Sacajawea (55 page)

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, p. 64.

T
here was confusion at the riverbank. Sacajawea watched her older brother lead the Shoshonis in a ring around the white men, hallooing, whooping, singing, embracing, with more Shoshoni red-paint smearing. She saw the chief spot Ben York and motion for York to peel off his buckskin shirt. York stood patiently as Chief Cameahwait tried to rub the black off his arms and chest, and pulled his kinky hair. The chief was gesturing to his men that this black man was the greatest medicine by far.

The canoes were unloaded and turned bottom side up on the level embankment near a stream flowing into the river. Soon the Shoshonis were examining kettles, axes, boxes, and soft robes. The sight of the flintlocks made their eyes gleam like fire points. They had never seen so many at one time.

“We will take shooting-sticks for the horses you want,” gestured Chief Cameahwait flatly, pointing a long bony finger at Lewis’s flintlock.

The situation was touchy because the expedition had few guns to spare. Clark patiently used hand signs to explain that trade with other Americans would take place only when this party had gone to the Pacific Ocean and come back. “The more help you give us now,” he motioned, “the sooner the traders can come and the sooner your people can have rifles and ammunition. We cannot give you rifles now.”

With great dignity, Chief Cameahwait motioned that he understood. Lewis presented him with a small Jefferson peace medal to wear around his neck, a blue uniform coat, a shirt, scarlet leggings, and tobacco. The chief went back to York, who was rolling his eyes as he sang a Negro spiritual, waving his hands and swaying his great body.

“See, you got to feel it,” said York, thumping the chief on the chest, “you just can’t sing it when you not warmed up to it.”

The chief shook his head, not understanding a word, but trying to outshout and outmoan York, who was now bent double with laughter as two subchiefs, medals hanging around their necks and colored strips of ribbon grasped in their fists, came to join the chief in imitating York.

“You all sound like conjure men or preachers—too much monotone. Push it out from the bottom of your belly to the roof of your mouth. Just think of a fantastic tale and let it talk for you.”

The chief laid down his gifts and clapped in delight as the subchiefs rolled their eyes toward the sky and shouted in their monotone, singsong voices.

When Captain Lewis fired the air gun, he sent the Shoshonis huddling in fear; then, sensing no imminent danger, they yelled in unison at the wonder of such great magic.

The Shoshoni dogs nipped and yipped at Scannon, who stood very still and held his head high. To get him out of this predicament, Captain Lewis put him through his routine of tricks. That sent the natives into vocal fits of admiration.

Captain Clark sauntered over to where York was entertaining the chief and his two subchiefs.
¹
He watched for a few moments, then with hand signs he asked the chief about a river passage through the mountains. Chief Cameahwait repeated the hand signs, then squatted on the ground and drew a river in the dust, showing with pebbles that it had many falls, and one place where the falls were higher than those of the Great Falls of the Big Muddy. With the dust he built mountains that were so close along the riverbank that no canoe could pass through. The ridges continued on each side, perpendicular to the river. Worse yet, there was no way to get out to hunt. And if there was some unknown way, it would be of no use—there were no deer, elk, or any game in that country. It was a dead land.

Sacajawea saw the disappointment on Captain Clark’s face as her brother described the passage through the mountains. She moved closer and helped with her hand signs and few words of English to interpret the problems to be faced going farther west. There would be seven suns over mountains of solid rock, with no vegetation, followed by ten suns of sand and gravel, with no game and no water unless there was snow. The snow could be deep or blizzarding, making travel nearly impossible and frostbite almost inevitable. But beyond all that was a fertile country with small game and fish in the river, and still a great many suns farther was the stinking lake—the ocean.

That day it was arranged for Clark, Sacajawea, Charbonneau, and some of the men to go ahead to the main Shoshoni camp in the mountains to bargain for horses. Lewis decided to keep a few of the men behind with him to cache extra supplies and sink the remaining canoes out of sight in the river. Lewis and his men would then pick up Clark and his party at the main camp, and with horses to carry the packs, they would follow the mountain passage drawn by Chief Cameahwait. Even knowing the dangers they faced, all the men were delighted—they were sick of canoe travel.

