Clark’s Journal:
Mandans— 27th of October Satturday 1804,
we met with a frenchman by the name of Jessomme which we imploy as an interpreter. This man has a wife and Children in the village. Great numbers on both Sides flocked down to the bank to view us as we passed, we Sent three twists of Tobacco by three young men, to the villages above inviting them to come Down and Council with us tomorrow, many Indians came to view as Some stayed all night in the Camp of our party. We procured some information of Mr. Jessomme of the Chiefs of the Different Nations.
4th November Sunday 1804
we continued to cut Down trees and raise our houses, a Mr. Chaubonie, interpeter for the Gross Ventre nation Came to See us, and informed that [he] came Down with Several Indians from a hunting expedition up the river, to here what we had told the Indians in Council. This man wished to hire as an interpiter
BERNARD DEVOTO, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, pp. 58-9, 63.
At the first light of dawn over the Five River Villages, Sacajawea was up with the others, Otter Woman and Corn Woman. She wore a shapeless, dirty red blanket and scuffed moccasins, but she wore the polished sky-blue stone on a thong close to her thoat. She built up the cooking fire with pieces of dry, seasoned wood that were within reach of her bed; they burned with a practically smokeless fire.
Otter Woman wore a leather tunic and calf-high moccasins that were baggy and dirty. She sat on her hide-covered bed and nursed a boy of two summers who lay naked in her lap on a mound of black deer moss.
“I was sick in the mornings when I carried this one,” Otter Woman said in her native Shoshoni. “You are lucky.”
“Ai,” Sacajawea said.
Corn Woman, still in her teens, was the eldest woman of Charbonneau. She sat on a pallet of cornhusks, motionless, silent, head bent, wrapped in a gray wool blanket, staring at her hands. Stuck into a well-worn animal hide hanging from a wooden beam behind her bed were her needles for sewing skins. Bits of sinew, pieces of leather, and skins lay about within easy reach. At the foot of her pallet were wire rabbit snares and a few rusted traps. Some animal skins were drying on the stretchers leaning against the side wall. In one grand motion she gestured toward the fire and rummaged among the leather and skins to find her vintage felt hat, which she pulled down over her wisps of coal-black hair.
Sacajawea saw the gesture and stirred the contents of the stew pot on a cooking crane over the fire. She laid the stirring bone on a piece of bark. What had gone into the stew she could not recall. It had started early in the fall with meat, barley, beans, and sliced pumpkin. As time went by, whatever was handy was tossed in— headless and footless, uneviscerated bodies of rabbits, a fish or two, some dried corn, a wild parsnip, some meat. The stew pot would be cleaned in the spring when Charbonneau moved his camp to a creek nearer his traplines. Then the stew pot would simmer its way until fall when they moved back to the permanent earthen lodge in the village of the Mandans.
Charbonneau pushed aside the wooden door, stamped his calked boots, and brushed off his baggy pants. He tossed a felt hat aside; his black hair was matted to his head. As he tossed a leather pouch near Sacajawea’s feet, he said, “Here’s that tea I got from the feller McCracken. She go in hot water. A little bit.” He dug around in his pants pocket and pulled out a wad of cigarette papers and a nearly empty pack of shag tobacco. “Come on, we have a good feed and a pot of tea.”
Corn Woman, glad he spoke the familiar Minnetaree she could understand, smiled and picked up the leather pouch. She put several pinches of tea leaves in a small iron kettle, poured water from a clay pot and replaced the stew pot with the teakettle.
As he sealed his cigarette, Charbonneau thought how he did not much mind being called Squawman. He did not mind if it meant this—being warm and well fed by women who did as he commanded. They were chattel. He was the boss. For a few trinkets and bits of foofaraw, the women were always there to make him feel like the Emperor Napoleon. Even if he left for a hunt or trapping for the Company for three or four months, the women would be waiting for him and his kill with freshly made trousers, jackets, and moccasins.
He found a stick and lit it in the fire, inclined his head, and got his cigarette going. “Pour that tea slow!” he yelled at Corn Woman, who was pouring the hot, bitter tea into a tin cup. “I want to drink, not chew this.” His nostrils distended as they took in the aroma. He pulled off his boots, sitting on the earthen floor, which was so hardened from use by bare and mocca-sined feet and swept so clean that it had almost a polished appearance. He wiped the back of his hand across his mustache and smoked again. Then he sipped the tea.
Sacajawea picked up the stirring bone and wiped the bark bowl clean with the edge of her blanket. With an elk horn she dipped out some thick stew. Charbonneau poured the stew into his mouth. The first swallow made him twist his face as the thick gruel burned his innards. With his fingers he picked up strings of meat and hunks of soft pumpkin. “By gar, I get lots of fur. Make plenty of money this winter. Charbonneau is damn good man!” His look almost dared the women to question his statement. Then his face softened. He smiled and pushed the child off Otter Woman’s lap. Charbonneau had given his son his own name, Toussaint, but usually called the baby Little Tess.
