Lewis relates the following complication which arose from Sacajawea’s unexpected home coming:
The father frequently disposes of his infant daughters in marriage to men who are grown who have sons for whom they think proper to provide wives. The compensation given in such cases usually consists of horses or mules which the father receives at the time of the contract and converts to his own use… Sah-car-gar-we-ah had been disposed of before she was taken by the Minnetares. The husband was yet living with this band. He was more than double her age and had two other wives. He claimed her as his wife, but said that as she had had a child by another man, who was Charbono, that he did not want her.
Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from Sacajawea, Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, by Grace Raymond Hebard, 1957, p. 64.
There was confusion at the riverbank. Sacajawea watched her older brother lead the Shoshonis in a ring around the white men, hallooing, whooping, singing, embracing, with more Shoshoni red-paint smearing. She saw the chief spot Ben York and motion for York to peel off his buckskin shirt. York stood patiently as Chief Cameahwait tried to rub the black off his arms and chest, and pulled his kinky hair. The chief was gesturing to his men that this black man was the greatest medicine by far.
The canoes were unloaded and turned bottom side up on the level embankment near a stream flowing into the river. Soon the Shoshonis were examining kettles, axes, boxes, and soft robes. The sight of the flintlocks made their eyes gleam like fire points. They had never seen so many at one time.
“We will take shooting-sticks for the horses you want,” gestured Chief Cameahwait flatly, pointing a long bony finger at Lewis’s flintlock.
The situation was touchy because the expedition had few guns to spare. Clark patiently used hand signs to explain that trade with other Americans would take place only when this party had gone to the Pacific Ocean and come back. “The more help you give us now,” he motioned, “the sooner the traders can come and the sooner your people can have rifles and ammunition. We cannot give you rifles now.”
With great dignity, Chief Cameahwait motioned that he understood. Lewis presented him with a small Jefferson peace medal to wear around his neck, a blue uniform coat, a shirt, scarlet leggings, and tobacco. The chief went back to York, who was rolling his eyes as he sang a Negro spiritual, waving his hands and swaying his great body.
“See, you got to feel it,” said York, thumping the chief on the chest, “you just can’t sing it when you not warmed up to it.”
The chief shook his head, not understanding a word, but trying to outshout and outmoan York, who was now bent double with laughter as two subchiefs, medals hanging around their necks and colored strips of ribbon grasped in their fists, came to join the chief in imitating York.
“You all sound like conjure men or preachers—too much monotone. Push it out from the bottom of your belly to the roof of your mouth. Just think of a fantastic tale and let it talk for you.”
The chief laid down his gifts and clapped in delight as the subchiefs rolled their eyes toward the sky and shouted in their monotone, singsong voices.
When Captain Lewis fired the air gun, he sent the Shoshonis huddling in fear; then, sensing no imminent danger, they yelled in unison at the wonder of such great magic.
The Shoshoni dogs nipped and yipped at Scannon, who stood very still and held his head high. To get him out of this predicament, Captain Lewis put him through his routine of tricks. That sent the natives into vocal fits of admiration.
Captain Clark sauntered over to where York was entertaining the chief and his two subchiefs.1 He watched for a few moments, then with hand signs he asked the chief about a river passage through the mountains. Chief Cameahwait repeated the hand signs, then squatted on the ground and drew a river in the dust, showing with pebbles that it had many falls, and one place where the falls were higher than those of the Great Falls of the Big Muddy. With the dust he built mountains that were so close along the riverbank that no canoe could pass through. The ridges continued on each side, perpendicular to the river. Worse yet, there was no way to get out to hunt. And if there was some unknown way, it would be of no use—there were no deer, elk, or any game in that country. It was a dead land.
Sacajawea saw the disappointment on Captain Clark’s face as her brother described the passage through the mountains. She moved closer and helped with her hand signs and few words of English to interpret the problems to be faced going farther west. There would be seven suns over mountains of solid rock, with no vegetation, followed by ten suns of sand and gravel, with no game and no water unless there was snow. The snow could be deep or blizzarding, making travel nearly impossible and frostbite almost inevitable. But beyond all that was a fertile country with small game and fish in the river, and still a great many suns farther was the stinking lake—the ocean.
