Sacajawea (117 page)

and ed.,
South Dakota Historical Collections,
“First Journey to North America in the Years 1822 to 1824,” vol. XIX. Pierre, S.D.: State Historical Society, 1938, pp. 303–4.

T
he following year when the land was losing its dead-brown color and tender, bright green leaves were coming back on the willow, with its blooms hanging like fuzzy caterpillars, and the redbud, dogwood, and haw stood in patches of pink and white, Sacajawea worked beside Eagle preparing packs. They were going on a trapping trip up the Missouri to the mouth of the Kaw River.
¹
Clark had told Charbonneau that a Mr. Woods was waiting in a small settlement for an interpreter and trader among the Kansas Indians. Clark suggested that Charbonneau take the job and take his family with him so that the boys could do some trapping.

“My God, that is what I say,” said Charbonneau. “Big boys like this should be out working, not inside turning white with their nose between book pages.”

Eagle wore her best tunic and leggings and a matted blanket held loosely about her shoulders. Her hair part was painted vermilion, and her hair hung loosely down her back. Tess, nearly twenty now, poked her in the side and hissed in her ear, “I would pay a good four-point blanket and a beaded belt to have a woman like you.”

“Your father paid ten ponies,” Eagle lied, grinning.

Shocked, Tess rounded his eyes at the young woman and lapsed into an affronted silence.

Sacajawea, in a plain tunic with fringe hanging to her knees, picked up the packs and took them outdoors. She went to the shed and brought the four ponies, one by one, to the front door so they could be saddled or loaded. She knew the men would each ride one and she and Eagle would share the fourth. They would each carry part of the gear needed for the summer trip.

Sacajawea’s work did not claim her full attention. Her mind was restless. When the last horse was tethered, she stepped to the back of the cabin and pressed herself close to the back wall, looking at the mound of soil with the gray slab of shale at its head. Spring beauties were growing near the small grave, and the brown needles of the cedar were sprinkled over the top. Her hands touched the rough logs of the cabin. It made herthink she could hug the child close, as if she could get back the child who had been irretrievably lost. She wept, thinking of all the vigorous life in that little body that was so quickly used up. She knew it was not right for her to feel this way—strange, how quickly the end had come! The end—when she should have been in the cabin with the child. She was weak. These were hopeless tears. She dried her eyes, knowing there were dangers for all life. This was not life, but eternity itself.

“Nobody gets cabin fever this summer,
hein
?” Charbonneau asked as he checked the leather straps around the bundles. His eyes squinted at Sacajawea, but she did not answer. He had never once asked her what had happened to Otter Woman’s child. She had tried to tell him, but he would never listen. She wondered if he knew who lay under that small mound of earth. She wondered if Tess or Baptiste had ever told him. She thought not. He probably would not have heard them. He would probably change the subject to something more to his liking, or to something he could brag about.

She sat back on the horse, looking down at Eagle, who carried a bundle on her back and was walking first. She gave one last look at the cabin, whose door was now closed. It was not locked against thieves, for there would be none. A hungry trapper might wander by, but he would take no more than he needed and leave the rest as he had found it, even chopping more wood to replace what he had used. This was the code of the times.

The Charbonneau family made their night camps where they found water. The horses grazed as they slept. The boys took turns at the night watch.

They pushed through hilly country and came down to the broad, sandy river. Clouds covered the sky. Eagle and Sacajawea erected the leather tepee near the small fur-trading settlement. Charbonneau went to find Mr. Woods. This was the only trading post in the Kansas country. Before this time the Kansas Indians had been served by itinerant traders who brought their loaded pirogues up the Missouri from New Orleans, or who came overland, as had the Charbonneaus, with loadedhorses from Saint Louis. The settlement was only about three or four years old.

Woods and Curtis, who operated the post, were traders licensed to do business with the Kansas Indians. Their wives were Creole women, and the rest of the population consisted of half-breed hunters and trappers who worked for the post.