“Little Tess, he be feller like his papa. He grow smart. He should work for Company, but he no bum like Jussome. That Jussome is a bum, anyway.” He picked up the child and bounced him across his knees. He thought of René Jussome. He did not like Jussome. He did not trust him. But Jussome was the only one Charbonneau could think of now to team up with for the winter. His friend Baptiste LePage had left. He was starting late; he did not like to travel alone in winter when the loose-blowing snow held no moccasin tracks. Charbonneau did not wish to be found gray and lifeless beside a snowbank crusted as hard as glass. It was better for traders and trappers to work in twos, he thought—besides, he had heard that Jussome was getting a pack of huskies and a sled for hauling from the Assiniboins. That fellow McCracken had told him he was going to ride them back for Jussome. Charbonneau wished his own brother were here, camped with the Mandans, instead of in the Canadian Rockies somewhere, hunting the mountain goats.
Charbonneau scratched his whiskers, gave Little Tess back to Otter Woman, tied a red kerchief around his neck, found his felt hat, and swung the blue capote over his shoulders.
“I go to see Jussome,” he said.
“Why don’t you hunt so we will have enough meat to fix a proper stew for the morning meal?” Corn Woman said.
“Shut that mouth. You got nothing to do, maybe you go hunt. Femme, paugh!” He was gone.
Silently the women tidied the lodge. Otter Woman put fresh deer moss in the cradleboard before placing her child inside the warm nest. She had rubbed bear’s oil on the child’s soft skin. He had grown so that he was not always happy confined inside the cradleboard all day.
Soon Charbonneau was back. “I cannot find Jussome, I go on the hunt with some Mandan fellers. They go right now. Get me jerky and corn and the horse.” He rummaged around and found his royal-blue three-point blanket and his flintlock.1
Several days later, Broken Tooth came to the lodge in midafternoon. Jussome had sent her for Charbonneau. “Did you hear?” she asked. “There is a lodge on water with many men in it. And two canoes coming along behind. One of the men is black as a burned stick and tall as a lodgepole.”
“Is it true?” asked Sacajawea, skeptical that anything Broken Tooth had heard was to be believed. Perhaps it was something for amusement. Then they heard shouting from the village as children and adults streamed out of their lodges and raced for the river.
“Let’s see, too,” said Corn Woman, heading toward the front wood flap.
“Probably the men coming in from the antelope surround,” said Otter Woman, but she laced Little Tess in the cradleboard and found a robe to wrap around herself against the cold. Sacajawea was already outside.
Looking into the wind, they saw something they could not believe. Moving up the river was a huge boat with a sail. It resembled a lodge floating upon the water with a soft gray cloud fluttering beside it. There were men at the sides pulling on long poles, moving the boat slowly upriver. Following the great boat were two smaller boats. They were canoes being pushed upriver. Who were these people? More and more curious Indians were crowding along the riverbank to watch.
“Taiva-vonel White skin!” Otter Woman shouted excitedly in Shoshoni. The onlookers moved closer. Some of the Indians were impatient with watching from shore and got into the tub-shaped bull boats and paddled downstream to see better.
The wind went through to their very bones as they watched the canoelike boats, the pirogues, go past their village upriver toward the other Mandan village. One pirogue was red, the other white.
Sacajawea hoped that Charbonneau was standing on the embankment somewhere watching these boats, because if he did not see them himself, he would never believe her own description. He would curse her, Baying she talked with a crooked tongue just to confuse him. He might beat her with firewood. And he would be too vain to ask anyone about her story. He could not admit there was something he did not know about.
The next several days were full of excitement in the villages along the Missouri, an excitement enhanced by severe and unexpected winds. Although these Indians were used to having white men among them,2 never had they seen as many together as there were on this expedition headed by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The party numbered close to forty-five men and one dog.
Through the Indian grapevine Sacajawea learned that Kakoakis was suspicious of these pale eyes who said they had come to make peace. And she learned that the council of chiefs, called to meet at the white men’s camp downriver, had been delayed because of the cold, violent winds that made it impossible for Chief Shotaharrora, or Coal, from the lower Mandan village, Matootonha, to cross the Missouri to attend, although Coal’s subchiefs Kagohami, or Little Raven, and She-heke, or Coyote, managed to get across in a round bull boat. Sheheke was immediately called Big White by the Americans because of his light complexion. Sheheke explained to his people that the white chiefs wanted to talk of a Great White Father who lived far off and would send white traders to bring the villages useful things if there was no war among the nations.3
“When the wind dies, we will all go across the river for a smoke with these pale eyes. They want us to make peace with the Sioux and Assiniboins, but how can we make peace unless the Sioux and Assiniboins know our intentions?” With cool logic, Shotaharrora repeated these words over and over among other chiefs and subchiefs.
Sacajawea wished more and more that Charbonneau had not gone off hunting with the Mandans so quickly. The white men had been delighted to find an experienced English-speaking French-Canadian interpreter for the Hudson’s Bay and North West companies in the big Hidatsa village—Jussome had learned to speak English from the Canadian explorer David Thompson. Then, too, Sacajawea had seen the flat stone that reflected the face of Broken Tooth the same way as a deep, still pool of water did. It was a gift to her from the white chiefs. Jussome had some wonderful gifts also—a knife, a tin plate, and a new red handkerchief.
