Sacajawea (154 page)

Finally Sage said, “I’m half-starved.” He kicked his horse into a run and fired his rifle.

They rode in through the arched passageway beneath the blockhouse. The squaws and near-naked children by the wall clustered around them in the small courtyard. Coming from the blacksmith on the opposite side of the courtyard was a man with white whiskers and heavy white hair.

“Hey, Lane, this old Comanche woman is here to takecharge of Fontaine’s baby. Can you guess who she claims to be?”

“Is this what you got at Bent’s, you fool?”

“Aw, I got the sugar and salt pork, but who do you suppose this squaw is?”

“Pocahontas?”

The old man’s eyes twinkled bright blue as Sage dismounted and helped Sacajawea and her child down. Someone came up and took the packs off the horses and led them to a small corral and water.

“Rub the horses good, Charley!” yelled Sage, then he said, “This here is Bap Charbonneau’s mammy. She was the woman with those captains—Lewis and Clark. Can you ever imagine?”

“Hell’s fire! Never would have dreamt a thing like this. Is it true or are you pulling my leg?”

“True, true,” replied Sage. “She knows too much about that there expedition for it to be anyone else. Been living with bloodthirsty Comanches in Mexican Territory for a time, looking for her son. Left her old man in Saint Louis. Incredible, eh?”

“Madame Charbonneau,” Lupton addressed Sacajawea with a bow. “Madame Charbonneau, are you certain Baptiste is your son?”

“Ai,” she said, wondering why the white men needed the story over and over again.

Lupton shook his white head. “I’ll get Mrs. Ducate, the washwoman, to show you around.”

“Take her to Fontaine,” interrupted Sage.

“She’ll take you to Monsieur Fontaine,” said Lupton; then he turned again to Sage. “Rufus, I have some traps for beaver I want you to set out. Come get them before we all have supper.”

The men walked away, leaving Sacajawea, Crying Basket, and their packs. Soon a large, pleasant, red-faced woman came toward them.

Mrs. Ducate did not hide her surprise when she found that Sacajawea was not a white woman in the red dress. “We’ll have a bath first off,” she said, taking Sacajawea into the tiny washroom where she worked. She took a bucket out to the pump and filled it with water. She placed the bucket on the hot wood stove. The room was very hot. Crying Basket was asleep on her mother’sshoulder. Sacajawea sat on the floor in a corner opposite the stove and watched.

Mrs. Ducate poured the hot water into a big wooden tub. She went out, pumped water into the bucket, and added it to the tub to cool the hot water. Sacajawea again marveled at the white woman’s pool for bathing. This tub was larger than the tub of Owl Woman. The water was soothing. Crying Basket sleepily clung to her mother as Sacajawea pulled her dress off.

“Soap,” said Mrs. Ducate, handing Sacajawea an uneven yellow bar. Crying Basket tried to take a bite from the soap. Both women giggled.

“It is much like the soap of Miss Judy,” said Sacajawea with surprise.

Mrs. Ducate was even more surprised at the squaw’s English. She ran her hand over the brown smoothness of the little child’s back. Then she noticed the faint white scars across Sacajawea’s back.

“You’ve been treated mighty poorly in your time, poor thing,” she sighed aloud.

Sacajawea looked up. “Time is better for me now.”

“For me, too,” laughed Mrs. Ducate. “My Charley is the clerk at the fort, and between the two of us we make out quite well. Took a long time to get this far.”

Sacajawea examined Crying Basket’s feet and legs. She was pleased the sores and scabs had disappeared. She scrubbed Crying Basket vigorously with the soap. The child whimpered when soap got into her eyes. Sacajawea splashed the water on her face, and soon the child was singing and splashing back. Mrs. Ducate brought out a faded blue-gingham dress for Crying Basket and fresh undergarments for Sacajawea.

These underthings were new to her. Sacajawea was used to living free from such bindings, but she stood patiently as Mrs. Ducate fastened them to her. That evening she took them off, never to wear them again, except for the petticoats. These she did not mind wearing, as she imagined herself to look as pretty as Judy Clark had looked with her petticoats swishing about her bare legs.

Then Mrs. Ducate brought in a little dark-eyed half-breed girl, about a year older than Crying Basket. “This is Suzanne Fontaine.”