Slowly Sacajawea became aware of sounds all around her. She looked and saw nothing but the few cabins of illegal squatters. She looked in a freshly leafed oak and saw a squirrel barking, then a skein of crows, noisy as they strung off from the top of a post oak, then a jay scolding from the top of a cedar. She blew out a gusty breath. For the first time she could see for herself the white settlers squatting illegally on Indian land. The Kansas tribes were being squeezed and pinched. Clark had told her this was one of his major problems. The Indians were bewildered and perplexed and angry, and Sacajawea felt they had every right to be. She was on the side of the Indians, and she herself had felt confused about their problems much of the time when Clark had discussed them with her. The U.S. government was determined to move the Eastern Indians west of the Mississippi. They had transferred tribes from their ancestral homes to this new country. Sacajawea often thought the Great White Father in Washington must be about as confused as anyone as he struggled to try to make everyone happy—the white men of the East, the Indians of the East, now the Plains Indians whose homes were being disturbed, and the settlers who were always moving westward.

Out of that huge land Jefferson had bought from Napoleon, there was so much territory that the eastern land could be freed from Indians so that the eastern land could be used only by white men. The government had promised the Eastern Indians it would move them, paying for their land, west of the Mississippi. There was land that was not occupied by white men and probably never would be wanted by them. The land was wasteland—only flat prairies, not good for farming, only good for the herds of buffalo roaming over it, eating the short, tough gamma grass. Sacajawea knew that Chief Red Hair was honorable and Nat Pryor a goodman—he was acting as a go-between for the Osages and the whites. Their hearts were increasingly heavy at the way things were going. It was not their fault promises were broken. She had taken Chief Red Hair by the hand and did not mean to let loose of it, yet seeing what was happening to the Indians was enough to make her despise all whites. The wind blew cold. Rain began to fall.

Sacajawea and Eagle ran about, gathering fallen branches for firewood. Before night they had built a snug camp, and the cool spring rain seemed good.

The next day, light showers fell. The women sat in the tepee sewing and stirring the fresh venison stew. They watched squirrels chase one another and hide in the tall grass.

Tess and Baptiste, tired of sitting around the damp camp, moseyed over to the settlement and found that one of the large log houses there belonged to Woods and his brood of dark-skinned children. The other house belonged to Curtis, who had fenced in his field of corn, beans, and potatoes.

“Look there,” Tess said, pointing. “Every spring that man plows and plants. All summer he pulls weeds and his back is tired. In the fall he gathers, and in winter he fences, cuts wood, mends, and patches, and not often can he take his gun to go in the woods. I’m going to depend on my gun for food, and go where I please, do what I please, and be as free as the wind.”

Baptiste looked at his half brother and grinned. “So—you pretty much do that now. I heard you were gravel in Father Neil’s throat most of the time, doing what you pleased.”

“You have got to make your own way.”

“A man has his own notions of what is best for him.”

Charbonneau met the boys. He’d found Woods, who thought that trapping would be complicated by the high water, but he thought this produced the best furs. Charbonneau puffed out both cheeks. “We’re going to set them traps tomorrow, early.”

Both boys learned that it was hardly too much to say that a trapper’s life depended on his skill. He not only worked in the wilderness, he also lived there, and did so from sun to sun by the exercise of total skill. Insteadof becoming tired of a trapper’s life, these boys, fresh from school, thrived on it. They used their heads, and intelligence, which had so recently been used in proving complicated geometric theorems, and their language mastery in English, French, German, and Spanish. They were awed by their father’s skill in the wild, and argued with each other as to whether Charbonneau had any specific craft, technology, theorem, or rationale, or whether it was only a rule of thumb that dictated his code of operating procedure. They agreed it was a total pattern of behavior.

They learned the whys, whats, and hows from Charbonneau, who was more of a braggart than a teacher. Why do you follow the ridges into or out of unfamiliar country? he would ask. What do you do for a companion who has collapsed from want of water while crossing a prairie? How do you get meat when you find yourself without gun powder in a country barren of game? What tribe of Indians made this trail, how many were in the band, what errand were they on, were they going or coming back from it, how far from home were they, were their horses laden, how many horses did they have, how many squaws accompanied them, and what mood were they in? Also, how old is the trail, where are those Indians now, and what does the product of these answers require of you?