The wary mind of Chief Kakoakis was set on edge by the white strangers. He knew that only a constant state of preparedness would ensure the Minnatarees’ continuing liberty and well-being. In years past, when his people had moved into the security of a fenced village, they had learned a grim lesson that was passed from one generation to another. If a people had nothing and lived in a poor land, they could preach peace and be known everywhere as friendly; but if the same people acquired possessions, such as horses, plenty of vegetables, or guns, and became prosperous and strong in their rich village, they would be called hostile and dangerous, a bad people, enemies and makers of war.
Chief Kakoakis sat on his horse watching the camp of the white men from a bluff upriver. He saw that the men worked continuously. He noticed their rifles and the brass cannon on the white-winged boat. He saw the discipline of the crew and watched them fire their weapons at small and distant targets upon orders from a chief in charge. He saw that the targets were hit regularly.4
Chief Kakoakis was uneasy. ‘These men are not traders,” he said to the Wolf Chief. “They speak of peace but bring guns.”
“I see that,” said the Wolf Chief. “They clean and shine the guns to preserve them. They bring gifts but take nothing. What kind of people gives without taking something in return?”
“A bad kind,” said Chief Kakoakis.
“It is puzzling,” said the Wolf Chief, “but the white chief, the red-haired one, seems friendly. I do not feel afraid of him. He smiles and shakes hands as a sign of his friendship. Jussome speaks for him.”
Chief Kakoakis put his hand on the Wolf Chief’s shoulder. “That is how the enemy works. He is wise. He gets close to us and seems friendly. What if he decides not to go west in the spring, but to stay here with us? To hunt our buffalo? Eat our corn? Take our women? Now I begin to feel fear.”
“I do not know,” said the Wolf Chief.
“Their pale eyes and pale skin tell me to stay away. They seem friendly, but they will destroy my people.”
“No,” said the Wolf Chief. “I would hear what they say.”
“Do not forget my warning,” said Chief Kakoakis, turning his back.
On the afternoon that the wind died down, it was learned that the council was meeting in the Matootonha village. Otter Woman brought the news. Otter Woman pulled the cradleboard from its place against the side of the lodge and pushed Little Tess against the flat board backing; then she deftly pulled the flaps of soft buckskin and laced them together. She checked the semicircular guard of bent willow fastened to the upper part of the board, designed to protect the papoose’s face in case the board were hung in a tree and somehow tumbled down. She pulled the leather tumpline across her forehead and was ready to go to see what was happening with all the white men nearby. Sacajawea and Corn Woman could not stand to be left behind. Hurriedly they pulled warm fur robes over their shoulders and closed the wooden slab on their empty lodge. There was a light skiff of snow upon the ground.
The council had been meeting many hours when they arrived, but the sun had not left the sky and everyone was in the center of the village watching and listening to the white chiefs, the chiefs of the Mandan and Hidatsa villages and the two Arikara chiefs who had come to make peace with the Mandans. The women and children stood in a circle behind the men of the village. Sacajawea stood on tiptoe to see the pale strangers and hear what they said. She could not understand the sounds these pale eyes made, but one of them, the red-haired chief, used hand signs well, so that she could follow some of what they talked about.
Otter Woman lifted her cradleboard from her fore-head and handed it to Corn Woman. Otter Woman then scooted in between several other women and closer to the circle of men so that she could see better. Sacajawea followed on her heels, and was pleased to find Sun Woman in the crowd. Earth Woman was in the cradleboard on her back. Sacajawea started to ask after the welfare of Four Bears and his other women, but in the council circle Kakoakis had stepped forward, holding himself erect so the crowd could see. He towered over everyone; his good eye pierced through the crowd. He looked down at the other chiefs and rubbed the scar that slashed across his face and cut his right ear in half. Finally, spreading his feet for better balance, he spoke.
“I can no longer stay and listen to the long speeches of the Great White Father’s subchiefs,” Kakoakis said. When the rumble of his deep voice had died away, he threw the medal and the flag he had received as gifts to the ground and stamped them over and over in the earth. “While I talk of peace here, my village could be attacked in my absence!”
Sacajawea turned quickly toward Corn Woman and let out an uncontrolled ”Paugh!” Then, in a voice louder than she had intended, she said, “Who would come to his village except some poor trader who needs only the comfort of one of his women?”
Suddenly all eyes turned upon Sacajawea. Some had merry twinkles, but others looked at her with scorn. In this unguarded moment she again had broken the Indian code, ancient as the rocks she stood upon. Women did not speak out when any man was talking. To speak out when a chief was talking was unpardonable.
Sacajawea felt hot with shame and embarrassment, then cold with fear. Her head bent, her long braids trembled. She dared not raise her eyes. The punishment for what she had done could be terrible.
