Clark’s Journal:
Saturday 17th of August 1806
Settled with Touisant Chabono for his services as an enterpreter the price of a horse and Lodge purchased of him for public Service in all amounting to 500$ 33⅓ cents—I offered to take his little son a butifull promising child who is 19 months old to which they both himself and wife wer willing provided the child had been weened, they observed that in one year the boy would be sufficiently old to leave his mother and he would then take him to me if I would be so friendly as to raise the child for him in such a manner as I thought proper, to which I agreed etc.
Bernard devoto, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, pp. 457-58.
“Hey, Charbonneau!” Captain Lewis waved. “You are just the man we want to see. We want to settle with you.”
Charbonneau sauntered to the canoe.
“You have quite a sum coming. Not only for services rendered at twenty-five dollars a month, but we owe you for the leather tent and a horse that the elusive Crows ran off with. Man, we sure made good use of that tent—wore it out. Clark and I figure you earned five hundred dollars and thirty-three cents. Is that satisfactory?”
“Mon dieu!” exclaimed Charbonneau.
Lewis made out a government money order. As he reached for it, Charbonneau’s eyes gleamed. He had never had that much money at one time before.
“You have to take it to a United States trading post or to a bank in a town to get the actual cash, you know. That will buy a lot,” Lewis explained. He grasped Charbonneau’s arm and looked into his face. His eyes narrowed against the glare. “We have completed our journey. There is nothing but thankfulness in my heart.”
Charbonneau turned away when he saw Jussome push Broken Tooth and their boy and girl into the next canoe. But Lewis’s slim hand tightened its grip. “Surely you feel happiness and some sense of accomplishment.”
“Capitaine, do not think that I feel any resentment that I cannot complete the trip to Saint Louis.”
Lewis dropped his hand. “We owe you nothing!” he cried angrily. “You stated you’d be more at home among the Minnetarees. We gave you friendship, and now you have been fairly paid for your services. There is no reason to become sulky. Can’t we part happily?”
“Maybe we can talk him into coming to Saint Louis and buying a parcel of land with that money order,” said Captain Clark cheerfully, coming to supervise the fastening together of two of the canoes with poles tied across them so that Big White and his family and the Jussomes would have a place to ride together.
“That’s nice,” said Charbonneau, staring blankly at
Lewis for an instant. “I’m not certain what to do with it yet.”
“Here is your Army discharge,” said Lewis, handing Charbonneau another paper. “That might come in handy if you ever want to buy land in the States. You can show them that you worked for the government in the capacity of an interpreter for the U.S. Army. That ought to make a good character reference.”
“I was thinking about the blacksmithing tools,” Clark said. “Charbonneau can have those. We have no further need of them.” Lewis nodded his agreement.
“Wish we could show our appreciation to your femme, Janey. If anyone deserves compensation—for interpreting, and caring for all those sick natives, and keeping up the general good spirits of the men—she does. But we can’t list a woman on our Army payroll — no way.”
“Oh, that is all right,” said Charbonneau sullenly, watching his woman talking with the other men. “She is a squaw; she don’t need nothing.”
“Well, there is something else I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you change your mind and come with us? We’ll make room. We could, couldn’t we, Lewis?”
But before Lewis could answer, Clark was speaking again with Charbonneau. “Come on and try to live among the whites. I’ll take you down to the Illinois. You can buy a piece of good land and farm—horses and cattle. Or you could hire out on the river boats; or you and I could be partners in some sort of small-scale fur trade.”
Charbonneau’s eyes were on Jussome, who was pushing Big White here and there. Charbonneau’s shoulders sagged. “As a voyageur I have no real prestige with the whites.”
Sacajawea had come next to Charbonneau and now tugged at his arm. “This is opportunity,” she said.
“You’d be better off than among these Indians,” said Clark. “Even Janey knows some of the white ways now, and she can speak fair English and French. It will be hard for her to be content anymore among the Minnetarees and Mandans.”
“Ai,” said Sacajawea, pulling at Charbonneau’s arm until he stepped away.
“Non, non,” he said, scratching his shaggy head. “I have no acquaintance or prospect to make a living below. I know no business except trading with Indians. We starve in Saint Louis.” He continued to watch Jussome. “I—I stay and live in the way I have done—with the Minnetarees!” Charbonneau cried in sudden consternation. “I have said this before.”
