Sacajawea (128 page)

“She is my sister,” said Spring, giggling behind her hand. “And she helps around the lodge less than any one of us women.”

“And she does that hastily,” added Jerk Meat, his words coming queerly thick, as if pushed out of his throat over some obstacle. “She is constantly in hot grease with someone for giving of her clumsy help and bad advice.”

“I call her bossy,” said Big Badger tautly.

“Does she boss you?” asked Kicking Horse, backing toward the tepee opening.

“She’d better not!” said Big Badger.

“Well, then, maybe I can handle her,” Kicking Horse said, coming back into the tepee. “I can take care of my women, Flower and Gray Bone, well enough.” He moved swiftly toward Sacajawea. “Will you come as my third woman?”

She smoothed her short hair, not yet grown out more than two or three inches from the cropping she’d received more than four months before. She pulled at the neck of her tunic, shook out her skirt, and went—had Kicking Horse known it—through all the motions a woman makes when she is confused and nervous and wants to gain time—a necessity for setting herself to rights before she sets a man in his place. All Kicking Horse saw was a composed young woman whose voice was cool, whose eyes were not, and whose mouth was puckered.

“My fingernails are long; they scratch. I have notwashed. My stench is stronger than the polecat’s. Your horses, out there”—pointing to the six that were tethered to a stake in front of the tepee—“have never been brushed, so their hair is dull. The Comanches must learn to brush the hair on their horses before they will have anything compared to those of the white man.”

Kicking Horse tried to think of something to say, to find an excuse for his presence, for his intrusion. There seemed to be nothing that would not make matters worse, so he said nothing. He simply stood awkwardly before her, twisting the silver loop around and around. Carefully he kept his face composed, knowing that to stammer, to utter some inanity, would only incur her swift wrath and bring it down on his head. It was easy to tell she was seething, that all she needed was his first word to start boiling over. He knew he could not endure another woman with a sharp tongue in his tepee. Gray Bone was more than enough for him. He had no idea that this Lost Woman was so free with her tongue. He did not like Pronghorn, but today he felt sorry for him with this woman in his family. Meekly he turned, picked up the several large silver loops, and shuffled through the opening, blinking in the light of day, motioning for the silent boys to bring the horses along home with them. “In Pronghorn’s moccasins I would lodgepole that woman. It would be a good thing.” The boys laughed, but made no reply. It was not good to venture opinions in family matters.

“Is it true you think our horses dull?” asked Jerk Meat wryly.

Sacajawea stared at Jerk Meat, who met her look. Color flamed in her face, turned her warm-red. “But then, your horses, they are even more beautiful than those owned by my people, the Shoshonis.”

“You are now truly one of us, Granddaughter!” shouted Big Badger, dancing with tiny to-and-fro movements. Then he stood before his grandson Jerk Meat. “Would you like this woman as your own and have many sons by her?”

Jerk Meat looked at Big Badger awkwardly, as if off balance. Then his eyes shone and his mouth worked to keep from smiling. “She is one of us. You just calledher granddaughter. Does a man take his own sister?” He struck out for the open air, trotting up the main street of the village, leaving Sacajawea standing with her mouth open, bereft of the last word.
¹⁰

For the ordinary Mexican mule and donkey caravans, existence was purely nomadic—the finding of an Indian encampment, the making of presents, then the spreading of trade goods on the ground: bolts of calico and a few Navajo blankets; some knives and beads and mirrors, the hard, sweet bread the Mexicans baked in their outdoor ovens; beans and pumpkins, which the Indians relished as a change in their all meat diet. Generally there was Taos whiskey, too, and it is not likely that the Comanches eschewed its use. Once the goods were displayed, prices were set by the use of counting sticks—this many pumpkins for a pair of moccasins; this many buffalo robes for a Navajo blanket. Haggling was interminable. Every article was traded for individually, never in lots. But finally the bartering was done and then probably there was a feast in the lodge of the chief, story telling, gambling at the game of hands, horse races, and quick, urgent amours.