In the stillness the Wolf Chief stepped forward and bent to pick up the Jefferson medal and American flag. “Keep these as tokens of goodwill,” he said to Kakoakis. The crowd’s eyes returned to the two chiefs, momentarily forgetting the squaw with no manners. “Look at all the fine gifts these pale eyes have brought us. Look at this beautiful coat and hat I have.” The Wolf Chief brushed his hands over the blue Army coat Captain Lewis had given him and the black felt hat that had been placed upon his head. “I trust the pale eyes,” he said. “Let the speeches continue.”
Chief Kakoakis took a deep breath and spat at the blue uniform jacket and sniffed at the plumed hat; then, turning his back on the Wolf Chief, he left, his head held high in the air. Pushing his way through the thick circle of women and children, he tossed the silver medal in their midst. The women passed the medal around like a hot potato. When Sun Woman found it in her hand, she held it. The child on her back squirmed. “Be still, Earth Woman,” she whispered. The medal was shiny, like the warm sun, and Sun Woman thought perhaps it was the light of the sun that was, by some magic, captured inside. It fit easily in her hand. She looked more closely and saw it had a man’s face on one side. Turning it slowly, she saw a peace pipe and a battle ax, crossed, and clasped hands, and strange markings she did not recognize.
“So, you are still speaking out,” Sun Woman said softly, when the speeches continued.
Sacajawea dared raise her eyes somewhat. None of the chiefs was looking at her. “Ai,” she sighed. “My heart lies on the ground. My tongue burns.”
Another squaw standing beside Sun Woman whispered, “It is true, what you said. But none of us has the courage to speak as you did. I hope your family is not too hard on you. They may only cut the tip of your nose off.”
“They would not,” said Sun Woman. “She is the squaw of a white man. But she must stay out of Ka-koakis’s sight.” She turned to shield Sacajawea from the eyes of the two Minnetaree subchiefs who had taken the time to deliberate and had deduced it was correct manners to follow their leader. They had dropped their medals and were pushing through the crowd, past the women, and returning to their village lodges. Sun Woman then pushed Sacajawea to the edge of the crowd. “I believe these white men want us to live in peace with all tribes as they say. They show it by marks on a shining stone.” Sun Woman’s hand opened a little so that Sacajawea could see the shine of the silver.
“This is great medicine. You can see your own face in it,” said Sacajawea.
“If it is learned that Kakoakis means to have you punished, I will send you this stone to keep you from harm. Then you must find a way to escape to the Shoshonis, your own people, that day,” said Sun Woman. Her eyes were wide and serious.
“You are a friend. But it is foolish. I have thought of it many times. I could not find the People now. It is nearly winter, and I have been gone too long. To take that trail would pull my heart out and leave it on the ground to be picked at by the crows and hawks, and risk the papoose I carry. If Kakoakis comes for me and Charbonneau is not here, I must take the punishment I surely deserve.”
“If your nose is cut off, I will not bar our lodge door to you. You will always be welcome to visit at the lodge of Four Bears.”
Earth Woman began to cry. Sun Woman pulled the cradleboard from her back, untied the child, then began to nurse her. Sacajawea helped straighten the empty board and pulled the old buffalo robe around her friend and the papoose. Sun Woman was still young, but already her face had the lines that come from hard work in the hot sun and cold snow. Her clothing was plain, with very little beadwork, and her only jewelry was white shells hanging from her ears. Her tunic was bleached from the weather, and her knee-high moccasins were patched. When there are seven wives and many children, there are not so many things to go around, Sacajawea thought.
When Earth Woman finished nursing, Sacajawea helped her friend arrange the child on her back. Then Sun Woman took the warm silver medal from Sacajawea and dropped it safely into the cradleboard.
Reluctantly, Sacajawea found Otter Woman and Corn Woman and set her moccasins in the direction of their lodge. Her mind flew over the trails of memory to the time she was not called Sacajawea and not known as the youngest woman of the white Squawman who traded pelts to Indians and other white men from the north. Her name had been Boinaiv, Grass Child. She wondered why. She tried to recall. Her memory pushed back into the past. She smelled the pungent burning pine of the Shoshoni morning cooking fires. She promised herself to talk to Otter Woman in their Shoshoni tongue more often.
Charbonneau had been gone for nearly half a moon, and so much had happened that Sacajawea no longer worried that he would not believe. The presence of the white men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition had become a reality of day-to-day life, for they would stay until the spring. The Mandans told the white chiefs that there was no longer fun in killing the Arikaras— they had killed so many—and agreed to make peace. The news that the white men would build a camp of wood and that fifty lodges of Assiniboins would winter in peace with the Minnetarees spread through the village like a prairie fire. They brought many parfleches of wild rice to exchange for dried pumpkin and squash. Crees and Ojibwas from the north began to appear about the villages. They had all heard of the white men and were curious.
