Clark’s Journal:
March 12th 1805
Our Interpeter Shabonah, deturmins on not proceeding with us as an interpeter under the terms mentioned yesterday, he will not agree to work let our Situation be what it may nor Stand a guard, and if miffed with any man he wishes to return when he pleases, also have the disposal of as much provisions as he Chuses to Carry in admissable and we Suffer him to be off the engagement which was only virbal
1805, 17th of March Sunday—
Mr. Charbonah Sent a frenchman of our party [to say] that he was Sorry for the foolish part he had acted and if we pleased he would accompany us agreeabley to the terms we had perposed and doe every thing we wished him to doe etc. etc. he had requested me Some thro our French inturpeter two days ago to excuse his Simplicity and take him into the cirvice, after he had taken his things across the River we called him in and Spoke to him on the Subject, he agreed to our tirms and we agreed that he might go on with us etc. etc.
BERNARD DEVOTO, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, p. 85.
Capitaine,” said Charbonneau. “You are a man in authority, and there can be no scalping between us. So tell me, will that man-child I begot turn into a log-leg or leather-breeches like me? Will he be a green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller, or a man for a massacre?” Then, giving himself a twirl on his foot, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of joy. “Ain’t he a ring-tailed squealer?”
Clark had come with Charbonneau to have a look at Sacajawea‘s papoose. “I’ll just have to see for myself,” he said.
The door to the cabin had been left ajar. Probably York had forgotten to pull it tight. It was still not light, but the sky was graying near the horizon. Scannon plodded up and, ignoring the two men, sniffed at the door. Just inside the threshold he halted. Up went his splendid head.
“Shhhh,” said Clark. “That old dog wants to have a look at your papoose. See there, how he goes gently?”
“Oui—that femme, she like dogs to keep her feet warm when the nights get cold, but I don’t like dogs—small dogs or large dogs.” Charbonneau stopped at the door and watched with Captain Clark to see what the big Newfoundland would do.
Scannon’s eyes sought out the sleeping figures before the dim fireplace. For a second or more, Scannon stood. Then he began to creep toward Sacajawea—hesitantly, one slow step at a time. The cold air blew from the opened door, and Sacajawea was roused from her sleep enough to pull the robes more tightly about herself and her papoose.
Clark stepped quietly inside. Charbonneau motioned frantically at the huge dog. He did not want the dog sniffing at his newborn child. “Shhh!” said Clark. “He will not harm either mother or child—watch.”
The dog was large inside the small room, with his black coat shining in the firelight. His deep-set dark eyes seemed to have a soul behind them. The tip of his tail twitched uncontrollably. Then all at once he began to lick the outstretched hand of Sacajawea. He lay down beside her pallet and put his huge head beside her hand. Half-asleep, she stroked his head and called him Dog in the Hidatsa tongue.
Charbonneau moved, but Clark pushed him back against the wall. Sacajawea rose up on her elbow, but she saw only the dog. Her eyes took in the whole color and shape and hide of the dog; she studied his massive shoulders and powerful legs, his drooping ears and intense eyes. The dog sneezed. She looked at him with curiosity and slowly crawled from the robes to close the door, stepping across Scannon’s legs and waving tail. Her hair was neatly plaited, and her tight braids hung over her shoulders. The linsey nightgown she was bundled in would have held two of her. It was the one nightshirt Lewis had brought. He had insisted she wear it. She was lost in the fullness of the floor-length garment. It fit her like a circus tent; she could hardly walk without stepping on the hem. A second step checked her so quickly that she fell head first on the hard dirt floor.
“That femme don’t much like a night-dress on,” Charbonneau told Clark.
He did not have to point that out, because Sacajawea had slipped her arms out of the wide flapping sleeves and pulled the fluttering material up over her head. Her head was out of sight. The more she pushed and pulled upward, the faster she kicked her slim, brown legs. She twisted from side to side in the manner of a squiggling, hatching butterfly shedding its soft, fibrous case. Getting on hands and knees, she wiggled away from the yards of flannel, at the same time muttering some incomprehensible Minnetaree gutturals.
Charbonneau said, “If that ain’t a tent-moth hatching out a cocoon, I ain’t a proud papa.” Charbonneau began to titter. Clark chuckled. Then the two men broke out in loud guffaws, clutched each other, and laughed until their sides ached. Charbonneau pulled away and put his hands on his belly as if to save the lacing on his shirt. He moaned and tears ran down his cheeks. Clark wiped his eyes.