DAVID LAVENDER.
Bent’s Fort.
New York: Doubleday and Co., 1954, pp. 130–31.

T
he spring weather was fine; gum trees showed red branches, and sweet acorns, known by the Spanish name of
bellotas,
grew in small fat clusters. Sacajawea worked with Spring to remove the bitter tannin from the
bellotas
saved from last fall by boiling the kernels several hours before grinding. Then the women soaked the
bellota
meal in hot water with occasional changes until the bitter flavor was lost. When the meal was dried and parched in an earthen oven, it tasted much like cornmeal.

During the time when the warm spring winds blew through the short, greening buffalo grass, Spring’s baby was born. It was a fast, uneventful birth. For days afterward, Spring cuddled and cooed over the round brown papoose.

“He is like a ripe, fat plum,” said Big Badger. “I will teach him to tie a taut bowstring.”

“Lost Woman will teach him the healing art,” said Jerk Meat practically, “and then he will be a man of great worth to the Quohadas.”

When the camp traveled, it carried everything it owned by horse. The very old and very young were carried by travois. They broke their winter camp and traveled only twelve days to a new temporary camp on the Red River. Then in the middle of spring the lodges were struck and the entire Quohada camp moved again to a place called Hungry Horse.

Before reaching Hungry Horse they traveled north through hot, dry countryside. They ate little, forded rivers, and when the woman found an area of fertile land containing beds of yap—the tuberous roots of Indian potato—they stopped. The women boiled the roots and sweetened them with crushed mesquite beans. The Quohadas consumed all the yap they could find, not attempting to preserve any. Their attitude when food was plentiful was that it might spoil unless eaten.

The Quohadas moved along with cool showers to a valley. The river became a broad, muddy torrent. Some of the boys tested the current on horseback. Some found it necessary to slip from their horse’s back and swimholding on to their horse’s tail. This crossing was too hard for the old and very young. They made a temporary camp to wait for the river to slow and to construct rafts from the cottonwoods. Sacajawea was among the women helping to bring in the huge cottonwood poles. Suddenly her mind began to work and she took to the river’s edge to chop off thick willow branches. She made a crude frame and stretched a piece of old rawhide over it, in the manner of making a bull boat. The other women scarcely paid any attention to her as she set her boat in the water and loaded it with goods from Prong-horn’s lodge. She pulled off her tunic and got into the water beside the spinning boat. Paddling and kicking, she pushed across the wide water and dumped the supplies on high, dry ground; then she was in the water pulling the boat back across for more goods. The supplies and equipment of Pronghorn’s lodge were across the river in one day, and many of the rafts were not yet constructed by other women.

“Ah, look, such a thing is truly knowledge from a great totem,” one woman pointed and whispered. Gray Bone spotted Sacajawea by the water’s edge showing Jerk Meat and several other braves how to construct a bull boat. The men made two that were larger than the one she had used. They were very pleased with them.

“She is a constant lover, always looking for a man,” snapped Gray Bone to some women. “Her true name is Nyahsuqite, the Flirt.”

Big Badger came toward the women, and Gray Bone closed her mouth and worked hard tying her raft together, her face scarlet.

“The Lost Woman is one of our people,” he said softly, stopping to inspect the raft. “She is more valuable to us than three sharp-tongued squaws,” he snapped and walked away.

The next morning, Sacajawea walked close to Gray Bone, saying evenly, “We have only to get the small one, Wild Plum, across in the round boat. I can see you have several days’ work left on your raft. I will give my round boat to you when I am finished so you can start moving your household goods right away.”

“Well, so—ah,” sputtered Gray Bone, “it is small, but I suppose I can make several trips and get my thingsover.” She left her partially finished raft and sat on the bank to watch Sacajawea swim out into the water, twirling the bull boat that carried the sleeping infant safely across the river.

At the end of three days, all the Quohadas had crossed. The tribe went on across the prairie to a sheltered canyon where a small creek ran. One evening Sacajawea asked Big Badger, “Do your people ever go to the Kaw River where it meets the Big Muddy?”

He turned toward her and said slowly, “That is hard to say. There are many rivers, and some have more than one name.”

