Sacajawea (167 page)

A few weeks later, Washakie wore his medal on a visit to Salt Lake City, where he let his picture be taken. He was given the picture several days later. He thought his outfit looked so handsome with the medal hanging from his neck that he had the superintendentof Indian affairs at Fort Bridger send the picture, carefully wrapped in soft white doeskin, to President Johnson.

That summer the Lemhis camped on the bank of the Sweetwater. Each day Toussaint raved against the white men who put boundaries on the Shoshoni land. He ranted against the Mormons because of their farming in lands no one wanted but which used to be a place the Shoshonis could wander through at will.

“So—the white men have not yet taken our horses or our guns,” said Shoogan, trying to calm him. Shoogan was even more a cripple now in his left leg. Whenever he walked, only the toes of his foot touched the ground, and his knee remained stiff. “Why do you think we can’t learn to grow vegetables and live peaceably with the whites if we must?”

Challenged to explain, Toussaint could not, but would only insist that they would all starve in time. “God! I don’t want to die like a hungry wolf,” moaned Toussaint. “That argument about the Shoshonis being farmers in order to live in peace is as old as shit. We’ve all seen it before. Instead, we’ll be like crazy, starving animals, scratching and biting at each other.”

‘Take hold of yourself,” said Shoogan calmly. “For many years our people lived in the mountains on roots and fish, and seldom had large game. We survived. Our chief, who was brother to the woman you call
umbea,
let no one go more hungry than another. Now Washakie is the same. None of us will go hungry if he does not wish it.”

Toussaint looked sideways at Shoogan. There was something in his words that disturbed him. He could not put his finger directly on it.

The next summer the tribe moved back to Fort Bridger. By then it was well known that the white men often killed the buffalo just for sport, taking the tongue, a piece of the choice hump meat, and perhaps a loin from the hindquarter, while the remainder was left to rot. The builders of the transcontinental railroads lived on buffalo meat. Their hunters left the thick hides to decay. Then the eastern market for hides opened, andthere was the last systematic slaughter of the remaining buffalo. Countless carcasses were again left on the prairie to rot.

Sacajawea found one such slaughtering ground near Black’s Fork while she was out digging sunflower roots one morning. The smell was so sickening she pinched her nostrils together. The screech of the crows was so disagreeable she could not stay. There were enough buffalo left to rot to feed Washakie’s band for four, maybe five years. Sacajawea recalled the dead buffalo in the Comanches’ land. She came back into camp with a look of disgust and sickness on her face.

Someone asked, “What happened?” Another said, “What did you see out there?” Others asked questions, then said, “Tell us.”

Washakie was angry. He sat with Sacajawea for a long time. “They’ve gone too far! I gave a promise not to raid the white hunter! But they take our hunting ground wherever they please and then insult us by this waste!”

Some of the men wanted to prepare for war immediately. There was little laughter in the camp. Washakie tried to keep his people calm. He spent much time in his lodge making medicine. Once or twice he came out and walked along the paths, frowning. Once Sacajawea spoke to him, but he did not answer. Days passed, and he came out searching for omens in the cries of the night birds, the pattern of rising smoke, or the formation of clouds. He could make no prediction or decision from any of the signs.

He seemed not to notice the other bands of Shoshonis that came to make camp near Bridger’s Fort; even the Bannocks moved in. By the second week in May, there were ninety-six lodges of Shoshonis and forty-nine of Bannocks. Rumors of another treaty council began.

Sacajawea spoke often with Crying Basket during this summer about living in the white man’s way. She was certain there was no other way open to them but to accept quietly the land, food, housing, and education the white men offered.

“There is an iron horse puffing black smoke through the village of the Cheyennes. Smell of Sugar told me of plans for a trail for this iron horse in the neighborhood of Bridger’s Fort,” said Crying Basket, combing her long black hair against the sides of her clear face. She resembled her mother; only she was taller and her hands broader.

Sacajawea put her hands to her mouth in disbelief, then wondered aloud when the white tops were coming with more supplies. “It does not take long to use the meat they bring or the flour in biscuits.”