The young mother sat on the voluminous nightshirt contentiously, as if to prevent it from engulfing her or smothering her in its wide folds. She clamped her lips together, sat up straight, and shook both her fists at the laughing men.
The door banged open, and Ben York peered into the dim room. “Hey, Master Clark, you got here before you have breakfas’!” Then he looked at Sacajawea, and his eyes moved from the heap of linsey to the two men. They shook. Their laughter would not stop. Charbonneau’s hands slipped helplessly to his thighs and beat upon them.
The young mother turned to the new voice. With a small, scurrying rush, she flung herself upon York’s leg and clung to it. With a wide sweep he scooped up the nightgown and dropped it over her head.
York scowled at the two men. “She’s not used to wearing clothes in bed.”
The men sobered and nodded.
“Lend me your whittle, Charb,” York said.
Charbonneau’s forehead puckered as he drew his knife.
“You can trust me,” said York. He thrust the blade into the twisted thong that held up his trousers. “Got more here than I needs,” he said as he hacked off a strip of the leather and held it up. “We’ll make a sash of this.” He pulled it around Sacajawea’s waist and tied it in back as he turned her around. “There, it’ll be comfortable and warm and let you walk. Go on back to bed.”
Her black eyes glittered. She tucked herself among the robes, letting Scannon smell at her and nose gently at her papoose. She was upset by the laughter.
“That papoose, he has hands and feet in the right place. ‘Magine me playing nursemaid to an Injun and her papoose,” laughed York, shooing the two men off toward the door. ‘Too many in here. Let the little mother rest.”
“You’re enjoying your nursemaid role,” Clark joked as Lewis unexpectedly pushed open the door, letting in another draft of cold air. The morning sky was now light gray.
“Oh, Lord, that damn dog is here!” whispered Lewis rather loudly. “Scannon, you have no good business here. Lord, who let him in?” The other three men stared blankly at one another as Lewis sent the dog bounding out the cabin door. “Now there is more room to admire that papoose,” he said, kneeling beside the pallet of furs and hides. “So now, little mother, may we see your fine son?” His hands moved as he explained to her that he wanted to admire her child.
Soon Clark was bent on the other side of the pallet, his big, rawboned hand feeling the smooth skin on the face of the papoose.
Sacajawea tried to scowl fiercely; she did not like to be laughed at. But she knew she had been a funny sight squirming out of a tunic as large as a tepee. She continued to frown as she gathered the wide open neck of the nightshirt close around her neck. She was cold. She looked from Charbonneau to Clark. Calmer now, she realized they were not ridiculing her, but were interested in her welfare and the newborn child. She smiled and handed the tiny papoose to Clark for inspection. The papoose was swaddled in a soft white doeskin with much absorbent cattail fluff stuffed in the bottom half of the wrapping cover.
“Pompy,” she said.
“What? Is that his name?” asked Clark, taking the swaddled baby like a rare porcelain doll and holding him to the firelight. Clark sat on his haunches and looked at the tiny brown hands and long, silky black hair. “Perfect,” he said, then asked again, “What name did you give him?”
Charbonneau answered eagerly, “He is called Jean Baptiste.”
“No, I mean what the little mother calls him. Maybe some nickname.”
Charbonneau spoke a few phrases in Hidatsa.
Reluctantly, Sacajawea took her eyes from the child. “Pompy,” she said with a hint of pride. She lay back to rest a moment.
“That Pompy is firstborn in the tongue of her people, I think,” explained Charbonneau. “He’s known by me as Jean Baptiste. A good French name.” He crossed himself and spit into the fire, making it hiss. “That’s same name as LePage. And it is my brother’s name, and my papa’s name, also.”
“LePage will be pleased to have a namesake,” said Clark, his hands under the baby’s head and back as he pushed him under the robes toward his mother. Sacajawea pulled down the top of the nightgown and put the baby to her breast before he began to whimper.
“I like that Pomp name best.” York grinned.
“Looks like the papa, eh?” asked Charbonneau, coming over to the pallet.
“I had thought he looked like his mother, sweet and innocent,” said Clark, laughing.
