Sacajawea (42 page)

“So, that’s my namesake?” said LePage. “That’s why I came in. Captain Clark told me the papoose had been named after me. The news made me feel good.
Magnifique!
I’ll teach him some songs.” And he began to sing. The women laughed.

Charbonneau became uneasy. He wondered what else Captain Clark had told LePage.

LePage took the baby, cradleboard and all, and began to dance. Then he unlaced the coverings and peered at the baby, who lay naked in the fine, soft, creamy robe Sacajawea had prepared.

Charbonneau crowded up and hunkered over his shoulder. “Zut, Baptiste!” he said. “Ain’t he a fine boy, an’ fat? Fat as a little possum.”

The papoose was a mètis like his father, part Indian and part French-Canadian. He was a pinkish brown, not as dark as his mother. He was under two feet long and so fat he looked almost like a soft ball. His wrists and ankles were ringed with chubby fat and his neck was nearly hidden by his chin. There was a thatch of dark hair on his head, the hair fine as a nursling beaver’s coat. There was no untoward blemish anywhere. His deeply colored eyes were tightly shut and he sucked with faint wet noises on a fist as his fat legs, bent at the knees, kicked out at the air.

LePage reached for one little smooth foot. It was swallowed up in his hand. His stomach felt queer, as if he had a sudden spasm of hunger. He grabbed a tiny copper fist and held it beside the foot thinking that he’d never seen anything human so small and so beautiful. What would the future bring to this infant? Would he be just another half-breed? He could be a British free trader like his old man, or he could be a squawman, trapping and living with whatever tribe was near. What would his old man do for him? For that matter, what could he, LePage, do for his tiny namesake? He touched the short, flat nose. Then he noticed the other child, Little Tess. I don’t know, he thought, I guess you brothers—half brothers—will have to find your own way, like the rest of us dumb bastards.

The baby opened his eyes and looked directly at LePage. The fist fell from his mouth, his face pushed together, and he began kiyiing loudly, stopping only to take a deep breath.

“Mon dieu,”
LePage said admiringly, “he’s sure got a good set of lungs, ain’t he?”

Charbonneau laughed. “And a temper, looks to me. Like his mama.”

For a while, Sacajawea watched proudly while the baby howled; then she gathered him up and cradled him, soothing him to sleep.

“Say, get your French harp out, Big Tess, and we‘ll sing some more.”

“We have to go,” Charbonneau said. “We are going to move to new quarters across the river.”

“I don’t believe it,” said LePage. “You aren’t! Not after all the Americans have done for you. They took your advice and gave me a job. They took care of your woman, gave you rations and ammunition. What is in your mind? Can’t you see beyond the nose on your face? This is the chance of a lifetime—to see this country west where no white man has gone. You’ll discover valleys that are more beautiful than your mind can imagine—in the spring, mallards skimming across the water, bear stepping along and snuffing. That bear will be your pillow at night. At your sides and scattered all around will be deer and wild turkeys, and a stack of beaver plews as high as your shoulder. You can bet I will not miss all this.”

“You don’t understand,” Charbonneau whined, trying to justify his decision to leave the Americans. “The Northwesters; they go west, too, and if I ask Larocque, he will let me take the three squaws with me, and I don’t have to act like an Army soldier. I can be big man. I can be interpreter, explorer, voyageur—three in one. Do the Americans have other interpreters?
Oui.
So I will not be so important, and they let me take only one squaw. They choose which one. I would have chosen Otter Woman—she does not speak out so much. She minds only me, her man.” He pointed a finger at Otter Woman.

LePage began to speak in French. “Both the American captains believe that your youngest squaw is the most intelligent, the smartest, the one who will help most when they come to the land of the Shoshonis. But you said something—something about Larocque.”

“Oui.
I hear he offers good rations, with taffee, trader’s rum, each evening.” Charbonneau patted his expanding belly. “Larocque has orders from the British to go west and keep ahead of the Americans.”

“West? What for?” LePage was sure that the American captains did not know this news—that the Northwest Company was rushing to expand its trade facilities or trapping area.

Charbonneau kept his voice low, in a whisper, as though he were telling a secret. “He explores the territory for the crown. For England, to make Canada big.”

