Toussaint Charbonneau was born in Carmela about 1758.1 His mother was a Sioux and his father a French Canadian. He and his brother were traders and fur trappers from Lake Ontario to Lake Superior and the James Bay region. Charbonneau was mentioned as an engagé of the Northwest Fur Company in 1793, when he was about thirty-five years old. He worked as a trader at Fort Pine on the Assiniboine River.2 In 1795 Charbonneau left from the Lake of the Woods area, moved down the Red River of the North and went west to the Upper Missouri where he lived, as a trader, among the Minnetaree in their Metaharta village on the Knife River. According to Hebard, a year later he was the only white man in the area and was living with the nearby Mandans. For a time he worked for the American Fur Company and in 1803-4 he was a co-factor at Fort Pembina with Alexander Henry.3 Sometime before the Lewis and Clark men built Fort Mandan with the heaviest local timber available,4 Charbonneau was back in the Metaharta village as an independent trader, bartering furs for supplies with the English in Canadian territory. During the latter part of 1804 until August 17,1806 he was an interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The fur trader John MacDonnell knew Charbonneau during the ten years they worked in and out of the Winnipeg and Upper Missouri area and also during the five years Charbonneau lived in the Metaharta village. Inhis journal, MacDonnell wrote that Charbonneau was one of three men who went “to court the Foutreau’s daughter, a great beauty.”5 A few months later an old squaw caught Charbonneau “in the act of committing a Rape upon her Daughter,” wrote MacDonnell. The squaw pounded Charbonneau so hard with a canoe paddle that he could scarcely walk back to his own canoe. MacDonnell finished the story by writing that this was “a fate he highly deserved for his brutality.”6
John Bakeless also wrote that Toussaint Charbonneau was “deep in aboriginal love affairs” during the years he lived in Indian country.7 The natives of the lower Minnetaree village knew Charbonneau’s character and gave him at least half a dozen names, none of them overly respectful. They were “The Chief of the Little Village,” “The Man Who Possesses Many Gourds,” “The Great Horse That Came from Afar,” “The Horse from Abroad,” “Forest Bear.” Another name, which Bakeless describes as “not very refined,” may be translated to “Squaw’s Man” or even more literally as “One Whose Man-Part Is Never Limp.”8
In August, 1807, Charbonneau, his two sons, and two Indian wives arrived at St. Louis. He left the women and children and took a fur company trapping job in the southwest. Three years later he was back in St. Louis. He bought a piece of farm land in the St. Ferdinand Township near the Missouri River from Clark, who was Indian agent for the Louisiana Territory. On March 26, 1811, he sold the land back to Clark for $100:9
It is well known that Charbonneau and one of his wives accompanied Henry M. Brackenridge on an expedition up the Missouri in April, 1811.10In July, 1816, Charbonneau was hired by Julius DeMun for Auguste P. Chouteau and Company to go from St. Louis up and down the Arkansas and Platte rivers trading for a year with the Indians. Three years later he was on the payroll of Captain Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, as an interpreter at “$200 from July 17 to December 31, 1819.”11
In 1825, General Henry Atkinson referred to Charbonneau living at the Mandan villages with a wife and her brother. In the journal of Major Stephen Kearny for August 11 of the same year is a note about a Charbon-neau Creek named for “a Frenchman, who accompanied Lewis and Clark across the mountains.”’12
Agent John F. A. Sanford, stationed on the Upper Missouri, paid ”Tassant Charboneau,” for work as an interpreter for the Mandans and Minnetarees on February 29, 1828. Other payments were recorded at the subagency to Toussaint Charbonneau, acting as an interpreter, from November 30, 1828 until September 30, 1834, for a total of $2,437.32.13
According to account books kept at Fort Clark, on the Missouri River across from the Mandan villages, Duke Paul of Würtemberg bought supplies that were delivered to James Kipp, the chief factor at the fort, to be sent on to Charbonneau at the Minnetaree village. Duke Paul purchased supplies on May 5 and May 30, 1830, with gunpowder and tobacco especially for Charbonneau. Two weeks later Duke Paul was at Fort Union, farther up the Missouri River—near Williston, North Dakota, today— where he bought more supplies for the “interpreter, Charbonneau. ”14
The famous German traveler, Maximilian, Prince of Wied, hired Toussaint Charbonneau as his interpreter in 1833 while he spent the winter at Fort Clark and later when he visited the Mandan villages. In June of the same year some Mandans tried to force the unwilling Maximilian to trade his compass for a horse. “It was only by the assistance of old Charbonneau that I escaped a disagreeable and, perhaps, violent scene,” wrote Maximilian in his journal.15
Charbonneau always seemed to be involved in escapades with young women. In 1833 he had two wives, but one ran away. In his Fort Clark Journal, Francis A. Chardon wrote on October 22, 1834, that he was aware of Charbonneau’s “two lively wives. Poor old man.”16
At eighty Charbonneau married a fourteen-year-old Assiniboine girl and the celebration included “a splendid Chárivéree, the Drums, pans, Kittles and Beating; guns ftreing etc.”17 Afterward “the old rascal offered his bride to the rest of the men in camp.”’18
In many respects the Charbonneau of Lewis and Clark fame was a feckless character. For example, in an emergency he seemed to be a coward, he abused his Indian women, and always seemed to manage to have only younggirls in his lodge. Dr. Elliott Coues referred to him as clumsy and boorish. John C. Luttig suggested that he ought to be hung, and William Laidlow, of the Columbia Fur Company in charge of Fort Pierre, referred to him as “the knave.”19
In August, 1839, Joshua Pilcher, Clark’s successor as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, wrote in a letter that Charbonneau came to St. Louis “tottering under the infirmities of 80 winters, without a dollar to Support him.”20
A promissory note written on August 14, 1843, by Francis Pensoneau stated that he would pay J. B. Charbonneau $320 as soon as some land, claimed by J. B. Charbonneau as coming from the estate of his deceased father, Toussaint Charbonneau, was disposed of. This note implies that old Charbonneau died sometime before August 14, 1843.21
Grace Hebard wrote, “The exact date of the death of Charbonneau has not been ascertained, and even his burial place is unknown. Vague rumors persist… that Charbonneau married a Ute woman and eventually died and was buried…in Utah.”22
The Antiquarian Society of Montreal states that it is impossible to trace anyone with the name Charbonneau or even Toussaint Charbonneau who lived from the late 1700s to mid-1800s. That French-Canadian name was as common as John Smith is in the United States23
It is interesting to note that Bakeless wrote that Toussaint Charbonneau was born in Montreal about 1759.24 This is a year after Hebard wrote that he was born. Roy Appleman wrote for the National Park Service that the old French-Canadian was forty-four years old in 1804.25 This would make his birthdate 1760.