Clark had been watching Sacajawea, who was slightly taller and much slimmer than Charbonneau. Her face was better proportioned, with its shapely nose, black eyes, bronze skin, and dark hair. Clark knew that Charbonneau regarded her only as a possession, a symbol of wealth. He knew that she had learned to be intensely perceptive; she was intelligent. He was aware that he could find prettier women — to the white man’s standards—in a ten-minute stroll down the streets of Saint Louis, but there would be none who would adore him so. And she was the squaw of one of his employees. She had become quite indifferent to Charbonneau, but she was devoted to her child.
Clark had also grown fond of the child. “Think! I offer you a better life, not only for you but for your child. Yes, let me give him an education. Let me raise him, send him to school, like a white child.”
Sacajawea pulled her child close, not in fear but in bewilderment. She knew now for certain that Chief Red Hair felt a deep tenderness for her child, for why else would he offer such a great thing? But she knew, too, it would break her heart to send her son away alone if Charbonneau would not go himself and permit her to go also.
Lewis shifted uncomfortably in the canoe, his wound still bothering him. What is the matter with Clark? he thought. He should know that Janey won’t give up that child. Does he hope by that kind of ruse to get her to come to Saint Louis? I knew he was fond of her, but not this much. Lewis could not see her face, but it had become transfused with yearning. She longed for her son to have the advantages Clark had had himself as a child, as the bears long for spring to ripen the berries, or as buffalo trapped in the mountains hunger for the plains.
Charbonneau answered, “When the boy is weaned, you ask me again.”
There was silence. Clark raised his head and stared at the men, some of whom had left smoldering ashes and were walking slowly toward the canoes.
“I will tell you something because I know in your heart you respect me,” said Clark, wiping his forehead with his leather sleeve. “You have asked for help, looked for servility, and demanded special privileges. The men have secretly laughed many times at your wild scrambling, but never when you were eager to join and do your share. They were sorry for your tortured hands and miserable condition, but they were proud when you showed the least doggedness and courage. There were times they deliberately tested your daring, and there were times you showed you could stand up like a man.”
Clark had unbuttoned his shirt and was fanning himself with a branch of cottonwood leaves. Charbonneau stared at him in openmouthed surprise. Clark chuckled. “Now I have flattered you enough. What I want to say is this. The men feel”—he laughed—“that they alone are responsible for turning a weak, helpless Frenchman into a man with whom any one of them would be pleased to hunt or trap. They trust you according to the rules that make a white man a desirable companion in the wilderness. You are not an Indian. What do you say now?”
“You do not lie?” Charbonneau flushed.
“So—it pleases you. And will you now realize how badly you have treated Janey, who deserves as much or more than you for the success of this trip?”
Charbonneau plucked at the whangs on his sleeves and pictured himself the owner of many fine horses and fat cattle, with a farm of tall corn and fat bolls of cotton. In his imagination he saw his sons, Tess and Pomp, going to school in Saint Louis. He saw Sacajawea’s grinning face, Otter Woman’s flat smile as they sang beside the cooking fire. And then they all turned to Clark and held out a brimful bowl of stew and an ear of roasted corn before turning toward Charbonneau.
Remorse filled Charbonneau. He had repulsed friendship, and now he wondered why Clark had not, in turn, deserted him. How had Lewis been able to bearhis insults? Where had they found the kindness to stay at his side? Now he felt shame and turned his head away from Clark’s gaze.
“Well,” said Clark, “bring the child to me in a year or so. I will take him and bring him up as my own son. This I can do as a favor for Janey.”
“All winter I have thought of my son learning to read and write,” she whispered. Tears welled in her eyes, and a sob broke in her throat. She could not speak more. Scannon made a low moaning sound in his throat and jumped to her side, nuzzling her hand; then he went quietly back in the canoe with Lewis.
Scannon had developed for Sacajawea something as akin to a feeling of human affection as he was capable. For her part, Sacajawea respected and admired the adamantine spirit of the dog’s unsubmissive soul.
She turned her head to the other men. Most of them wore only the leather trousers she and York had sewn. Except for their beards, they were hardly distinguishable from the breechclouted Indians. In the crowd she saw York elbow his way to the canoes. Now the noise from the natives seemed deafening. York grasped her shoulder and bent down by her ear, but she hardly knew what he said. In his eyes there was the familiar, the well known, the intimate. He had been crying, and Sacajawea’s gaze struck fresh tears to his cheeks.
“It is all over, Janey,” he said, and though Sacajawea could not hear the words, she read them on the trembling brown mouth.