Sacajawea began to crawl out of the robes, her feeling of being laughed at making her uncomfortable.
“I’m not making fun of you,” said Clark anxiously. “I’m not laughing at you. Please.” His blue eyes pleaded with her to understand that he had not meant to torment her. He could never hurt any living thing.
It was curious how his look affected her. She gazed into his eyes and saw at the same time the yellow glints of firelight dancing off his shock of red hair. Her mind began to rest easy, and she knew she could trust him. She had learned politeness from Grasshopper, and it tied her tongue. She could not hurt Chief Red Hair’s feelings.
“You, mama, stay put. I’se going to make hot tea for you. And you men want some?” York asked as he watched Sacajawea crawl back into the fur robes.
The men nodded.
“With sugar,” added Charbonneau, tugging at his capote.
It was comforting to lie there with the soft robes around and the fire warming her side. It reminded Sacajawea of nights when she’d slept on a pile of robes with Grasshopper crooning nearby. She thought how comforting Grasshopper had been. That had been the best time she could remember in her whole life. York had the same comforting qualities. He had the same wise mixing of authority and tenderness so that she had not been frightened to have her papoose among the paleface men. She was relaxed with York around. She did not understand how he managed to give her peace of mind, but she trusted him completely. Now she sat up and drank the hot, sweet tea, enjoying the hushed tones of the men as they talked of the day’s work ahead of them. She had a drowsy sense that the whole world was filled with blue sky and sunshine, and York merged with the big black Newfoundland dog, Scannon, who had sneaked back inside the cabin to sleep at her side.
When she woke up, she was cold. The men had gone, and the fire was low. It was daylight, and the camp was in a hubbub, like a village on trading fair day, with moccasined feet pounding on the hard-packed dirt and people calling out names and men bawling back at them.
Then she noticed that the room had been put in order, and a handsome carved and woven cradleboard stood at one side of the fireplace so that she could easily see it. The weaving was familiar to her, and she knew at once that her adopted Metaharta mother, Grasshopper, had done the work.
The Minnetaree grapevine had worked quickly to bring news of Sacajawea’s firstborn to Grasshopper. She wondered if Charbonneau had spread the news or if Otter Woman had gone to visit Grasshopper.
She lay on her back and looked at the split cotton-wood log ceiling. She felt good. She stretched herself lazily, her arms flat against the hides and all her fingers spraddled. She curled one arm around the sleeping baby, scratching her belly with the other and, at the same time, pulling up the linsey nightgown that was itself scratchy. It was then she noticed that she wore a woman’s belt packed thickly with cattail down. She remembered a pile of it heaped in one corner of the cabin. Not since being with Grasshopper had she been treated with such consideration. York came in with more sweetened tea. “You better get between them covers. Gather your strength afore you gad about, little mama,” he scolded gently. Noticing her wistful expression, he whistled softly. Scannon padded in, right to the edge of her pallet, sniffing, then curling himself as small as possible between her and the fire. York nodded in approval, knowing he was taken by this guileless little squaw.
“Dog,” she said in English, surprising York. “Nice dog, nice York.”
York’s smile spread across his face. “Thank you, little mama.” York stepped forward. “Captain Clark, he told me to tell you about this here Injun squaw that came early this afternoon. She was decked out in some fine garb—yes, ma’am! Her hair was daubed with mud and wound around her head like a crown, and her ears was red painted inside. She made Captain Clark promise you got the papoose board. She was all for coming in to see you, but the captain, he made her understand you need rest. That there lady waddled off singing to herself. She was that happy you had a buck papoose. You know anybody like that?” His hands worked as he talked so that Sacajawea could read his hand signs.
“Ai, Grasshopper!” she cried, sitting among the robes. “She did come!”
That afternoon, Charbonneau brought in the large hind quarter of an antelope and some of its entrails. He lounged around, smoking and talking and broiling the meat. He said that Otter Woman and Corn Woman had the rest of the animal. He wrapped a long piece of the small gut, which contained the marrow, around a stick and tied it. Then he held it to the fire until it sputtered and browned and the juice dripped. He ate it as he talked with Sacajawea and York about hunting with the Americans.