Winter was coming fast. The wind blew colder, and the snow became thicker. Sacajawea and Otter Woman put extra clay around the sides of their lodge to keep it warm during the time of the Snow Moon. Sacajawea listened to the honkings of Canada geese moving south. She rubbed her fingers over the blue stone dangling from the thong around her neck. She had thrown off her fear of punishment by Kakoakis and spent what free time she had watching the strange activities of the white men who were using the Indian’s land, his trees, his river, and his game. Mandan men came and squatted over their pipes along the new walls in the afternoon sunshine. Women with children on their backs came and worked rawhide or sinew or beading. Sometimes several men played a little game of chance, shaking a gourd bowl with marked stones or plum pits while they kept an eye on all that was going on. Sometimes Sacajawea watched, but never if they played a game of hands. When mess call came, the Indians expected to eat, too, for they were guests.
One clear night, long, brilliant tongues of cold flame licked over the Indian villages and the white men’s camp. The northern lights had returned to stream and shimmer over the plains, and in the morning Charbonneau returned.
“Sacré diable! Is it true the Americans are here? People get gifts? About these fellers—they build huts with cottonwood for winter?” Charbonneau came bursting into the lodge.
“Ai,” said Sacajawea.
Otter Woman and Corn Woman were busy at the cooking kettle. “She can tell you about it,” said Corn Woman. “She heard them talk with the chiefs.”
Sacajawea scowled at Corn Woman and flushed, fearing she would tell how she had loosened her tongue at Chief Kakoakis.
“Je ne sais pas!” Charbonneau said. “There’s talk; talk everywhere. Big boats there; I don’t happen to see. Jussome is not home. Can anyone tell me?”
Speaking with hand signs and much Minnetaree, Sacajawea tried to explain. “The pale eyes are downriver by the village of Chief Black Cat making their own village from great logs. I have never seen anything like it. I heard they asked Jussome to tell them what the Minnetarees and Mandans say, so Jussome works for the pale eyes now.”
Both Otter Woman and Corn Woman nodded in agreement. Sacajawea had told him the truth.
“That sneaking cheat, that mean, dirty louse, that pissant! I stop to visit, and he goes off to the strangers to take work with them. Zut!”
“It is also said that Jussome and his squaw and children will live the winter with the pale eyes in their camp,” said Sacajawea, hoping that by now the day of the council of the chiefs had been forgotten and Charbonneau would never learn how outspoken she had been. Maybe Corn Woman and Otter Woman would keep their mouths shut and not hint about her humiliation and the tongue she had wagged at Chief Kakoakis.
“Our Chief Kakoakis does not trust the white men or Chief Red Hair,” said Otter Woman, shooting a sidelong glance at Sacajawea.
“Rouge?”
“Ai, it is true, hair as bright as red war paint. And the greatest wonder of all—they have a man who is black all over, with hair like burned prairie grass.” Otter Woman felt important with her information, and a certain loyalty made her give it all to her man.
“Charred wood used as paint,” sniffed Corn Woman, who had seen the man but could not believe her eyes.
“No, I heard that Four Bears rubbed his arm and face. The black did not come off, even when he licked it with his wet tongue,” announced Otter Woman, significantly licking the back of her hand.
“Oui, the noire people, called Negro. I have seen them. They can do the work of three men. These fellers, they are like the giant. By dang, these fellers make a trading post here?”
“I hear they come to make peace between enemy nations so that they can all live as one family under the hand of a white chief who lives far down the river in a place called Washington,” said Otter Woman.
Sacajawea and Corn Woman had heard this also, and had laughed behind their hands. Imagine all the nations living under the leadership of one chief! Otter Woman scowled at them.
“One family?” Charbonneau threw back his shaggy black head and laughed so that his yellow teeth showed. “There is always somebody who wants to be the chief. No tribe lives peaceably forever. There is always chief somewhere who wants to get even with some enemy.” He kicked off his boots and held out his feet for Sacajawea to put on his moccasins. “They come to get ideas from Hudson’s Bay and the Northwesters and get the Indians’ help. They think what they hear is the thing. Zut! I got plenty know-how. I go visit those men in the morning. I will take four packhorses loaded with pelts and meat to trade. I will show Jussome! I can interpret for them, too. Now, feed Charbonneau! He is hungry.”
Next morning, Corn Woman rose early to take extra hay out to the four packhorses. Otter Woman rolled the pelts and called Sacajawea to pack the meat to carry on the horses.
“Can we all go?” asked Sacajawea, curious to see the inside of the pale eye’s camp.
“Ai. Otter, carry these buffalo robes, then help Sacajawea with the meat. Her load is getting plenty large!” he added, extending his arms suggestively around his belly. “Corn, stay and take care of Charbonneau’s lodge and my son.” He bent in front of his boy. “Little Tess, shake hands with your papa.”
The boy hung back against Corn Woman’s skirt. “Mother,” the child called, looking pleadingly at Corn Woman. He felt as secure with Corn Woman and Sacajawea as he did with Otter Woman, for Indian children were raised so that any of the women in the lodge where the child lived would act as the mother.