So it was a race. A race between countries for that unknown land beyond the Rocky Mountains. LePage gulped in his surprise and puffed hard on his pipe. “My friend, I am surprised that you would make such a grave mistake, a smart man like you. One who is called Chief of the Little Village must be wise in something. Don’t you want to be on the winning side?”

“Winning side?
Oui,
of course.” Charbonneau always wanted to be with the winning team. He tried hard to think if maybe he was making a mistake. LePage was his good friend, and he knew the Northwesters as well or better than the Americans. His judgment was worth something in a case like this.

LePage, feeling he was beginning to get through to this thick métis, went on, “You are smart. You know who owns the land we are sitting on?”

“Oui,
the Americans,” Charbonneau said.

“You are right. They own the land to the foothills of the Rockies, too. Soon they will be kicking the British traders out of here—and the trappers and the French-Canadians, too. Then where will you be? Where?”

Charbonneau blinked and shook his head.

“You’re damn right again. Out—with them. But if you go with the Americans, as you promised in the first place, you will be secure for many years. Maybe for the rest of your life. You can have plenty of red-flannel shirts. You’ll be a big man, and rich, with as many squaws as you wish when you return. They will wash your aching feet and fill your belly with roast buffalo humps and squash and keep your bed warm.”

Charbonneau’s face glowed, then became dark again.

Baby Pomp cried for his milk. Little Tess was jumping on his father’s sleeping couch and laughing. Otter Woman had removed her fur robe and was putting more sticks on the cooking fire.

Sacajawea was listening, trying to catch a few French words along with the English she knew, to put things together. It was hard. She knew that LePage was trying to persuade her man to be more friendly with the Americans. Was he persuading him not to move across the river with the Northwesters? She fervently hoped so. She wondered if Corn Woman already had the furs on the other side of the river. How long would she have to wait across the river for the rest of them to come over? Sacajawea listened some more.

“I will do something for you,” offered LePage. “I will go to the American captains and tell them that you are sorry and that you realize you made a foolish mistake. But now you are wiser and will go with them on the expedition on their terms.
Bien?”

Charbonneau thought things through slowly. LePage continued, “It ought to be the winning side for a smart man like you. Let me try to make the captains understand you now wish to go with them. If they won’t take you back, then you can go with Larocque and MacKenzie. But those Canucks won’t get far.” LePage drew on his pipe and shrugged his shoulders.
¹

Charbonneau scrambled to his feet, knocking Le-Page’s pipe to the ground.
“Merci,
go to the Americans,” he said impulsively. “Go tell
les capitaines
I am sorry for the way I acted. Tell them I can work like a horse and I can do what they say—and tell them I cook.
Oui,
can I cook!”

Sacajawea handed LePage his pipe. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Get
le bébé
ready for a long canoe trip,
ma beauté,”
he said, winking.

“I better send someone after Corn Woman. That
femme
will sit on the Northwester side of the river until it freezes again.
Presse je suis!”
Charbonneau grabbed his blue wool capote and hunched down and out of the tepee.

Toward the end of March, the two pirogues that had so surprised the Indians in the fall, and the six pirogues that had been built from huge cottonwoods during the winter, were safely in the river. The snow was melting fast, and the ice had broken away from the water’s edge. Captain Clark oversaw the loading and lashing on of the cargo while Captain Lewis worked with Corporal Warfington and the crew that were to take the keelboat,
Discovery
, back to Saint Louis.

Nine boxes were packed with specimens of plants and animals and curios for President Jefferson. There were animal horns, Indian gear, skeletons of small animals and botanical specimens in small jars, and mineral samples. Lewis had them labeled and dated. With great care, Lewis also oversaw the arrangements for transporting to the President his live specimens: a prairie dog, four magpies, and a prairie chicken. “The American Philosophical Society ought to have some of these things,” Lewis wrote in his letter to the President.

There was a song in the heart of Sacajawea as she stood beside Charbonneau watching the keelboat sail downriver. She had on a clean tunic trimmed with fringes and held in at the waist with a woven reed belt painted red and yellow. Captain Clark had told her that she would be regarded as one of the crew on the expedition, not just as the woman of Charbonneau. She could help Ben York with the cooking, and she would be called upon to interpret when they reached the mountains and the home of her people.