That day it was arranged for Clark, Sacajawea, Charbonneau, and some of the men to go ahead to the main Shoshoni camp in the mountains to bargain for horses. Lewis decided to keep a few of the men behind with him to cache extra supplies and sink the remaining canoes out of sight in the river. Lewis and his men would then pick up Clark and his party at the main camp, and with horses to carry the packs, they would follow the mountain passage drawn by Chief Cameahwait. Even knowing the dangers they faced, all the men were delighted—they were sick of canoe travel.
To Sacajawea it was nearly unbelievable—she was here, looking at the broad, level valley, Shoshoni Cove. This was the gateway to the highlands, where there was but a narrow opening, through which the river narrowed and chiseled its way forward. Along the cove’s high edge were spruce, pine, aspen, and alpine willow. As if trying to show the life history of the region, the mountains at the western rim of the cove showed their ancient strata; the old fossilized strata rested upon younger strata rich in fossils of clam and oyster shells and the backbones of fish and fern. The old Shoshonis called these highlands “mountains without roots.”
Sacajawea remembered what this pass meant to the People. To the west of it they were safe, though they lived like bears on roots and berries; to the east was the land of plenty, but they had to be in constant hiding because of the Blackfeet. The soft-spoken, prophetic words of her grandmother came to her: “Boinaiv, you are destined to be a leader of the People, to bring them full bellies and contented faces.” She began wondering if perhaps she could persuade Charbonneau to stay now with her people. He could be here to meet the men who would come after this expedition to build trading posts. She could show the women how the Mandan and Minnetaree women embroidered their tunics with dyed quills.
They rode four days alongside the river, today called the Salmon, where the bed was rocky, the water rapid, and the mountains amazingly steep. They passed places where there were no more spruce forests or aspen, no crowded stands of lodgepole pine or montane meadows, only rocky alpine heights, with bull thistles.
One of the Shoshoni men found a tomahawk that Clark had lost in the grass after chopping heads from a good mess of rainbow trout. A tomahawk like that was worth a great deal to the Shoshoni, because he had no steel knives or hatchets. He split wood with a wedge of elkhorn and a mallet of stone. He made a deal with Clark to trade his horse for the tomahawk when they reached the main camp. Through all the hidden meadows and valleys this Shoshoni spread the word that a horse could buy a good tomahawk. The braves began to ride horses, unshod but surefooted, over the rocks, down steep slopes, and through narrow passes to the main camp for trading.
Clark’s party passed several small encampments of Shoshonis who were hunting or digging roots in the mountain valleys. Naked children played with the horses in the small camps. The squaws fed the horses the inner bark of cedar trees. Always the horses were decorated with eagle plumes in their manes and tails. This was the insignia of the Agaidükas living in the Rocky Mountains. Chief Cameahwait explained, “The People would die without their horses. They are true friends. My horse knows my voice, and he listens when I speak. He warns of the enemy and informs of nearby game.”
As Clark’s party neared the main Agaidüka encampment, Sacajawea’s heart beat fast with excitement. She rode beside Chief Red Hair and her brother, and made herself sit very still, even though Pomp cooed and jabbered and caused Willow Bud to smile the whole day. She looked up at the glistening mountains that guarded the valleys and lowlands and willow-brush lodges on the bank of the clear river for the People. Her eyes moved from the birch and aspen and red paintbrush flowers of the foothills to the belt of spruce above, then to the top where the wind-tortured lumber pines and white-bark pines grew in grotesque shapes. She studied the summit, trying to visualize where pockets of kittentails or dwarf clover grew, their life span only a few short weeks. A mountain jay scolded a lone pipit. She breathed the invigorating air and knew that the foothills, and the mountains behind, were something certain and enduring, something in which she could believe when there was uncertainty in life.
