Authors: Anna Lee Waldo
“The Great Spirit will look at you pleased,” she said, wondering if he were still joking or a little serious.
“God is in us, Janey,” he said seriously. “He works through us.”
She’d miss Ben York when this trail came to an end. Sadly, she slipped on her moccasins.
On April 27, the expedition met Yellept, chief of the Walla Wallas, waiting in the green hills, wrapped in the United States flag Lewis had given him.
“Come to my village for food and horses,” he said, happy to see these white men once again.
The expedition was happy to see Yellept and his people at the mouth of the Walla Walla River. The squaws began to unpack the horses and sort out cookingpots. Sacajawea tried to catch up to them, but the streaming of squaws, dogs, and children forced her back. She stumbled up beside Clark, whose pack had been snatched off his back.
“These people don’t know what stealing is,” Clark said encouragingly, waving his hairy arm. “Not like Chinooks. We’ll get everything back.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Sacajawea shouted back.
Chief Yellept brought the first armful of wood for the cook fires as the women cut up mullets for the kettles. Several bucks brought in four dogs for the feast.
Clark and Sacajawea gorged themselves on the mullets, then laughed at each other, remembering their vow not to eat any more stinking fish. But under no circumstances would either eat the dog meat.
Sacajawea wondered why these Walla Wallas were willing to exhaust their own food supply, even their wood and clothing, in a day or two of feasting, never replenishing the stock until they were shivering and hungry again. Was it a sense of sport, a contest against fate and each other? Or was it simply laziness? She did not extend her thinking beyond the mountains to her people or any of the other tribes she’d been with. She’d just now noticed this fact of Indian living.
In that village there was a captive Shoshoni woman. The captive and Sacajawea were invited to a council. The captains explained who they were and the object of their journey. The prisoner translated the words given her in Shoshoni by Sacajawea into the Walla Walla tongue. The woman was short and fat and wore nothing more than a long leather dress with no sleeves and the sides open. The dress was held together with a woven grass belt. She was highly honored by being invited to a council, and she felt that Sacajawea had reached a height of esteem never before dreamed of by women. She believed that the great medicine of these white men had been transferred to Sacajawea, making her something great, not only to the white men but to all Indian nations as well.
Sacajawea showed Clark an infected slash made by the captive woman’s digging knife as she dug roots. “I’ll clean it and dress it with linen strips soaked in borax water,” promised Clark.
The woman excitedly told Chief Yellept about the healing powers of the white chief.
“Opposite our village is a short route to the Kooskooskee.”
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The chief waved his arms in gratitude for the white chiefs. “A road of grass and water and plenty of game.”
Clark estimated that this cutoff would actually save eighty miles if they left the rest of the canoes behind, detoured the Celilo Falls, and traveled on the high land above the canyon.
“But don’t leave yet,” begged Chief Yellept. “Stay a little longer.” He had sent out invitations to the Yakimas, the Cayuses, and the Salish. The healing power of the white chiefs was talked about all along the rivers. The lame, sick, and blind began to press around the expedition’s camp. The number of unfortunates was prodigious, reminders of Indian battles, hunts, neglect, damp weather, and exposure to the constant blowing of fine sand.
Clark was the physician, and Sacajawea the nurse. They distributed solutions of lead and zinc salts, eyewash, splinted broken bones, gave out emetic pills, and used sulfur ointment for skin ulcers. They employed camphor liniment and quick massaging to relieve rheumatism.
In gratitude Chief Yellept offered a beautiful white horse in trade for a single blackened cooking kettle one of the women had not returned to the camp.
“This here is the only large kettle with no hole in its bottom,” said York. “If this goes, we can cook like the Indians in grass baskets.”
Clark looked at York and gave him the beat-up kettle. “If you like it that much, keep it,” he said.
Then Clark gave the bewildered Yellept his sword, together with one hundred bullets and some powder for an old musket Yellept had and some pieces of red ribbon for his squaws.
That evening the Walla Wallas formed a half circle around the white men and watched them dance. Cruzatte brought out his violin, and York sang some songs in Chinook that tickled the Walla Wallas so much that they rolled on the ground holding their sides as they laughed.