In 1979, ninety-year-old Irene DeClue Haltermann Coyle, born in the DeSoto, Missouri, area, but living in Missoula, Montana, said that her family always claimed that Toussaint Charbonneau, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was her great-grandfather. Apparently, her family records show that this Charbonneau was born in Montreal on March 1, 1771. Mrs. Coyle said her grandfather, Louis Charboneau, a son of old Toussaint, was born on October 16, 1812, in St. Louis.26
In the small, Missouri community of Richwoods, closeto DeSoto and about sixty miles from St. Louis, there is an interesting white marble grave marker in St. Stephen’s Catholic Cemetery on which are carved these words:
Toussaint Charboneau, Mar. 1, 1781-Feb. 19, 1866
Beside that marker is another similar one with these words:
Marie LaViolette, Wife of T. Charboneau Died Sept. 23, 1869, aged 86 years
The Charboneaus in this area claim this is the Toussaint Charbonneau of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the cemetery are half a dozen other Charboneaus, all born in the mid or late 1800s. In the John Horine Private Cemetery, also in Richwoods, are at least four Charboneau grave markers, showing these people were born in the late 1800s and all used only one ? in the spelling of their name.
From the few things that are known of the character of the Charbonneau of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, it is doubtful that the man would marry a woman seven years his senior as was Marie LaViolette to her T. Charboneau. Old Charboneau liked his women young. Bake-less said he was a squawman “who had a special weakness for very young Indian girls.”27
The Coyle and Richwoods Charboneaus are both too young to have been on the Lewis and Clark Expedition because he was one of the oldest men in the group. If he had been twenty-four, he would have been in the same league with Shannon, who was the youngest member of the expedition. If he had been thirty-four, he would have been about the age of Lewis and Clark who, in 1804, were thirty and thirty-four, respectively.
Toussaint Charbonneau became a famous member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition because of his Shoshoni woman, Sacajawea. It appears that his birth and death dates and burial site are as elusive as hers.
Sacajawea was allowed to rest until her body felt completely restored. Until midday she lay dreamily inside the robe in Fast Arrow’s lodge and then, prompted by an evanescent sixth sense that flickers on in the wiser among us, realized that things might not be too bad. She had examined and evaluated her new surroundings. The lodge was clean. Fresh river sand lay on the floor. Clothing was hung neatly on pegs placed in the four wooden supports holding the roof of the lodge. There were no stale vegetables or yesterday’s meat lying around the cooking fire. Everyone worked, except the grown girl, Sweet Clover, who swayed and stared vacantly.
Sweet Clover’s eyes were similar to the old father’s, rimmed with white and ready to pop from her head. Her movements were slow and sometimes without direction, her mind elsewhere, her ears not hearing what went on near her. She laughed at nothing.
In the early afternoon the mother, Grasshopper, came to Sacajawea carrying a board with dried meat and cooked squash. She said, “Eat, you are one of us now.”
Sacajawea rolled over, found her tunic, put it on, and ate. Sweet Clover came and sat on her sleeping couch. She drooled and picked at some of Sacajawea’s meat. She grinned and stared at Sacajawea. With hand signs she indicated that Sacajawea was pretty.
“Shoo, outside!” said Grasshopper. “Play with the children.” Sweet Clover made a face, but she understood and left. The children, Sucks His Thumb, Half Moon, Hungry Horse, and Chickadee, followed. Chickadee, the baby, crawled more than walked.
“That is my baby,” said Grasshopper, pointing a stubby forefinger toward the door through which the grown girl, Sweet Clover, had just left. “She will never grow up.”
“Is she cursed?” asked Sacajawea.
“Ai, but her torment did not come with age, as did Redpipe’s.” Grasshopper brushed her hand across her moist eyes. “Stay clear from the sight of Kakoakis, our one-eyed chief.”
“One eye? Why?”