The weather became warm in the middle of the month, but by the end of February the men were again wearing their fur robes and Mackinaw coats. Sacajawea had moved back to the skin tent with Charbonneau. She sliced the meat he brought in and spread it out on drying racks in the sun—it froze before the moisture evaporated. But the meat dried because the water seemed to sublime rather than evaporate out in the subzero weather. She scraped the hides inside the tent where the center fire was warm.
One morning Charbonneau was called inside the fort because the Mandan subchiefs, Sheheke, the Coyote, and Kagohami, Little Raven, had come to see Captain Clark. Charbonneau took his older son, Little Tess, with him. The two chiefs shuffled their moccasins in a dance when they saw the three-year-old son of Charbonneau. Little Tess walked behind them, imitating their dancing. This made Sheheke laugh, and he pulled the child up on his shoulders while he danced. After their frolicking they motioned for Charbonneau to come sit with them on the floor of the officers’ cabin. Sheheke produced a pipe, and they smoked. Clark waited patiently for Charbonneau to translate why these subchiefs had come.
They wished to consult their Medicine Stone, about three days’ march to the southwest, and wanted Clark to go with them. Each spring, and sometimes in the summer, they visited the stone. They built a fire and let the smoke roll across the porous face of the rock, which was about twenty feet in circumference. Then they slept. In the morning the stone had certain shiny white markings that represented peace or war for their village. Sometimes other things could be read from the markings as well.
“Tell them,” said Clark, “that I would like very much to go with them, but I have promised my men working on the canoes that I would bring them more scraping knives for hollowing out the insides of the dugouts. I cannot go back on my word to my men.”
Sheheke smiled. “Chief Red Hair speaks true. He is a man to be trusted. He will not wage war with us unless he tells us first. Some other day he will come to our Medicine Stone.”
When they left, Charbonneau became owlish and rude. “They asked a favor. To them the Medicine Stone is great. They think you are impolite.”
Clark looked at Charbonneau. “I could see by Little Raven’s smile and the handshake that the Coyote gave that they thought I was right in keeping a promise I made first to my men. They are leaders and they understand that one’s own men must come first. That will hold for you, also, on our trip. You will follow orders, as the others do.”
Not looking Clark in the face, Charbonneau said, “By Jésus, on that trip I will not stand guard. I am an interpreter. I am not a soldier. I will go maybe as far as the big falls the Indians talk about. Then I wish to return here. This place, she is not so bad when I work for the Northwesters and Hudson’s Bay. I join hands with them. If I join with you, I want my share of rations—as much as I can carry. My squaw, she is sickly, see? She need plenty of good food, and sugar in her tea.” Charbonneau straightened Little Tess’s shirt, then drew himself up importantly. “I am interpreter for many years, I am somebody important here. I think I am important man, and I do not have to do the same things your soldiers do. I would not have to do that if I continued to work for the Northwesters.”
Clark was at a loss to know what to say in response to Charbonneau’s arrogance. After a long silence he answered, “Think it over for a couple of days. If the weather clears, we’ll be pulling out in three or four weeks. Maybe we can make an agreement so that you’ll take the responsibility we first spoke of. If not, I promise we’ll see if Monsieur Jussome will go with us.”
Charbonneau had not thought Captain Clark would let him go like that. He had expected an argument, but he thought the captain would give in to his demands and he would go with the expedition. Captain Clark was a hardheaded man, Charbonneau decided. He reached for his cap and sash and had stomped out the door before Clark could refill his pipe. Little Tess scampered behind his father, who shooed him back to the tepee alone.
Charbonneau did not return until dusk, drunk on trader’s rum.
“Do you wish your meal now?” asked Otter Woman.
“Shut up,” he answered in a surly tone. He had not liked the way that the American captain had spoken to him that afternoon, and he had decided that he ought to live on the other side of the river where the British trappers, MacKenzie and Larocque, had their camp. He was going to take his wives and two sons with him. He would live in a big skin tent and have many important guests and powwows in his lodge. He held his head to see if the fog inside it would clear. It settled deeper, making it hard for him to focus his eyes.
Leaning against a pile of furs, he gave orders to pack and get the gear by the water’s edge by nightfall, including the leather tepee they were in.
Otter Woman and Corn Woman, who hadn’t liked the idea of Charbonneau’s leaving them behind, immediately began preparing for the move while Sacajawea listened to Charbonneau with a growing horror. If they moved across the river, she would not be going back to the People. And she would never again see the black, laughing face of York or smell the warm, panting dog, Scannon, or see the stern face of owl-eyed Captain Lewis, or hear the deep voice of Chief Red Hair, or see the boyish grin of Shannon when he tried to teach Otter Woman his words.