Hard, squeezing fingers sank into her shoulder, and she was twisted about violently against Clark’s chest. She threw her arms around him and kissed him on his hairy face. “I will bring my son to you. It is a promise.” She was barely able to hold back her tears. She turned away from both men abruptly so that they would not see her crying.
“She is proud,” York said to Clark with an amused inflection.
Clark, composed and standing in his canoe, felt that somehow he had deserted Sacajawea. He stared at her with unhappy, searching eyes.
Then Pat Gass called to Charbonneau, “Hey, Frenchy, fur companies aren’t run by men chewing bearmeat around a native campfire.” Gass’s broad face was deeply weathered, his lips wide and set in a manner that drew a crease line from each side of his straight, short nose to the corners of his mouth. His raven black hair was thick and long against his neck. His eyes, cool blue, always suspicious and seeking, warmed as he smiled and called, “The rules of the game are set up in Saint Louis these days. I’ll be there, and you should be, too.”
Charbonneau seized the hands of the nearest bucks and laughed suddenly, shaking off his remorse, and appearing now to have only hurt feelings. “Do you think I don’t know what I should do? I am a man of experiences.” He tapped his forehead. “And ability. I speak three, four languages, and I have a number of words I use with impressiveness.”
Gass called from the floating canoe, “Au revoir!” The canoes moved downriver fast. Far out, two men on the forward canoe fired a rifle. For some time Sacajawea remained there gazing at the empty river. Her son clung to her side. A series of clouds came up to cover the blazing sun.
The natives were speaking their feelings in a jumble of voices. “Our hearts are heavy.” “In the wind at night we will hear the white men’s voices, and in the day the sun will paint their shadows.” “Do not forget us, for we will be lonely.”
She listened until she felt that she must turn away to hide her emotions once again. Now the villagers talked of the stars, the earth, the water, the sights and sounds of the world that were everlasting. She had been away for two years, but as she looked inside herself she found that the time was not a succession of years or seasons, but a single unit of rich experience and lessons learned. She had gone on the expedition’s trail with a certain amount of indifference, as a follower, a slave to her Frenchman, Charbonneau. The chastening process had begun abruptly and had been complete. The learning had come more slowly, but it was thorough. She was genuinely sorry to be left behind.
Even under the cloud cover the day was hot and humid, and she flexed her knees and tried to hold back her tears.
* * *
Dropping below their old 1804 winter quarters at Fort Mandan, the two captains saw but a row of blackened pickets left. The cabins lay in ashes. Clark halted the canoes to go ashore. His private thoughts ran uninhibited in his head as he wandered among the ashes and the gray, wrinkled mushrooms that now covered the blackened grounds. His journal was objective and impersonal about the burned-out fort.
He shook his head at the blackened cabins and stamped the ashes off his feet. He moved from the heat-cracked boulders and blackened trees down toward the waiting canoes. He’d seen enough. His thoughts were dark as he stepped into an open glade that formed a gentle hollow in the center of a shallow basin to which the rains of centuries had brought a depth of rich soil. It was completely covered with asters, tall and pale and scarcely moving in this somewhat sheltered spot—no other flower grew there. The asters shone in the pale yellow light of a cloud-hidden sun like their namesakes, the stars.
Clark was strangely moved. He bent down over the flowers for a moment, and when he raised his head, his eyes were shining. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful,” he said aloud, from the heart. “The fire did not come here—it could not burn everything.” And he bent once more over the asters, which shivered a little as a warm breeze passed through the basin, and then were still again.
Now Clark was thinking of home, the safe, peaceful plantation, and he saw the vivacious blue eyes of Judy Hancock as he gave her the gifts he had brought. She was called the most beautiful girl in Virginia, with her light auburn curls. So, he thought, I have two girls—Janey, a brown-eyed fawn, and Judy, a blue-eyed red fox. Clark jumped aboard his canoe and dipped the paddle into the water.
Lewis had settled himself in the white pirogue, moving his leg back and forth to relieve some stiffness. It would be nice to live like a gentleman again, with hot baths and no beard.
The expedition was leaving behind the grizzly bears wolves, rattlesnakes, hostile Sioux and Blackfeet as theyswept downriver, covering eighty miles a day. They no longer thought of a diet of roots, dog meat, and pounded salmon, the prairie heat and mountain cold, the prickly pears, wild roses, and blue camass, and the endless native powwows. They thought of home, with the smell of corn pone and molasses and the sight of women in calico dresses. The Corps of Discovery was soon to be heard from.1
Sacajawea, her son enfolded in her arms, was unconscious of the crowd waving and shouting toward the canoes as they became small dots upon the muddy water. She was unaware of the rocks and sticks under her feet. She stumbled forward toward the empty, rolling hills under the hot mid-August sun. She did not hear the whimpers of Pomp as she brushed past rosebushes and stinging nettles.