“Mon dieu! L’enfant believes his own papa is actually the Bear of the Forest. I put a scare in him!” His head rolled back and he laughed. “He knows his papa is boss.” Charbonneau grabbed the little boy’s hand and shook it wildly. “That’s au revoir.”
“Do I ride?” asked Sacajawea. “Horses walk faster than I with all this to carry.”
“Bonne nuit!” said Charbonneau. “Squaws, they are lazy.” Finally he relented. Charbonneau, Sacajawea, and Otter Woman rode to where the big sandbar showed itself in the middle of the river. There they forded, letting the horses swim in the cold water until they could touch bottom again. Crossing the sandbar, they had only a few yards to ford and the water was not deep.
The white men’s camp was being built in the form of a triangle. Stout log cabins formed two sides, opening inward. The base of the triangle was closed by a semicircular stockade of large pickets. The cabins were not finished. Everywhere men were working—sawing, hammering, fitting logs.
Sacajawea deliberately slowed her walk after dismounting and tending the horses. She looked and listened. One man called Pat seemed to be the chief in charge of raising the strange wooden lodges. This was Patrick Gass, the head carpenter. Among the enlisted men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Gass was outstanding. He was a barrel-chested Irishman from Pennsylvania. Ruddy-faced like so many Irishmen, he hid the fact behind a bushy beard. As a civilian he had helped build a house for the father of the future President James Buchanan. Although uneducated, having had only nineteen days of formal schooling, he was nevertheless intelligent and an experienced Indian fighter. While stationed at Kaskaskia, Illinois, he had applied for Lewis’s expedition, but his commander—not wanting to lose his best carpenter—had refused. Gass had then gone directly to Lewis, who had persuaded Captain Russell Bissell to let him go west.
There were other Indians standing off in little groups watching. They had never seen such industry before. Sacajawea tried not to miss a thing. Once in a while she would pull at Otter Woman to show her something, such as the men drying strips of meat and working pelts and skins into leather for clothing. “These men have no squaws?” asked Otter Woman.
“White man, he can do anything,” boasted Charbonneau.
“Squaws’ work?” questioned Otter Woman. “Men cannot be happy if they must stay in camp for cooking and sewing like soft women. Men should hunt and fish.”
“Oui,” answered Charbonneau. “These men, they hunt and fish, too.”
Sacajawea shook her head. It was hard to understand. Then she pulled on the arm of Otter Woman again, showing her a lodge that held large round pots with covers.
“Those canisters of ammunition are for guns,” said Charbonneau. “She would be enough for two, three wars between us and the Sioux. Pow! Pow!”
Sacajawea had never seen so many guns. Charbonneau’s gun was the only one she had really ever seen. The Agaidükas did not have guns. How powerful these white men must be, thought Sacajawea. The People would be better fed and more secure if they had all these guns.
“Your people could shoot off the Blackfeet with those guns,” said Charbonneau, seeming to read Sacajawea’s thoughts.
“Ai, hunt much better,” she answered, misunderstanding Charbonneau, for the point of fighting between Indians was usually not to kill opponents but only to embarrass them, to steal horses or dogs or women. It was only once in a while that raiding got out of hand and Indians killed each other.
Otter Woman pointed to some large cooking kettles made of metal like the guns, not copper like those which the northern tribes had brought in. And they saw that the spoons were not made of horn or bone, but a shiny metal. The women’s eyes grew large in wonderment at all they saw.
Charbonneau tugged at the women and urged them to follow him. Otter Woman was carrying two of the buffalo robes, and Sacajawea carried the other two. The meat packs had been left on the horses. Charbonneau stopped to ask a white man if he could speak to the patron, the chief, the headman.
“You want Captain Lewis or Captain Clark?” asked the man working on a door to one of the cabins. He was George Shannon, a blue-eyed Pennsylvanian of only seventeen years, the youngest man in the party. He was a likable young Irishman, handsome, clean-shaven in a hirsute age, intelligent, and well educated for his youth. “I think both of them are in that tent over there.”
“Oui, that’s him, Capitaine Clark. I come to work for him,” said Charbonneau.
The women followed behind Charbonneau. He motioned for them to wait while he went inside. They squatted against the outer tent wall. Sacajawea moved her bundle of robes so that she could watch the men talking. Charbonneau soon motioned for them to bring in the robes. He nodded and smiled as they handed the captains the fine hides. The white men seemed pleased. The red-haired one, Captain Clark, tall, rawboned, and powerful, put one across his knees and felt the fine thick fur. Sacajawea said nothing as the keen eyes of both captains studied Charbonneau, Otter Woman, and then herself. Then the captains exchanged glances and Captain Lewis came around a table and shook hands with Charbonneau. This man was younger than the red-haired one, and he did not smile. There was rock in him. Sacajawea sensed at once the force he possessed. She would never want to make this sandy-haired, blue-eyed man angry. His face was oval, like the egg of an owl. Small of mouth and long and slender of nose, he was neither handsome nor attractive.
“Capitaine, these robes were made by the hands of my two femmes. This is Otter Woman, and this is Sacajawea, Bird Woman. They wish for a small trinket in return. Not much, but something they can show off.”