“I think maybe one of his women pushed his eye out.” She put her short forefinger in her mouth and pulled it out with a pop. Over Grasshopper’s simple broad face grew a smile, stretching her mouth from ear to ear. “I wish to call you daughter,” she said impetuously. “What do you say? Are you pleased?” It was love the child hungered for, yet she was suspicious and held herself rigid. Then Grasshopper took the food board away. She motioned Sacajawea to sit close to her, and she cradled the child, who was now eleven summers old, against her ample bosom.
“This lodge is a good place to live, my daughter— except for one thing, one being. Listen and remember. The stinking Kakoakis came against this lodge. He is a chief, and thought by some to be wise. He is full of health and energy. One day he came here and asked for our youngest child to visit with his young wife. She was lonely, he said. With kindness in our hearts and gratitude to the chief for showing us special favor, we dressed Sweet Clover in her best and let her go with him. She was filled with fear when she found that his tongue was split. He had several white men and the Wolf Chief of the Mandans at his lodge. His wife was not lonesome. There were other young women in his lodge. It was Kakoakis who was the only man in his lodge without a woman that day. He then chose Sweet Clover. He had tricked us.” Grasshopper paused, smacking her lips.
“Sweet Clover used her wits and looked about her for a weapon. She had not taken her skinning knife. She struck Kakoakis with his own war club. She stood tall and strong. Never was such a blow struck!” Her mouth became round, and she drew in air. “It would have been one of many great blows, except that one of the white men stopped her and tied her hands and feet. That is all she can remember to tell us, but we did not see her for three suns.”
“So—if Kakoakis is more brutal than a handful of Blackfeet, why don’t the people of your village choose another leader?”
Grasshopper looked down at Sacajawea and laughed, her strong blunted teeth white against the darkness of her face. “He is friendly with the white traders from the north, and he puts fear into the Hidatsas and the Mandans. Even the Sioux, Assiniboins and Chippewas fear to cross him, so that he is a protection to our village. Others will live longer because of him.”
“And so—Sweet Clover?”
“Ai, she became an investment so that our village might be strong. She kept our chief happy for a time, and now he pays his debt with gifts to us from time to time. But I do not wish to make another investment. I will not!” She spat at the fire and listened for the sizzle. She clucked and went on about the badness of the chief. “He favors pretty women and keeps many in his lodge, giving them to white traders for the evil crazy-water the white men bring. Kakoakis has a deep thirst for this water and an insatiable hunger for young women. I believe his blood always boils, never cools.”
“And the white traders?”
Grasshopper shrugged. “They do not know better. They believe Kakoakis is a mighty chief, and they do not turn aside his hospitality, especially when the chief will furnish them with the furs and hides they come after. But I am not trying to hold back secrets. And I do not try to frighten, but to warn you, my daughter. Everyone knows the time Kakoakis entered an Assiniboin village alone, by night, with no disguise except a blanket drawn over his head. Catching a young squaw alone in a lodge, he silently forced himself inside her, and while he was doing that, he killed her and scalped her. Then he withdrew safely and told of his exploit with a pleasant sense of duty done.’28 It was an enemy; but what if the Assiniboins start doing the same? This man makes sport of young women. He plays games with them. I know he made my Sweet Clover drink crazy-water and he played animal with her while she was bound. When her front side was worn out, he forced himself many times on her back side. Then he invited the white men to take their turns. Sweet Clover’s mind slipped away from her body, and the spirits came in its place. They have never left.”
A tear slid down Grasshopper’s chin. She was silent, still rocking Sacajawea in her lap. Sacajawea’s mind went over the tragedy of Sweet Clover. She looked carefully around the warm, clean lodge.
“Sweet Clover is my sister,” she said in a voice barely audible. “I will show her kindness.”
“The Great Spirit has favored us. If anyone asks who you are, say you are the youngest daughter of Grasshopper. I am your mother. I will make you a new dress with elk’s teeth on the yoke and dainty shells on your moccasins and a fringed drag. Come,” she said, releasing Sacajawea from her arms. “I will feed you.”
“So—I have already eaten.”
Soon Sacajawea was working with the other Metaharta women. She went with the berry-pickers and herb-gatherers and garden-hoers. She was pleased with her new clothes and her new home in Fast Arrow’s lodge. She liked the embroidery work on her tunics, and the shells on her moccasins, like tiny bells, and the fringes dragging along behind them. Evenings she joined the water-carriers, shy with the boys and young men who seemed so ordinary during the day and so strange in the twilight. In no time at all, she was known in the village as the inquisitive daughter of Grasshopper and Redpipe. She asked questions incessantly.
She asked the small children to show her how to shoot their small bows. She asked why a woman always carried the small skinning knife in her belt. Soon she could hit her mark with an arrow, and she carried a woman’s skinning knife in her belt, ready for digging roots or for defense if it were needed against enemies or any who would molest her.
Among the people of the Upper Missouri any woman who was not a slave had the duty of defending herself at all costs against attack, against any who would violate the chastity rope of soft doeskin she always wore when away from the lodge. Such violations were very rare before the whiskey days. Even after those days, the guilty man never made another attempt, for the stab with the skinning knife was automatic in a woman from earliest childhood. When this happened, the man was not driven out of the village, but he lived alone in a hut outside the lodge circle, with none to speak to him.
