Sacajawea (15 page)

But within a few days she was learning to make clay vessels by shaping wet riverbank clay into basketry forms and baking them in the hot fire. Mortars for pounding corn were also made. These pots and mortars were gray-colored and stood fire very well. “If they were painted,” suggested Sacajawea, “they would look much nicer.” Again, Old Grandfather did not reply.

The dog watched from an alder grove.

On another day, Sacajawea went with both Old Grandfather and Antelope to find fine, clean river sand and to climb the limestone cliff and scrape the special stones from the wall into a basket. The chalky stones were pulverized with a pounding stone, and the powder was mixed with the sand. The mixture was divided evenly among the holes in an oblong clay form. The form was put in a clay oven that soon shimmered with hotness as skin bellows were used to make the fire white-hot. Old Grandfather puffed as loudly as the bellows as he pumped air onto the charcoal flame. Finally Antelope motioned for him to rest. The oven was opened so that the molten glass would cool. The clay mold was broken, and translucent glass beads rolled out. Antelope pointed out that they could be used for game-playing. Sacajawea soon learned to add bits of colored clay to the molten glass and to insert a roll of clay in thecenter in order to make colored beads. These beads were smooth and brick red, mustard yellow, gray-green, or a dirty blue.
⁴

“This is something to take pride in,” said Old Grandfather one day. “This is a thing that the other tribes come to us to trade for. We can get the good chalky stone, and if the Utes bring us white sand, the beads are nearly clear. They are something wonderful.”

“Blue is my favorite,” said Sacajawea.

Old Grandfather looked at her and cleared his throat. “That is a chiefs color because it is like the sky with no clouds and like the rivers that run calm and deep.” He grunted, then continued, “Like your own blue stone. The one you hide but secretly look at and fondle.” His eyes became two pinpoints of fire. “Was your father’s tepee in the center of the village?”

Sacajawea was stunned by the blunt question and his knowledge of her precious blue stone, which once belonged to her mother and grandmother. She averted her eyes, keeping her head lowered. She knew he meant “Was your father the chief?”

She ignored his question. “See, the stones I made here are red, but not clear like your paints or the paintbrush flowers. See, there is a bird in them, raised up from the surface. I think it is trying to fly out.” She laughed quietly, staring at the two glass stones, which were about the size of hickory nuts. “I would like to make the deep-blue beads. A clear blue would be the most beautiful.”

Old Grandfather would not be put off. “Your stone was found among rocks. One like that cannot be made by us. That was left in the rocks many ages past by the Great Spirit, who declared that they were to be used only by great chiefs. Those sky-stones come from a land far south from us.” It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make.

Sacajawea found that many of the Hidatsa women made ornaments in the white-hot ovens on the side of the hill. These ornaments were used as beads, earrings, hair and dress decorations. On the way back to the lodge she asked if the rusty red were considered a chiefs color also.

“Of course not,” laughed Old Grandfather. “Any-thing you can make at the ovens is not considered bright enough for such a thing. You can wear anything you can make. But never wear your other stone in the open. That bright, clean sky-blue would be a blasphemy to our chief. Your life would be cut off faster than I could cut the head off a river trout.”

Sacajawea put one of the red stones inside the pouch with her precious blue stone, and she took the other one to Antelope. “It is because you gave me my name,” she explained, her face crinkling a bit around her dark eyes. “See the flying bird rising up out of the glass?”

Antelope was very much surprised. It was not the custom for a slave to give gifts or feel generous about anything.

“It was leftover bits, ready to be dumped on the ground,” explained Sacajawea. “I used no one’s good sand or paints.”

“Get the vegetables well done tonight and put the eating boards in place,” ordered Antelope, holding the treasure tightly in one hand. “Talking Goose will be pleased if things are ready when she comes in from visiting her relatives on the other side of the village. Keep your moccasins flying!” Antelope was pleased, yet embarrassed, not quite ready to admit that she would take a gift in friendship from a slave. To cover her confusion, she gave Sacajawea orders all evening.

Old Grandfather watched. “Close up your mouth, my daughter,” he said. “Sacajawea does the chores before you have ordered them. She knows you are pleased. To hide it is bad. Accepting a gift cannot be that hard.” He did not say more. But something was taking place in his mind. Something had pushed aside a shadow for an instant as if a ghost had walked, a strange wind had blown, a tongue had spoken, and he did not know the language. A young slave girl knew it. It would take him years to learn it. Only those who moved up and above wild animal instincts could ever learn it.

The feeling was as elemental as the gray rocks of the mountain, as the wild water of the canyons, but something more than the animals that haunted the wild places knew. It was an understanding, a giving with no thought of reciprocation, a kindness. It was love. This feeling Old Grandfather experienced did notnegate sexual attraction, as that would go against his long, bred-in-the-bone training as a Hidatsa, but it went beyond that. He was left with a deep, intimate, father-daughter attachment to the girl. From that time on he could not treat Sacajawea merely as a sex object.

Old Grandfather could not bring himself to exploit sexually a person he had taught and worked with at the glass-making ovens. Sacajawea was a person he had come to respect and see as an individual. She had a new identity for him now. Through this interaction between himself and the slave girl, he found a companion.

There is a grave commemorating the legendary dog, Gelert, in the village of Beddgelert, Wales. In 1794 David Prichard, the first landlord of the Royal Goat Hotel (which is still in use), and two friends placed the large stone that now marks this grave on the bank of the Glaslyn River. The marker tells the story:

This dog story, also told in Persian, Hebrew, Irish, Hindu, and Buddhist mythology, is a version of an ancient Indian folktale found in the Sanskrit
Panchatan-tra
,
according to the Encyclopedia Britannica (Vol. 10, 1965, p. 55). It is one of those old legends that is moving enough to be told, retold, written and rewritten. At present, no one knows why the North American Mandan Indians had such a tale, which was closely related to the late Welsh version.