She stopped at the top of a long slope that rose easily from the river, a benchland where the village was situated. She turned to the west and saw that the plain reached out to high yellow hills that formed a ragged line against the sky. That way there were no trees, and the surrounding valley swept away on either side, empty and barren and immense. Land benches tilted upon one another like great red and amber slabs driven through the irregular contours of the tossing hills. She saw horse herds grazing on the plain. At the foot of the slope, round bull boats swarmed like fat-bellied polliwogs. Some of the villagers had followed the expedition downriver for a while and were now coming back, bobbing and twisting as they moved toward the shore. The river was half a mile wide, but the cries from the opposite shore, the barking of the dogs, and the beating of drums came clearly across the water.
Sacajawea’s thoughts ran past the yellow hills, past the shining mountains, onward through the haze to the great Stinking Waters of the west. They came slowly back over the Lolo Pass to the Great Falls, and to the land of the People. There a child waited for her to come back. Shoogan, her sister’s child, waited as the People waited for white traders to come with guns and ammunition. She thought of the enemy, the Blackfeet. Ifthey had guns, there would be no peace; it would be a season of wars and sadness in the two nations.
Slowly she turned to face the blazing sun. Down the yellow Missouri to a land she did not know went her white friends and the great black one, naked to the waist, his head wrapped in a red kerchief that fluttered against his wide, shining neck. She imagined the muscles of his back and thick shoulders as he paddled, sweat glistening in the sun on the knobs of his spine.
She was not the same as she had been before in these river villages. She knew things not known by her foster mother, Grasshopper, or Otter Woman, Fast Arrow, or even the one-eyed Chief Kakoakis. She would not be content to stay in this place long. She had goals and a horizon to follow. She had hope. She would teach her son these things. He would learn to read and write.
She wept in the dry brown grass where no disapproving Minnetaree could see her, away from the taunting eyes of her man. Pomp sat beside her, picking up stones and placing them in a small heap between his knees. A rush of self-pity filled her lonely heart. Her man did not care what happened to her. He would find another young femme when it pleased him. Otter Woman was glad to see her only because the lodge work could now be shared and she could have more time to visit, sit in the sun, and gossip. Today, the thick-walled lodges of the Minnetarees seemed oppressive with filth and darkness, because she had lived for two years almost completely outdoors, except in the coldest part of winter, in the clear air and next to Mother Earth. The wooden cabins of the white men were light, not filled with filth, even though at times smoke-filled. She thought, Squaws belong where they are, the way the buffalo belong where there is grass and distance. But not me. I do not wish to be thought of in the same breath with prairie dogs. They belong where they are. They were put there. I have moved. I have changed. The village is here and the same. I do not belong in it.
“Umbea.” Pomp tugged at her leather tunic and patted her arm. His face was bright and full of laughing. A deer mouse scampered off, and the child tried to follow.
Sacajawea caught his hand and walked in the direction of Grasshopper’s lodge.
“I am happy you came first to see me after your friends left,” said the old woman. “You are a true daughter.” She clicked her tongue and smiled. “You are sad. I can see it. Sit and listen to your old mother for a while. The world will go on if you are not here. Boats will go up and down the river.”
Looking up, Sacajawea said, “I worry about my people and the strength of their enemies, the Blackfeet.”
“We are your people.” Grasshopper took a willow fan to Sweet Clover, who sat near the fire stirring the stew made with fresh corn. Sweet Clover did not look up, but began fanning her face vigorously, and her stirring became faster, so that Grasshopper began to shake with laughter. When the old woman looked at Sacajawea, she made herself calm and said, “The Blackfeet will kill and be killed. The sun will shine, and night and day will come. You are on Mother Earth to live and die. You can do and think what is best, but there is no use fighting things. You help others when you can, work, and live as best you can—that is all.” Her face puffed in and out in thought. “You can fight for what is right. It does not matter so much how you fight. It is what you fight for. A grandmother once said, ‘You have to stick to the row you are hoeing.’ In this life it is a person’s first right to live, even if he has to shed blood for that. And what you think is right has to come while you are alive. It is no good to you when you are dead. Am I telling you too much?” The old woman looked fondly at Sacajawea. “I am wearing on you?”
“No,” Sacajawea said quickly. “I need your thoughts.”