However, if Chief Kakoakis asked a maiden to honor him in his lodge, none could refuse, for there would becertain death for her or a member of her family. That grand chief was all-powerful and very cruel.
It was not many weeks before Sacajawea discovered it was her time to go to the women’s retreating lodge; thereafter, she would go periodically to be separated from the men for seven suns. When she returned from her first visit, a crier went around the village calling everybody to a feast for the one who had now become a woman.
Grasshopper loved this little Shoshoni girl as her own child. She called her friends to help with the fine garments and the preparation of food. This was the time to show off a daughter in handsome new clothes and moccasins, long shell bands hanging from her hair, a demure beauty in the paint of a woman.
While Sacajawea was at the women’s retreating lodge, she listened to the gossip of the other women. They spoke of the bearded ones—the white men—who lived at the edge of their village. They spoke of the fine presents these men brought their women after a trip to the north—blankets, combs, hard candy. One man, whom the men called Chief of the Little Village, had come from Assiniboin country recently, bringing his Mandan woman a beaded leather belt and another woman to help around the lodge. The other woman was no more than a child. She had been bought from sickly Blackfeet who had starved during the winter and were glad to be rid of her. She was not of their nation, but a Shoshoni.29 They made the sign of weaving in and out, like the weaving of a Shoshoni grass summer hut.
“Does this Shoshoni woman come to the retreating lodge?” asked Sacajawea, very curious.
The women giggled. The Shoshoni squaw was only a papoose, a child, hardly old enough to come to the women’s retreating lodge.
Sacajawea asked more questions, but she could find out no more. No one seemed to know much about the bearded one called Chief of the Little Village.
Grasshopper sang over the tunic being prepared for Sacajawea. The symbol for the water bird, for which Sacajawea was named, was set in the center of the outer tunic and made of colored quills, mostly yellow. Underthe bird there was a white bank made of shells. The edge of the skirt had buckskin whangs, which were painted yellow, the color of pollen, for fertility.
When Sacajawea returned from the women’s retreating lodge, she was bathed by Grasshopper’s squaw friends. They clucked and waved their hands and smiled as they dressed her and seated her in the honored place of the lodge they had set up. This day of the ceremony, Sacajawea presented Grasshopper with a single white eagle feather. From this time on, Sacajawea would call Grasshopper “Umbea, mother,” and Grasshopper would call her “daughter.” They would be close to each other throughout their lives.
The chief Shaman came in an intricately feathered bonnet and deerskin robe richly decorated with quill-work. He showed much pomp, knowing that only he, with the highest religious authority, could conduct this rite. He had a method of self-induced trance in which he claimed to have direct communication with the Great Spirit, from whom he relayed words of wisdom to the Girl Who Had Become a Woman. His chant began, “It is the beginning of this young girl’s flow that marks her as entering womanhood. This is the beginning of her good life. This woman has wandering moccasins. She will live long. She will see much. What she sees is unbelievable. I do not have words to tell.”
The Shaman moved into the lodge, indicating that the well-wishers could follow him inside. Sacajawea moved with the well-wishers, receiving congratulations, gifts, and songs of praise and promise. There was an elaborate oration from Redpipe, who outlined the duties of a woman of the Metaharta. First he harangued them concerning the greatness of the village and then about his family and Sacajawea’s duties toward the members of his family. “The honor of the people lies in the moccasin tracks of the women. Walk the good road, daughter, and the buffalo herds, wide and dark as cloud shadows moving over the prairie, will follow you. The spring will be full of the yellow calves, the fall earth shaking with the coming of the fat ones, their robes thick and warm as the sun on the lodge door. Be dutiful, respectful, gentle, and modest, my daughter. And proud walking. If the pride and the virtue of the women arelost, the spring will come, but the buffalo trails will turn to grass. Be strong with the arm, strong heart of the earth. No people goes down until their women are weak and dishonored, or dead upon the ground. Be strong and sing the strength of the Great Spirit within you and all around you.”
Then Sacajawea did as instructed. She went out and faced the sun. She lifted her arms to the heavens, to the earth, and toward its four corners. To the observers, she was quite lovely, as most young girls are at that age.
Her face was shaped like the moon, painted soft white with yellow circles under each eye. Her black hair, which fell below her shoulders, moved in the sunlight with blue-black glints. Her ears were red inside. Her lips were full, the corners turned up. Her eyes were dark, widely spaced, her nose straight, her cheekbones high, and her skin silken. Her long bare legs broke through her garments. Her voice was soft and filled with restraint, and her movements were unhurried. None could see the scars that still remained white on her back from the quirt of her former master.
“You are beautiful, my daughter,” Grasshopper said in a low voice. “Your body is straight and strong. What comes to you from now until the ceremony is ended will be the measure of your life. The things that you feel now in your heart will mark your feelings henceforth. What you like now, you will like until the end of your days. If you eat well now, you will always have plenty to eat. Watch carefully and study yourself, for this is your opportunity to know yourself and what lies within you, in your body and in your heart.”
Sacajawea held her hands together; her lips quivered. “Ai, my mother,” she whispered.
“You must not speak overly much because then you will always have a long tongue. You must not laugh because then your face will become old and wrinkled before its time.”
“Ai, my mother.”
“You must listen to what the singer tells you and believe him. If you do not believe in your heart what he says, it will be of no benefit. You must not becomeangry or use bad language, for if you do, such will be your nature for the rest of your life.”