“York,” said Lewis, “will you find two looking glasses for these young ladies, please?”
Ben York, whose mother, Rose, had worked for the Clark family as long as she could remember, had been Clark’s body servant since boyhood. He had been standing out of the line of Sacajawea’s vision, and now Sacajawea felt a strange excitement as she glimpsed the huge dark man for the first time close up.
Otter Woman sat down on the floor at the sight of him. Captain Clark laughed, which effected an amazing transformation in his personality. Unlike Captain Lewis, in Clark it was the softer side of his nature that remained hidden. He motioned for Sacajawea to sit down on some packing crates.
“Assieds-toi,” ordered Charbonneau.
Neither woman had ever sat on anything but the ground or a log or a hide couch in a lodge. Gingerly, Sacajawea sat on the box. It was strange. She looked down—her feet just touched the ground.
York handed something to Charbonneau, who grunted his thanks. “Here,” he said, giving a small square looking glass to each woman. “This is a mirror like the white women use in Capitaine Red Hair’s village, Saint Louis. Perhaps it is so. Who knows these things?”
Sacajawea took the pewter looking glass, aware instantly that she saw her own image in it. She had never before held such a thing in her hand. It seemed alive. It danced in a light of its own, like a hard bit of smooth water hole.
Sacajawea could not understand what the white chiefs were saying to her man. Then Charbonneau spoke in Minnetaree. ‘They want to ask you questions,” he said. “They will ask me, and I will ask you and then tell them what you say. Tell them about your people and where they live.”
At first Sacajawea did not understand. “My people are the Minnetaree, and they live here in the village. I belong to the big Hidatsa village.”
“Sacré coeur!” said Charbonneau. “They want to know about them Shoshoni. The Snakes.” He made a wiggling motion with his hands. “Tell them about your maman and papa, where they lived, what they did, how many horses they have in camp.” Turning to Captain Lewis, he explained, “They give me plenty trouble, them filles. It’s exasperate to me!”
Again she looked at her man, puzzled. She could not talk about her mother and father; they were dead. Then she looked at Chief Red Hair. He was smoking, and, to her relief, he smiled. She looked at the other chief, and he was smiling, too. It was not that they were amused by Charbonneau’s exasperation; rather, they were completely warmed by Sacajawea’s round, childlike face, her huge, intelligent eyes, her graceful hands as she made signs while speaking, and the incongruity of her obvious pregnancy at the age of only twelve or thirteen.
“Tell them, femme. Tell them about the land of your birth. She is one big shining montagne, oui?”
“No, many mountains, with cool green valleys in summer, and tall pines that sing in the wind.”
“Merci beaucoup,” said Charbonneau, wiping his brow with his red kerchief and telling the captains in his halting English-trader patois what his woman had just said in Minnetaree.
She went on, “In winter the People move to warmer valleys in the south, but the food is scarce and enemy raiders are thick. We lose many horses.”
“Could you find your way back?”
“Back?” Back to the People? She was sure she could find them if no enemy interfered, but it would be many days from here and there were raiding parties along the trail and it was winter now—she had told Sun Woman it was a foolish time for travel. The people had not come to find her, but she could find them if she had good horses and much food.
Both captains watched as she spoke, using her slim hands for emphasis. They were sure she remembered her home in the mountains.
“Do you remember landmarks on the trail? If you say you don’t, I’ll beat you plenty when we get home.”
She looked at her man and could not answer.
“Come on. You speak out plenty when Chief Kakoakis is talking. Why you quiet now?”
Fear ran up her spine, and she put her hands over her face to hide her nose. He had heard, after all!
In fact, Otter Woman had told Charbonneau. But Charbonneau had thought it rather amusing that his woman had been bold enough to speak out once again against that chief. Now Charbonneau let out an explosive sigh. “Tell about the signs on the trail! Can you remember?”
“My nose can stay?” she asked softly.
“Oui! You think I want a woman with an ugly face? Not Charbonneau!”
“Ai,” she sighed, looking at Otter Woman, who was half-asleep against the wall. She looked at the captains, who had not understood. Then she said, “Much poison three-leaf creeper. I was a small child. I can remember only little. A beaver-head stone and three forks in the river. Those are on the land of the People. You will not punish me?”
“She remembers! She remembers many landmarks,” Charbonneau translated. “There is a large rock shaped like a beaver; and the river goes three ways at one place. And the poison ivy everywhere.” Charbonneau folded his hands across his stomach and grinned at the captain. “She has a quick memory, which I, Charbonneau, have trained. My other squaw, she is also Shoshoni. Her papoose, my son, named for me, he is almost ready to talk many ways. I teach him myself.”
Captain Lewis then asked to talk with Otter Woman, and Charbonneau sent Sacajawea to fetch the horses. She was reluctant to leave, but dared not disobey.