This morning, April 7, 1805, she had wakened early to say good-bye to Corn Woman and Otter Woman, who were busy moving back into Charbonneau’s mud lodge in the village of Metaharta. There they would wait for him; arrangements had been made with Jussome to make sure that they would have food and other necessities while he was away.

Sacajawea had bathed her papoose, cleaned his cradleboard, and now checked for the tenth time to make sure there was enough cattail down in her pack to last a good while. Her own hair had been washed and combed into neat braids.

The Mandans and Minnetarees were still shouting farewells after the keelboat, but their eyes were fastened on the eight remaining boats lining the bank of the river.

While saying good-bye, Otter Woman had held Sacajawea back. “I fear I shall never see any of you again. I will be here alone. It is a trick!” There were tears in her eyes.

“Get hold of yourself or our man will surely whip you,” said Sacajawea. “It is no trick, and we will all return with many things to tell about.”

“You would tell him to beat me?” sobbed Otter Woman.

“Oh, no,” said Sacajawea, gasping. “Never!” She patted Little Tess on the shoulder. “You are my Shoshoni family here. You are my sister.” She looked at Otter Woman, who found parting so hard.

“I will never be your sister again. You have come between my man and our child. You are a dirty schemer, a mountain cat. This is good riddance!” Otter Woman sobbed louder.

Tears overflowed. Sacajawea could scarcely see as she walked with her toed-in stride, learned as a child in order not to lose balance, instead of slipping and sliding with no dignity down the path to the loaded pirogues. She could not believe that Otter Woman actually meant what she had said.

Suddenly out of the crowd came the Coyote and Little Raven to wave good-bye with both arms. There were the women of Four Bears, too, including Sun Woman holding out her arms. “A great thing,” she said, “you going with the palefaces!” Grasshopper had come also. She pushed a small leather bag into Sacajawea’s hands. “Give it to your man,” said Grasshopper. “That is the best use of the greasy weasel collar.” Her hand clung to Sacajawea’s. “My daughter,” she began, but her voice broke and she crossed her arms over her breast in the sign for love. Tears streamed down her face, but her mouth smiled.

Silently the women fell into single file; others came to walk before Sacajawea and to follow. Last week they would have told her to shut up, or maybe pushed her into the water while walking this close to the river. To her surprise Sacajawea found she was not too sure she liked her new status.

“Yesterday I was an ordinary squaw, cleaning out my tepee and packing to go on a journey with my man,” she said to Grasshopper. “Now I walk in the middle of all of you like a venerated grandmother, and you look at me out of the corners of your eyes.”

Grasshopper, her face lined and weather-worn, gave Sacajawea a nod. “There on the meadow of yellow flowers we walked—how long ago we walked in that pleasant way.” There were tears still in her eyes.

“Here, it is for you,” said a shy voice from behind Sacajawea. Sun Woman slipped a small leather pouch with a round quill design on both sides into Pomp’s cradleboard. “It is the shining stone of the Americans. It is for good fortune.”

Sacajawea blinked back a flood of tears and found her voice. “My heart stays with you.” She pressed her face against the cradleboard so that Sun Woman might not notice the tears spilling down her face, and said a final farewell. Charbonneau, who was already on board, motioned her to join him.

A shot from the swivel gun on the keelboat’s deck was heard. The Minnetarees and Mandans became quiet as Captain Lewis, looking smart in his blue Army uniform, wearing the tricornered hat, raised his hands to indicate he had something left to say.

“Good-bye, our friends. We thank you for your kindnesses and hospitality. We will return to see all of you once more before we go back to our Great White Father and tell him of your peaceful and kind manners.”

Sacajawea saw Jussome and Broken Tooth on the bank; she then spotted Water Woman. Everyone was waving and milling about and cheering.

“Yiiiii, eeeee! Hooooklaaaa!”

Sacajawea gasped. Old Black Moccasin was being led forward by his woman, Sunflower. He stood in front of Captain Lewis and raised his hands in friendship to the natives, and then to the Americans. There was now dead silence because this old man no longer came before any kind of gathering very often. He could not walk easily and he did not see well, but his voice was still powerful. Sacajawea recalled its vitality when she had first encountered him nearly six summers before.