Grasshopper placed her hands upon the girl’s head and said, “Now I must ask you this. No man has entered you and made you unchaste?”
“Mother,” replied Sacajawea, trembling, “I did not know you would ask me that.”
“Has any man of the Metaharta tribe touched you?”
Sacajawea’s knees became water, then froze again. She felt she was now to be a disgrace, not only to her new family but to herself in front of all of Grasshopper’s friends. “No, no one from this tribal village, but I was a captured slave of the—”
“You are ready, then,” Grasshopper said quickly, so that Sacajawea need not go on with the whole truth, and took her to sit on a skin in front of the lodge to the south of where the Shaman supervised the raising of the ceremonial wickiup, singing with the singer as the poles were placed so the tips inclined until they met in a point at the top. “Plant a thought, harvest an act,” they sang. “Plant an act, harvest a habit; plant a habit, harvest a character; plant a character, harvest a destiny.”30
From the cooking wickiup nearby, women emerged with clay trays lined with arrowhead leaves and watercress, with fresh chokeberries, wild plums, and grapes. There was a kettle of soup with horn spoons, hump and rib roasts on wooden platters, and bowls of corn, squash, and pumpkin. All were welcome to come to eat, while the father, Redpipe, and his friends sat in a little circle smoking—as they would for birth, for death, for a son returning from his dreaming, so they did for the daughter today.
“So—here you are!” a voice shouted from a group of strange bearded ones who suddenly appeared at the festivities. Sacajawea had never seen these men in the village, yet she was sure they were the white traders that the women had spoken about in the retreating lodge. Her heart jumped to her mouth—maybe one of these men had the Shoshoni girl!
The man who had spoken was not a white trader. He glared with one yellowish brown eye as he moved to the food trays. The guests silently moved around him.
Sacajawea thought him the most violent-looking person she had ever seen. He was more than six feet tall, with a head that seemed large even for his gigantic body and a nose that hooked inward like an eagle’s beak. His face was pitted with smallpox scars and the right eye was covered with a white opaque membrane, half-concealed by a drooping eyelid. A vivid scarlet scar ran from that drooping eyelid across his cheekbone to his earlobe. The earlobe on both ears had been slashed so that he could run a yellow strip of rawhide through, knotted in the back, with copper wire wound around the dangling rawhide in front. He stood slightly bent forward so that his neck seemed to be placed more toward the chest than back. His elbows and knees were flexed, and he looked as if he would attack anyone who disagreed with him.
Suddenly the huge man left the food and came close to Sacajawea. He wore only a breechclout, and around his bare neck was a circlet of black-tipped weasel tails.
“I wish to make a gift to the daughter of Redpipe.” His voice boomed.
Before Sacajawea could respond, Rosebud stepped up. “I will take your gift on behalf of Redpipe and his daughter,” she said, her face almost as white as the white pigment decoration circling her eyes.
“No, no, the young daughter of Redpipe must accept this,” he said. “You are not the one. Where is the other? Where?” he demanded.
“Ho, Le Borgne knows where to pick the pretty flowers!” shouted one of the bearded men in broken Minnetaree.
“Hey, Chief, you think they’ll come entertain us?” called another, stamping his feet and swinging his arms.
“Quiet,” the huge man said, and his anger seemed to rise and boil within him. “You, then, take this to the one called Sweet Clover.” Rosebud gasped as he handed her the weasel collar from around his neck. ‘Tell the one called Sweet Clover that Chief Kakoakis sends this gift”
Grasshopper drew in her breath.
Chief Kakoakis turned toward Grasshopper and blinked his one good eye at her. “I was not aware of this youngest daughter of yours. I see she is now ripeenough to be a woman. Send her to my lodge, and you will have a grand present. You do like presents, Old Mother?”
“There are enough gifts this day to satisfy the heart,” spat out Grasshopper, moving to block Kakoakis from both Sacajawea and Rosebud.
“Some of my friends wish to dance,” Kakoakis said, pointing to the bearded men. “I will tell them that you make them welcome.” He turned to leave and was swallowed by the crowd that seemed to surge in behind him.
Grasshopper’s face was ashen. “Kakoakis!” she spat, her voice shaking. Her mouth bunched up, and she rubbed her hands down her hips. “Give me the weasel tips.” She grabbed them from Rosebud and stepped silently toward the refuse heap. She never took her eyes from Sacajawea as she wadded the fur necklace and threw it on the pile of bones and scraps. No one seemed to look at her, nor did they say anything for fear of bringing on the wrath of their chief.
When the sun began to set and the men who were to serve as masked dancers had donned their ritual shirts and moccasins, the Shaman rolled a leaf of mild tobacco, puffed smoke to the four directions, and asked the dancers to begin.
With the drums throbbing, they moved out to the center of the village to the council fire, moving forward and back, then circling. The people talked and joked, and soon the young people joined in, the girls keeping a watchful eye for a hand, perhaps a certain hand, to beckon them into the dancing and song, then to fall back to another, as was proper.
Sacajawea knew that she was expected to join the dancers, but the sight of Kakoakis and the white men sitting near Redpipe on the far side of the fire filled her with fear, and she watched the activities sitting safely on a blanket.31 At last the festivities were over.
