From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  The women and girl were now capering around the three advance horsemen, showing them their gifts and chattering like birds. Lewis advanced resolutely toward them. Now the three leading horsemen came riding slowly toward him through the grass, and he could feel the soft heavy tread of their horses’ unshod hooves on the ground and hear their slobbery blowing, that beloved horse-sound he had not heard for so long, and he could hear the slight jingling whisper of ornamental quills and claw-necklaces and shells and horn. The men were agleam with oil and their faces were garish with paint. Feathers in their hair and in their horses’ manes and on their bows and lances swiveled and bobbed. And now they were close enough for him to smell: horse-sweat, smoke, bear-oil, body-musk. The man in the center was gaunt, sunken-cheeked; every fiber of his long muscles, every vein in his arms stood in relief. He wore a bonnet made of a hawk’s skin with feathers and head intact, and a necklace of claws. He was bare to the waist and carried a two-foot painted shield strapped on his upper left arm; in his right hand was a long, iron-tipped lance whose entire shank was decorated with a comb of eagle feathers. His dark, deep-set eyes were drilling into Lewis’s face. Lewis met them with his own intense stare for a moment, then smiled and turned back his sleeve to show his white forearm.

  Now the three riders had reined in their fine horses around Lewis. The chief’s stallion was all white; an ochre handprint had been made on the side of its brawny neck. The other two men, apparently subchiefs, now sat on their horses flanking Lewis, and he noticed that each held a long war club covered with rawhide. He could hear them breathing, and he had a notion that it all might well end right here for him with his temple bashed in with a stone-headed club.

  “Ah-hi-ee,” the chief said in a breathy voice.

  “Ah-hi-ee. Ah-hi-ee,” said the other two. And then all three moved suddenly and slipped off their horses, landing lightly on their feet around Lewis. The chief in the hawk-skin bonnet stood so close Lewis could smell his breath. Then his teeth bared white; he put his greasy left arm across Lewis’s shoulders, gripping him in a sinewy hug, and rubbed his painted cheek on Lewis’s cheek. Then he released Lewis and let the other chiefs hug and caress him. Everyone was smiling and exclaiming, “Ah-hi-ee” which he knew was their exclamation of joy, and the first chief summoned the warriors forward, and Lewis called to Drouillard and Shields and McNeal, and then for the next fifteen or twenty minutes everyone hugged and patted everyone else until Lewis, even though almost overwhelmed by relief and gratitude, was altogether besmeared with paint and grease and heartily tired of the national hug. All the Indians were scrawny as dogs; all were armed only with clubs and bows and spears, except three he noticed who held poorly made light muskets of the kind traded by the North West Company. There was hardly a piece of metal to be seen among all these warriors; even their knives were of flint. Yet, for all their gauntness and poor equipment, they were unusually fine-looking warriors, much more handsome and lithe than the Sioux or Mandans, certainly. And there was no doubt that they were a good-hearted, cheerful people, childishly extravagant in their affections. Lewis thought of Sacajawea. These were the people from whom she had sprung.

  “Gawd!” McNeal was saying. “If their squaws are this lovey, let’s git on t’ town!”

  THE CHIEF SAID HIS NAME WAS CA-ME-AH-WAIT. THROUGH Drouillard’s hand language, Lewis was able to convey that he came in peace, that he had been seeking the Shoshonis for a long time, that he had small gifts for them, and that a larger party of white men was coming along with boats several days behind, that these boats contained more articles which he wished to trade for horses, and that a woman of their nation was with the boats. All of this seemed agreeable to Ca-me-ah-wait. Lewis brought out a pipe and tobacco. The Indians seated themselves in a circle around the four white men and removed their moccasins, and the white men removed theirs. The chiefs noted the swollen, cut and blistered condition of their feet, but said nothing.

  It was a strange parley, here in the sun-baked meadow with no lodges or water nearby. Lewis gave the Indians some small gifts, of which the best received were blue beads and vermillion paint. “Tell them now,” Lewis said to Drouillard, “that we want to go to their camp and tell them our whole story.”