To Sacajawea it was nearly unbelievable—she was here, looking at the broad, level valley, Shoshoni Cove. This was the gateway to the highlands, where there was but a narrow opening, through which the river narrowed and chiseled its way forward. Along the cove’s high edge were spruce, pine, aspen, and alpine willow. As if trying to show the life history of the region, the mountains at the western rim of the cove showed their ancient strata; the old fossilized strata rested upon younger strata rich in fossils of clam and oyster shells and the backbones of fish and fern. The old Shoshonis called these highlands “mountains without roots.”

Sacajawea remembered what this pass meant to the People. To the west of it they were safe, though they lived like bears on roots and berries; to the east was the land of plenty, but they had to be in constant hiding because of the Blackfeet. The soft-spoken, prophetic words of her grandmother came to her: “Boinaiv, you are destined to be a leader of the People, to bring them full bellies and contented faces.” She began wondering if perhaps she could persuade Charbonneau to stay now with her people. He could be here to meet the men who would come after this expedition to build trading posts. She could show the women how the Mandan and Minnetaree women embroidered their tunics with dyed quills.

They rode four days alongside the river, today called the Salmon, where the bed was rocky, the water rapid, and the mountains amazingly steep. They passed places where there were no more spruce forests or aspen, no crowded stands of lodgepole pine or montane meadows, only rocky alpine heights, with bull thistles.

One of the Shoshoni men found a tomahawk that Clark had lost in the grass after chopping heads from a good mess of rainbow trout. A tomahawk like that was worth a great deal to the Shoshoni, because he had no steel knives or hatchets. He split wood with a wedge of elkhorn and a mallet of stone. He made a deal with Clark to trade his horse for the tomahawk when they reached the main camp. Through all the hidden meadows and valleys this Shoshoni spread the word that a horse could buy a good tomahawk. The braves began to ride horses, unshod but surefooted, over the rocks, down steep slopes, and through narrow passes to the main camp for trading.

Clark’s party passed several small encampments of Shoshonis who were hunting or digging roots in the mountain valleys. Naked children played with the horses in the small camps. The squaws fed the horses the inner bark of cedar trees. Always the horses were decorated with eagle plumes in their manes and tails. This was the insignia of the Agaidükas living in the Rocky Mountains. Chief Cameahwait explained, “The People would die without their horses. They are true friends. My horse knows my voice, and he listens when I speak. He warns of the enemy and informs of nearby game.”

As Clark’s party neared the main Agaidüka encampment, Sacajawea’s heart beat fast with excitement. She rode beside Chief Red Hair and her brother, and made herself sit very still, even though Pomp cooed and jabbered and caused Willow Bud to smile the whole day. She looked up at the glistening mountains that guarded the valleys and lowlands and willow-brush lodges on the bank of the clear river for the People. Her eyes moved from the birch and aspen and red paintbrush flowers of the foothills to the belt of spruce above, then to the top where the wind-tortured lumber pines and white-bark pines grew in grotesque shapes. She studied the summit, trying to visualize where pockets of kittentails or dwarf clover grew, their life span only a few short weeks. A mountain jay scolded a lone pipit. She breathed the invigorating air and knew that the foothills, and the mountains behind, were something certain and enduring, something in which she could believe when there was uncertainty in life.

Willow Bud pointed out late-blooming bear grass, windflowers, blue columbine, purple clematis, pearlike everlasting bedstraw, and then the yellow goldenrod. They chattered about the times they had made chains of flowers in their girlhood. And then, before she knew it, they were at the camp and the People were coming along the wide trail from above to meet them.

Sacajawea’s exaltation died. The People were emaciated from hunger and grown old with work. She had forgotten how starved they had been. But their faces were happy and smiling, even gay.
Ai,
these were her people. She felt close to tears. The women still let their hair fall loosely over their faces and down their shoulders, she saw; not many women braided it as her mother had done. The men divided their hair by means of dressed leather in two equal queues, which hung over their ears and down their chests; many had cut the hair to the neckline because of the loss of relatives in recent skirmishes.

