Sacajawea (103 page)

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 were 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.

The clerk looked quizzically at her, then asked, “You belong to anyone? You got a husband? Someone who eats your stew?”

“Ai,” she smiled. “He is Charbonneau. He is also a friend of Chief Red Hair.”

The clerk turned and, looking up, called to Chouteau. “Boss! This here squaw speaks French and English and claims she knows General Clark. She says her husband is a man called Charbonneau. Know him?”

Chouteau looked over the balcony. He was taller than most Frenchmen, slender, with dark, flashing eyes, very carefully dressed, and with an easy manner, as if he had long ago decided not to be bothered by little things.

“Oui,
I know him. He lived with Indians many years way up north. He’s the squawman that likes brandy and
les jeunes filles.
He was an interpreter for Lewis and Clark on their trip to the west. The men on that trip tell stories about him—not too flattering. That could be one of his squaws. Which one I wouldn’t know, but if she says she knows General Clark, I daresay she does. How do you do, Madame Charbonneau.”

Sacajawea saw him bow toward her.
“Merci.
I am fine. How do you do, Monsieur Chouteau,” she said.

The clerk said nothing. There was, he thought, nothing worth saying. After that, the clerk was kind to her and tried to help her understand about money and the many things in the trading post that she did not know.

One day he was astonished to find that she claimed to have gone along on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Glancing at her, he was unreasonably annoyed by the truth in her eyes. There was decency about her; she was not one to conceal facts or prevaricate. This squaw had nothing to hide and did not pretend with stories. After that, he could not do enough for her when she came to the trading post.

Sacajawea always told Otter Woman all she had seen in the post and begged her to come, but Otter Woman was shy because she could not speak or understand enough French or English. “I will teach you,” suggested Sacajawea.

“No, I cannot learn. It is too much for my head. I will listen to you and pretend it was me there in the town. You continue selling the moccasins I make and bring me the cloth so that I can make myself soft, brightly colored dresses.” She actually preferred taking care of the boys or sitting out of the way in the shade of a building and watching the passersby, drawing her shawl over her face if anyone seemed to look at her. She listened to the white ladies talking together and wished she could be so gay. She admired their dress and curly hair. But at the same time she missed the more familiar things in a Minnetaree village. “A cooking fire in a mud lodge is easier to keep hot than this one in a cage of stones.” She complained about the fireplace in the cabin. She complained about the wooden floor. “It has to be swept more often than a hard-packed dirt floor.”