Sacajawea (142 page)

She stood in front of the Council Lodge and called everyone to listen to her news. Those that saw a crowd in the center of the village came to see what was going on. She began by telling about the thousands of skinned buffalo lying in the river valley and ended with, “The white men are trampling upon our hearts. What are we going to do?”

“Hey-yah!”
There was general agreement. A solitary drum began to beat slowly.

Sacajawea moved away from the circle, letting some old men step forward to give their ideas. She went close to Spring, who had Ticannaf and Wild Plum beside her. Wild Plum was making faces at the young girls who were skipping among the crowd. The sun was sinking toward the treetops.

“I think we had better all go to our lodges and get our evening meal,” said Hides Well, moving among the women but staring intently at Sacajawea. “The men are not here, and we cannot do anything yet about the white raiders of our buffalo.”

A few of the women got up to go. A few more followed. The singing continued, and Sacajawea heard
“Hey-yah”
over and over as some of the older women stamped their feet when they sang.

Big Badger passed from the old men’s circle on his way to his lodge. “Bad, bad”—he shook his head—“this will be a bad night.”

Sacajawea did not understand his remark. She was still angry from seeing all those wasted, rotting buffalo. It was hard to fathom the irresponsibility of the act. The night air had a chill on it. The smoke of fires hung everywhere.

While Sacajawea and Ticannaf were putting their bone spoons away, they heard someone singing. It grew louder, like a death chant. Sacajawea felt her pulse pounding in her throat. Something unusual was happening in the center of the village.

They walked until the lodges thinned out and they came to the center of the village, where the ground slanted downward into a natural arena. Here half a hundred women squatted along the gentle slope on all four sides, with twice as many children and half again as many old men. At the sight of Sacajawea, a heavy silence settled over the crowd. Nobody moved; they were watching. Everyone knew that a turning point was at hand. Gray Bone’s lodge witnessed the first struggle. Not long before, Gray Bone had come out carrying the Mexican baby and dragging his resisting sister.

“It takes more than barking dogs to drive the fox from cover,” someone had called.

And Gray Bone had answered back, “And so that non-Comanche, Lost Woman, talks fire to you, but her deeds are ashes! I make the flame!” She directed the placing of two posts of newly hewn cottonwood into the ground. Leather thongs were hung from each post. Several gaunt-faced women, shockingly pale, and a lone woman drummer sat in an open space beside the posts. A fire of cedar was kindled nearby. Its light glanced off the feverish eyes and bared teeth of the women, who began to sing and whose fervor increased as the Mexican girl and her brother were dragged to the fire.

Contempt was on Gray Bone’s dark face. She moved to the center. The air was rent with her arguments for punishment. “We must not shrink from any measures!” she shouted. “These are offspring of the vile dogs who kill the buffalo, taking away our meat and hides! I have proof. This girl also takes. She takes extra broth for the wretched, squalling boy here. She steals a robe to cover herself at night.
Hey-yah!
I knew these two were sent to this village to gorge our food, pilfer our robes, so that we starve and freeze. Then their relatives will come and take over our village and our land. They are the enemy living in our camp!”

The children were bound hand and foot. The Mexican girl kicked and struggled; the baby cried.

Sacajawea sucked in her breath. She knew that Kicking Horse had kept them in his own lodge, treating them as well as his own children. The girl helped Gray Bone and the younger woman, Flower, with the lodge chores, and she seemed well liked. The baby was being raised as a son by Kicking Horse. He was to take the place of Wolf. Sacajawea pressed forward, using her elbows, until she reached the front row. In her everyday voice she ordered Gray Bone and the others to set the Mexican children free. “That,” she said, “is not the sort of children they are. They are innocent. They can be Comanches, and we will be proud to have them in this tribe. So—that should be your choice. Take them home. They are frightened.”

A few women raised objections. They wrangled for some time. Sacajawea repeated that Gray Bone had no other choice. The children were captives of her man,

Kicking Horse, and it was Gray Bone’s duty to care for them.

“I’ll take care of them!” Gray Bone shouted back.

Disconsolate, Big Badger moved behind Sacajawea, smiling helplessly. “You must come back. Lost Woman,” he said.