  THE SHOSHONI ENCAMPMENT WAS REACHED AFTER A MARCH of about four miles. It was in a fertile, level plain through which ran a fast, clear stream about forty yards wide and three feet deep. There were perhaps a hundred Indians but only two poor lodges, one made of willow brush and another of leather, and a scattering of small brush shelters. Ca-me-ah-wait explained that his people had been attacked in the spring by Indians from the plains, who had killed and captured about twenty of his people and had stolen many of their horses and all of their leather lodges. He took off his hawk-feather bonnet to show that he had cut off his hair in mourning for his murdered relatives.

  THE OLD UNHURRIED CEREMONY OF THE PEACE PIPES REsumed then in the lodge, in pleasant shade, with everyone seated on antelope skins spread over green boughs, moccasins off, all the elegant and solemn ritual in which the chief presented the pipestem to the heaven and center of the earth and the four quadrants of the horizon, and then the long and heartfelt preambles to longer and more heartfelt speeches. It was late afternoon now and Lewis and his men had not eaten a bite of food since the night before, and their empty stomachs gurgled and growled, and the native mixture in the pipes made their heads buzz. The business took about ten times longer even than usual, for want of interpreters, and much of it surely was lost because sign language could convey only so much. I wish Sacajawea was here, Lewis thought over and over. The sun was going down.

  Then it was his turn, and he stood and told of the large party he had back over the mountain, and how they were going to the great lake where the sun sets, and would find a route by which tools and hunting guns and other fine things from his nation could be brought to the Shoshonis to make their life easier and richer, and how the Great Chief in the east would protect them and enrich them if they would be peaceful and helpful now. Ca-me-ah-wait was rapt as Drouillard signaled all this to him; it was obvious that the lot of the Shoshonis was particularly hard, and these promises made him feel that good things were to come during his time as the head of the tribe, and that he would be remembered for them. While Lewis talked, scores of women and children stared into the shelter at these men with white feet and light-colored hair, the first such men they had ever seen. Then Ca-me-ah-wait harangued his people for another long spell, and told them they should help these new friends in any way they could. He told Lewis that they were on their way down to the plains to join their friends the Flatheads and hunt buffalo for their winter’s meat, but that they would help before they went if the white man would tell them what they needed. He explained that he had come out against them as a war party because the Indians who had seen them approaching that morning had come and alarmed the village, and he had feared that these strangers were allies of the Blackfeet. Lewis learned only now that tab-ba-bone meant “alien,” that there was no Shoshoni word for “white man.”

  Lewis told them now what he needed. He would like some people of the tribe, and about thirty horses, to go back beyond the great ridge and meet the rest of his people, and help carry his party’s goods across to this place. He would like guides to show them a route for boats to the great river that flowed to the west-em lake. He would like their help in finding large trees for making canoes to float down that river. And if it should be necessary to cross mountains to reach such a route for boats, he would want to buy enough horses from the Shoshonis to carry the party’s baggage to that route. All of this Ca-me-ah-wait found reasonable, but he warned that this little river, and a larger river it flowed into, a day’s march below, were too full of rocks and foam for passage by boats. He said too that there was little more timber on that lower river than here, and that the other river wound between unclimbable mountains.

  Lewis glanced at his men, and saw their faces looking grim. This was bad news, but perhaps, he th
ought, the chief exaggerates.

  “But now,” Lewis said, “our needs are simpler. We have eaten nothing today.”

  To his astonishment, the chief replied that there was not a bite of meat in the village that he knew of, as his hunters had had no fortune for many days. All the Shoshonis had to eat were a few cakes of sun-dried berries. Lewis looked around at the gaunt natives and understood. But, Ca-me-ah-wait said, the people would share what they had.

  It was almost night when the parley broke up. The chief had his people bring dried serviceberries, and the white men were fed. “I promise you,” Lewis told him, “tomorrow my two hunters here,” he indicated Drouillard and Shields, “will take their fine firesticks and will hunt meat for your people.”

