Sacajawea (34 page)

Clark’s Journal:

Mandans—             27th of October Satturday 1804,

we met with a frenchman by the name of Jessomme which we imploy as an interpreter. This man has a wife and Children in the village. Great numbers on both Sides flocked down to the bank to view us as we passed, we Sent three twists of Tobacco by three young men, to the villages above inviting them to come Down and Council with us tomorrow, many Indians came to view as Some stayed all night in the Camp of our party. We procured some information of Mr. Jessomme of the Chiefs of the Different Nations.

4th November Sunday 1804

we continued to cut Down trees and raise our houses, a Mr. Chaubonie, interpeter for the Gross Ventre nation Came to See us, and informed that [he] came Down with Several Indians from a hunting expedition up the river, to here what we had told the Indians in Council. This man wished to hire as an interpiter

BERNARD DEVOTO
, ed.,
The Journals of Lewis and Clark.
New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, pp. 58-9, 63.

A
t the first light of dawn over the Five River Villages, Sacajawea was up with the others, Otter Woman and Corn Woman. She wore a shapeless, dirty red blanket and scuffed moccasins, but she wore the polished sky-blue stone on a thong close to her thoat. She built up the cooking fire with pieces of dry, seasoned wood that were within reach of her bed; they burned with a practically smokeless fire.

Otter Woman wore a leather tunic and calf-high moccasins that were baggy and dirty. She sat on her hide-covered bed and nursed a boy of two summers who lay naked in her lap on a mound of black deer moss.

“I was sick in the mornings when I carried this one,” Otter Woman said in her native Shoshoni. “You are lucky.”

“Ai,”
Sacajawea said.

Corn Woman, still in her teens, was the eldest woman of Charbonneau. She sat on a pallet of cornhusks, motionless, silent, head bent, wrapped in a gray wool blanket, staring at her hands. Stuck into a well-worn animal hide hanging from a wooden beam behind her bed were her needles for sewing skins. Bits of sinew, pieces of leather, and skins lay about within easy reach. At the foot of her pallet were wire rabbit snares and a few rusted traps. Some animal skins were drying on the stretchers leaning against the side wall. In one grand motion she gestured toward the fire and rummaged among the leather and skins to find her vintage felt hat, which she pulled down over her wisps of coal-black hair.

Sacajawea saw the gesture and stirred the contents of the stew pot on a cooking crane over the fire. She laid the stirring bone on a piece of bark. What had gone into the stew she could not recall. It had started early in the fall with meat, barley, beans, and sliced pumpkin. As time went by, whatever was handy was tossed in— headless and footless, uneviscerated bodies of rabbits, a fish or two, some dried corn, a wild parsnip, some meat. The stew pot would be cleaned in the spring when Charbonneau moved his camp to a creek nearer his traplines. Then the stew pot would simmer its way until fall when they moved back to the permanent earthen lodge in the village of the Mandans.

Charbonneau pushed aside the wooden door, stamped his calked boots, and brushed off his baggy pants. He tossed a felt hat aside; his black hair was matted to his head. As he tossed a leather pouch near Sacajawea’s feet, he said, “Here’s that tea I got from the feller McCracken. She go in hot water. A little bit.” He dug around in his pants pocket and pulled out a wad of cigarette papers and a nearly empty pack of shag tobacco. “Come on, we have a good feed and a pot of tea.”

Corn Woman, glad he spoke the familiar Minnetaree she could understand, smiled and picked up the leather pouch. She put several pinches of tea leaves in a small iron kettle, poured water from a clay pot and replaced the stew pot with the teakettle.

As he sealed his cigarette, Charbonneau thought how he did not much mind being called Squawman. He did not mind if it meant this—being warm and well fed by women who did as he commanded. They were chattel. He was the boss. For a few trinkets and bits of foofaraw, the women were always there to make him feel like the Emperor Napoleon. Even if he left for a hunt or trapping for the Company for three or four months, the women would be waiting for him and his kill with freshly made trousers, jackets, and moccasins.

He found a stick and lit it in the fire, inclined his head, and got his cigarette going. “Pour that tea slow!” he yelled at Corn Woman, who was pouring the hot, bitter tea into a tin cup. “I want to drink, not chew this.” His nostrils distended as they took in the aroma. He pulled off his boots, sitting on the earthen floor, which was so hardened from use by bare and mocca-sined feet and swept so clean that it had almost a polished appearance. He wiped the back of his hand across his mustache and smoked again. Then he sipped the tea.

