Sacajawea (169 page)

It was that very evening that Toussaint hesitatingly came to her tepee in much embarrassment.

“I want you to leave my boys alone,” he said, shamefaced. His head hung toward his moccasins.

It was after the evening meal and Sacajawea was tidying the lodge before the others came back from some visiting. She was alone.

Toussaint looked around the tepee. It was the first time since his arrival that he’d been inside. Now he looked strangely complacent.

She looked at him questioningly, not understanding his request.

“What is the matter, Mother? You want to deny that you let those boys have this?” He took the Jefferson peace medal from his back trouser pocket. He knew full well she had not given the boys the medal—they had seen its shininess and taken it.

But Toussaint knew that Sacajawea would deny it.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I did not think to tell them they had no real use for such a thing and it was best left here with me. Perhaps they liked the neck string—see, I have beaded it a little.”

“Mother,” said Toussaint, “you mean to tell me that you would let them have this and say nothing?”

She shook her head. She was not sure what she would have done if she had found that the medal was missing. Toussaint had jockeyed her into a position of appearing to have condoned the boys’ taking anything they wished. She was thinking it over. Angry as it made her, there was nothing much she could do about it. She had long ago decided never to criticize Toussaint and his women, never to offer them advice, never to really notice them if possible.

“This medallion rightfully belongs to me. I am called your son, and so it is mine.”

Sacajawea was appalled and stepped back. He was trying to take advantage of her. Her arm darted out, and she pulled back the medal.

“It rightfully belongs to Baptiste. It is mine until I find him or until I see fit to give it to someone,” she said.

“You will give it to me, or at your death it will be given to me,” he sneered. A secret look of triumph wasin Toussaint’s eyes. “Years ago, just after my brother came back from Germany acting like some kind of dandy, the two of us were in Saint Louis selling peltries and we met Bill Clark in Chouteau’s trading post. Old Bill Clark was so glad to see Bap he hardly noticed me at first. When he asked about you, I was the one who stepped up and told him right out about how you’d run off. Bap still felt so bad about that he went off to look at some tooled saddles while I told Clark the details.”

Sacajawea’s hands flew to her mouth.

“So I told him that wolves had found you sleeping on the prairie and devoured your flesh to the bone. I said I knew it was you by the little blue stone on the leather thong around your bare neckbones. And I saw the surprise and hurt that came to his face.”

Sacajawea stared, stunned.

“I used my head and suggested that Clark not say a word to Bap about your death because it had upset him so. Clark knew how sensitive he was and had seen how he’d left me to tell the facts. So he agreed not to discuss it with Bap.”
¹

Sacajawea could think of nothing to say, nor did she really wish to say anything. The perfidiousness—the utter perfidiousness—crushed her. She drew herself down into a knot, staring unbelieving, wounded beyond any power of expression.

Toussaint looked at her, standing away from him. Suddenly there came conviction. He truly had known all along she’d been alive, even though no one could find her. Sacajawea could take care of herself no matter where she went—on the prairie, in the mountains, anywhere. Why had he made up such a story and told it to a man he really respected, Bill Clark—and then half believed it himself for a time?

She had withdrawn to the side of her tepee. Her face was averted now, and she placed a hand on her pallet and guided herself down upon it. Toussaint could not see her, but he knew she was crying—crying deep inside herself, not sobbing or weeping, but breaking far within, her tears being tears of the soul and infinitely more poignant than any tears of the surface.

He said no more. He’d come again and see to it shegave him the old Jefferson medal. Then the Shoshonis would think he was something—maybe look up to him the way they looked up to old Washakie. Slowly he moseyed on toward his own tepee, grimly, stubbornly silent.

One of Sacajawea’s great-grandsons, named James McAdams, who was the son of Nancy Bazil, daughter of Shoogan, contributed certain interesting information regarding the medal which Sacajawea had. This medal bore Jefferson’s head and his name, and had a gold rim about it.
¹

“I have seen it many times. At Salt Lake the people, when they saw this medal, said to Porivo or Chief, ‘Something grand!’ and they gave Sacajawea and her people who were with her a big feast in honor of her wonderful achievements for the white people when they were on their way to the big waters.”

Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from
Sacajawea, Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
by Grace Raymond Hebard, 1957, pp. 200–1.

W
ashakie kept his band close to the Fort Bridger Agency. Often Sacajawea went to visit with Washakie’s Crow woman, White Curly Bear. White Curly Bear was always pleasant and always working hard. She was not old, but not very young, either. She had white hairs growing from a small mole on her chin.

One morning the two women were making moccasins together, each sewing on blue-and-white beads they had bought earlier from the sutler’s store inside Fort Bridger. Sacajawea was amusing White Curly Bear with stories about the antics of Ben York and the big dog, Scannon. “That black warrior was the envy of all the young native girls,” said Sacajawea. “They would trade anything to have a strong black child who resembled him, for strength and protection in their lodge.”

White Curly Bear looked up, her eyes big. She put a finger on her chin, then slid it slowly across her lips. “Shhh,” she said. “That is like a story of my own from long ago. Now, do not interrupt and I will tell you about a band of Crows that came to visit our tribe one spring. They had a magnificent chief who was dark as a burned log, except on the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands. His hair was curly like the buffalo grass, and he let it grow long and bushy. He had four women to take care of it. They tied it with grasses and put shining black crow feathers in it. He could speak the language of the white man and sometimes entertained travelers and mountain men. He trained one of his camp dogs to stand on its hind feet and bark for meat. He taught the dog to roll over and over. My mother told me he lifted me to his shoulders one time and danced around until I sang with delight. I was a child and remember only what my mother told. She said he went into council with the chief of our tribe and wore a beautiful white shirt with threads pink as the sunset on it. These threads were made into flowers like the wild rose. He was very careful with that shirt and would not let his women fold it. He himself did that, and he kept it in a parfleche high on a lodgepole peg—stop interrupting me.”

Sacajawea was waving her hands in the air. Shecould hardly keep her mouth shut in her excitement. “His name? What name did he go by?”

“How do I know? I cannot remember if my mother ever told me. He was a grand chief. He stood tall and big and black. He sang loud in a tongue that the Crows could not understand. He could sing up high and down low; he did not chant as the Crows do. My mother said he had once lived with white men.”

“The shirt—did he tell where it came from?”

“I do not know about that, except I think my mother said a white woman made it for him.”

“Did the shirt have lacing at the neck and wrists?”

“Ai, it did, and those beautiful pink flowers on that pure whiteness of the material. It was not like fine doeskin, but white as birchbark and soft and thin. Nothing like the Crow women could sew.”

Sacajawea was speechless. She did not know who else it could be but Ben York, wearing the shirt she had so carefully made for him in Saint Louis. She thought awhile. She thought about the people she had known and decided now that they did not die with the years, they came back to her. Her own world was as large as the whole nation of white men to the east, the Comanches and Mexicans to the south, the Mandans to the north, and now the Crows to the west.

“I cannot remember more except that the big black chief made little children laugh when he swung them up in the air and caught them in his powerful arms. He liked children, and he had many in his lodge.”

“It is some story,” said Sacajawea finally, her eyes fastened on White Curly Bear’s face as though she had not heard the end.

“You do not believe it?” asked White Curly Bear.

“Oh, I do,
ai.
It is just something that is gnawing at my thoughts. I think it is the Great Spirit telling us that we can all live together in happiness, no matter where we come from. If we get to know a person, we can like him.”

“Chief Woman, your mouth won’t stay shut. I feel like pinching it closed,” said White Curly Bear. “I tell you a childhood story, and you start telling about people getting along. Even members of families fight, you know. It seems to be the nature of people to be happy for atime, then to make some sadness, like fighting or death. Happiness is never long lasting. Now, why are you making a design of roses on those moccasins instead of the sun with rays?”

“I do not really know. It is just something that was in my mind,” answered Sacajawea softly.

“There is something going on that puzzles me,” said White Curly Bear. “That man called General Augur sent three men of the Arapahos to talk with my man. He would tell me nothing, except that the Arapahos wish to live with us on the Wind River Reservation. I could not believe it. The Arapahos are our enemies; they cannot be trusted. Why would they suddenly wish to join us now?”