Sacajawea looked at the child, who wore her hair in short dark braids. “She is beautiful.”

Mrs. Ducate smiled and braided Crying Basket’s hair and tied strips of red cloth around the ends. Sacajawea then thought her own daughter beautiful. She bent to hug both children.

Mrs. Ducate announced, “Suzanne, this is Madame Charbonneau, who will cook for you and tidy up around your place.” Then, abruptly, she turned to Sacajawea and asked, “Why is old Lancaster Lupton so interested in you?”

“Maybe because the one called Sage is interested in finding my son.”

“And why don’t you speak like other squaws?” Mrs. Ducate shook her head. “You are a somebody, I can see that. But who?”

A grin crept over Sacajawea’s face. “I am the mother of Baptiste, and a long time ago I lived near the village of Saint Louis. I saw how the white women spoke and lived. I have been at the place called Bent’s and have learned more. I can talk your tongue now, huh?”

“Oh, oh.” Mrs. Ducate stared at Sacajawea in a placid, measured way, trying to piece things together. She dropped herself into an unpainted chair and stretched out her legs.

It was not long until Sacajawea was settled in as housekeeper for Monsieur Fontaine, who was neither young nor old, but had white hair, a gray pointed beard, and smoked his pipe continually. Sacajawea kept his rooms cleaner than Mrs. Ducate thought possible. Suzanne loved having Crying Basket as a playmate and companion. Often she asked to sleep in the single robe in the corner of the living room where Sacajawea and Crying Basket slept each night. Monsieur Fontaine did not allow it. He thought his daughter should sleep in a proper featherbed. And he made sure that the sleeping robes were neatly folded and stacked early each morning so that no hint of a bed showed in his front room.

Sometimes Sacajawea took both little girls visiting outside the fort. They visited the camps of friendly Utah and the Tukadükas, or Sheep Eater Shoshonis, living near the walls of the fort. The girls ran with the campdogs and played ring and pin, hoop and pole with the Utah children.

When travelers came to the fort, Sacajawea sat in the yard to hear of where they had been and who they had visited. She was aware of trappers going out of the fort and who was carrying furs to Mexico or east to Saint Louis.

One morning after breakfast, Monsieur Fontaine got his pipe and motioned for Sacajawea to stop sweeping the floor a moment.

“I have to ask you, Madame Charbonneau. Was old Toussaint your husband?”

Sacajawea was startled, and a chill crept over her. She looked carefully at Monsieur Fontaine, whose face told her nothing.
“Ai,
many years back.”

“I met him at Fort Union on the Upper Missouri back in thirty-five or so, and he was then claiming to live with the Mandans. Since then, those people were wiped out from smallpox. He had trouble speaking the Mandan language without mixing French phrases with it. With no more Mandans, I wondered what happened to old Charbonneau. I would not have thought him to be the kind of man you would live with. He often talked about his boys and their education in Saint Louis, but he was a damned scoundrel himself.”

Sacajawea had to keep a hand over her mouth to keep from showing her amazement. “Our paths have not crossed for many seasons,” she said. “But the Mandans—gone? It is not possible.”

Monsieur Fontaine rose and began to pace. “So you had sons who were schooled in Saint Louis?”

“Ai,”
she answered, wondering what he was to say next.

“Old Lancaster Lupton has a West Point education. What do you think about education for girls? I am serious.”

“You mean read the talking leaves?”

“I most certainly mean that, madame. How else are these young women going to get on? Your son went to school with backing from General Clark, and so did that other, called Tess. The time is coming when everyone will be expected to read and write. The white manis going to force the red man to be civilized. I know it is coming.”

“But you mean these little girls, here, learn from books?”

“I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Have you met Céran St. Vrain? Maybe we could take them to Fort St. Vrain and have Céran work with them on the teaching himself. He has books. You could teach the sewing. I’ve watched you. Your work is equal to any white woman’s.”

Sacajawea shook her head.

Monsieur Fontaine resumed his pacing.

Then, with no more discussion of such an important subject, he left the room; a snatch of a whistled tune came from the yard, and the iron gate of the fort opened and slammed.

Sacajawea ran out after him. She stopped and saw him in the unkempt garden digging and still whistling, throwing out weeds here and there from a row of pole beans.