Willow Bud pointed out late-blooming bear grass, windflowers, blue columbine, purple clematis, pearlike everlasting bedstraw, and then the yellow goldenrod. They chattered about the times they had made chains of flowers in their girlhood. And then, before she knew it, they were at the camp and the People were coming along the wide trail from above to meet them.
Sacajawea’s exaltation died. The People were emaciated from hunger and grown old with work. She had forgotten how starved they had been. But their faces were happy and smiling, even gay. Ai, these were her people. She felt close to tears. The women still let their hair fall loosely over their faces and down their shoulders, she saw; not many women braided it as her mother had done. The men divided their hair by means of dressed leather in two equal queues, which hung over their ears and down their chests; many had cut the hair to the neckline because of the loss of relatives in recent skirmishes.
Willow Bud swung down from her horse and hurried to a group of women, and then the women pushed toward Sacajawea, jabbering and cooing at Pomp, feeling the soft doeskin tunic on Sacajawea, and fingering the wide belt of blue beads she wore. They picked up her two fat braids and wound them around Sacajawea’s head, laughing. Over and over they said that this was something unbelievable. A middle-aged woman came up carrying her grandchild on her hip. She brought him close to Pomp. The babies reached out toward one another.
“See,” said the grandmother, “he knows this newcomer is an Agaidüka.” Then the woman called, “Hush, sshh! Women of the Agaidükas, look at the one called Boinaiv who has come back to us. Look closely. You can see she is like another who lived among us years back. She stands with her back straight like the other; she wears her hair like the other; she looks around at us with questions in her eyes like the other.”
Some of the women blinked tears, so great was the resemblance of this young woman to her mother, whom they had dearly loved as the wife of one of their great chiefs. The younger women, who could not remember but had heard the stories of greatness, stared and smiled. Sacajawea smiled as they called her Boinaiv, clenching her teeth together so that her tears would not spill out. She opened a pouch tied at her waist and gave the nearest ones a few kernels of dried corn, the first they had tasted. She poured a few kernels in her hand and gave the woman with the grandchild the empty beaded pouch. She put her arm around others and whispered in their ears, “I am one of the People.” She charmed them. They were delighted with her baby. She had a hundred nursemaids for Pomp.
Then the women began to notice the man of Boinaiv. He held his head high, smoothing out his mustache and hitching up his bright, multicolored sash. Some of the younger women giggled behind their hands at the hair on Charbonneau’s face. “He is like a big brown bear,” said one. “No, like a porcupine,” said another, a bit bolder than the rest.
“He is my man, called Charbonneau,” said Sacajawea. “He cooks for the pale eyes.”
“Hai, yi! Yip! Cooks! A man cooks? That is the duty of the woman. What do you do? Do you hunt for the meat?” They turned now to sarcasm, looking at her strangely.
Willow Bud spoke quickly. “It is a custom of the pale eyes. It is the way things are done. It is a fine custom. It lets the women have time to play with the children and tell them stories.”
The women nodded, hushed, thinking carefully on that. Slowly they began to thread their way among the willowbrush lodges to the center of the camp where the skin Council Lodge stood. Chief Red Hair had already entered. Sacajawea asked Willow Bud to care for Pomp, and, to the surprise of many of the women, she left her moccasins at the door and boldly walked inside to sit in the place for interpreters. She was about to sit on the hard clay floor when she saw a small child before her, and beside him a warrior whose cheek was whitened by four long, deep scars. Instantly she recognized the warrior.
“Spotted Bear, my brother!”
“Boinaiv!” In one sweeping motion he pulled the robe from his shoulders and covered her shoulders also. “Boinaiv, we had all mourned for you as dead. We did not dare speak your name!”
“Many times I have seen you in dreams,” she said, tears running unchecked down her cheeks. “Many times I thought of the time you fought the yellow-and-black-spotted bear alone. I recall how our father found you behind a windfall, red with your own blood, and the bear red with your blood and his. We feasted that night, singing with the Medicine Man to make you well again.”