Grasshopper said softly, “It is good to hear you say so, my daughter.”
“You have a right to hear this,” Sacajawea said. “Chief Red Hair asked to take my son to his village, to teach him understanding of the markings on paper.”
“Your little Pomp?”
“At! My son would have much in his head.”
“You are young and silly. I doubt if you’ll take my word for it, but I will tell you. You think the white blood of a father dominates the mother’s blood. That is not even sensible.”
“Sensible!” Sacajawea’s mouth was wry upon the word. “How can you judge that?”
“Well so, then maybe not. I’ve done many things that were silly. If anyone had told me, three or four months ago, that you’d find your way back here, I maybe would have said he was in the world of spirits. And the day I took you into my arms and said you were my daughter—well, so there are times one has to be a fool. I did not have room to choose.”
“That’s it. That’s my feeling. My son could learn the white man’s ways.” Sacajawea looked around the lodge slowly. Sweet Clover had fallen asleep beside the cooking fire.
“You were forced on me. Was this offer for teaching your son to be a white man forced on you?”
“I could do like my man and ignore it, as if it were never spoken.”
“Why don’t you? Maybe that is the sensible thing to do. It doesn’t sound like sense to me to make a person into something he never was.”
“Who can say what a person can be made into? I have been changed.”
“You want your little son to be like the whites?” Grasshopper looked incredulous. “You like men who boast, who cannot shoot a straight arrow, who hit women, who want their meat fully cooked?”
“So,” said Sacajawea calmly, “I never dreamed you thought all white men were like the one we call Charbonneau. Pah! He is but a dry bean dropped from a rotten pod. He’s a bad smell. There are others who have no fear of cutting out new trails, who can cut their feet to pemmican on the rock and half drown in the river, let the flies eat them, freeze, and eat their horses to keep from starving; and before they sleep they can make marks with a thin stick in what they call journals.” She was pacing up and down the lodge, her arms shaking. Her head tossed from side to side. “This other kind of men know of lands beyond the seas. But they have not been there. They learn of them from journals. This reading can do much. It is something I want for my son.”
Grasshopper could see Sacajawea’s intention was as firmly fixed as her determination that Pomp should take on the characteristics of the white man. “And so—you would not be afraid to send your son to the white man’s village?”
“Afraid?” Sacajawea thought that Grasshopper did not even try to understand. She drew in her breath and held it, watching Pomp as he pushed a tiny red coal back into the fire with a discarded bone. “I do not believe I fear any place where Chief Red Hair would be.”
Grasshopper told herself that she could name on her fingers ten times over squaws who lacked the courage to do what Sacajawea had in mind for her son; and yet just now she looked more like a wistful child than a squaw—even a squaw of only fifteen or sixteen summers.
“And you speak this out loud? What if I should say the same words sometime to your man?”
To your man. Startled, Sacajawea realized that it was the first time since coming back from the west that she had thought of herself as belonging to Charbonneau. The thought angered her; belonging to him meant nothing but drudgery. She shifted her weight to the other foot. She would do all she could to see that her son was not bound by the same kind of life. “I do not fear your tongue.”
Grasshopper began to laugh. She sat with her hands flat against her broad thighs and roared with laughter that stung because there was so much to laugh at, that stung the more because there was so little humor in it. “And so—it is this Chief Red Hair who has tied your heart in knots, so much so that you would even let him take your firstborn son from you! Ho—ho—ho—OOO!”
Sacajawea began to laugh also. There was no good reason to laugh. It was foolish; she sounded foolish to herself. For two years she had given her heart to one of the captains of the expedition, but her body had belonged to her man and her body had felt nothing; it had been dead. Her heart beat with its own life. She could see Clark, gentle and tough at the same time, and his red hair; it needed only sunlight to set the red sheen shining in it.
“So—it is my daughter who seeks out the highest chief among the white men and permits him to take her heart. My daughter, who has a man—no, a dried bean—is to be commended because she does not telleither man her feelings. Sometimes it is good to stay inside yourself and not let on. My own mouth is sealed. Now it is time for something to eat. Your son must have a full belly to match the full head he is going to have. And your belly must not go empty, my daughter.”
But emptiness came of another hunger. Forbidden hunger, and a forbidden man.
Otter Woman and Tess were outside Charbonneau’s lodge when Sacajawea returned.
“Where did you go?” asked Otter Woman. “Our man is looking for you. He wants you to clean these fish for cooking.” She pointed a dirty finger at the half-dozen fish with blue flies buzzing over them. The fish were not fresh.