When she returned and they were preparing to leave, Sacajawea took Otter Woman’s hand and asked what she had told the men. Sacajawea spoke in the soft, deep tones of their native tongue. Otter Woman stared, wondering at this outburst of long-pent-up Shoshoni words. Sacajawea did not often speak their native tongue, despite the promise to herself to do so. This questioning had aroused a great longing in her. “I told them the Shoshoni had many horses, but if the winter is bad, there will be few horses by spring, but at least the People had meat,” said Sacajawea.
Otter Woman said, “Chief Red Hair asked if my people went through the mountains by canoe or on horse. I said no canoes could go through the mountains. Imagine a squaw telling a grown man canoes do not travel on mountains.” Sacajawea put her hand over her mouth and laughed with Otter Woman. “They asked if the Shoshoni would trade for horses. So I said for food and guns, ai.”
“Speak Minnetaree,” scolded Charbonneau. “Keep that Shoshoni gibberish for when you reach that montagne land of yours.”
For an instant Sacajawea looked at Charbonneau. His words sank deep within her: when you reach that montagne land of yours. Did that mean he was going to take her and Otter Woman there someday?
Captain Clark had one more question. He wanted to know if the Shoshonis had ever seen white men before. Otter Woman shook her head; she did not know. Truthfully, she could not remember her own people.
Sacajawea said to Charbonneau in the Minnetaree he understood, “No, not in the villages, but the People have gone south to the Spanish trying to trade for their firesticks. The Spanish would not let the Shoshonis trade for these shooting sticks, but pointed them at the men who asked for them. The men came back tired and disappointed, for they could not hunt as well with their spears and bows and arrows. I was young, but I remember the talk about those men. They were called ‘senor,’” she said, to the amazement of all.5
In the days that followed the visit to the white men, Sacajawea worked at jobs that demanded all her attention and engaged even the deep parts of her mind, so that she forgot to think of those words her man had spoken: when you reach that montagne land of yours. She would sometimes forget her reason for being a good worker and lose herself in the satisfaction of her work, saying silently, “It is going well.” It was that way when she was making bead designs on moccasins and, caught up in the humming of Corn Woman, hummed one of the Mandan songs with her. Suddenly she saw herself clearly, and a feeling of guilt flooded over her. How could she have forgotten? She felt that she had been unfaithful to those who had loved her so many winters ago, those who lived in some snug little valley, with little food in the winter. She had asked Otter Woman what she thought of the words of their man, and she had replied, “Nothing. The words were said to make us speak in the language of this village. We are fed here, and we have good clothing. I do not wish to leave now. I do not remember any of my people, and I am forgetting the Blackfeet captors I served. This is the life for me. I have a strong, healthy child; why should I want to go away to some poor, thin nation that I do not even know?”
A bold pounding came from the outside of the slab door. Corn Woman went to see what it meant. She screamed and ran back into the lodge, clutching at Sacajawea, who was rubbing bear’s oil on Charbonneau’s winter moccasins.
The women looked toward the door. Bending his huge body almost double was Ben York, and he was calling Charbonneau’s name. “Monsieur Charbonneau, is you here?”
“Devil, Okeeheede!” screeched Corn Woman, looking at the jolly obsidian giant.
“I’se only York, the manservant of Captain Clark, ma’am. I’se come to ask Monsieur Charbonneau to come with me to see the captains.”
Otter Woman and Sacajawea were speechless.
Sacajawea reached for Otter Woman’s hand and started slowly toward the huge black man. York smiled down at them, his teeth flashing in the firelight. “I don’t bite,” he said.
Sacajawea could not understand his words, but she looked at his face and could not help smiling. He held out his hand. She did not know what to do with the proffered hand. She touched his fingers shyly and said, to hide her confusion, “Would you like to rest and eat some stew?” She indicated the bubbling pot.
“Hey there,” called Charbonneau, coming into the lodge, “she’s mine! I won her in a fair game of hands.”
“Monsieur Charbonneau, I scarcely understand her palavering. I think she is the one called Sacajawea, though. Captain Clark, he say I would know because her eyes shine. And the other, with longer braids, that is Otter. Captain Clark did not say you have three women—you’re quite a rascal, living out here among the Indians.” York grinned broadly.
Charbonneau shrugged.
“Captains are waiting,” said York, pointing to the doorway. “They will talk to you about interpreting.” Then both men left.
“Oooooo!” cried Corn Woman. “He is big and strong.”
“Something different,” said Sacajawea. “Something good.”
“Didn’t you see how the palm of his hand was white,” asked Corn Woman, still shaking, “and how red his tongue was? And the whites of his eyes, and his teeth—like yampa flour. Great medicine.”
Little Tess cooed, and the women crowded around him, each wondering if he had seen the big black man. “That is something you can tell your children about,” said Otter Woman.
“He’ll forget,” laughed Sacajawea. “He is too young to remember the importance.”
“I’ll keep telling him,” said Otter Woman.
“Why did he want our man?” asked Corn Woman suspiciously.
They were still chattering when Charbonneau returned. “By gar, I’m to be interpreter for them this winter, same as Jussome. I find why they come to this river country, by dang!”