Big Badger was not much help. She had been thinking more and more of Baptiste. Perhaps, she thought, if he were back from across the Great Eastern Waters he would go where those rivers met because the trapping was good.

Sacajawea stood alone early one morning, on the little hill above the camp. She could look in all directions and see the skyline. She could see the young boys already at their play. In reality they were practicing a skill that would only be perfected when they reached manhood—trick riding. The small boys picked up sticks, moccasins, anything from the ground, while their ponies galloped as fast as they could. The oldest boys were grabbing at blanket rolls, cooking pots filled with stones. On a long sandbar three young men rode their ponies at full speed and swooped down, almost underneath the running animals, to grab a companion from the ground and swing him across a pony. Already the young men knew the importance of rescuing a companion who fell in battle, or on a hunt.
¹

She turned to see a group of little girls playing beside the creek. Most of them wore breechclouts similar to those worn by the adolescent boys. The small boys wore nothing. The girls carried sand in baskets, pretending it was mesquite flour. They tied a harness with short sticks to the backs of pet dogs to make a kind of old-fashioned travois, using it to carry their play robes and toy household material.

Sacajawea moved so that she could sit comfortably in the warm morning sun on a flat-topped boulder. Sheknew that Charbonneau had never been able to ride a horse the way even these boys did. Certainly, she had heard him boast about sticking to his horse, never letting light show between himself and the horse’s back, but he couldn’t know what sticking tight meant until he’d seen these boys.

She watched several of the older boys tie a looped rope around a gelding’s neck. A young man slipped the loop over his head and under his arm. He jabbed his bare heels into the horse’s sides and with both hands nocked an arrow in his taut bowstring and let it fly, lodging it in the trunk of an old, dead cottonwood tree. Nothing showed but the leg of the rider hooked over the scrawny back of the horse. No wonder these people were sometimes called Lords of the Plains, she thought. Oh, if only Baptiste could see this! Where was he now? Would she ever have news of him?

She figured that by now Baptiste must be someone of importance among the whites, because he had been to the land far beyond the big waters with the one called Duke Paul. He must be back by now. What wonderful tales he would have to tell! She wondered how she might send word to him that she was fine. She looked beyond the creek, across the Quohada village. She saw what looked like a wagon train kicking up clouds of red dust across the plains. That’s it! She sat up straight and shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand to see better. She’d ask the white people in that wagon train. A tingle of excitement ran up her spine. Then she sighed and let her shoulders droop. Would the whites understand what she wanted to know? What would they do if they saw her in Comanche clothes? Maybe they would shoot! She felt stymied for a moment. Then she figured they wouldn’t shoot if she came to them speaking in their tongue. It had been nearly two years since she had said anything, except in Comanche, but she was confident she could speak the white man’s tongue as well as before.

She stood up again and cupped her hands, staring hard at the continuous puffs of red dust. “What is new from St. Louis? How is Mister Jean Baptiste Charbonneau? Have you heard?
Kiyi!
Listen to me! He is myson! We are friends of Captain Red Hair! And—Duke Paul! What is the latest news?”

She wanted to run ahead to see if it was truly a white man’s wagon train. But logic told her it was more than five, six miles away, and by the time she could find their trail they would be far gone.

She drew in her breath and felt her stomach tighten. She opened her mouth to exhale slowly. What had suddenly come over her? If she had attracted the attention of the whites, would they come straight for the Quohadas? Would they shoot into the tepees? Would they care about a man she called “son”? She couldn’t be sure. The dust plumes were farther away now. Would she risk these people’s lives for news of her firstborn? If she started, she could reach them. The train would stop for the night. She spoke out loud. “I’m a lousy squaw. Those whites do not know me. They will laugh, make fun, and send me away. If I can believe what the Quohadas say, they will shoot me in the back.” Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face. She could not hold them back. Finally she brought herself under control. She looked around and saw that the play areas of both boys and girls were empty. The sun was already past its midpoint. When she got back to the lodge everyone looked at her, then resumed work, as if she had not been gone all morning.