Now he had to persuade the council. He spent the last two days before the parley politicking--talking to Bazel and Sacajawea, to Mountain Ram, who was now crippled, to Broken Hand, Little Eagle, Fat Bear, Buffalo Horn, Crazy Eyes, to every man who would attend the council. He had no idea whether he would get support from anyone but Jim.
Washakie puffed, then saluted the earth, the sky, and the four winds.
"Our brother Paump has asked to me to call this great council," he began. "We will speak of what we must do concerning the Frenchman, who now comes as many as the locusts--who drinks the water, burns the wood, and kills the buffalo of our hunting grounds, so that the Shoshone people may one day have not enough to eat. Paump has lived among the white men and knows their hearts. Therefore do not be offended that I have invited him to sit here beside me and to speak to you his heart about the Frenchman.”
He passed the pipe to Paump, who puffed ceremonially. Ordinarily, the first speeches would have been preliminary skirmishing, but he decided to pitch straight in.
"My brothers, the white man wants your land, your game, your water, your wood, your children, your minds, your hearts, and perhaps your lives.
"Before the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men, the Frenchmen came across the Salt-Water-Everywhere to this land. From the beginning they fought with the Indians and took the land where they had lived since the time before the memories of the grandfathers of their oldest men. First they pushed the red man away from the Salt-Water-Everywhere, beyond the first range of mountains, and took their land for themselves. They promised, however, that the red man would have the land beyond those mountains to live upon as long as the grass shall grow and the sun shall shine.
"Then the white men themselves crossed the mountains and began to take the land. When the Indians fought them, they sent the long knives with many guns to drive the red men far to the west or to kill them. They killed many, and stole the lands of the others. Only fifteen years ago they declared that all the land west of the Missouri River shall belong to the Indian as long as the grass shall grow and the sun shall shine. They herded all the red men of the east together and drove them in herds like tamed oxen to the west side of the Missouri River. Even to the Frenchman that march is now known as the Trail of Tears, for many died of weariness, of hunger, and of sorrow.
"Now, however, they wish to use for themselves the land which they promised to the red man for as long as water shall run downhill. They wish to make a great trail to the Salt-Water-Everywhere that lies to the west. Last summer wagons came thick as grasshoppers across our land, scavenging all that lay in their path and leaving it barren. Last summer the long knives sent out a band to mark the trail. Soon the long knives will come to guard the trail with their rifles, and the long knives will live in the forts and feed off the land.
"My brothers, the Frenchmen are many. The Great White Father alone rules a hundred villages each with as many Frenchmen as there are braves, squaws, and children in the Shoshone nation. And for the Frenchmen in those villages there are ten more living in smaller villages. Many more white men live across the Salt-Water-Everywhere, and now they come to increase the number swarming across our lands. They outnumber us as the flies outnumber the buffalo.
"They will come as thick as mayflies if we permit it. They have the boat that moves driven by mist, as you have heard, which carries many people. They also have a wagon that is driven by mist; it pulls many more wagons behind it, so that together they stretch farther than the highest lodgepole pine. This wagon travels many sleeps in a single day. Many will come to our country on that wagon and will spread like plague through our land. "My brothers, they are many and they are strong. Perhaps they are too strong for us. But we must fight like made-to-dies. If we die now, that will be better than living to be toothless old men, starving as we wander the earth because we have no lands. Perhaps, however, we can in our brave fight stop them. For the land is on our side.
"The Frenchmen who cross our land in wagons do not understand it and do not love it. Therefore they come in fear and quake in their sleep. They are poor hunters, nearly starving in a land of plenty. We can use their fear, their lack of skill, and the land.
"All the wagons that cross to Oregon must come through South Pass. The next pass over which oxen may draw wagons is many sleeps to the south, farther than any Shoshone has traveled. The land there is a desert, without water or game. Few white men can cross it without perishing. "Brothers, we can close South Pass to the wagons. Its western side belongs to us. It is narrow, and our braves can hold it against many guns.