She grasped his hand, letting the robe fall to the ground, and noticed the long black hair of an enemy scalp fastened at the string of his breechclout. “You are still fearless,” she said with pride.
The child, ignored so far, rested his hand lightly on the robe, waiting for the adults to end their conversation. Sacajawea glanced down. “Shoogan,” she said with a certain intuition, and pulled the naked little boy to her. He came shyly but without resistance. She lifted him in her arms and held him out to look at him. The child scowled back at her, his mouth puckered as if pulled together by a drawstring, and curled his legs around her waist. The child had a mop of snarled hair, and his feet and legs were laced with scratches. His knees were gray from crawling in the cook-fire ashes, and his small hands greasy from dipping into the meat pot. He was no dirtier than any other Shoshoni child that had grown too big for dry-moss swaddling but was not yet big enough for clothes.
“And so, he is the son of our sister?” Sacajawea beamed. “And it is you, Spotted Bear, that I see in this papoose.”
She gave the child a little pat on his naked bottom and set him on his feet on the ground. The child backed away and planted himself solidly, his lower lip pushed out stubbornly and his eyes clouding up darkly.
Quickly she scooped him up in her arms again. “When I return, I will raise him with my papoose. He will have two mothers, your woman and me.” She looked at the round, hollow-eyed, undernourished child. “You will have a little brother and you will call me umbea, mother.”
The toddler, no longer afraid or shy, put his head against the beaded yoke of her tunic.
“My woman, Cries Alone, has no babies yet, and he is the light in our lodge” said Spotted Bear softly. “He lives with us.”
Sacajawea shifted her feet, and her eyes moved away from the hurt and sadness she saw on her brother’s face. She thought, He believes I would take the child away. “When your woman lets him come to visit me, I will tell him stories about the pale eyes.”
Spotted Bear’s eyes lighted. “She is my first woman. She is good. There is no hole in her moccasins from running around. She stands by me. She loves the boy as if he were her own. She would bring him to visit in your tepee. So—you can see we have thankful hearts he did not die when it was discovered he was deformed. He was considered a curse, but my woman would not listen when others requested that the little one be interred with his dead mother on the scaffold. His cries would have followed us through the night across the hills, long after he was out of sight. His spirit would have followed us forever. My woman knew.”
Now Sacajawea could see why the child was named Shoogan. His left foot was turned in slightly and was smaller than the right, a clubfoot.
The child stared with his two black robin eyes as Sacajawea examined his foot. His pink-brown mouth pursed, and he spoke. “I go. Father goes. You go. I go. I like you.” He beamed, and then he went to Spotted Bear, who had picked up his robe and was preparing to leave, for the men of the council had taken their places.
Sacajawea took her place beside Charbonneau.
Chief Cameahwait brought out his stone pipe and lighted it with a coal from the small smokeless fire. He drew a few puffs, then held it up, stem outward toward the west, intoning in a controlled, ceremonial voice a prayer, moving the pipe to the other three directions, then toward heaven and earth. He passed the pipe to the left, each man making a few motions and smoking. Captain Clark was constrained by a strong, incongruous feeling that he was in church. He breathed deeply, and then spoke to the Agaidükas.
“As you know, our Great White Father, who lives in a large village toward the rising sun, has sent us to you. We have come to blaze a trail for traders who will bring guns and blankets and axes in trade for your beaver and ermine pelts.”
After a while, Chief Cameahwait spoke.
“It is believed that the white man’s magic smoking-stick will make the difference between full bellies and starvation. The Agaidükas has always hunted his meat with bow and arrow, testing his skill and courage in the chase. His medicine is good, and for this he has a skill beyond the white man’s.
“But the white man has strong medicine, and now he is offering to teach us his skill with the smoking-stick. So—let us hunt the buffalo, killing them where we find them, the women dressing the meat where it falls, bringing it into camp, as is their right. This is the Agaidükas way. In a little while we can dance with round bellies and sleep in peace. I say we learn the white man’s skill and hunt meat with guns.”