“No!” Sacajawea said. “I won’t go!”
“When are you going to learn to keep your damn mouth shut?” barked Charbonneau. “You take orders from me with no back talk. Follow Corn—she takes orders like a squaw should.”
Corn Woman had already taken a load of furs outside, but Sacajawea could not stop. “I hate your ways.” She made furious signs with her quick hands. “If you leave the Americans, I will run away with my papoose where I can think and not be pushed down.” She trembled, surprised that she had actually said those bold words herself.
Angered, Charbonneau grabbed her arm, squeezing it until it was white, and hit her across the mouth, cutting deep into her lower lip. Now she said nothing, only wiped the bright red stain on the back of her hand. This physical pain did not hurt as much as the mental anguish that she felt with her hopes of going back to the People destroyed because she had a weak, foolish man.
Someone coughed and cleared his throat outside the tepee. It was their friend Baptiste LePage kicking the ice and snow from his boots. Sacajawea greeted the husky brown-eyed Frenchman with a half smile. LePage could pass for a Shoshoni, she thought. He had the same barrel chest with prominent sternum and clavicle, and the same long-stringed muscles in his thighs and legs. His wrist and hand bones, and his ankles were small. His hair was black and straight, without sheen, and he wore it banged, with a red band to keep it from falling in his eyes. He rarely wore a head covering. He had joined the Northwest Company long after Charbonneau, but he had stayed longer because the discipline appealed to his sense of getting a job well done. Charbonneau could never stay long with one outfit before he went off by himself as an independent trader or changed his mind unexpectedly, on a whim, as he had done now. LePage glanced around the tepee, then squatted beside Charbonneau and handed him his tobacco pouch. The two men talked in French while the women finished the packing. Little Tess, dressed for helping the women outside, grew warm and had to be unbundled. Sacajawea decided that no longer did she need a blanket on her papoose. She removed the robe and hung the cradleboard on a large peg on one of the lodgepoles.
“So, that’s my namesake?” said LePage. “That’s why I came in. Captain Clark told me the papoose had been named after me. The news made me feel good. Magnifique! I’ll teach him some songs.” And he began to sing. The women laughed.
Charbonneau became uneasy. He wondered what else Captain Clark had told LePage.
LePage took the baby, cradleboard and all, and began to dance. Then he unlaced the coverings and peered at the baby, who lay naked in the fine, soft, creamy robe Sacajawea had prepared.
Charbonneau crowded up and hunkered over his shoulder. “Zut, Baptiste!” he said. “Ain’t he a fine boy, an’ fat? Fat as a little possum.”
The papoose was a mètis like his father, part Indian and part French-Canadian. He was a pinkish brown, not as dark as his mother. He was under two feet long and so fat he looked almost like a soft ball. His wrists and ankles were ringed with chubby fat and his neck was nearly hidden by his chin. There was a thatch of dark hair on his head, the hair fine as a nursling beaver’s coat. There was no untoward blemish anywhere. His deeply colored eyes were tightly shut and he sucked with faint wet noises on a fist as his fat legs, bent at the knees, kicked out at the air.
LePage reached for one little smooth foot. It was swallowed up in his hand. His stomach felt queer, as if he had a sudden spasm of hunger. He grabbed a tiny copper fist and held it beside the foot thinking that he’d never seen anything human so small and so beautiful. What would the future bring to this infant? Would he be just another half-breed? He could be a British free trader like his old man, or he could be a squawman, trapping and living with whatever tribe was near. What would his old man do for him? For that matter, what could he, LePage, do for his tiny namesake? He touched the short, flat nose. Then he noticed the other child, Little Tess. I don’t know, he thought, I guess you brothers—half brothers—will have to find your own way, like the rest of us dumb bastards.
The baby opened his eyes and looked directly at LePage. The fist fell from his mouth, his face pushed together, and he began kiyiing loudly, stopping only to take a deep breath.
“Mon dieu,” LePage said admiringly, “he’s sure got a good set of lungs, ain’t he?”
Charbonneau laughed. “And a temper, looks to me. Like his mama.”