“I can tell you something else,” said Crying Basket, lifting her small daughter, Berry, off the floor and setting her comfortably on her lap so that she could plait the child’s hair. “I hear that one of the women of your son Baptiste boiled the bacon of the white man in water and swore that the meat was not fit to eat. She threw her bacon portions out to the dogs, and she did not know what to do with the flour. I thought this Baptiste knew the ways of the white man and would tell his women what to do with such supplies. I think it would be good, maybe, if you taught them how to cook the bacon on sizzling-hot iron plates, and to save the grease to make flour biscuits.”

“That man can tell his women how to cook if he wishes hot biscuits or his bacon crisp. It is not my affair,” Sacajawea said sharply.

On July 1, 1868, Sacajawea stood with the other women to watch the supply wagons come in with bacon, flour, sugar, coffee, beads, mirrors, trade cloth, stockings, tobacco, and woolen blankets.

The Shoshonis pushed and shoved to get their share of food and gifts being distributed by the agent, Mann, who sat with a ledger at a small wooden table set out in front of the fort’s gates. A steady file went on until the Shoshonis were all given their share of food, stockings, a blanket, and tobacco, and ticketed so that Mann would know which Shoshonis had been through the line already.

Finally, when the goods were distributed and the happy families sat on the grass in relaxed picnic groups, General C. C. Augur came through the fort’s gates. Sacajawea looked at him and wondered if he was somebody newly appointed to give out more gifts. She pinched Crying Basket and pointed, saying, “I think the menwearing the best clothes should shake hands with this important stranger.”

“Oh, Mother,” hissed Crying Basket, rocking gently to and fro on her haunches with Berry, who was nearly asleep, “he is going to tell us who he is. Then the men will know what formality to take.”

“Well, he moves slower than I,” Sacajawea hissed back.

Augur was perhaps thirty years old, with a ruddy, smooth-shaven face, wide-open blue eyes, and a good, though somewhat plump, figure. On this day he was dressed impeccably in the uniform of the U.S. Army. He had been authorized by the Indian Peace Commission at Fort Laramie to come to Fort Bridger for the sole purpose of negotiating with the Bannocks and Shoshonis.

Washakie stepped forward. Sacajawea nodded her approval. Washakie took the pipe offered him and passed it through the four cardinal points, to the sky, then the earth, then took a long puff and handed it back to Augur. As unobtrusively as possible, another man came to sit cross-legged between Augur and Washakie. He was the interpreter. Crying Basket pinched Sacajawea and pointed. The interpreter was Shoogan. Augar told the Shoshonis and Bannocks to seat themselves in a great semicircle to hear the council of the generous white men. “The Great White Father wishes to give you land into which no white man will be permitted to go.”

There was a formidable grunt from Washakie. Some of the Shoshonis seated alongside him let the air out of their mouths in a loud manner. Sacajawea looked expectantly to see what the white man might do next.

General Augur continued speaking, his face not changing expression. He suggested the bands move as soon as possible to this land, where there would be wooden lodges and men to show the right way to plant seeds and harvest vegetables. He said the children would go to school. Augur’s voice went on, in a humdrum manner. Shoogan waved his arms and tried to keep the Indians awake as he did his best to translate.

“For each man there will be a coat, hat, trousers, shirt, woolen socks. For each woman, a skirt of flannel, trade cloth, and woolen socks.”

Sacajawea moved her shoulders in the warm sun. She removed the new red blanket and got up. This was too much talk. She was going home. Crying Basket pulled her back as Chief Washakie stood to put an end to this talk.

“We will come here again tomorrow,” translated Shoogan. “At the end of all the talk, if it is satisfactory with our chief, he will mark the paper with an X. The paper must say the white hunters will never come on our land.”

Sacajawea looked at Chief Washakie. He had dignity and confidence. His people loved and respected him; the whites respected him. She thought of the leaders in the Comanche nation and could think of none so great as Washakie, none who would sit calmly in the hot sun listening to talk of supplies of sickening sweet meat of the cow, and of giving the children the cow’s milk with its sick taste. This Washakie fully understood what was happening to his people under the overriding push of the white men in Shoshoni country. He wore his eagle feathers and a fresh breechclout, the wide apron hanging to his knees in front and behind, and new moccasins and leggings to the thighs, and across his arm hung the thin red-wool blanket.

The next afternoon, Augur stood and held up his hand. The People murmured.

