From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  As for the mountains they would have to cross, the Indians’ descriptions made him believe they were not like the Alleghenies, as Jefferson believed, but probably much higher. Still, he had been led to believe they should be no harder to cross than the Alleghenies, thanks to rivers. If the forked Missouri wound among those mountains as the Potomac and Shenandoah and Monongahela rivers wound through the Alleghenies, the ranges would be no great obstacle. But the traverse apparently would require the cooperation of the Shoshonis, and that was why William Clark now was having this unorthodox notion of taking a girl squaw along as a member of a military expedition. Her husband Charbonneau was a man of no observable merit except his ability to speak in the Minnetaree tongue. But he was strong and wilderness-wise and would not be a burden if he had to be taken along as a condition of obtaining his squaw’s services. William had made up his mind to hire the couple, come next spring, and would broach the idea to Lewis this very afternoon. At the moment, Lewis was in another of the huts, doctoring two soldiers who had cut themselves with axes while hewing logs for the fort.

  Charbonneau now was opening and displaying, on the floor, the huge bundle of skins he had made his squaw carry over.

  At this moment, the door of the hut was opened. The little Indian girl gasped, then yelped. William glanced up. She was petrified, both palms over her mouth, and he saw what she was staring at.

  Lewis had come in, so blinded by afternoon sunlight that he had almost stepped upon the girl, and the front of his clothing was drenched with the blood of surgery. It was he whose appearance had made her gasp. And behind him loomed the horror that had made her cry out:

  York, hulking, scowling, his clothes also spattered with crimson.

  “Tell her,” William said quickly to Charbonneau, “that the black one will not hurt her. Better tell her he’s human, too,” he added. Then he looked to Lewis, who was just taking in the sight of the visitors. His face was still tense from the strain of surgery.

  “Had to fix a cut artery,” he said to William, setting down his medicine chest. “Whew! A bloody blood bath. Hm. What have we here?”

  At that moment the girl started again; another large, black apparition had appeared in the doorway, following York. It was Scannon, pink tongue hanging between white fangs, tail wagging. He went straight to her and licked her hands, which were still clasped over her face. She cringed, squinting. Her husband was laughing at her and telling her what William had said. York was looking at her with a kindly smile.

  “These are our new interpreters, with your permission,” William told Lewis. “He talks Minnetaree and she’s a Shoshoni.”

  “Interpreters? You mean, take a woman along?” Lewis growled. “Y’re daft.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” William said. He knew he could convince him.

  And he looked around the room at the strange scene: the surly, blood-soaked Lewis, the beaming black York, the rancid-looking voyageur and his pregnant wife-child, whom Scannon was soothing with great slurps. This roomful of unlikely characters would be the nucleus of an army expedition into an unmapped land. He couldn’t help it: he started chuckling.

  Lordy, he thought, if Brother George could see this menagerie!

  PRIVATE JOHN NEWMAN HAD BEEN TRYING HARD TO ATONE for his crime. He sat in Captain Lewis’s quarters now, stooped far over, his hands and feet in a pan of tepid water. Trying to do his best on a hunting trip, he had run into the river’s edge to pull out a wounded antelope that had plunged through the ice. Now Newman was being treated for frostbite.

  “Cap’n Lewis, sir?”

  “Aye, Newman?”

  “Have you reconsidered, sir? About me going back?”

  Lewis said after a pause:

  “You’ve been an exemplary soldier, Newman, and in our minds you stand forgiven. But you can see that I’d weaken our temper if I changed the sentence, can’t you?”

  “Will you not bend at all, sir? I really want to stay with the Corps, truly I do, sir.”

  “I appreciate that sentiment, Newman. But let’s not talk about it any more just now.”

  December 16, 1804

  “WE KNOW,” CAPTAIN LEWIS TOLD THE THREE VISITING traders, “that your interpreter La France has been spreading bad word about us in the villages. This must stop, or else. We learn also, Mister Larocque, that you intend to give British flags and medals to the Indians here, and that your North West Company has a notion of building a fort at the Minnetaree village. Let me advise you very strongly about such notions.” The other two traders, George Henderson and George Bunch, looked out of the sides of their eyes at Larocque, then sullenly stared at Lewis, whose contempt for them was scarcely masked. William watched these proceedings, and remembered Anthony Wayne, a decade ago, ordering the British to vacate their Fort Miami, which they had so audaciously built on American territory. Some things, it seemed, never changed. “It’s plain,” Lewis went on, “that your visit with us is to learn why we’re here. I’ll answer that: because this is American land. Now. While you’re visiting here, we’ll do anything in our power to make you comfortable, and to prepare you for a safe return to Canada. But mark my words well: Your company and its sharp practices have no place in this territory. Understood! Now. Let’s eat.”

  36

  FORT MANDAN, DAKOTA COUNTRY

  December 25, 1804

  WILLIAM WAS JOLTED AWAKE IN HIS SLEEPING ROBE BY THE sounds of a gun battle, the crashing of many rifles, right outside.