An Indian woman of the Snake nation, desirous, like Naomi of old, to return to her people, requested and obtained permission to travel with my party to the neighborhood of Bear river, where she expected to meet with some of their villages. She carried with her two children, who added much to the liveliness of the camp.

The Shoshone woman took leave of us near Ham’s Fork of the Black Fork on the Green River, expecting to find some of her relations at Bridger’s Fort, which is only a mile or two distant, on a fork of this stream.
¹

JOHN CHARLES FRÉMONT
,
Report of the Expedition on the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843 –44,
28th Cong., 2nd Sess., Sen. Doc. no. 174. Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, Printers, 1845. also in:

Donald Jackson and Mary Lee Penal, eds.,
The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont, Travels from 1838 to 1844
, vol. I, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, pp. 430, 457–58, 468–69.

M
rs. Ducate stopped Sacajawea at the water pump one morning. “Say—you’ve got him out of his shell. He was whistlin’ and hummin’ this morning when he went out to that garden. Next he’ll be wanting to take you and the little girls to the other forts. He’ll want to show them off. Let’s fix them up. I have some pink gingham and we can make them dresses and hair ribbons.”

Sacajawea was delighted with the idea, and indeed, Mrs. Ducate was right. By the end of the week Monsieur Fontaine’s face was a shade tanner from working in his garden, and there was a twinkle in his eyes. “I want to go visit St. Vrain. Bring the children. We might hear something about that roving, handsome Baptiste. He ought to be in Saint Louis by now. Maybe St. Vrain has heard,” he said to Sacajawea.

Sacajawea could not wait to tell Mrs. Ducate. “See there, I told you,” was her reply. The two women chattered and scrubbed the little girls. “They look beautiful in that pink with their dark eyes and black, shining braids,” said Mrs. Ducate, walking around each little girl.

“Ai,”
said Sacajawea, just as pleased with the effect. “Will Monsieur Fontaine like their looks?”

Monsieur Fontaine brought the horses from the corral. He was most pleased with what he saw.

Sacajawea wore a yellow flowered dress. It had been Mrs. Ducate’s once and was big for Sacajawea, but she had taken in the waist with a belt of woven grass. Underneath she wore two petticoats.

Suzanne rode in front of her father and Crying Basket rode in front of Sacajawea as they set out.

During the ride Monsieur Fontaine turned his head slowly every so often and stared at Sacajawea. Slapping a gnat that had lit on his nose, he remarked once that this country sure did get as hot as the inside of a buffalo. Sacajawea reluctantly understood that he was one of those people who could ride through a land full of glory and never see it. To Jacques Fontaine, beauty meant a clean shave, and shining boots, and his own reflection in the stillness of a deep pool. He had hauled furs inand out of the country, herded sheep, farmed, but never noticed a mountain or a sunset in his life.

So Sacajawea did not talk about the spectacle around them. But that evening she gazed at the declining sun that sent long blades of light among the rocks, striking fantastic colors from their walls, and the shadows that lay purple on the ground. They arrived at Fort St. Vrain as the sun slipped behind one of the far towers, and the light around them was a thicker purple, though there were still crowns of gold on the top of the fort.

The Indian women inside the fort gathered around the little girls in pink and ooed and ahed, and touched their soft dresses.

Charley Bent came out.

“He is called White Hat by the Indians and is Bill Bent’s brother,” explained Monsieur Fontaine.

Charley Bent was happy to see the old
engagé
Fontaine out for a visit again. “You’ll be trapping by fall,” was his prediction. Then he winked toward Sacajawea. “Another woman now, huh?” asked Charley Bent.

“No. She’s my housekeeper.”

“Of course.” Bent winked. “Come through the blockhouse to the main quarters.” Descending the blockhouse stairs behind Sacajawea and Monsieur Fontaine, holding a spyglass in his hand, was a stocky, round-faced man. He was distinguished by a hedge of black whiskers and deep brown eyes, and his gray cassinette pants and red-flannel shirt set him apart from the buckskin-clad trappers and the Mexican dragoons with their colorful serapes. This man was Céran St. Vrain, first in authority here.

“We would like to wash up a little before the evening meal,” said Monsieur Fontaine. “We want to stay overnight. I don’t want to take these babies back to Lupton’s in the dark.”

“Oui, you may sleep inside the fort, Monsieur Fontaine. I did not know you were remarried,” said St. Vrain.