Sacajawea picked up the stirring bone and wiped the bark bowl clean with the edge of her blanket. With an elk horn she dipped out some thick stew. Charbonneau poured the stew into his mouth. The first swallow made him twist his face as the thick gruel burned his innards. With his fingers he picked up strings of meat and hunks of soft pumpkin. “By gar, I get lots of fur. Make plenty of money this winter. Charbonneau is damn good man!” His look almost dared the women to question his statement. Then his face softened. He smiled and pushed the child off Otter Woman’s lap. Charbonneau had given his son his own name, Toussaint, but usually called the baby Little Tess.

“Little Tess, he be feller like his papa. He grow smart. He should work for Company, but he no bum like Jussome. That Jussome is a bum, anyway.” He picked up the child and bounced him across his knees. He thought of René Jussome. He did not like Jussome. He did not trust him. But Jussome was the only one Charbonneau could think of now to team up with for the winter. His friend Baptiste LePage had left. He was starting late; he did not like to travel alone in winter when the loose-blowing snow held no moccasin tracks. Charbonneau did not wish to be found gray and lifeless beside a snowbank crusted as hard as glass. It was better for traders and trappers to work in twos, he thought—besides, he had heard that Jussome was getting a pack of huskies and a sled for hauling from the Assiniboins. That fellow McCracken had told him he was going to ride them back for Jussome. Charbonneau wished his own brother were here, camped with the Mandans, instead of in the Canadian Rockies somewhere, hunting the mountain goats.

Charbonneau scratched his whiskers, gave Little Tess back to Otter Woman, tied a red kerchief around his neck, found his felt hat, and swung the blue capote over his shoulders.

“I go to see Jussome,” he said.

“Why don’t you hunt so we will have enough meat to fix a proper stew for the morning meal?” Corn Woman said.

“Shut that mouth. You got nothing to do, maybe you go hunt.
Femme, paugh!”
He was gone.

Silently the women tidied the lodge. Otter Woman put fresh deer moss in the cradleboard before placing her child inside the warm nest. She had rubbed bear’s oil on the child’s soft skin. He had grown so that he was not always happy confined inside the cradleboard all day.

Soon Charbonneau was back. “I cannot find Jussome, I go on the hunt with some Mandan fellers. They go right now. Get me jerky and corn and the horse.” He rummaged around and found his royal-blue three-point blanket and his flintlock.
¹

Several days later, Broken Tooth came to the lodge in midafternoon. Jussome had sent her for Charbonneau. “Did you hear?” she asked. “There is a lodge on water with many men in it. And two canoes coming along behind. One of the men is black as a burned stick and tall as a lodgepole.”

“Is it true?” asked Sacajawea, skeptical that anything Broken Tooth had heard was to be believed. Perhaps it was something for amusement. Then they heard shouting from the village as children and adults streamed out of their lodges and raced for the river.

“Let’s see, too,” said Corn Woman, heading toward the front wood flap.

“Probably the men coming in from the antelope surround,” said Otter Woman, but she laced Little Tess in the cradleboard and found a robe to wrap around herself against the cold. Sacajawea was already outside.

Looking into the wind, they saw something they could not believe. Moving up the river was a huge boat with a sail. It resembled a lodge floating upon the water with a soft gray cloud fluttering beside it. There were men at the sides pulling on long poles, moving the boat slowly upriver. Following the great boat were two smaller boats. They were canoes being pushed upriver. Who were these people? More and more curious Indians were crowding along the riverbank to watch.

“Taiva-vonel
White skin!” Otter Woman shouted excitedly in Shoshoni. The onlookers moved closer. Some of the Indians were impatient with watching from shore and got into the tub-shaped bull boats and paddled downstream to see better.

The wind went through to their very bones as they watched the canoelike boats, the pirogues, go past their village upriver toward the other Mandan village. One pirogue was red, the other white.

Sacajawea hoped that Charbonneau was standing on the embankment somewhere watching these boats, because if he did not see them himself, he would never believe her own description. He would curse her, Baying she talked with a crooked tongue just to confuse him. He might beat her with firewood. And he would be too vain to ask anyone about her story. He could not admit there was something he did not know about.