The return to the lodges from the dance was casual. The young people walked together in small groups, the old women a few steps behind, complaining among themselves about the late hour and the chill of the night.
When Sacajawea came through the lodge entrance, Grasshopper asked, “Did you enjoy your festivities?”
“Ai, thank you. It was nice.” She showed Grasshopper her presents: paints, a belt with beaded shells, a scraping knife, a metal awl, several yellowed elk’s teeth.
“I am relieved Chief Kakoakis did not bother us at the dancing,” sighed Rosebud, “but you did not dance with anyone! You just sat there staring at the fire and the other dancers! You did not dance!”
“Shhh! My daughter did not wish to dance. She had a moment of bad experience,” said Grasshopper, waddling over to sit beside Sacajawea.
“Is she my daughter or still a slave girl?” asked Red-pipe, moving his skinny legs into bed. “It was embarrassing for me to have her sit. Chief Kakoakis asked me about her. When we could not find her dancing, he made a joke, Oh, oh, she is out in the brush with a man already. So—she is aware of the effect she has on men!’ And he slapped me on the back so that I almost coughed up my buffalo steak.”
“And then you pointed to where she was sitting?” snapped Grasshopper.
“I did not! One of the bearded white men did that. They had been watching her. These white men are slaves to urges that seem about to consume them. But they did not go near our new daughter. After a time they went home with the women loaned to them by Kakoakis. I think they imagined you beside our daughter and feared your long tongue.”
Grasshopper whispered, “Great Spirit, help us!” Then in a louder voice she said, “I have noticed that about the whites. They are eaten by the thoughts of one thing—wanting our women. Nobody has taught them to be continent or restrained like our men, by fasting and controlling the body for what it must endure in war or in hunting and trapping.”
“Mother,” interrupted Rosebud, “the white traders in our village are not so bad. They have lived here for as many as five summers.” She held up the fingers of one hand. “Their women do not complain about them. The women have many presents and do not have to work in the fields. Their men are able to trade for the vegetables from us. It is our chief, Kakoakis, I think, who spreads evil in our village.”
Redpipe rolled over in his bed. “Women! Hush! Nevermust you speak out loud of your dissatisfaction with our chief. He can bring disaster upon this household anytime he wishes.”
Instantly Grasshopper remembered the discarded weasel collar and looked about the room thinking who might have seen her put it in the refuse pile and wondering if any would dare tell on her. On an impulse, she left Sacajawea’s side and walked to the back of the lodge where the refuse had been thrown. She stopped, aghast. A squaw was hunting through the pile. It was possible her family did not supply her with enough to keep her sides from rubbing, and Grasshopper called to her, “Come, I will fix you some broth!”
Before Grasshopper could get a good look at her, the woman, who was not old, but young and agile, ducked and dodged past. Something was rolled inside the front of her tunic. Her hands pushed it securely to her breast as she ran across to the next lodge and then out of sight. Grasshopper called after her and ran to the edge of the next lodge, but the young woman had gone. Grasshopper’s mind ran in circles. She gazed at the clouds in the sky and tried to think, to remember the features of the young woman. Was she familiar? Grasshopper wiped her hands on her tunic; they were wet with perspiration.
“That woman took the weasel-tail collar,” said both Sacajawea and Rosebud together. They had followed Grasshopper from the lodge, and now they put their hands to their mouths. It was a sign of thinking another’s thoughts to speak the same thing at the same time. “Why would she take that?” they asked together. Then, afraid to speak again, they looked to Grasshopper.
“She could be a woman of Kakoakis,” Grasshopper said slowly. “But I don’t think so. His women are well-dressed and good-looking. I did not see her face, but she was not clean.” Grasshopper’s decision was made. “Do not think on this. It is something we can do nothing about. Probably we will not hear of it again. The weasel collar is gone, and I say good riddance!” She clucked and pulled the wisps of hair from her face and returned to the lodge.
“I hope Grasshopper is right and there will be nothing more heard of the collar,” said Rosebud.
“Ai,” answered Sacajawea. “I do not want Chief Kakoakis coming around. He could give the small children bad dreams.”
That night, Sacajawea slept little. She was a woman now, but vacillated between the impossible thought of running away and the other thought of quietly marrying one of the Metaharta braves. “Why not?” she asked herself. “My own people did not come to look for me.”
Then there was that round, hard thing that came and stayed in her throat—the thing was the forgetting of the old Agaidüka habits. Several times she told herself, “I am an Agaidüka. I must throw off my Minnetaree ways and keep those of my own people. They cannot make me be a Minnetaree!” She thought of following the Big Muddy River back across the prairie, into the mountains—but if she were caught, she would be made sport of by Kakoakis, then she would be killed or sold to some other tribe. Grasshopper was kind, and life was not hard here as it had been in the big Hidatsa village. Maybe she should, after all, wash her mind of the past.
She lay quite still until the dawn light showed through the smoke hole and she could see the dark forms of her new family lying around the sides of the circular room. She rose quietly and went outside, pulling a woven grass sash tightly around her waist to hold in the sides of her tunic. No sound came from anywhere in the village. All was cool and still. She walked quietly down to the edge of the bathing place in the river and along the shore. She watched the killdeers swooping out over the river, catching insects on the wing, emitting thin cries as they rose from the river and flew out across the grassy plain. She watched until they were only a group of mingling, weaving specks, then nothing. She washed the paint from yesterday’s ceremony from her body. She felt refreshed, and her mind was clear.