  He flung off the musty buffalo robe and reached in the dark for his rifle in its place on the wall above his bed, his heart slamming. The air in the room was bitter cold, though the smoke-scent from last night’s fire still rankled and there were still coals glowing orange. Lewis was thrashing about with equal urgency in the darkness on his side of the room, and from the interpreter’s room next door Charbonneau could be heard calling “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” while the voices of his wives keened fearful queries. William and Lewis bumped into each other as they rushed for the door—and at that moment, William remembered something and noticed something. He grasped Lewis’s arm and whispered, “Wait.”

  There was no battle-sound going on out there now, no yelling; it was dead quiet.

  A smile spread on William’s face. He whispered something to Lewis, unlatched the door stealthily, and flung it wide, and they shouted into the compound:

  “Happy Christmas, boys!”

  Forty men were standing there crowding the little parade ground in the predawn halflight, wreathed with gunsmoke, their rifles still pointing toward the fading stars.

  “Happy Christmas, Cap’n Lewis! Happy Christmas, Cap’n Clark!” they roared back, then filled the compound with three boisterous cheers and an uproar of laughter.

  York limped out of the orderly room carrying a torch, and came to stand beside William. “Merry Christmas, Mast’ Billy.”

  “Merry Christmas, my man.” They had spent every Christmas they could remember together.

  The torch cast a warm flickering light around the snowy compound. York looked even more enormous than usual; he had taken to wearing two entire suits of underclothes and two suits of deerskins, since that subzero day two weeks ago when his feet and his penis had been frostbitten. His frostbite had become a grand joke among the men. It had suspended York’s performance as a Great Medicine Stud among the Mandan women.

  The men were awaiting the first speeches of the day from their captains. They knew they had better be brief, because it was cold as the Arctic pole here on the Upper Missouri. There had been nights of forty degrees below zero. It was not quite that cold now, but it felt like zero to William.

  Lewis began.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for your good cheer. And not just on this day of our Lord’s birth, but your good cheer every day of this arduous year. Well, we’re a long way from the comforts and the affections of our homes and families—just think how far!—but I should like to wager that there’s few families closer knit than we’ve all come to be, eh, what
?”

  They all murmured their assent, nudging each other affectionately and some of them gripping hands; it was as true a thing as they’d ever heard. He went on then.

  “This is to be our own day. I’ve asked the chiefs to keep themselves and their people at home, because this is our Great Medicine Day, so we won’t have the usual parade of savages through here.” The men laughed and feigned relief; the chiefs, curious about everything and always wanting to sleep in the fort, had become a daily annoyance. “There’ll be no female companionship for any of us today”—this was acknowledged by a collective moan of mock disappointment—“as the only women permitted among us this day are those in the seraglio of our interpreter.” The men looked amusedly at Charbonneau, who now stood in the doorway of his hut. Lewis went on: “Cannon will be fired at the raising of the colors. Controlled amounts—controlled amounts, mind you—of brandy will be dispensed during the day.” More cheers. “Thanks to our hunters, we’ve choice meat, which York is preparing for the banquet. You’ve all been issued sugar, pepper, dried apples, and the like, so you can try your hands at making Christmas delicacies at your own hearths—and if anyone should concoct anything he deems really superb, why, bring me some, and I’ll be happy to judge it.” They laughed, and he nodded. “The orderly room’s being cleared for dancing, fiddle music courtesy of Private Gibson and Saint Peter.” Saint Peter had become Cruzatte’s nickname. “As we’ve no chaplain in this army, every man who wants prayers will pray for himself, and Cap’n Clark and myself shall pray for all of you. That’s all I have to say now, except Merry Christmas, which I wish you from the very core of my heart. Cap’n Clark, anything to add?”

  The men were visibly moved by this unusual warmth and humor from their chief.

  William waited for their happy murmuring to subside, then he said, “Only this: there’s good news for the Mandan ladies up the river: York’s frostbite is healing up, and”—he turned with a wry smile to the big black man—“we won’t have to amputate.” York capered with glee, and the men roared.

  “Now, boys,” William said, “I know y’re old hands at entertaining yourselves, so have at it. A merry Christmas day to you all, and God bless every man of you!”

  They truly were good at entertaining themselves, and from the moment at sunrise when the swivel cannon saluted the hoisted colors, the new fort began to ring with exuberant shooting, laughter, fervent conversations, songs—some holy, some bawdy—Creole and Kentucky fiddling, the bleating of tin horns, the dashing of tambourines, the nasal-sounding twanging of jew’s harps, the thudding feet of men who danced with the grace of drunken bears.