The next several days were full of excitement in the villages along the Missouri, an excitement enhanced by severe and unexpected winds. Although these Indians were used to having white men among them,
²
never had they seen as many together as there were on this expedition headed by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The party numbered close to forty-five men and one dog.

Through the Indian grapevine Sacajawea learned that Kakoakis was suspicious of these pale eyes who said they had come to make peace. And she learned that the council of chiefs, called to meet at the white men’s camp downriver, had been delayed because of the cold, violent winds that made it impossible for Chief Shotaharrora, or Coal, from the lower Mandan village, Matootonha, to cross the Missouri to attend, although Coal’s subchiefs Kagohami, or Little Raven, and She-heke, or Coyote, managed to get across in a round bull boat. Sheheke was immediately called Big White by the Americans because of his light complexion. Sheheke explained to his people that the white chiefs wanted to talk of a Great White Father who lived far off and would send white traders to bring the villages useful things if there was no war among the nations.
³

“When the wind dies, we will all go across the river for a smoke with these pale eyes. They want us to make peace with the Sioux and Assiniboins, but how can we make peace unless the Sioux and Assiniboins know our intentions?” With cool logic, Shotaharrora repeated these words over and over among other chiefs and subchiefs.

Sacajawea wished more and more that Charbonneau had not gone off hunting with the Mandans so quickly. The white men had been delighted to find an experienced English-speaking French-Canadian interpreter for the Hudson’s Bay and North West companies in the big Hidatsa village—Jussome had learned to speak English from the Canadian explorer David Thompson. Then, too, Sacajawea had seen the flat stone that reflected the face of Broken Tooth the same way as a deep, still pool of water did. It was a gift to her from the white chiefs. Jussome had some wonderful gifts also—a knife, a tin plate, and a new red handkerchief.

The wary mind of Chief Kakoakis was set on edge by the white strangers. He knew that only a constant state of preparedness would ensure the Minnatarees’ continuing liberty and well-being. In years past, when his people had moved into the security of a fenced village, they had learned a grim lesson that was passed from one generation to another. If a people had nothing and lived in a poor land, they could preach peace and be known everywhere as friendly; but if the same people acquired possessions, such as horses, plenty of vegetables, or guns, and became prosperous and strong in their rich village, they would be called hostile and dangerous, a bad people, enemies and makers of war.

Chief Kakoakis sat on his horse watching the camp of the white men from a bluff upriver. He saw that the men worked continuously. He noticed their rifles and the brass cannon on the white-winged boat. He saw the discipline of the crew and watched them fire their weapons at small and distant targets upon orders from a chief in charge. He saw that the targets were hit regularly.
⁴

Chief Kakoakis was uneasy. ‘These men are not traders,” he said to the Wolf Chief. “They speak of peace but bring guns.”

“I see that,” said the Wolf Chief. “They clean and shine the guns to preserve them. They bring gifts but take nothing. What kind of people gives without taking something in return?”

“A bad kind,” said Chief Kakoakis.

“It is puzzling,” said the Wolf Chief, “but the white chief, the red-haired one, seems friendly. I do not feel afraid of him. He smiles and shakes hands as a sign of his friendship. Jussome speaks for him.”

Chief Kakoakis put his hand on the Wolf Chief’s shoulder. “That is how the enemy works. He is wise. He gets close to us and seems friendly. What if he decides not to go west in the spring, but to stay here with us? To hunt our buffalo? Eat our corn? Take our women? Now I begin to feel fear.”

“I do not know,” said the Wolf Chief.

“Their pale eyes and pale skin tell me to stay away. They seem friendly, but they will destroy my people.”

“No,” said the Wolf Chief. “I would hear what they say.”

“Do not forget my warning,” said Chief Kakoakis, turning his back.

On the afternoon that the wind died down, it was learned that the council was meeting in the Matootonha village. Otter Woman brought the news. Otter Woman pulled the cradleboard from its place against the side of the lodge and pushed Little Tess against the flat board backing; then she deftly pulled the flaps of soft buckskin and laced them together. She checked the semicircular guard of bent willow fastened to the upper part of the board, designed to protect the papoose’s face in case the board were hung in a tree and somehow tumbled down. She pulled the leather tumpline across her forehead and was ready to go to see what was happening with all the white men nearby. Sacajawea and Corn Woman could not stand to be left behind. Hurriedly they pulled warm fur robes over their shoulders and closed the wooden slab on their empty lodge. There was a light skiff of snow upon the ground.