Sacajawea stopped, and the crowd behind her was suddenly silent. Her face was as gray as the skins in her tunic. She stared at Big Badger as though she did not know him.

“You must come back, Lost Woman,” Big Badger reiterated, nearly weeping with distress. “You cannot stop it now. You will only be hurt.”

But Sacajawea took one step farther and began to shriek, “Children, can you hear me?”

The Mexican girl flung her head up and screamed.

“Can you hear me?” shrieked Sacajawea, waving her arms like banners. “We are not savages who mistreat children. I gave you my promise. No one will mistreat you. We all know Gray Bone has seen justice done and now goodwill is to come.” Her Spanish was bad, but she used her hands out where she thought the girl could see.

A few in the crowd laughed; the rest were silent. A coarse voice cried, “Wait until Pronghorn comes—he’ll put a stop to it all.” Other voices joined in; the whole arena roared. Big Badger, near tears, pulled Sacajawea back. Still she shrugged off his hands.

‘Tree the children. They are not slaves!” she shrieked.

His eyes agape, Big Badger receded a step. His neighbors right and left quickly put out their arms to bar Sacajawea’s way. It grew very quiet, and Sacajawea suddenly realized she stood alone in the empty space between these Quohadas and the others, Gray Bone’s friends. Her knees gave; she reeled. Hides Well leaped forward because she thought she had been pierced by a skinning knife from the others, and supported her with her arms. The rest surged forward, too, and the empty space was obliterated by the crowd that pressed around the Mexican children.

There were several old dried scalps swinging from peeled white-willow wands implanted in the dirt. These seemed a clue to the occasion.

Gray Bone was in the center. In a shrill voice she recited glories that the Quohada men had performed in battle and then bragged about the number of slaves they had brought back from raids. Sacajawea could not recall anyone ever mentioning any other captives used as slaves since she had been with the Quohada band.

“And from now on, this tribe will punish anyone who kills our relatives or rips hides from our cousins, the buffalo! That is good, good, good,” Gray Bone sang in a high, reedy falsetto. “We must give our enemies a lesson if they do not behave.”

Some of the spectators’ mouths tightened at the effrontery of the boasting, but a few of the women applauded with approval after each recitation, stamping their feet, clapping their hands, and vigorously shaking their gourd rattles.

“We must punish them.”

Again there was agreement with hand-clapping, gourd-rattling, and shouts of ”
Hey-yah!”

A dancer in a long-fringed tunic with vermilion-and-black stripes painted on her face and arms, her beaded ear pendants and copper wire wristband glinting in the firelight, burst into a frenzied gait. It was She Cat. With a long, slow sweep of her hands through her hair, down her sides, and over her hips, she indicated that her enemy was the Mexican girl. She Cat crouched and looked wildly about, as though her victim had escaped. She bounded after her and, with a grunt of rage, went through the action of grabbing her by the hair and swinging a club downward.

Sacajawea’s legs began to shake uncontrollably. The pantomimist pulled a knife from her bosom, stooped, and pretended to tear off the scalp. Then Gray Bone decided there had been enough pretending and snatched up one of the scalp poles. The black hair on the small willow hoop stirred in the air. Flourishing it triumphantly, she whirled around, arms spread, facing the four directions, one after the other, and tapped the Mexican girl on the head with the wand. A roar of approbation echoed off the canyon walls.

A wave of anguish overcame Sacajawea.

The Mexican girl and her brother were lashed to the two posts, back to back, the right hand high on one postand the left high on the other. Their bound legs were loosed so that their ankles could be secured to the bottoms of the posts. The two-year-old cried in pain, turning his head from left to right and keeping his eyes shut. Tears streamed down the girl’s face, and her tied-up arms twitched again and again as she wanted to wipe the tears off.

Sacajawea looked from right to left at the women clustered about. She was remembering that when an enemy kills a Comanche, the Comanche’s tribe kills or tortures its enemy captives in return. And at this remembrance a seed of fear germinated in the pit of her stomach.

Everything grew ominously quiet. The drum was hushed. All around, the audience stood gravely still, as if waiting for a new and more significant scene to start.

