and legs. Blood soaked the sand as the women marched backward off toward the village, their right hands outstreched toward Sacajawea, thumb between index and second finger, in the ges
ture of scorn.

  “And your ears should be cut off, you—flirt,” sneered Gray Bone. “Now the one called Jerk Meat, the son of our chief, will bring fine Mexican horses in trade for my own sweet daughter, Round Belly. She mooned over him all winter and he did not see her. Now he will see he can do no better than take the first daughter of the Medicine Man as his woman.”

  When they were out of sight, Sacajawea thought, let this not be the morning of my going to another world. She managed to feel her nose, all the while breathing through her mouth and tasting the bubbles of blood that dripped along the back of her throat. The nose wascut back to the bone. She fainted. Coming to, she realized she must do something or she would bleed to death. She pulled herself to the water and washed her face carefully. There was much pain and she was afraid of fainting again. Slowly she pulled the leather headband down over the nose to hold it in place. The effort was great. Sacajawea’s mind whirled with the words: Round Belly—Jerk Meat.

  Her world blackened. When she came to, she heard the gentle pit-pat of the late spring sap from the oaks dripping on their newly formed leaves. Some of the sap hit the sand, making it sticky. It dripped on Sacajawea. Her arms were sticky. There was some fluff of the cattail nearby and when she moved her arm it stuck. It stuck to her fingers when she tried to pull it off. The trees were rich in spring sap. Cattail fluff! She opened her swollen eyelids wider, then gingerly felt her throbbing face. The face was swathed in the soft fluff and tied firmly with wide rawhide bands. A piece of wood or bone was shaped over the top of her nose. She could not breathe from the nose, but she no longer tasted blood. She was weak and exhausted and could not remember bandaging her face so expertly. She tried to pull her thoughts together. I must leave the Quohadas. I’ll go north and ask about Baptiste, maybe I’ll go as far as the People in the mountains. I am disgraced. Jerk Meat must never see me. He would scorn me, and I could not bear it.

  She slept for a time, gaining strength. She imagined something soft as cattail fluff touching her hand and a voice as far away as a dream, “We raided the Mexican traders. They have fewer horses and one less well-fed trader. Ha-ha-hee-hee.”

  She thought only of Jerk Meat and his steady, trustful eyes, his gentleness and understanding. The soft fluff touched her hand again and again. She awoke, and the sky was as black as smoke-hole soot. The only sounds in the dark were the whiffling sniffs of a horse as it cropped new grass, the drip-dripping of the oaks, and the sliding water sound of the creek.

  Sacajawea awoke next on her own pallet. Her stomach hurt, as if pinched, and her face felt like a huge puffball. She was thirsty constantly; the water she drankfrom the skin bottle Spring brought did not quench her thirst. Her throat felt swollen, and her mouth was dry and hot as if she had a fever. Then she remembered her nose and her vow to run away.

  “Why did you bring me home?” Sacajawea asked, conscious of her rudeness, but driven by her own necessity to know. Her teeth chattered so that she could hardly speak between them. She clenched her jaw hard on them.

  Calmly, taking no offense, Spring answered, “Gray Bone’s boy, Wolf, told our brother to find you by the stream, hidden in the oaks. He said you had fallen and cut the side of your nose. It is good our brother looked for you. Kicking Horse said you would not have lived through the night if you had been unattended.”

  “Kicking Horse?”

  “Well, ai, he helped Jerk Meat push the cut together. He did it in the same manner that you held together the cut on the son of Twisted Horn’s face. They were quite pleased with their sewing!”

  Spring had fastened the tiny hawk’s bells to the fringe of her skirt, and when she moved they made a gay, tinkling sound.

  Wild Plum gurgled from inside his cradleboard hung on a pole peg in the tepee.

  “Sewing on my nose?”

  “Your ears have heard,” Spring said quietly.

  Her face ached, and her heart stayed on the ground. She could only think, what if Gray Bone tried more retaliation? She resolved to keep the secret of what had happened. “Jerk Meat?” she asked.

  “He has many horses and a few mules. He hunts and rides to show off his new herd.”

  The day came when the pain in her stomach eased, and the fever cooled, and the chill was gone. She felt only a dreadful, draining weakness. The binding was removed from her nose, and she helped Spring with the easy chores. She gave thanks to the Great Spirit for keeping her life and for the sharp edge of Gray Bone’s knife, because there was only a thin line across the front of her nostrils and a thin pink ridge on either side to prove her nose had been severed at all.

  Jerk Meat did not come to see her, and she felt flameon her cheeks when she dared imagine he went to see Round Belly.