Sacajawea went back across the grassy rise and along the dusty path toward the village. On an impulse she wandered close to the sapling-picketed walls of the village along the bank of a little stream. She thought of the wild dog and wondered if there were others in thesagebrush out there, waiting to be friendly. She began roaming the woods. She had known little of childhood, but Mother Earth was her friend. The growing things that changed every day, the rocks that never changed at all—these were things she could count on. She thought, I always know what to expect of the things of Mother Earth. Sometimes they are cruel, but it is hard, clean cruelty. They don’t torture you with their own weakness. She wondered then about Old Mother, Old Grandfather, and Catches Two, Antelope, and Talking Goose. Then her mind turned to her new family—the tormented Redpipe, and Sweet Clover, and the hideous chief of this village. Kakoakis could change people’s lives without so much as thinking about what he was doing. You cannot count on people, she thought, and the corner of her mouth flickered with a grim little smile.
Alone this morning, she let herself go back to the fantasies her childhood had never completed. She entered into the magic realm that her new family would not have credited even if she could have told them of it. Grown-ups managed to forget all such things with maturity and could not visualize one who had been a slave for several years behaving with such abandonment and pure childish joy. She smiled secretly for delight, a child, forgetful of all yesterdays.
For several hours she wandered, playing in her own way, back into her nearly forgotten childhood, vying with the chipmunks in search of nuts, with the chickadees in the seeking out of secret places, and with the big green frogs in plumbing the depths of the woodland pools. She had smelled scents, seen colors, heard sounds, and felt joys so seldom in the summer air. Her fingers, no longer callused, were sensitive to the dryness of the rocks and the pleasurable contrast between the soft moss and the rough sand, all at one and the same time, in the instinctive way of young birds and animals.
About midafternoon, she came to the banks of a wide stream. She made boats of rolled bark, peeling it thin with her knife and sending boatloads of frightened people down the rushing stream to the far-off water. Her people were pinecones, and she sang to them with each launching in the old, monotonous, five-note songs of the
Agaidükas. Her songs were not remembered, but instantly invented to fit the freedom of her situation.
Presently a disturbing sensation that she was not alone began to steal over her—a sense that unfriendly eyes were close by. She hardly heeded it at first, but it persisted. Finally she stood up and strove to penetrate the blue-black shadows.
Then her heart gave a violent surge and she wished she had taken heed of those semiconscious warnings earlier. Something subtle as a shifting cloud had caused her to glance backward, and there, framed in a tangle of windfall, she saw a bushy black head with a furry face and dark eyes, and although there were no braids like the braves wore, and the face was not smooth and brown, she knew this was a man—a bearded white stranger. This was one of the white trappers from the village!
He’d been there a long time, fixing his beaver traps and watching Sacajawea at play. This was not the first time he had followed this same girl lecherously. He had seen her in the big Hidatsa village, and discovered her here more than a moon before. He had taken to watching her in the gardens, knowing well that he could not touch her without being obliterated with a fast stroke of her skinning knife. Each time he had shadowed this child, who was clear-featured and slim, exquisitely made, beautiful by the standards of whites and Indians alike, the one part of frenzied daring had come a bit closer to prevailing over the nine parts of sheer cowardice that composed his French nature. But an instinctive awe of very young females continued to hold him from success.
Today, in this lonely spot, he had aroused himself to the point of action. And like the blood lust of the prairie wolf, the bodily appetite of this half-white, half-Indian man, fully aroused, was not to be turned aside. Imagination had worked upon him until lurid flames burned in his raisinlike eyes and he could fairly smell the pleasure of the tender flesh of his prey.
Abruptly the shaggy black head withdrew for an instant, only to reappear at another spot several feet closer. As Sacajawea glimpsed his short, broad body, the strength of his shoulders, she felt a shaft of coldfear at the purpose she sensed in his sinister movements.
Breaking the spell of his evil watching eyes, Sacajawea turned and fled along the bank of the stream. Glancing backward, she saw the man crashing through the thickets, closing the distance between them. Her knife lay on a shell of birchbark, glinting in the sun.
Emboldened by the sight of the girl running away, the bearded man covered the ground in short bounds, keeping to the undergrowth. Now Sacajawea ran with frank abandon and with all the strength she had. She had never before known fear of a man’s two eyes, but she was terrified at what she saw in their depths, fearing at each moment to be struck down. But her woods sense did not leave her; she knew just where she was— the stream led back to the gates of the village, and toward those she turned in her flight, knowing there would be refuge there.
The man was fascinated by the ancient game of chasing a desperate quarry. He came on, always keeping to cover, never getting closer, yet never falling behind. This was all that delayed the girl’s capture in those first vital minutes.
Redpipe, as it happened, was rummaging disconsolately about the deserted clearing in front of the village gates, looking for spent arrows and old flint chips. He raised his head at the sound of a human cry that came floating to him from somewhere out at the edge of the woods. He peered with his myopic, hyperthyroid eyes and saw Sacajawea.
Sacajawea had reached the clearing in front of the gate in the very nick of time—the white man was at the clearing also, but an instinct for keeping to cover made him utilize every possible clump of undergrowth in his path.