Willow Bud swung down from her horse and hurried to a group of women, and then the women pushed toward Sacajawea, jabbering and cooing at Pomp, feeling the soft doeskin tunic on Sacajawea, and fingering the wide belt of blue beads she wore. They picked up her two fat braids and wound them around Sacajawea’s head, laughing. Over and over they said that this was something unbelievable. A middle-aged woman came up carrying her grandchild on her hip. She brought him close to Pomp. The babies reached out toward one another.

“See,” said the grandmother, “he knows this newcomer is an Agaidüka.” Then the woman called, “Hush, sshh! Women of the Agaidükas, look at the one called Boinaiv who has come back to us. Look closely. You can see she is like another who lived among us years back. She stands with her back straight like the other; she wears her hair like the other; she looks around at us with questions in her eyes like the other.”

Some of the women blinked tears, so great was the resemblance of this young woman to her mother, whom they had dearly loved as the wife of one of their great chiefs. The younger women, who could not remember but had heard the stories of greatness, stared and smiled. Sacajawea smiled as they called her Boinaiv, clenching her teeth together so that her tears would not spill out. She opened a pouch tied at her waist and gave the nearest ones a few kernels of dried corn, the first they had tasted. She poured a few kernels in her hand and gave the woman with the grandchild the empty beaded pouch. She put her arm around others and whispered in their ears, “I am one of the People.” She charmed them. They were delighted with her baby. She had a hundred nursemaids for Pomp.

Then the women began to notice the man of Boinaiv. He held his head high, smoothing out his mustache and hitching up his bright, multicolored sash. Some of the younger women giggled behind their hands at the hair on Charbonneau’s face. “He is like a big brown bear,” said one. “No, like a porcupine,” said another, a bit bolder than the rest.

“He is my man, called Charbonneau,” said Sacajawea. “He cooks for the pale eyes.”

“Hai, yi! Yip!
Cooks! A man cooks? That is the duty of the woman. What do you do? Do you hunt for the meat?” They turned now to sarcasm, looking at her strangely.

Willow Bud spoke quickly. “It is a custom of the pale eyes. It is the way things are done. It is a fine custom. It lets the women have time to play with the children and tell them stories.”

The women nodded, hushed, thinking carefully on that. Slowly they began to thread their way among the willowbrush lodges to the center of the camp where the skin Council Lodge stood. Chief Red Hair had already entered. Sacajawea asked Willow Bud to care for Pomp, and, to the surprise of many of the women, she left her moccasins at the door and boldly walked inside to sit in the place for interpreters. She was about to sit on the hard clay floor when she saw a small child before her, and beside him a warrior whose cheek was whitened by four long, deep scars. Instantly she recognized the warrior.

“Spotted Bear, my brother!”

“Boinaiv!” In one sweeping motion he pulled the robe from his shoulders and covered her shoulders also. “Boinaiv, we had all mourned for you as dead. We did not dare speak your name!”

“Many times I have seen you in dreams,” she said, tears running unchecked down her cheeks. “Many times I thought of the time you fought the yellow-and-black-spotted bear alone. I recall how our father found you behind a windfall, red with your own blood, and the bear red with your blood and his. We feasted that night, singing with the Medicine Man to make you well again.”

She grasped his hand, letting the robe fall to the ground, and noticed the long black hair of an enemy scalp fastened at the string of his breechclout. “You are still fearless,” she said with pride.

The child, ignored so far, rested his hand lightly on the robe, waiting for the adults to end their conversation. Sacajawea glanced down. “Shoogan,” she said with a certain intuition, and pulled the naked little boy to her. He came shyly but without resistance. She lifted him in her arms and held him out to look at him. The child scowled back at her, his mouth puckered as if pulled together by a drawstring, and curled his legs around her waist. The child had a mop of snarled hair, and his feet and legs were laced with scratches. His knees were gray from crawling in the cook-fire ashes, and his small hands greasy from dipping into the meat pot. He was no dirtier than any other Shoshoni child that had grown too big for dry-moss swaddling but was not yet big enough for clothes.