Big Badger moved with deliberation to the center, his arms flapping to the crowd. “Something is growing here that is bad,” he said, trying to shout above the women, who now began to chatter. “Stop and all go home. Take the children home. Our chief is not here to advise us. Nothing must be done this night that we cannot undo or that would cause the men who are gone to look upon us with shame.”

Gray Bone was not listening, She Cat was not listening, and the drummer, who was Weasel Woman, had begun again even before Big Badger finished. His head hung on his chest, and he was swallowed up by the crowd. Feet stamped in a rhythmic beat on the dirt to the beat of the drum. There they were, led by She Cat, the dancer, a long line of painted squaws with their hair plastered upward with cactus spines and river clay. Each carried a skinning knife in one hand and a gourd rattle in the other.

Sacajawea stared at them, entranced by the deliberateness and confidence these women showed. They seemed in no hurry, advancing slowly, with a half shuffle. They glided forward; then back, left and right. The onlookers remained still.

Sacajawea gaped at Gray Bone. Her stomach twitched, her buttocks jiggled, and the strands of hair poking up from the cactus spines waved in the wind. Bowlegged and pigeon-toed, she looked old and wizened,

her slit-eyes boring hypnotically into the eyes of the crowd. The rattling gourds grew louder, and Sacajawea braced herself. If Big Badger could not stop them, how could she? Ticannaf was clinging lightly to her skirt, yet his eyes were fixed on the spectacle in front of him.

The Mexican girl screamed shrilly. With a swift, dextrous stroke of Gray Bone’s knife, a tiny patch of thick black hair was scalped off. Next, the women dancers drew their knife points across the midsection of the girl and small boy, ripping their clothing and cutting deep red gashes.

Rage and revulsion shook Sacajawea. The chanting women formed a serpentine line. Sacajawea called out, “Stop! Stop! Do not harm them! They have done nothing to you!” The line slithered around the children, slashing at them. Sacajawea lifted her gaze to the stars. She sucked in a long gulp of the night air and began to pray to the Great Spirit. “Stop them, stop them, stop them!”

She heard the barbaric uproar, the advancing and retreating. Her legs were locked in terror and in an effort to keep them from shaking. In another moment a dull rushing of air sounded in her ears, the sky turned black, and the singing retreated to someplace far away. She felt ill. Hides Well again pulled her up. Her legs were so deadened that she found it difficult to walk.

“Do not do anything more!” Sacajawea croaked. “Go home! These are only children. They are frightened and hurt. Take them home!”

Gray Bone made more slashes across the shoulders of the girl. Her knife stabbed at the baby. His howling stopped. Blood flowed down from his chest to the dirt.

Sacajawea began to push forward.

“No, not now,” Hides Well said. “You cannot stop this. Even together we cannot stop this.”

Sacajawea had seen the dull fish-eyes of Gray Bone and the great sadness that lay like a lake behind her pupils. She also saw that the Mexican girl no longer breathed. The girl’s face was mutilated with knife slashes. Her entrails lay bloody upon the ground.

Gray Bone yelled, “They killed my son, but they will kill no more! Dirty Mexicans!”

Sacajawea realized Ticannaf was standing at her side.

She put her hand on his shoulder and wished he had not witnessed this evil thing. She thought there must have been something of the same kind of brutality, the same indifference to suffering and rights of others in those twenty-two white men who raced through the empty Quohada village, setting fire and burning tepees in a furious desperation to destroy the thing that would not fight back.

She could not sleep. She heard the restless turning and moving about that Ticannaf made in his bed. Her logic finally made her admit calmly and quietly in the middle of the night that it was she, Sacajawea, who had stirred up that great, black, ugly thing in Gray Bone and the other Quohada women this night. She had not meant that to happen, but not meaning such a thing did no good. It was that impulsive thing in her—the thing that caused her to speak before the women and children and old men as if she were a chief in council—that had been bad. She was the bad influence. She bit her tongue. Jerk Meat would have a perfect right to beat me, she thought. I am truly a bad squaw. Her tears of self-pity spilled into the darkness.

The next morning, Sacajawea rose in the gray dawn and with quick steps hurried to the center arena. There the two cold bodies hung lifeless, mangled, and crusted dull red. Sacajawea unbound them, stuffed the cold entrails into the gaping cavity of the girl’s belly, and dragged them to her own tepee, one at a time.