The eastern side of South Pass belongs to the Crows. We can ask them to join us in blocking the pass against the wagons. Against the Shoshones no Frenchmen will get through. The Crows will make the Shoshones even stronger, and we will no longer help the Frenchmen by letting Shoshones kill Crows and Crows kill Shoshones.
"Brothers, until now the white men we have seen have been men of good heart, and they were few. They took only the beaver, which we did not need, and they gave us guns in fair return. The Frenchmen who now come in wagons on the great trail are many, and they are not of good heart. They take our buffalo, our deer, our elk, our wood, our water, and give us nothing in return but misery. Brothers, we can force them to a halt, and we must."
As a sign that he had finished, Paump passed the pipe to Mauvais Gauche. He hoped he’d done right spitting it all out at once like that.
It would be a long process now, for every brave who wished to speak would be heard in full, and none cut short. He would not know what had been decided until the pipe went full circle to Washakie, and then perhaps full circle again and again. Aside from the chiefs and the principal warriors who sat in the circle, many braves and even squaws sat and stood behind them listening; some of those braves would speak and be heard.
Mauvais Gauche supported Paump, except that he would not go in league with the Crows but would kill every one he saw and curse their grandchildren. One Eye said that the Frenchmen were too many, and perhaps the Shoshone should demand payment for the crossing of their land, because they could not keep the wagons away. Buffalo Head agreed with One Eye, Fat Bear with Mauvais Gauche; Bazel said that he believed that the Frenchmen would be brothers to the Shoshone and teach them their great medicine; Crazy Eyes called for the closing of the pass. And so it went, hour after hour. Opinion seemed split, except that all were against making a pact with the Crows. Damn, Paump thought, they’d rather raid their old enemies than save their lives and their land. The pipe had circled nearly two full times when they quit for the day, but Washakie had said nothing.
The next morning it went the same. Paump had no idea what they would decide. Jim, sitting in the place of least honor on Washakie’s right, helped with an impassioned plea for war against all whites. He reminded everyone that the whites had made slaves of the black men--braves, too, not just squaws--and had bought and sold them like horses. They would do the same to the Shoshones, he said, if the Shoshones did not fight like made-to-dies. Baptiste saluted him with an eyebrow.
It was time for those sitting in the rear to speak. Mountain Ram was first. He said simply that the whites had killed his one daughter and his other daughter’s brave without cause, and he would see their blood in the dust even if he, an aging cripple, had to kill them himself. Three more braves called for war on the Frenchmen: If Paump, who had lived among them many years, said that their hearts were bad, it must be so. Baptiste thought maybe the ayes had it.
"Fathers and sons"--it was Sacajawea’s voice--"I also know the Frenchman’s heart, and know it to be good. " Damn, he couldn’t believe she would speak up in council, being a squaw. Washakie did not interrupt her. "I lived near the white man’s big village St. Louis for two summers and two winters, and visited there many more times. Always they treated me with sincerity and respect, and my children also. Furthermore, I have the word of the Red-Headed Chief that the Great White Father holds us as he holds his brothers and sisters and sons and
daughters. This I believe, for the Red-Headed Chief always spoke the truth to me. The Shoshone must never black his face against the Frenchmen."
That hurt. Baptiste looked at his knees while he listened to Washakie sum up. He invoked open hands for the Frenchmen, blackened faces for the Crows. It was settled.
"Whar you went cockeyed, John, was askin' ’em to jine up the Crows. Wagh! If Frémont come back with fifty men, the Shoshone would give him five hundred warriors to help kill Crows, and fork up the know-how besides. The Crows’d do the same against the Shoshones, or the Blackfeet, or the Sioux. And t’other way. John, they druther kill each other than the U.S. Cavalry."
"Looks like it.”
"What ye gonna do?”
"Stay here a spell. The time isn’t yet."
"It will be, afore 1ong."