For a while, Sacajawea watched proudly while the baby howled; then she gathered him up and cradled him, soothing him to sleep.
“Say, get your French harp out, Big Tess, and we‘ll sing some more.”
“We have to go,” Charbonneau said. “We are going to move to new quarters across the river.”
“I don’t believe it,” said LePage. “You aren’t! Not after all the Americans have done for you. They took your advice and gave me a job. They took care of your woman, gave you rations and ammunition. What is in your mind? Can’t you see beyond the nose on your face? This is the chance of a lifetime—to see this country west where no white man has gone. You’ll discover valleys that are more beautiful than your mind can imagine—in the spring, mallards skimming across the water, bear stepping along and snuffing. That bear will be your pillow at night. At your sides and scattered all around will be deer and wild turkeys, and a stack of beaver plews as high as your shoulder. You can bet I will not miss all this.”
“You don’t understand,” Charbonneau whined, trying to justify his decision to leave the Americans. “The Northwesters; they go west, too, and if I ask Larocque, he will let me take the three squaws with me, and I don’t have to act like an Army soldier. I can be big man. I can be interpreter, explorer, voyageur—three in one. Do the Americans have other interpreters? Oui. So I will not be so important, and they let me take only one squaw. They choose which one. I would have chosen Otter Woman—she does not speak out so much. She minds only me, her man.” He pointed a finger at Otter Woman.
LePage began to speak in French. “Both the American captains believe that your youngest squaw is the most intelligent, the smartest, the one who will help most when they come to the land of the Shoshonis. But you said something—something about Larocque.”
“Oui. I hear he offers good rations, with taffee, trader’s rum, each evening.” Charbonneau patted his expanding belly. “Larocque has orders from the British to go west and keep ahead of the Americans.”
“West? What for?” LePage was sure that the American captains did not know this news—that the Northwest Company was rushing to expand its trade facilities or trapping area.
Charbonneau kept his voice low, in a whisper, as though he were telling a secret. “He explores the territory for the crown. For England, to make Canada big.”
So it was a race. A race between countries for that unknown land beyond the Rocky Mountains. LePage gulped in his surprise and puffed hard on his pipe. “My friend, I am surprised that you would make such a grave mistake, a smart man like you. One who is called Chief of the Little Village must be wise in something. Don’t you want to be on the winning side?”
“Winning side? Oui, of course.” Charbonneau always wanted to be with the winning team. He tried hard to think if maybe he was making a mistake. LePage was his good friend, and he knew the Northwesters as well or better than the Americans. His judgment was worth something in a case like this.
LePage, feeling he was beginning to get through to this thick métis, went on, “You are smart. You know who owns the land we are sitting on?”
“Oui, the Americans,” Charbonneau said.
“You are right. They own the land to the foothills of the Rockies, too. Soon they will be kicking the British traders out of here—and the trappers and the French-Canadians, too. Then where will you be? Where?”
Charbonneau blinked and shook his head.
“You’re damn right again. Out—with them. But if you go with the Americans, as you promised in the first place, you will be secure for many years. Maybe for the rest of your life. You can have plenty of red-flannel shirts. You’ll be a big man, and rich, with as many squaws as you wish when you return. They will wash your aching feet and fill your belly with roast buffalo humps and squash and keep your bed warm.”
Charbonneau’s face glowed, then became dark again.
Baby Pomp cried for his milk. Little Tess was jumping on his father’s sleeping couch and laughing. Otter Woman had removed her fur robe and was putting more sticks on the cooking fire.
Sacajawea was listening, trying to catch a few French words along with the English she knew, to put things together. It was hard. She knew that LePage was trying to persuade her man to be more friendly with the Americans. Was he persuading him not to move across the river with the Northwesters? She fervently hoped so. She wondered if Corn Woman already had the furs on the other side of the river. How long would she have to wait across the river for the rest of them to come over? Sacajawea listened some more.
“I will do something for you,” offered LePage. “I will go to the American captains and tell them that you are sorry and that you realize you made a foolish mistake. But now you are wiser and will go with them on the expedition on their terms. Bien?”