“Perhaps if we knew them, we could be friends,” said Sacajawea.

“I hesitated to tell you this. But now it is time. It is the family of the man you call your son. There is a girl in that family who has made a friendship with an Arapaho youth. She meets him on the other side of the fort. It is the girl called Joy. You knew about this affair? That is why you talk about being friends with everyone?”

“No,” said Sacajawea, “I did not know.” She sat quite still, her head reeling with thoughts.

“And the man you call son has a loose tongue. He boldly told my man, Washakie, he was too old to be chief. He told him he could never win any battles or take a scalp now. He said further that the war blood has ceased to flow through his veins and that he, who was named Baptiste, should now be leader of the Lemhi Shoshoni.”

Sacajawea’s head reeled with the words. Several times she bit her tongue so that she would not say what came to her mind.

“Washakie has gone off on his horse alone. I do not know when he will return. He and I do not blame you for the ways of that man who calls himself Baptiste. We respect you as a true friend. What we do not understand is how you can have a son like that man.”

Sacajawea sat hunched over her sewing for a long time. To have publicly claimed a son that was not truly hers was neither right nor wrong. He was the son of

Otter Woman, her friend, and never would she let the spirit of this old friend find her rude or discourteous to something so valuable as the grown son of a true friend.

But she could not understand Toussaint. Maybe he’d had too much schooling or maybe it was the poor, thin cows of the white men he brought home pretending it was buffalo meat; maybe it was the raw trade whiskey that made him stormy one time and peaceable the next. She could not tell ahead what little things might set him off. She hated him and at the same time loved him.

Late one evening not long afterward, the girl, Joy, came limping to Sacajawea’s tepee. Her right leg was stiff. Sacajawea rolled up the legging and saw the two tiny holes with blood in them. By this time they were turning black and the flesh was beginning to swell and puff. Sacajawea pulled the lacing from the legging, and around and around she bound it as tightly as she could, just above the knee, twisting the knot with a piece of stick to stop the flow of blood. The girl fainted as nausea swept over her and the earth swam. At first horror filled Sacajawea; then, as it ebbed away, anxiety for the safety of this young life took hold of her.

“What happened?” she asked when the girl was conscious.

“I was out on the trail beside the water hole on the far side of the fort,” explained Joy slowly. “I waited for High Horse, the son of the Arapaho subchief Sorrel Horse. He did not come, and I grew impatient and stepped off the trail only to see the moon better.”

Numbness was climbing to her knee, and her leg was swelling terribly. Another great spasm of vertigo overcame the girl. She tried to fight the sickness.

Sacajawea’s decisive and authoritative voice cut across her nausea. “I’ll get your mother.”

“No, please, no. Do not tell them. Not any of them.” Then when the great twisting nausea was over, Joy knew she had vomited; her tunic was covered. She then found she was lying down on a bed of robes. She lay half-conscious as Sacajawea worked over her. Her clothes came off. A cotton cloth covered her.

“Be still now,” Sacajawea said. “Do not stir up your blood.”

The girl obeyed. She was small, light-complexioned, frail-looking. Her face seemed coarse and vacant. She seemed to have no volition of her own.

Sacajawea looked up as she heard footsteps. Dirty, the girl’s mother, pushed aside the tepee flap and entered. “The boy, Squirrel Chaser, told me she was hurt and had come here. I brought whiskey. It’s the one cureall. Where is she?”

“You’re not going to let her drink the whiskey?” asked Sacajawea.

“Ai.”
Dirty’s fat fingers pressed at the leg’s swelling. “And so she found herself next to a rattler. It looks bad.”

Sacajawea wished she had called Dancing Leaf to come. Her mind seemed numbed for a moment. Crying Basket was gone with her man and baby to Fort Hall. She knew that drinking whiskey was not good for snakebite. Kicking Horse, the Comanche Medicine Man, would never use it. But he would use mescal powder to edge off the pain. And what else did he use? Her mind reeled and fell into her past.