  One afternoon Big Badger lumbered into the tepee and sat down with a wheeze. When he was young he could lasso an enemy and drag him to death. It was many years since he had thrown a lariat or gone out on the warpath, but he was still looked up to.

  “Everywhere I go there is some talk,” he grumbled. The fatty sacks under his eyes quivered. “What is there now between you and your brother? If there is anything, let us get on with it. I see Gray Bone grooming her daughter as a wife for my grandson. Wagh! The only reason I can see Jerk Meat going to that lodge is for talk with Kicking Horse about healing medicines.”

  “I would like to have you show me how to make a bow so that it shoots straight.”

  “That is a brave’s education. What do you want with that kind of knowledge?”

  “There may come a time when I will need to know more than I do, Grandfather.”

  “I can no longer fight, but I do not expect you to do it, even though you know more than most women of your age. And you do not have to hunt meat for me. I expect you to find a man among the Quohadas who will care for me in my old age.” He straightened out his thin, rheumatic legs with a groan. “I have not had good luck with many great-grandchildren. There is Wild Plum. I’d like more for this lodge. Well, then, it might serve Jerk Meat right if that fat daughter of Gray Bone’s caught him off guard and he ended with her for his woman. She is built for childbearing.” Big Badger eyed Sacajawea carefully.

  She did not blink an eye, but listened intently to the old man’s complaints.

  “My granddaughter, Spring, has no time to take care of an old man like me. Her man died in a raid on the Utes. He was rich and had many horses, but those horses have dwindled in the lot of Pronghorn. I think he butchers them for winter meat. So—by a miracle I have a new granddaughter. But she has another man’s brand on her—and so she believes she is not enticing to men. Well, in my opinion—”

  “Grandfather, you know perfectly well that I willtake care of you all the time I am here.” Sacajawea stroked the white strings of hair on the old man’s head.

  “And will you now consort with your brother?”

  “Grandfather!”

  “All right,” he said petulantly, waving his hand. “I did not mean to put it exactly that way. But I know how you both have looked at one another. Gray Bone acts disgraced before the whole band by me and my family because Jerk Meat does not offer a fine horse or two for Round Belly. She knows he has a distinctive, white horse that would more than serve as a bride-price with any family in this band.”

  Hides Well came into the tepee. “There are things beyond ordinary understanding. We should be grateful to have Lost Woman in our lodge. She must follow her own path.”

  “The woman, Gray Bone, sickens me,” mumbled Big Badger.

  The next day Sacajawea brought a big load of firewood back to the lodge on her back. It was tied together by wide leather bands. The load was heavy and she was perspiring, in no mood to stop and gossip with the women who stood in front of their tepees waving to her. Inside the lodge Sacajawea bent way down to slide the load off her back. She rested a moment then asked, “Where is Jerk Meat? I saw his white horse tied outside.”

  Spring said, “He told us he was going south, maybe as far as the Red River. I believe he is loo
king for mustangs.”

  “Why didn’t he ride the white gelding?”8 Sacajawea was puzzled.

  “I suppose he wanted you to care for it,” said Big Badger after he cleared his throat noisily.

  “It ought to be with the rest of the herd. There is not enough grass around the lodge anymore.” She went out to lead the white horse out to the pasture on the other side of the village, where everyone let their herd graze freely.

  “She didn’t notice the horse was loaded with gifts,” burst out Hides Well, clapping her hand over her mouth.

  Sacajawea was back, dragging packs and leather boxes from the back of the horse into the tepee. She said, “I suppose he left these things for us in exchangefor taking care of his favorite horse. If we did not know better, we might think all this a gift to the family of a bride. Just look at these Mexican blankets. Beautiful! I like the red. And baskets of silver beads! They could be from some great warrior.” She hung a long strand of silver around Spring’s neck and gave the baskets to Hides Well. A box of rough onyx stones she gave to Big Badger for making bird points.

  She gave a whole pack of eagle feathers, including the blanket it was wrapped in, to Pronghorn. He said, “Thank you,” cleared his throat, looked at Big Badger, and wiped a hand across his face as though trying to hide some huge secret.

  Big Badger suddenly had a coughing fit. Afterward his eyes snapped. He was obviously enjoying the whole situation.

  Sacajawea looked from one to the other. “Have you been thinking what I am thinking—that some man found Jerk Meat’s horse staked out front and thought it a handy place to leave his gifts? Honestly, I think somebody wants Spring to be his woman. Oh—I am stupid! Forgive me—they were not things for me to give away.” She was confused and embarrassed.

  Spring spoke up, “Listen, if all this were for me, I’d divide it exactly the same way. You keep the red blanket, my sister, and the string of little silver beads. I’ll keep the many-colored blanket and the little gray and black one for Wild Plum.”