Charbonneau thought things through slowly. LePage continued, “It ought to be the winning side for a smart man like you. Let me try to make the captains understand you now wish to go with them. If they won’t take you back, then you can go with Larocque and MacKenzie. But those Canucks won’t get far.” LePage drew on his pipe and shrugged his shoulders.1
Charbonneau scrambled to his feet, knocking Le-Page’s pipe to the ground. “Merci, go to the Americans,” he said impulsively. “Go tell les capitaines I am sorry for the way I acted. Tell them I can work like a horse and I can do what they say—and tell them I cook. Oui, can I cook!”
Sacajawea handed LePage his pipe. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Get le bébé ready for a long canoe trip, ma beauté,” he said, winking.
“I better send someone after Corn Woman. That femme will sit on the Northwester side of the river until it freezes again. Presse je suis!” Charbonneau grabbed his blue wool capote and hunched down and out of the tepee.
Toward the end of March, the two pirogues that had so surprised the Indians in the fall, and the six pirogues that had been built from huge cottonwoods during the winter, were safely in the river. The snow was melting fast, and the ice had broken away from the water’s edge. Captain Clark oversaw the loading and lashing on of the cargo while Captain Lewis worked with Corporal Warfington and the crew that were to take the keelboat, Discovery, back to Saint Louis.
Nine boxes were packed with specimens of plants and animals and curios for President Jefferson. There were animal horns, Indian gear, skeletons of small animals and botanical specimens in small jars, and mineral samples. Lewis had them labeled and dated. With great care, Lewis also oversaw the arrangements for transporting to the President his live specimens: a prairie dog, four magpies, and a prairie chicken. “The American Philosophical Society ought to have some of these things,” Lewis wrote in his letter to the President.
There was a song in the heart of Sacajawea as she stood beside Charbonneau watching the keelboat sail downriver. She had on a clean tunic trimmed with fringes and held in at the waist with a woven reed belt painted red and yellow. Captain Clark had told her that she would be regarded as one of the crew on the expedition, not just as the woman of Charbonneau. She could help Ben York with the cooking, and she would be called upon to interpret when they reached the mountains and the home of her people.
This morning, April 7, 1805, she had wakened early to say good-bye to Corn Woman and Otter Woman, who were busy moving back into Charbonneau’s mud lodge in the village of Metaharta. There they would wait for him; arrangements had been made with Jussome to make sure that they would have food and other necessities while he was away.
Sacajawea had bathed her papoose, cleaned his cradleboard, and now checked for the tenth time to make sure there was enough cattail down in her pack to last a good while. Her own hair had been washed and combed into neat braids.
The Mandans and Minnetarees were still shouting farewells after the keelboat, but their eyes were fastened on the eight remaining boats lining the bank of the river.
While saying good-bye, Otter Woman had held Sacajawea back. “I fear I shall never see any of you again. I will be here alone. It is a trick!” There were tears in her eyes.
“Get hold of yourself or our man will surely whip you,” said Sacajawea. “It is no trick, and we will all return with many things to tell about.”
“You would tell him to beat me?” sobbed Otter Woman.
“Oh, no,” said Sacajawea, gasping. “Never!” She patted Little Tess on the shoulder. “You are my Shoshoni family here. You are my sister.” She looked at Otter Woman, who found parting so hard.
“I will never be your sister again. You have come between my man and our child. You are a dirty schemer, a mountain cat. This is good riddance!” Otter Woman sobbed louder.
Tears overflowed. Sacajawea could scarcely see as she walked with her toed-in stride, learned as a child in order not to lose balance, instead of slipping and sliding with no dignity down the path to the loaded pirogues. She could not believe that Otter Woman actually meant what she had said.
Suddenly out of the crowd came the Coyote and Little Raven to wave good-bye with both arms. There were the women of Four Bears, too, including Sun Woman holding out her arms. “A great thing,” she said, “you going with the palefaces!” Grasshopper had come also. She pushed a small leather bag into Sacajawea’s hands. “Give it to your man,” said Grasshopper. “That is the best use of the greasy weasel collar.” Her hand clung to Sacajawea’s. “My daughter,” she began, but her voice broke and she crossed her arms over her breast in the sign for love. Tears streamed down her face, but her mouth smiled.
Silently the women fell into single file; others came to walk before Sacajawea and to follow. Last week they would have told her to shut up, or maybe pushed her into the water while walking this close to the river. To her surprise Sacajawea found she was not too sure she liked her new status.