  That sounded good to Ca-me-ah-wait and he announced it to his people, who responded joyfully. A bonfire was kindled in the twilight, and a merry dance ensued. The music and the manner of dancing were similar to those of the Missouri tribes, and the soldiers were quickly absorbed in the eager and affectionate society of the tribespeople. It was still going strong at midnight when Lewis grew too sleepy to stay up. He was taken to a small bower, where he put up his mosquito net and retired. He was awakened several times during the night by the exuberant yelling of the men and Indians, but was too weary to stay awake long. The decision to hunt meat for the Indians was a good one, he knew; it would further strengthen this bond that had begun so well, and he suspected, too, that William and the main party would need another day at least to reach the forks where he had left instructions for them to halt.

  Aye, he thought, dozing with the beat of drums in his head, things seem to be going well.

  Maybe too well, he thought.

  No, he told himself. Expect the best.

  DURING THE VOYAGE, DROUILLARD HAD KILLED SEVERAL pronghorn antelope even while hunting afoot, and so Lewis was certain that he would be able to kill some of those fleet beasts while mounted on a fine Shoshoni horse. Lewis was proud of Drouillard, and when a herd of a dozen pronghorns was spotted in the valley next morning, Lewis told Ca-me-ah-wait there would be meat soon.

  Drouillard and Shields were quickly mounted on fast horses, and, accompanied by some twenty young Indian men, set out to pursue the herd.

  The chase swept hither and yon through the sunny valley for about two hours, most of the time within view of the village, and it was a good entertainment. But, perhaps because of their carousing the night before, Drouillard and Shields were not up to their usual level of skill. The Shoshoni hunters were unable to get within bow range of the antelope, which moved more like birds than earthbound beasts, and early in the afternoon the hunters rode in empty-handed on their sweat-lathered horses and there was no meat for the village after all. So Lewis gave Drouillard one sullen look and then ignored him for a while; the Indians ate berries again, and the white men ate berries cooked in a little flour paste.

  That afternoon Lewis continued his conferences with Ca-me-ah-wait and made observations on the living mode of the Shoshonis. He noted that they were almost as flighty and wary as antelope themselves, that each warrior kept at least one horse staked near his lodge day and night, and that the whole male population could be mounted and armed within seconds. They were all superb horsemen, so much a part of their mounts that they seemed like centaurs, and gave the impression of being awkward, incomplete, half-creatures when afoot. The horses themselves were fine. “Indeed,” he wrote in his journal, “many of them would make a figure on the South side of the James River, or the land of fine horses.” Drouillard made a count of the horses, both tied and grazing loose, and said they numbered about four hundred. The Indians also had a few mules, which they said had been obtained by other Shoshoni tribes far to the south, from some source Lewis had a hard time understanding until he saw a bridle bit of Spanish manufacture. Yes, Spanish, Ca-me-ah-wait said; that was their name. But the Spanish would not sell guns to the Shoshonis because they appeared to fear the thought of Indians with guns. Ca-me-ah-wait’s own tribe had never been to the Spaniards.

  It was agreed that Indians and horses would go with Lewis next day toward the creek fork back on the other side of the divide, and meet there his friend the Red Hair Chief with the boats. This settled, the hungry Shoshonis and their hungry guests launched into another evening’s entertainment, and the dancing and carousing lasted late.

  Once, shortiy before midnight, McNeal came staggering blissfully out of a brush hut, sat down by a happy-faced Shields near the bonfire, sighed, and said, “Stud York better get here soon. We a-goin’ need some reinforcements.”

  From the journal of Meriwether Lewis

  Thursday August 15th 1805

  This morning I arrose very early and as hungary as a wolf. I had eat nothing except one scant meal of the flour and berries.… we had only about two pounds of flour remaining. This I directed to McNeal to divide and to cook the one half this morning in a kind of pudding with the berries.…on this new fashoned pudding four of us breakfasted, giving a pretty good allowance to the Chief who declared it the best thing he had taisted for a long time

  I hurried the departure of the Indians the Chief addressed them several times before they would move they seemed very reluctant to accompany me. I at length asked the reason and he told me that some foolish persons among them had suggested the idea we were in leaugue with the pahkees and had come on in order to decoy them into an ambuscade … but that for his part he did not believe it. I readily perceived that our situation was not enterely free from danger as the transicion from suspicion to the confermation of the fact would not be very difficult in the minds of these ignorant people who have been accustomed from their infancy to view every stranger as an enimy.