Yellept hung his new sword at his side and danced around the ring.
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The next day, following their chief’s example, two minor chiefs gave a horse apiece in return for medals, pistols, and ammunition.
Lewis wrote in his journal: “I think we can justly affirm to the honor of these people that they are the most hospitable, honest, and sincere people that we have met with in our voyage.”
For three beautiful days the expedition traveled through new grass beside small streams. It was so warm that most of the men were stripped to the waist, tying coats and shirts in a bundle on the horses. Yet the nights were still and cold, with stars that shimmered brilliantly.
On May 7, Red Robe, the brother of the Nez Percé chief, Twisted Hair, visited the expedition and took them to a large lodge housing six families. Lewis invited all six families to accompany him back to his camp for a dinner of horse beef. One of the men of the lodge brought along two canisters of powder, which he claimed his dog had led him to. “It was buried in a bottomland near the river only a few miles away.”
“They are canisters we buried ourselves as we came downstream last fall!” exclaimed Lewis. He gave the man a steel firemaker for being honest. The man was pleased with himself and followed Captain Lewis around for half a day grinning and indicating by hand signs that his tongue was not forked.
In the evening a Shoshoni man who had been captured as a small boy by the Chopunnish, a tribe of Nez Percés, came to the expedition’s camp because he had heard there was a young woman of his nation. The man was called Shadow. He talked most of the evening with Sacajawea, asking about her nation in the mountains. He told her he was of the Kogohue tribe of Shoshonis and he thought his people now lived south in the plains, feasting on the buffalo every day.
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He said, “My people never come north anymore, but now they stay where the summers are hot and dry because there is more food and even more horses to be raided from villages still farther south.”
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Led by Red Robe and Shadow, the expedition moved on toward the larger Nez Percé villages. The mountain peaks were still covered with snow, and even some sides were covered below the tree line. No one could get through the passes until more snow melted. “After the next full moon,” said Red Robe.
During the next several nights, the coarsened drifts turned to stony hardness and trees began to fall, torn in half by their loads of ice and snow. Twisted Hair’s village had black snow around the lodges, where layers of soot concentrated.
Everyone in the expedition was surprised to find Chief Twisted Hair cool and distant, breaking into violent tirades with another chief, Neeshneeparkeook, Cut Nose.
Drouillard was unable to translate the fast-flying Nez Percé words of either chief. There seemed no way of finding where the horses were that the expedition had left in Twisted Hair’s care.
Drouillard tried frantic hand signs. Charbonneau tried hand signs. Both Lewis and Clark tried hand signs and Chinook jargon. Everything seemed useless as the chiefs spat out Nez Percé faster and louder than anyone could understand.
Sacajawea appealed to old Shadow, who knew the Nez Percé language, and through her could interpret the angry words of the chiefs. But to her disappointment Shadow was a stickler for etiquette. He explained, “It is improper for me to interpret a private quarrel between two important chiefs. Even for the friendly white chiefs I cannot repeat those words, nor try to interrupt and pacify them.”
The expedition’s men hoped that the quarreling did not mean trouble for them, and finally went to make their camp. After supper, Lewis sent Drouillard back to Chief Twisted Hair’s village in hopes that the quarreling was over and the chief would come to smoke with him. While Drouillard was gone, York strutted around the relaxed party mimicking the angry chiefs. Pomp jumped up and down laughing. Clark picked the child up and sat him on his shoulders, then danced around with York, shouting shrill, incomprehensible, guttural sounds, stomping the blackened snow.
Shannon rolled in the hard snow, holding his sides laughing. Sacajawea laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks. At this moment, Twisted Hair arrived in their camp. Lewis had to quiet the men because he was fearful the situation could become less than a laughing matter. But Twisted Hair acted as if nothing had happened. He smoked a pipe with Lewis and told through hand signs that his two subchiefs, Cut Nose and Tunnachemooltoolt, Broken Arm, had grown jealous. To make them feel important he had let the two of them care for the white men’s horses. They had had free use of the horses, who were nearby, munching tender blades of spring grass. But if the white men wanted the horses right away, it would take some time to round them up. Twisted Hair said, “And your packsaddles are no longer in the cache because it was poorly made.” He pushed his hands downward to show how some of the earth had fallen in. “I buried them in a new cache, which I made myself.”