Her breath coming in desperate sobs, Sacajawea spurted across to the gate with the last of her strength, the bearded one now only a couple of man-lengths behind. Mercifully, the gate was open. But then there came a fresh shaft of terror at the apparition of Red-pipe’s thin form as he made straight for her, walking with short, unsteady steps. She plunged in through the open gate just as the bearded one straightened, literallybeside himself with lust, and came lancing through the air to land upon the feet and legs of Redpipe.
In the middle of the afternoon, Fast Arrow, rounding the village after a desultory hunt, came upon the flat-footed, moccasined tracks of the white man, toes outward, in the damp earth on the bank of the little stream. He looked at the sunken beaver trap and knew the owner by the wad of beaver-castoreum-soaked cloth on a stick above the trap. As he had done before, out of curiosity about the bearded one’s ways, he turned to follow the moccasin tracks. They looked less than a hour old. Fast Arrow worked out the trail, which ran along the bank, noting that the man had squatted at intervals to watch and wait. What had the man been stalking, he wondered.
He puzzled over the tracks where they finally left the stream bank, and then he was startled to find mingled with them the footprints of a Minnetaree squaw. It could be that the bearded one had come after a runaway woman. Yet the squaw did not go back peaceably; she ran, digging in with her toes.
Fast Arrow hurried forward now, his quick eye reading signs as he went. He came upon deepened toe marks and saw that the squaw was in full flight. She was small; her tracks did not sink far into the earth. The bearded one followed with long strides—he was not heavy-laden, yet he brought his heel down first and then rocked forward to his toes. Fast Arrow’s heart began to pound; he was running, too, soundless in his moccasins.
Stumbling through thickets, he sped toward the clearing in front of the gates by the shortest possible route. He was in time to witness the unscrambling of his father-in-law, Redpipe, and the bearded one.
Ordinarily, Redpipe and this bearded one avoided one another in their comings and goings, through mutual and well-warranted disrespect. But in this instance all such inhibitions were swept aside. When old Redpipe suddenly appeared in the clearing, it seemed to the bearded one a direct attempt to rob him of the pleasure he had so patiently stalked—an unforgivable action. Instantly he sprang forward to annihilate this blun-dering redskin; the distrust between red and white men was not new by this year, 1802, in the history of the American plains.
Redpipe was flung forward on his nose as the two hundred pounds of bulk landed on him. Immediately the slow, deathly rage of his phlegmatic spirit was lashed to flames. In his nostrils was the beaver-castoreum scent of his attacker, the Squawman, Toussaint Charbonneau.
Redpipe’s mind exploded with this knowledge. Rearing upward with a bawl of rage, he flung all his frail strength into the struggle, mouth open in the savage caricature of a grin. Suddenly he fell backward, gasping for breath, his bulging eyes rolling up into his head, in an epileptoid fit.
Fast Arrow saw Sacajawea make the entrance to his lodge and knew that she was safe from her attacker.
It was a minute or so before Toussaint Charbonneau realized that Redpipe was having a seizure; Redpipe’s affliction was well known. Charbonneau’s fury abated; he fell back to examine his arm, which was deeply scratched from elbow to wrist. Then, seeing Fast Arrow standing near, he abruptly rose and ambled forward in sudden friendliness.
“Mon dieu, that old Redpipe is still a warrior,” he said in halting Minnetaree mixed with French phrases. “He tripped me as I came for the gate.” Charbonneau’s breath came in fast, shallow gulps, and the upper part of his face, which was not whiskered, was as red as his neck.
“Squawman,” said Fast Arrow, his face dark, “you were running after my small sister?”
Before Charbonneau could think of an appropriate answer, Fast Arrow had bent to tend to Redpipe. Perspiration laced spidery channels through the crusting dust covering his body. He shook and slavered like a trapped wolf.
“La jolie femme?” Charbonneau said. “She is your sister?”
“My sister since the Moon of the Trading Fair,” Fast Arrow indicated with hand signs.
“Was that her ceremony in the village yesterday?”
“Ai, and you chased her as if she were a village slave.”
“Slave—oui. It is known you won her from an Ahnahaway. She is known in the big Hidatsa village as the Girl Who Loved a Dog.” Charbonneau began to laugh and hold his sides. “That is a nice picture for you. A girl making love to a dog! What a diable she must be!”
Fast Arrow straightened and looked directly at Charbonneau, who was now wiping the tears from his eyes as he laughed harder.
“That girl is known as Sacajawea, and she is the daughter of my mother, Grasshopper; she is no man’s woman. You lie about her and some mangy dog.”
“Woman! She cannot even keep hold of her skinning knife for protection, and she plays in the water like a small child. Aagh, that papoose, she did not even dance at her own puberty ceremony. I saw! The Hidatsas threw her away. Why did you pick her up? She is really still a child, a nothing, a female child of no importance, something to give away. I’ll take her. I’ll give you an ax for her. Then you will not have so many mouths to feed in your lodge. You will thank me and call me your friend.”
Fast Arrow’s eyes narrowed as Charbonneau continued to speak in his halting Minnetaree, begging for the young girl who appealed to him.
Finally Fast Arrow had heard enough. “If you are lucky, you will stop an arrow before the new moon.”
Charbonneau sneered back; then his shoulders sagged and he spat on the ground before heading toward the village gate. ”Zut! Diable!” he shouted back at Fast Arrow.