  I told Cameahwait that I was sorry to find that they had put so little confidence in us, that I knew they were not acquainted with whitemen and could forgive them, that among whitemen it was considered disgraceful to lye or entrap an enimy by falsehood. I told him that if they continued to think thus meanly of us that … no whitemen would ever come to trade with them or bring them arms and ammunition … and that I still hoped there were some among them that were not afraid to die, that were men and would go with me and convince themselves of the truth of what I had asscerted. that there was a party of whitemen waiting my return either at the forks of Jefferson’s river or a little below coming on to that place in canoes loaded with provisions and merchandize. he told me for his own part he was determined to go, that he was not affraid to die. I soon found that I had touched him on the right string; to doubt the bravery of a savage is at once to put him on his metal, he now mounted his horse and haranged his village a third time … that he hoped that there were some of them who heard him were not affraid to die with him and if there was to let him see them mount their horses.… he was joined by six or eight only and with these I smoked a pipe … determined to set out with them while I had them in the humour, at half after 12 we set out, several of the old women were crying and imploring the great sperit to protect their warriors as if they were going to inevitable distruction.

  We had not proceeded far before our party was augmented by ten or twelve more, and before we reached the Creek which we had passed in the morning of the 13th it appeared to me that we had all the men of the village and a number of women with us. this will serve in some measure to ilustrate the capricious disposition of those people.… they were now very cheerfull and gay, and two hours ago they looked as sirly as so many imps of satturn.

  * * *

  AGAIN TODAY WILLIAM HAD BEEN STRUCK AT BY A RATtlesnake; then, later, while fishing in the evening in the late sun at the foot of a steep bluff, he had looked down from a drowsy daydream to find a rattler coiled between his feet. He had sat quietly waiting until it unwound itself and slithered away. Then on returning to camp he saw Sacajawea, gathering cottonwood down for Little Pompey’s cradleboard, leap backward suddenly with a little outcry. He ran to her, his string of trout flopping beside him, and saw the scaly pattern of a big rattler’s ba
ck streaming into the brush. She had not been hit.

  The place was infested.

  The party had made fourteen miles along the twisting river this day, but it was only about six miles in direct distance. The men had been almost constantly in the cold water, and they ached in all their joints. William yearned for whiskey to allay their miseries. Fortunately the Fields brothers had fared well in their hunting, and there was meat from five deer and an antelope, as well as plenty of trout, to stoke their inner fires, and they were jolly enough tonight, though they all moved like old men around the camp.

  Maybe it was because of the rattlesnakes, but William felt a particularly tender kinship with the Indian girl tonight. It seemed marvelous that she and her little fat baby were alive, and that the playfulness of fate had put their vulnerable lives into his care. It was a remarkable situation to which everybody had become entirely accustomed, and yet sometimes in the evenings like this, by the campfire, it would all come over him again so poignantly, the domesticity of it. That was what it felt like, domesticity: food by firelight, writing by the light of a little lamp, York humming in his baritone as he sand-scoured a kettle, Scannon lying nearby with his muzzle on his paws, probably dreaming of his master, Sacajawea sewing something for the baby or mending something for William. And he would have that feeling which was so natural until he would think the words for it: the words were that he felt married to this squaw-girl, this Janey, and he felt as if the little fat baby boy with his alert eyes and ready giggle was his boy. And he would pick him up in his big hands, and hold him while the baby’s strong little legs kicked, and laugh and call him “my little dancing boy Pomp,” and would look into those perfect obsidian baby-eyes with fireglints in them and would feel a miniature hand close around his thumb, and the little red mouth would form a perfect leer of a mansmile and the voice would chortle and coo, and William then would glance up at Sacajawea and find her beaming at him with pure intimate sharing in her eyes. William would have that strange and wonderful notion then, as incredible as it was natural, that no man and wife could be more truly akin to each other than this.