“Yesterday I was an ordinary squaw, cleaning out my tepee and packing to go on a journey with my man,” she said to Grasshopper. “Now I walk in the middle of all of you like a venerated grandmother, and you look at me out of the corners of your eyes.”
Grasshopper, her face lined and weather-worn, gave Sacajawea a nod. “There on the meadow of yellow flowers we walked—how long ago we walked in that pleasant way.” There were tears still in her eyes.
“Here, it is for you,” said a shy voice from behind Sacajawea. Sun Woman slipped a small leather pouch with a round quill design on both sides into Pomp’s cradleboard. “It is the shining stone of the Americans. It is for good fortune.”
Sacajawea blinked back a flood of tears and found her voice. “My heart stays with you.” She pressed her face against the cradleboard so that Sun Woman might not notice the tears spilling down her face, and said a final farewell. Charbonneau, who was already on board, motioned her to join him.
A shot from the swivel gun on the keelboat’s deck was heard. The Minnetarees and Mandans became quiet as Captain Lewis, looking smart in his blue Army uniform, wearing the tricornered hat, raised his hands to indicate he had something left to say.
“Good-bye, our friends. We thank you for your kindnesses and hospitality. We will return to see all of you once more before we go back to our Great White Father and tell him of your peaceful and kind manners.”
Sacajawea saw Jussome and Broken Tooth on the bank; she then spotted Water Woman. Everyone was waving and milling about and cheering.
“Yiiiii, eeeee! Hooooklaaaa!”
Sacajawea gasped. Old Black Moccasin was being led forward by his woman, Sunflower. He stood in front of Captain Lewis and raised his hands in friendship to the natives, and then to the Americans. There was now dead silence because this old man no longer came before any kind of gathering very often. He could not walk easily and he did not see well, but his voice was still powerful. Sacajawea recalled its vitality when she had first encountered him nearly six summers before.
“Palefaces, our Great Spirit will watch over you. We trust you. Our hearts are bigger because we have seen you. We wait for you to return in peace.”
Black Moccasin’s veined hand clasped the peace medal he wore proudly around his neck.
The hushed silence was shattered with the crowd’s roar. Never again would Black Moccasin appear at such a large public gathering. Everyone seemed to sense this and already to feel the loss. The crowd surged as one person around the old chief.
The Coyote moved through the crowd to stand before Captain Lewis. He was wrapped in a United States flag, with fifteen stripes and fifteen stars. He stood out in bright red, white, and blue contrast to the dull fur robes of the others. He made his hand signs high so that everyone might see them. “I will always be a loyal friend to the Americans.”
Suddenly the crowd seemed to stop and stumble uncertainly. Chief Kakoakis in his war paint and regalia dashed through the people to the shoreline on a raven black horse. He surveyed the pirogues with his protruding one eye as they pushed off from the shore. He noted the mounted swivel gun on the prow of one of the pirogues, and his cruel, dissipated face broke into a ghastly grin.
Sacajawea, sitting in the white pirogue, with Captain Clark, Drouillard, Cruzatte, and Charbonneau, trembled at the sight of Kakoakis and the abrupt change in mood he brought to the people. They shuffled after him to the center of the nearest village. The Coyote and Little Raven stood off by themselves. Black Moccasin moved his arm slowly, and a few of the people obeyed and shuffled off toward their own lodges. Then some came close to the shore to shout their farewells. Sacajawea noticed that soon there were not too many left to follow Kakoakis like sheep and stand around in a circle waiting for him to speak. She imagined she could hear him say, “They will not get far. The Sioux or Blackfeet will massacre the whole bunch.”
And she imagined he spat upon the ground as his handful of followers shouted, “Ai!”
The six canoes and two pirogues poled up the river that late afternoon as far as the Mandan village of Matootonha, where the Coyote lived. They camped for the night on the south side of the river. Both captains, Drouillard, Charbonneau, Sacajawea, and Pomp slept in the skin tent Charbonneau had brought along.
Sacajawea breathed deeply of the cool spring air, and exhaled just as fully as though to get rid of the foul, smoked-filled air of the Minnetaree villages. Where would she go now? She found her mind full of thoughts. She knew well where she had been. She thought about the first time she had learned that Otter Woman was also a Shoshoni. Her thoughts took her back over the years, highlighting the events that had led to her being taken to the lodge of Toussaint Charbonneau as his woman.