Shoogan translated loudly. “This I have to say first. The Bannocks will receive four thousand dollars’ worth of goods from the treaty funds and a place in the Shoshoni Reservation land.”

Another murmur went through the crowd. The Bannocks were standing, each one moving forward to press the hand of Augur to seal the bargain. Augur held up both hands and made the cut-off sign. He was through talking, and it was time for Washakie to say something. The Bannocks stopped and stumbled back to their places in the semicircle.

“I should get up to walk around myself,” sighed Sacajawea. “My legs would feel better then.”

“Do not complain, Mother,” said Crying Basket. “Mostof us have the patience to sit politely while our chief speaks.”

“Humph,” muttered Sacajawea, wiping perspiration from her forehead with the red blanket.

Washakie shook General Augur’s hand, then took Shoogan’s hand and pumped it. Solemnly he pointed his own redstone pipe to the four directions and to heaven and earth. Then he stared into the bright sunlight at the semicircle of Shoshonis and Bannocks. No one stirred. No one was disrespectful. He handed his pipe to the general. After a few moments his deep voice projected to the outer edge of the semicircle.

“I am laughing because I am happy. Because my heart is good. As I said one day ago, I like the country you mentioned, then for us, the Wind River Valley

“I want for my home the valley of the Wind River and the lands on its tributaries as far east as the Popo Agie, and I want the privilege of going over the mountains to hunt where I please, never to be disturbed by white hunters.”

Then Chief Taghee of the Bannocks spoke. He had a straight body and an impassive face with jutting jaw, strong, flat-planed cheeks, and deep-set eyes. He wore denim trousers, a cotton shirt, a broad-brimmed black hat, and moccasins.

“As far away as Virginia City our tribe has roamed. But I want only the Port Neuf Country and Camass Plains. We are friends with the Shoshonis and like to hunt with them, but we want a home for ourselves.”

Augur raised his hands to tell the assembly to return to the council tomorrow, when the formal treaty would be read. He unbuttoned the top of his coat, then quickly rebuttoned it, saying, “I am not acquainted with the country to locate a reservation for you, but when someone comes to lay it out, then the Bannocks will be told to move there.”

There was much buzzing about this treaty around the evening fires. The Bannocks were still not happy. The Shoshonis made it a time of feasting and merriment.

In the firelight Sacajawea caught sight of Toussaint sitting far on the edge of the camp with his two women, Dirty and Contrary Woman. His children ran aboutnoisily, ragged and unclean. Her heart sank to see these children learning no responsibility to themselves or others. She’d caught two of the boys creeping up to her tepee and peering inside the rolled skirts on warm afternoons. She longed to invite them inside and hold them. But she could not. She had told Toussaint not to come to her lodge, and that meant his family also. One child, Race Horse, looked much like Toussaint—with tousled, thick hair and a round, flat face with shining, large eyes. His mouth seldom smiled, but did not seem sad, only resigned. The other, Squirrel Chaser, was small and built like his mother, Contrary Woman. Yelling Falls, a little girl, was not kept at her lodge, but permitted to toddle everywhere after her two older brothers. She was naked and streaked with dirt and grease. Joy, a girl of about fifteen summers, was oldest. Joy was Dirty’s only child. She seemed shy, staying close to her lodge.

Several times Sacajawea knew the boys pilfered small things from her tepee, like a butcher knife, a leather box half-full of tallow, and bits of meat. Toussaint never seemed to challenge where the youngsters found their new items. Neither he nor his women seemed to have an understanding of children. Toussaint possessed a certain amount of natural affection, but he never showed it, and he was erratic in his dealings, so that the boys never knew whether they would be punished severely for some minor offense or ignored when guilty of some far more serious misdeed. The children naturally feared their father, and Toussaint sensed this. They ignored their mothers. But they held Sacajawea in some respectful awe, always hoping that one day they might be permitted to hear the mystical stories she could tell.

To Toussaint, Sacajawea seemed the consistent ally of his children. This gave him a feeling of being defied in his own lodge, which added greatly to his resentment. Yet he never hinted that he wished to move out, nor did he ever speak to Sacajawea about his feelings. She knew he was irritable whenever his children came near her tepee. She never once invited them even to sit with her during a tribal meeting or festival. She watched the four children with pity in her heart.