Buffalo are moving downwind, an elk is in an unlikely place or posture, too many magpies are hollering, a Wolf’s howl is off-key—what does all this mean? A branch floats down stream—is this natural, or is it the work of animals, or of Indians, or of trappers? Another branch or a bush or even a pebble is out of place—why? On the limits of the plain, blurred by a heat mirage, or against the gloom of distant cottonwoods, or across an angle of sky between branches or where hill and mountain meet, there is a tenth of a second of what may have been movement—did men or animals make it, and if animals, why? It was unlikely that Charbonneau himself could detect 60 percent of these things accurately, but he knew what should be known. He knew that as a trapper’s mind dealt with these puzzle pieces, it simultaneously performed still more complex judgments on the countryside, the route across it, andthe weather. The boys learned to modify their reading in relation to season, to Indians, to what had happened. They could modify it in relation to stream flow, storms past, storms indicated, and modify it again according to the meat supply, to the state of the grass, to the equipment on hand. Trappers must master their conditions. Tess and Baptiste not only mastered their conditions, they enjoyed them to the utmost.

Later these boys saw soldiers, gold-seekers, and emigrants come into their country and suffer where they had lived comfortably, and die where they had been in no danger.

The days became warm, and the heat inside the tepee oppressive. The mosquitoes came in droves, and the women kept their skin covered with rancid bear’s oil. This only added to their discomfort in the heat as they perspired under the oil. They sat under the post oaks waiting for a cool breath of air. Their hair was tied against their necks with thongs as slick from grease as their moccasins. Whenever they passed the trading post, they left behind a strong smell of wood smoke and rancid grease.

“Them there squaws of old Charb’s keep to themselves and don’t buy none of that whiskey the others do,” remarked one of the itinerant traders to Curtis, who rubbed his chin, his blue eyes reflective.

“Yeah, but have you seen the one son? He’s in here with two, three pelts and asking for his pay in whiskey nearly every fortnight.”

“Sure, but the younger breed is the opposite. He don’t drink, and he stays out with the traps.”

“They’re both more like Indians than whites, even though they got some schooling,” said Curtis. “I heard that Governor Clark himself educated them two. He hopes they get into politics or Indian affairs one day.”

“This here chile bets they both end up living with Indians. You can’t never hammer out a gold piece from wet clay.”

The men looked up toward the north sky and saw clouds gathering. “If you don’t like the heat, it’ll soon be cooler,” said Curtis, moving off the steps to the inside of the post.

The trader shaded his eyes and looked at the churning, boiling clouds. The weather shifts fast on the prairie, he thought. A few minutes ago, I saw nothing to indicate a storm, only a low red haze against the northern horizon.

A spatter of heavy, noisy drops hit the dust, and Eagle hurried for shelter. Sacajawea pulled the kettle off the tripod and brought it into the tepee, placing it upon the floor. The handle was hot.

“Roasted fingers?” Eagle inquired mildly.

That night, a thunderstorm deluged the settlement and threatened to wash away everything, but it did not cool the air. It became sultry and hot. The short street in front of the post and the two cabins was knee-deep in mud. A couple of small boys rode their horses wildly down it, splattering the mud in every direction.

“My boys would like that horseplay,” said Sacajawea, ruminating.

“The sun is setting clear. Maybe the rain is over. Our man ought to be back. The streams are probably running bank-full and overflowing. He’ll have words to say if he loses some of his traps,” said Eagle.

The next morning, the rain came down hard again. The wind turned to the northwest, and the sultry heat was somewhat broken. The Missouri had flooded the lowlands, so that but little could be done by way of trapping or hunting.

“Well, it is time they came in,” said Eagle, watching Baptiste and Tess riding through the mud past the settlement. She craned her neck suddenly, looking down toward the gap in the trees where the mouth of the Kaw began to widen. “Strangers coming in, too.”

“Our man with some trappers, I expect,” said Sacajawea, braiding a bridle for one of the horses.