There were murmurs of approval from the Agaidükas.
Sacajawea interpreted the chief’s words to Charbonneau, who in turn gave the words in French for Labiche to translate into English.
While the translation was proceeding, Sacajawea proudly watched Cameahwait, who was handsome this day with a tippet over his leather shirt. This neckpiece was about four inches wide, cut from the back of an otter skin, with nose and eyes on one side and tail on the other. Attached to this collar were hundreds of little rolls of ermine skin, which fell down over his shoulders nearly to his waist, so as to form a sort of short cloak. The center of the collar held oyster shells. It was elegant.
Then, like thunder in a cloudless sky, a deep voice boomed in the gutturals of the Shoshoni language, interrupting the proceedings. “Where is this woman, Boinaiv? Where is this woman?”
Everything stopped, the air still as before lightning. All eyes moved toward the open flap, where an unkempt, thick-necked warrior stood.
Sacajawea stared at the man. What could he want? She felt acutely uncomfortable. Had she violated some custom or law that she had forgotten or did not know?
“I want this squaw,” the man said. “Three horses and a Spanish saddle were sent to her lodge many seasons ago as a gift to her father. She is my woman. Mine!”
Heads turned to look at Sacajawea.
Sacajawea put her hand to her mouth. So—this was Big Moose, the son of Red Buck. But he was old and had bad manners! Her mind was confused. It raced here and there trying to untangle what was happening. She did not understand how she had let herself into such a situation. She forgot to interpret his words.
The chief held his hand up imperatively. “Hold on, we are in council.”
The man shook his head and spoke again. “I paid for her before she was out of the cradleboard.”
“Ai, Big Moose, we all know that is true,” said Cameahwait. “Your father, Red Buck, made the arrangement with my father.”
Sacajawea was unable to move, stunned, but she knew this to be the truth. Her sister had been betrothed to the brother of Big Moose at the same time. Then she felt a chill, for Big Moose was staring at her.
“She must come with me,” Big Moose said.
“She sits in the council of chiefs.” Cameahwait spoke sternly.
“This is no place for my woman. I paid good horses,” Big Moose repeated.
“Your father paid the horses,” said Chief Cameahwait. “You could not afford them at the time. We will powwow with you after the council. Go, sit in the front circle with the other warriors,” he ordered.
Slowly the big Agaidükas pushed his way forward, every eye now fastened on him. There was a humming of voices, a sign of apprehension. The Agaidükas sensed trouble.
“Have you admitted this woman to the men’s council to make me ashamed? Do you know how much I am ashamed for her?” Big Moose pulled angrily at the tuft of drab hair above his ear. “These white men have brought this woman here to torment me because she looks like the lost Boinaiv. I wish they would tell me why they do this.”
“You know this is Boinaiv,” said Cameahwait.
“Then I claim her! She is to share my lodge with my other squaws, Leaf and Smoky Robes. Come now, Boinaiv. We go. Do not make me more ashamed by remaining in council with men. This is not the way things are done. Do not dishonor my lodge!”
Charbonneau shifted his feet under him. He could not understand the angry Agaidükas, but he sensed the tension had something to do with his woman. He began to feel anger rise in him. Who did this clod think he was, anyway, yelling things at his woman and interrupting the council?
“What did he say, eh?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you telling us? He seems worked up about something.”
Sacajawea began to speak. The man had come to reclaim her. This was the way things were. She had dishonored him. She belonged to another.
“Mon dieu! Pah!” Charbonneau exploded. There was no sense to it. She was his woman. He had won her fairly in the game of hands. He glared at the man. “I spit on you, bâtard! You grandpère! You old fart! You dirty old buck!” He did not stop to reason that he and Big Moose were about the same age, more than three times that of Sacajawea. “Tell him,” he told his woman, “tell him that I am your man and that you are the mother of my son.” He pointed through the flap toward the circle of women where Willow Bud sat with Pomp’s head buried against her shoulder.