Suddenly Cut Nose and Broken Arm appeared before the captains. They shoved and pushed Twisted Hair to one side.
Cut Nose said, “He is bad and wears two faces.”
“He did not really let us take care of your horses. He let his young warriors ride them fast and hard,” said Broken Arm. “But now the two good friends of the white chiefs have intervened and saved your horses from careless use, which would spoil them. You, white chiefs, are fortunate to have such good friends as us, who can tell you about the bad old man. Chief Twisted Hair.”
Chief Twisted Hair said nothing. He kept his face averted and remained sitting with his back against a stone. Soon all the horses were returned to the captains. Then Twisted Hair invited them to his lodge. There he told them that two horses were missing, but they were the two Old Toby and his son, Cut Worm, had taken back to the Shoshoni nation with them. Then he invited the captains, Drouillard, Charbonneau, and Sacajawea to eat with them. Sacajawea sat back against the wall with the other squaws, who passed Pomp from one to the other. Each examined his beaded shirt and moccasins and stared in wonderment at his winter’s growth.
Clark burned his finger trying to snatch half-boiled pieces of meat from the kettle, and he used the tops of his moccasins for napkins. “Makes them waterproof.” He winked at Charbonneau, who was wiping his hands on the legs of his trousers. Twisted Hair wiped his hands on any one of the two dogs in the lodge when either came close enough in their frantic scramble for meat bones.
Twisted Hair took the men to the new cache where their saddles were stored along with the ammunition. Lewis stopped by a spring to wash his hands.
‘I do sincerely believe that Twisted Hair is about as hot-tempered as they come,” said Drouillard, wiping his hands through his long hair. “But I think he is honest.”
The Nez Percés brought in over sixty horses to the men of the expedition. One horse was wild, and they tired of struggling with him. On the good advice of Charbonneau, the horse was made into steaks and roasts. When some of the other stallions proved hard to control, the Nez Percés showed a couple of the men how to geld them.
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During the next few days, the sun ate steadily into the sodden snowdrifts. The Nez Percés discarded most of their clothes, even going barefoot in camp where the snow was packed hard as earth. The forest swayed its ice-free branches, and the nights suddenly became warmer. The stars were often covered by a film, and there seemed to be a vast and restless whispering everywhere.
“Rain,” Sacajawea said. “I can smell it.”
The rain started that night. At noon the next day, the men were huddled in Nez Percé lodges built on a framework of long poles laid in a circle to meet at the top, where strips of birchbark were spread, leaving a hole over the center. The skin of elk or deer hung as a door. Branches of spruce and pine were spread on the ground against the heaped-up snow, which had nearly melted, and which made the lower wall of the lodge The men slept like the Nez Percés, feet toward the fire in the center, curled in tortuous positions to keep their legs out of the coals. The smoke, like a greasy blanket did not escape through the hole overhead, but packeditself into every cranny on the ground. Even the dogs burrowed their tortured snouts into the arms and legs of the coughing sleepers, searching for a breath of filtered air.
The village was in a small clearing separating the forest from the riverbank. The wet ground was trampled everywhere, littered with ashes, burned wood, and bones—everything useless was simply thrown out the door. A film of soot stretched like mosquito netting under the trees.
When the rain stopped, the expedition moved their camp to Commearp Creek,
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to the village of Broken Arm. This chief received them formally under the flag they had given him the previous fall. Broken Arm gave the expedition two horses, two bushels of
quamash,
dried salmon, and four large flat cakes made from
kouse
flour. Broken Arm refused payment and instructed his women to set up a special lodge for the white chiefs and their important men.
The unexpected pleasure of privacy in a lodge gave the captains a chance to enlarge the hole in the top. They preferred the added cold with the reduction in smoke.