  The fort was fragrant with the odor of roasting buffalo and baking sugar-cakes. York had been working since midnight basting and seasoning the buffalo sides, baking a sourdough bread laced with currants and cinnamon, and cooking a succotash of ground potato, pulverized corn, suet and seasonings. The men enjoyed the freedom of going to eat whenever they were hungry, whatever the time of day, and the pattern set itself early. They danced till they were famished, ate till they were stuffed and wheezing, rested and digested until they could dance again, then danced until they were famished again.

  William was drawn into the dancing room in early afternoon by a particularly catchy new kind of rhythm he had never heard before—an infectious tempo of snapping and slapping—and found Charbonneau at the center of the room performing hilarious light-footed antics astonishing for someone of his bulk and his surly appearance: a French-Canadian dance involving the snapping of fingers and slapping of thighs. He was teaching it to the Americans, and was thus redeeming himself a bit in the eyes of the troops. Most of them had envied him his harem and considered him a buffoon.

  His squaws, in compliance with the orders of the day, were allowed to look on but not participate in the white men’s dancing. They were obviously intimidated and bewildered by the merry mayhem in the room, by the high, squalling, squeaking, jiggling noise of the fiddles, which they surely had never heard before. The three women watched, open-mouthed, sometimes wincing at the shrill notes or the thundering voices, and they watched their own man Charbonneau with particular interest; obviously they had never seen him cavort in this manner before, and they seemed uncertain whether to admire him or make mockery among themselves about him. They kept turning to catch each other’s eyes, to smile or make round mouths, to cover their mouths with their palms or make hand signs.

  Charbonneau’s women all were comely. The oldest was not yet twenty, and had a face round as the full moon, and very full lips and huge breasts. The second was fine-featured and big-bodied, but her eyes were dull and she gave an impression of being slow-witted. She held a two-year-old boy, Charbonneau’s son, in her lap. She too was a Shoshoni, William had learned, but she seemed to have neither the intelligence nor the accuracy of memory to be any use to the expedition.

  The slight and big-eyed one, though—Bird Woman, or Sacajawea—was of a different caliber, and William had become even more impressed by her. For some reason—perhaps because she had been a chief’s daughter—she was not timid in the presence of men, and would speak up when something needed saying. William had even heard this child-woman contradict her husband at times when he was being untruthful or making an ass of himself. But for all that courage, she was not brazen, not a shrew. She was, in fact, demure, and capable of a childish wonderment yet. She reminded William of a doe more than a bird, with those great, soft eyes. York favored her, hanging around and being-avuncular, and Scannon seemed to have designated himself her protector; he stayed by her nearly as much as by his master now, lying near her, looking up at her now and then and thumping his tail on the floor. Just now, while Charbonneau was teaching the men to dance, Sacajawea was rubbing Scannon’s head, scratching under the black, silky flaps of his ears, causing him to close his eyes and tilt his head in utter bliss. Ordinarily Scannon would flee from fiddle music, because the high notes sometimes made him need to howl. But apparently he now had rather be near the Shoshoni girl than away from the music. William watched them for a while, then turned to watch Charbonneau. Suddenly he seemed to feel eyes on him; intensely he felt it, and he glanced over to see the girl studying him. She was studying him with such absorption that she failed to drop her eyes, and for a moment, through several bars of the music, they were looking straight into each other’s eyes.

  When she realized that he was smiling at her, her eyebrows raised and she returned his smile—just for an instant, then dropped her gaze to Scannon and moved her brown fingers to caress under his jaw.

  Back in his cabin, William sat down near the fire and wrapped a flannel shawl around his neck. The rheumatism was fierce, and he could hardly turn his head. Lewis looked up at him from his writings and, without saying anything, got up and put a kettle of water near the fire. Then he took a large section of flannel cloth, fashioned it into an oblong pad, and returned to his notes. When the water was steaming from the kettle spout he poured it into a bowl, steeped the flannel in it, and said:

  “Open your collar, and take off that shawl.” He applied the wet pad, almost too hot to bear, around William’s neck, and then refilled the kettle to heat more water. “We’ll keep this up off and on during the day,” he said.

  “Thankee. Feels relieved some already.”

  “Heat,” said Lewis. “Amazing what it’ll do for bones and sinews.” He poured a brandy for William and one for himself from William’s decanter. William raised his glass and they touched their drams with a clink.

  “Amazing what brandy makes ye think it does,” William said, “It’s heat, too, though, isn’t it? Merry Christmas, my friend.”

  “The same, my friend. Now I’ve something to say to you.” He squinted, as he seemed to need to do before declaring something from his heart, and said: “All my life, it seems, it’s been the darling project of my life to make this crossing to the Pacific. I’ve wanted the doing of it. I’ve wanted to be the first white man to see the head of the Missouri. I’ve wanted to b
e the first to peek over the Great Divide, and the first to reach the Pacific Ocean overland. I’ve wanted the first doing of it, and I’ve wanted the repute of it. I wanted men to say, ‘Meriwether Lewis made the crossing, it was he.’”