Sacajawea spoke, her voice thin and high-pitched at first.
Big Moose looked bewildered as he saw Willow Bud cradling a fat, clean papoose. He looked at Charbonneau, who was shaking his fist and smoothing out his mustache at the same time. His shoulders sagged and his head fell, his voice barely audible. “I am a man who does not need a squaw with a paleface papoose. I have squaws and plenty papooses. I do not wish for a son with skin the color of milk.” He looked at Pomp. “Ugh,” he said in disgust. “He is probably so weak he will never have thoughts of his own.” Big Moose stepped toward Charbonneau, his foul breath causing the Frenchman to lean backward. Big Moose’s lips blew out with the bubbling noise of marsh gas bursting through soft mud.
“May your food turn to ashes in your mouth, you fuzzy-headed raccoon,” Charbonneau muttered under his breath.
Captain Clark nudged Labiche, who could not keep a straight face or a twinkle from his dark eyes as he told the story as Charbonneau had gotten it from Sacajawea.
“Lord Almighty! What can happen next?” asked Captain Clark. Then he turned to Charbonneau, who was wiping his brow with the end of his yellow cravat. “We ought to keep peace and make up for this old warrior’s loss. Charbonneau, you open the pack over there behind the lodgepole and give him your old leggings and waistcoat and the yellow silk scarf around your neck. Maybe some tobacco.”
Charbonneau’s eyes were bugging out. It seemed as if suddenly he were a good three inches taller. His voice was doing the same trick it always played on him when he was excited; it had climbed up and up, and he was standing on his toes now with his heels raised off the ground as if he were trying to reach up to where his voice was. The more he tried, the higher his voice became. His breath was getting short, too, and he had started to sweat.
“My waistcoat and yellow scarf? I am not to be blamed for his loud, stinking bellowings, or for some moldy promise made years ago. Tell him to take his shock of coarse black hair and get out of here. Look at him sitting there like a puffed-up toad, thinking he can take my woman. He’s not going to have my coat or my leggings, either, Capitaine, sir. He gets nothing.”
“My words were an order,” snapped Captain Clark.
“Zut!” Charbonneau said, and reluctantly brought out the clothing and tobacco and passed them to Big Moose, who smiled broadly, promptly rubbed his grimy face against Charbonneau’s, and turned toward the lodge opening, hugging the gifts to his wide chest. He considered it a fair settlement for a debt he had given up long ago as uncollectible.
The humming in the council started again. Charbonneau, angered, thought they were making fun of him, and he stared at the circle of Shoshoni faces, ready to burst into a tirade about their uncouth manners. But soon enough he sensed that the people were not making sport of him at all. They approved of him; he was a big man to give away such fine gifts. He began to smile then, soon dropping his anger.
Sacajawea turned to Captain Clark. “I am grateful to Chief Red Hair,” she said softly.
Captain Clark, involved beyond all previous experience in protecting this young woman, felt the joy that this role of protector gave him. He sat with his head held high.
Chief Cameahwait held the long-stemmed jade pipe high as a signal for silence and order. “Let us continue,” he said. Then his voice rang throughout the open lodge.
“Mighty chiefs and brothers, this year will be remembered in the legends of the Agaidükas as the Time Many Palefaces and One Black Face of Great Medicine Came among Us. In my family it will be remembered as the Season Our Sister Came from the Land of Our Enemies. We have friends among these palefaces. We do not fear them. You see for yourselves what good care they have taken of our sister, and how generous with gifts they are to our brother. Now, Chief Red Hair will speak of what he wants from us. Listen.”
Captain Clark stood, his bare feet upon the white robe, spread for chiefs. The fire seemed to light up his face, and the Agaidükas noticed the similarity between the sacred red flames of the council fire and his thick thatch of red hair, drawn and bound in a queue behind his ears. He was great medicine indeed. He held out his arms as if to gather all of them unto him, and his friendly smile won their complete confidence.