EPILOGUE
SUMMER, 1847: The spearhead of the Mormon migration crossed the Wasatch Mountains and neared the Great Salt Lake, in country hunted and disputed by the Shoshones and the Utes for generations. Brigham Young announced, by the authority of divine revelation, that this territory was ideal for the cultivation of crops, for settlements, and for the Saints’ way of life; back up the trail a ways, Jim Bridger had announced the same to Brigham Young, by the authority of a quarter-century spent learning the whole interior West. Brigham exhorted his people to the stalwart courage and determination to succeed that would be needed.
1848: Paump, having observed the impassioned and inspired efforts of the Saints’ first year, and also having noted the astonishing numbers of Mormons who kept bumping into the area in wagons, decided that a little distance from them would be a tonic. By then he had a second squaw, a teen-aged girl named Aspen whom he thought remarkably beautiful. He packed up Spotted Deer, Aspen, and their year-old daughter, and rode north for Salmon River country. He promised Sacajawea that he would be back next summer to trade for supplies at Fort Hall.
Brigham Young’s representatives promised the Shoshones that they would teach them how to tend the soil so that they would have food, and how to tend their souls so that they would be saved. Washakie and the other chiefs, aware that their people were beginning to go hungry from lack of game, pronounced themselves grateful.
Paump sets up this lodge beside a swift-running creek seventy miles below the head of Middle Fork, in the upper part of the river’s deep canyon. Between his lodge and the river stretches a grassy meadow about a hundred yards wide. That winter he shoots an elk, a bear, and two deer, and could shoot as much in any week of that season. He builds a second lodge to use as a smokehouse.
1850: The Shoshones began to distinguish between "Americans," whom they liked as good friends, and "Mormons," whom they did not like. Paump builds a log cabin. After living in it two months, he decides to travel to the plains to get buffalo hides for another tipi. And he presents to Sacajawea that summer, at the tribe’s camp on the Siskadee, now better known as the Green River, another grandchild, this time a son.
1853: Washakie, angered by a slight from the captain of the Green River ferry, shouted at the Mormons who owned the ferry that he would kill every white man, woman, and child he found on the eastern bank of the river the next morning. The Mormons spent the night getting ready to defend themselves. At sunrise Washakie came back with fifteen warriors and declared his people to be the good friends of the white man.
Paump’s year has evolved its own seasons: The winter he spends by his meadow in the canyon, where the animals join him for shelter against the deep snow and zero temperatures of the surrounding mountains. When the snow melts away from the bottom of the rocks and trees, and then from the meadows, and the brown grass begins to green and the wildflowers bloom, he moves slowly up the river. After a couple of weeks the salmon run, and for a few days he catches the huge fish on hooks made from pins and smokes the meat on wood racks above open flames. The squaws gather rosehips and every imaginable berry as they travel, for drying and for use in pemmican. All summer they camp above a savage set of falls near the head of the river, in a series of meadows that unfold as broad, flat, green, and gentle as any country estate in England. He spends his days on long walks or long rides, for here the country is high, cool, and truly alpine, the hills covered with pine, spruce, and fir, the water plentiful, the temperatures cool. Sometimes he spends whole afternoons inventing new tunes on his harmonica; sometimes he spends whole days sitting still in the forest, watching, listening, drinking in. And in the autumn, when the aspens begin to turn color, he makes a circle through the mountains back to his meadow in the canyon. So he has a summer home in the high alpine plateau, a winter home low in the warm canyons, and a spring and fall of traveling.
1854: Brigham Young sent missionaries to Washakie with the Book of Mormon, The chief whiffed on the pipe, then passed it and the book left around the council circle without comment. Every brave puffed, fingered the book, and pronounced the book good for the white man, no good for the Indian. After the book had made the circle over twenty times, without a word being said in its favor, Washakie upbraided the councilors for their stupidity:
"You are all fools, you are blind, and cannot see; you have no ears, for you do not hear; you are fools for you do not understand. These men are our friends. The great Mormon captain has talked with our Father above the clouds, and He told the Mormon captain to send these men here to tell us the truth, and not a lie.