While living among the Mandans, Sacajawea no doubt heard the tale. Maybe she repeated it. The dog story in the following chapter makes use of this Welsh theme. It is an interesting tale to use in a historical novel as part of the legend of the unusual Mandans.

Most historians today do not believe the “Welsh Indian” myth—that the Mandans were descendants from the Welshman, Madoc, and his followers. They believe that the Mandans were descended from a branch of the early Sioux. Mandan prehistory is only dimly known and today there are no full-blood Mandans.

The anthropologist Dr. Edward M. Bruner writes that there were nine thousand Mandans in 1750, but after the small pox epidemic of 1837 there were only twenty-three male survivors. The descendants of these people are scattered in mixed Hidatsa and Arikara communities on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

SHOWELL STYLES
,
What to See in Beddgelert and How to See It.
Caernarvonshire, Wales: William H. Eastwood, 1973, pp. 9-12, 19-22.

EDWARD HSPICER
, ed.,
Perspectives in American Indian Culture Change
, “Mandan,” by Edward M. Bruner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 187-277.

W
inter was not far off. During the night, the marsh froze hard. For days the sun had fought against the ice. Sacajawea had kept the hope that the Agaidükas would come. Now she listened to the rattle of dry stalks, empty scabbards with summer drawn out of them. Chickadees slid down the stems, and her hope flowed away as the days grew shorter.

One morning she was aware that her lodge was preparing for some big event. Knives and hatchets were being honed on sandstone. Catches Two squatted over the fire, heating, bending, and straightening his arrows. Sacajawea wondered if he were preparing for battle and moved close to Talking Goose, who was nursing Little Rabbit.

“What is he doing?” She pointed to Catches Two, who was sighting along his arrows one by one.

“Going fishing,” said Talking Goose. “The bass are in groups now. We will smoke and dry them for trading with the Sioux in the Moon of Storing Squash.”

“Trading?” Sacajawea asked.

“Ai,
you ask so many things. They come and trade buffalo robes, skins, and meat for our vegetables and the fish. It is a time of feasting and merriment. We will have some fun.”

That night there was a dance in the middle of the village, with drummers and singers. Sacajawea watched from behind the old people and children. The people were dressed in their regular clothes, and two men came out and danced like fish swimming upstream. A few children imitated them, and the old ones patted hands and nodded to the drums. Sacajawea noticed that not all the village came out to dance for the fish. Only ten or twelve families were going on this trip. She walked back to the lodge and did not see the dog, which followed at the edge of the village. She slept to the monotonous beat of the drums.

The next morning, Old Grandfather said she was to go with them. Only Old Mother was staying behind to care for Little Rabbit. Antelope carried willow nets,

Talking Goose carried spears, and Sacajawea carried the bows and arrows. At the river embankment they laid the gear near Catches Two’s bull boats. Old Grandfather sat in the sun to smoke his pipe. The other families had also risen before sunrise and trooped out of the village to the riverbank. Frost made the short grass slick where it melted in the first rays of the sun.

Catches Two assigned his boats, and, like the other Hidatsas, they each clambered inside one and began twirling downriver. Sacajawea stayed close behind Antelope so that she could imitate her actions with the long pole. The first two craft to reach the bend in the river hesitated, and their occupants yelled back to the others to take care, there was white water. The others held back until the first two had gone down around the bend and out of sight; then they began fishing. Antelope instructed Sacajawea to stretch her net over between their boats, and they rode with it dragging in the water for some distance. Some of the Hidatsas had already caught fish in their nets. Talking Goose and Catches Two had more than a dozen. Old Grandfather had several bass flopping around his feet in the bottom of his boat.

Sacajawea tensed as her boat rounded the bend and began to bob down in a stretch of rapids. Some of the Hidatsa men and women had already leaped from their boats to swim to shore, dragging the bull boats behind.

Antelope waited until she was close beside Sacaja-wea’s fast-moving, twirling boat, then she flung a rawhide rope to Sacajawea and frantically poled toward shore. Antelope held tightly to one end of the rope, then her bull boat suddenly was pulled into a riffle. The little round boat lurched and overturned. Antelope was thrown into the water, which was waist-deep; she still held the rope. She looked around and saw her small craft right itself in the rapids and bob like a milkweed pod until it reached a deep, quiet pool and gently float to the riverbank. Antelope waded ashore against the pull of the swift water, the rawhide rope digging into her palm. She again looked back to the middle of the river where Sacajawea was trying to keep her eggshelllike craft upright as Antelope pulled it against the current.

At that moment, and without warning, Sacajawea’s boat smashed against a boulder that lay hidden just under the water’s surface and Sacajawea was thrown into the water. Fragments of the boat floated downriver. Sacajawea came up sputtering, gasping for air, fighting the rapids, trying to find something to wedge her body against, to put her feet against, or to put her hands around. She still had the rope in her hand and it cut into the flesh.

Antelope tried to maneuver Sacajawea out of the swift water, to get her closer to the riverside into a quiet pool she saw that was overhung with graceful willows. Antelope’s arms ached, her shoulders throbbed, and her hands hurt from the pull of the rope. Her eyes watered as she ran from rock to rock along the shore.

Catches Two yelled at Antelope to let go the rope. “She is lost!” he yelled. “Don’t fight the fast water.” Then he turned to Old Grandfather, who was white as bleached bone. “She is only a female, a Shoshoni at that, not worth much.”

“Oh,” cried Old Grandfather, “Great Spirit, stretch your hand to the child. Help her!”

“Are you dizzy-sick?” asked Catches Two, staring at Old Grandfather. “She is only a slave.
Pagh,
young females are nothing. Come, let us get this other net untangled and catch more fish.”