“Great Shoshonis, we need your help. We need your horses to carry our supplies over the mountains to a river where we can build canoes that will take us to the Great Waters of the West. I ask now for two things: a guide to show us the trails over the mountains, and horses to carry the supplies. We will pay you well. Will you do this?”
Sacajawea interpreted slowly so that the People would understand well. Then, on impulse, she added to the translation:
“People of my own blanket, my heart is filled with so much happiness I find it hard to keep the tears off my face.” Her voice was childish; she paused, then started again more slowly. “But my heart is filled with sadness to see you hungry. I had forgotten how it was. While I have been away from you, I have seen unbelievable things. I have seen lodges that keep out the winter wind and summer heat. I have learned how to put seeds into the earth to grow into foods that cause the mouth to water.” She smacked her lips and rubbed her belly. “There are ways to store these foods for winter. I have seen traders come for the foods with knives, awls, kettles, axes, and blankets. Hunt and save your pelts for the traders who will come here. You can trade horses for unbelievable good things. This will fatten the Shoshonis so that you will not perish as the game in the mountains has perished. Help the white men. I have spoken.”
Shaking from nervousness and the excitement of her impulsive speech, Sacajawea sat down and lowered her head in the manner of a proper Agaidükas woman.
The chief was moved by her speech of love for the People. However, it was not in his Agaidükas nature to let his emotion be shown outwardly. He rose impassively and addressed the members of the council. “Do you wish to help these friends who have traveled a long trail to be with you now?”
“Ai,” was the unanimous reply.
“So—it shall be. You have spoken.” Chief Cameahwait turned to an elderly man. “Our bravest warrior, you have the most knowledge of the trails west over the mountains. Will you act as guide to these white chiefs?”
The old warrior, whose face was as dark as weather-worn leather and wrinkled as a dried persimmon, nodded approval. “Ai, my four sons shall come, also.”
“Good,” said the chief. “Now I wish to honor this Chief Red Hair who has shown kindness to my blood sister and shared his food with my people. To this white chief I give my tippet of furs, and to the black white man I give a poggâmoggon.”
Ceremoniously, he placed the snow-white tippet across the shoulders of Captain Clark, and in York’s hand the chief placed an instrument consisting of a handle about the size of a whip handle, about two feet long, made of wood and covered with dressed leather. At one end was a thong, two inches in length, which was tied around a stone weighing about two pounds and held in a cover of leather. At the other end was a loop of the same material, which was passed around the wrist so as to secure the hold when striking a severe blow to a small animal or some other game food.
“I also give to this Chief Red Hair my name, Cameahwait.” By signs he showed it meant “One Who Never Walks.” “I will keep my war name of Tooettecone, Black Gun. My people know this war name and know that it was given to me by an enemy warrior during a fight. I had fallen from my horse and saw a long black smoking-stick as I got to my feet. I pulled it from the hands of a wounded Blackfoot, and he yelled my new name as I hit another enemy across the back with the stick. The stick jumped from my hands, shot lightning, and ripped open the man I had hit. Again the enemy yelled ‘Black Gun,’ and they ran down a hill for a cover of trees.”
Modesty about personal achievements had no place among the Shoshonis. When a man did something big, he told it and retold it.
“Henceforth, I shall be known as Tooettecone,” said the chief. “This will be as a reminder of the black shooting-sticks the traders will bring to us when they bring the trading post close to our camp. And hereafter, among the Agaidükas, this Chief Red Hair will be known by the name of Cameahwait.”
To give a friend one’s own name was an act of high courtesy and a pledge of eternal friendship among the Agaidüka Shoshonis.
“Chief Black Gun,” said Captain Clark, moved by the gifts and the bestowal of the name, “I am honored greatly. I would like to think of you as a brother, as does Janey here—the one you call Boinaiv.”
The chiefs dark, impassive face broke into a wide grin. He was very pleased.
York opened up the pack sack on orders from Captain Clark, and he and Sergeant Gass passed out mirrors, beads, paint, and fish hooks to the pleased Agaidükas.