"They have not got forked tongues. They talk straight, with one tongue, and tell us that after a few more snows the buffalo will be gone, and if we do not learn some other way to get something to eat, we will starve to death.
"Now, we know that is the truth, for this country was once covered with buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope, and we had plenty to eat, and also robes for bedding, and to make lodges. But now, since the white man has made a trail across our land, and has killed off our game, we are hungry, and there is nothing for us to cat. Our women and children cry for food and we have no food to give them.
"The time was when our Father, who lives above the clouds, loved our fathers, who lived long ago, and His face was bright, and He talked with our fathers. His face shone upon them, and their skins were white like the white man’s. Then they were wise and wrote books, and the Great Father talked good to them; but after a while our people would not hear Him, and they quarreled and stole and fought, until the Great Father got mad, because His children would not hear Him talk.
"Then he turned his face away from them, and His back to them, and that caused a shade to come over them, and that is why our skin is black and our minds dark. That darkness came because the Great Father’s back was toward us, and now we cannot see as the white man sees. We can make a bow and arrow, but the white man’s mind is strong and light.
"The white men can make this [picking up a Colt’s revolver], and a little thing that he carries in his pocket; so that he can tell where the sun is on a dark day, and when it is night he can tell when it will come daylight. This is because the face of the Father is toward him, and His back is toward us. But after a while the Great Father will quit being angry, and will turn his face toward us. Then our skin will be light."
Paump is tramping, this summer, across a steep hillside above the head of Middle Fork; he moves slowly and keeps his eyes roving after rotten logs. He walks more than a mile, stopping at seven or eight logs, before he finds what he is looking for: Hidden in the decaying wood, on the shady side of the log in marshy ground, grows an alpine orchid, pale burgundy tinged with violet. He picks it gently. It is his second of the day--one for each squaw. He smiles at the thought of the speech he has long since stopped giving them, about how they are getting free what only queens can afford to buy.
1856: One of them does move a little--just the quick jerk from freeze to freeze that birds make with their heads--and Paump has them. He’s carrying his Hawken, as always, but he also has a four-foot club in his right hand. He stands still for a moment and watches them, three prairie chickens perched stock-still on the ground underneath
a big fir tree. He wonders if, when he stands still so long, they forget he is there, or can’t distinguish him. Then he bolts. He clubs the first one before it moves at all, and gets the second after the short step it takes before it flies. The third sits stupidly on the lowest limb of the fir, not thirty feet away. But he doesn’t shoot it. It’s by not shooting often, and never missing when he does shoot, that he keeps his trips to the fort for trading down to once in two or three years.
1859: Spotted Deer raises up from the ground, the newly pulled camas roots in her hand, and freezes. A hundred yards across the meadow, green with spring, Paump realizes something is wrong, then sees what it is: A grizzly, probably not long out of hibernation, is inspecting her closely from twenty yards away. No telling what the damn thing will do. He walks slowly toward Spotted Deer, his rifle in one hand; he doesn’t want to shoot it, because he doesn’t need the meat. It still doesn’t move. He passes Spotted Deer, who retreats to hold the horses, and yells at it: "Hey! Horse turd! Wake up! Get out of here!" The bear just blinks. "Move your ass! Clear out!" The bear doesn’t budge. It is stupid. He looks back at Spotted Deer, who is mounted and has the reins of the second horse. All right, okay, he’ll see what happens. He slides his wiping stick off his Hawken. Slowly, step by careful step, he eases toward the bear, which is on its hind legs. It’s just a yearling. Maybe it’s thinking of settling in with his little family and teaching them a new dance. He raises his wiping stick.
Just then the bear drops to all fours with a growl and charges. Paump drops the stick and the gun and runs. Shit, the bear’s almost on him. He zigs hard to the right, stumbles, rolls, and is back on his feet running.
Charbonneau - Winfred Blevins Page 29