“That about skins it out,” said York, shaking the empty sack.
The next day was windless, with an unnatural warmth, as if summer had finally reached beyond its peak. In the morning, John Collins and George Gibson brought in several buffalo. Near noon, Hugh McNeal and John Ordway came into camp with three deer. Sacajawea went with some of the women to dig turnips in the valley beside the River for the People. Early in the afternoon, Captain Clark sent word to Chief Black Gun that the white men would like the Agaidükas to have a feast with them.
As the crier went around the lodges telling the people of the meal with the white men, wild whoops were heard and the Agaidükas descended on the camp. Without waiting for the meat to roast on the cooking sticks York and Charbonneau had placed around the fires, people began to eat and tear at the meat as if they had not seen any in weeks. They fought over their shares, pulling and jerking and greedily devouring the warm, dripping, raw flesh; they pulled great handfuls of Mandan corn from the kettles with their bare hands, not seeming to mind the heat.
“Do your people always act this way?” Captain Clark asked the chief. He was appalled by the scene.
“Game is scarce for us. Usually each hunter keeps what he kills for his own family. This is the first time many have had fresh game in weeks,” said Chief Black Gun sadly. He was standing next to Sacajawea, who looked on in silence.
Captain Clark turned his back on the blood-smeared scene and ordered Ordway and Collins to divide the three deer with the Agaidükas. In addition, he distributed what was left of the Mandan dried corn and beans.
“It won’t be many years before these people can live below the mountains and feed on corn, beans, and squashes,” said Captain Clark. “If they put their minds to it, they could become good farmers.”
Sacajawea turned away. “Good farmers,” she mimicked. “They have no taste for it yet.”
“They’ve eaten enough Mandan corn and beans to get the taste,” he flashed. “Lord knows, they could poke seeds into this ground in the spring.”
Sacajawea shook her head sadly. Then suddenly she looked at Chief Red Hair, her mouth rounded. “Please,” she said, “I would like to boil a little squash for my brothers to taste. Lord knows, they would like that. And I can show them how.”
Forgetting herself, she bolted for the cooking fire. Out of the tail of her eye, she saw Chief Red Hair settling down on a boulder and chuckling.
Chief Black Gun and his woman, Dancer, Spotted Bear and his woman, Cries Alone, Shoogan, Willow Bud and her man, Yellow Neck, ate the orange squash greedily. Sacajawea watched their mouths rounding as she pushed squash toward Shoogan.
“Leave me half my thumb,” she hooted.
As she fed the child the fragments left in the kettle, she hummed an ancient tune that lost itself now and then in her pleased chucklings.
“Miss Janey!”
Her song stopped short. York’s voice was not loud, but Sacajawea caught its excited pitch. “Whooo! You look here. I’se fetched something sweet for after supper.” York had a sly smile on his face, and a crowd of children behind him. The children were sucking their fingers. He handed her a handful of sugar cubes and put more on the ground beside Chief Black Gun. “It appears like it’s the first time they’se had such fine tastes.”
“These sweet stones are finer than anything I have ever dreamed of eating,” Yellow Neck told Sacajawea, smacking his lips loudly.
“Will the white traders bring these?” asked Spotted Bear.
“Ai, they will bring all good things to the People,” she answered, and then began to show them how to put squash seeds into little holes in the ground and cover them, then look for the rain clouds and wait for the green shoots and then the fruit.
“Yes, sir,” York told Clark later. “They’se wild, but they’se like children when it comes to liking sweets. Lord, they’se still be licking their fingers. If the traders bring lots of sugar, there will be no reason to be scared of Injuns.”
A feeling welled up in Clark. York knew, right enough. He knew how to make friends. He knew people. Of its own accord, his hand reached out and took hold of York. “Thanks—I’ll make a note of it in my journal this minute.”
“Write how Miss Janey looked when she saw her kinfolk. You could’ve lit a lamp wick off that smile. I’se never seen the sun rise up in nobody like it done in her then—just as sudden as the rain pour down like it never going to stop.”