“How long have they lain here?”
Otter Woman looked up, surprised that anyone would be that inquisitive. “Two, maybe three suns. Our man left them here under the wood so that the coyotes could not get at them.”
“They have spoiled in this heat and will give us bellyaches.” Sacajawea threw them out toward the refuse heap in the back of the lodge. Then she made a broom from willow branches and began a vigorous sweeping of the lodge. Otter Woman sat on her sleeping couch wondering what had taken possession of Sacajawea since she had been gone. No squaw ever worked so hard, so fast and furiously. By evening the lodge was in order, clean above Minnetaree standards, and the couches were neat and sweet-smelling with sage laid in between the musty hides and blankets. There was fresh corn soup and antelope chunks sent from Grasshopper’s lodge in the kettle when Charbonneau returned. He glanced briefly around and shrugged.
“The place shines like a new-minted louis d’or. Nom du bon Dieu, my women also are as golden clean. It is past believing. Let me have some of that meat.”
“That meat,” said Sacajawea, glancing at Otter Woman, who had done nothing but eat all afternoon, “has been saved by me from the wolves who infest this lodge and eat like a famine is to come.”
“That could not be me,” said Otter Woman inno-cently. “But it could be your sons who have been in and out after food all day.”
“Zut! If my sons are Canadiens like me, they are mangeurs de lard,” laughed Charbonneau. “With some disrespect, too.”
“I would not mind being a pork-eater when there is meat like this.” Sacajawea filled a dried gourd with boiled meat and corn.
“Oui, it is good.” Charbonneau chewed a mouthful slowly. His jaw muscles stretched his beard, and his bobbing head flung it from side to side. “You have become a nice housekeeper and fine cook since I have been gone. You are glad I am back? Oui. Keep your eyes there on my bowl. She needs refill.”
Otter Woman smiled, accepting the compliment and refilling his bowl. She ran her fingers through his greasy hair.
Sacajawea’s hands balled into fists.
“Ma petite furie,” he said. “Little storm, do not scratch a man’s eye out. Cut those long nails.” He pulled away Otter Woman’s hands and laid his head in her lap. “I have needed a squaw like this—one with big tits a man can hang on to.”
Otter Woman giggled and began rubbing his shoulders, bending low over him.
Sacajawea’s fists dropped helplessly, and her voice dropped with them. “Come, little sons of the man called Charbonneau, it is your time to eat this tender meat.” It struck her suddenly that there were streaks of white in Charbonneau’s hair that were beginning to overrun the black.
“Kakoakis, that old one-eyed chief, wants to hear more stories. He likes the one about me killing the grizzly. She had the biggest mouth I ever saw. Oui, the biggest. And I shoot right into that bear’s mouth. Pouf! She is dead. The chief listened to me tell how I kept the canoe from upsetting in fast water. Your man is important. Le grand esprit guides me. You a lucky squaw to be in the lodge of such a big man in this village.” He pulled Otter Woman close and whispered something; then he sat up and looked at Sacajawea, who dipped small gourds of water for the boys.
“Where did you go this afternoon after the boats left?
Kakoakis would not believe the story of the whale, and I looked for you to tell him it was so and to clean some fish he gave to me three, four days ago.”2
Sacajawea did not answer, but began to stir the meat after pouring more water in the kettle.
“I am giving orders. Next time I want you, you be in this lodge. You hear. Little Bird?”
“Ai,” she said, not wishing to begin an argument.
“Give me some tea.” Charbonneau talked to the fire. “If you do not do as I say, I will take a tough leather thong and smack your legs with it. My squaws behave. You will not act like you did when Capitaine Clark was around. And you keep your mouth shut about that trip. It had nothing to do with you. It was a trip for soldiers and strong men, not sick squaws. So do not brag about your part or I will tell how you lay in the bottom of a bateau for many days moaning and letting spittle slide past your lips.”
Sacajawea blinked. Then she noticed on each side of his leather shirt hung pieces of bright green ribbon. “Kakoakis will be jealous of your shirt’s ribbons.”
“Le Borgne says I sing my life away and strut like a jeune coq to be gazed at and admired. That means rien du tout—nothing at all—to me. You are right, he is jealous. From now on, Little Bird, you say nothing, only answer my questions.” Charbonneau’s eyes were like dark molasses. He took up a tin cup for tea. Being French, he had a feeling for drama and its uses, and for the details that made if effective. Expression, costume, gesture—all these were important. A gesture was often more than the mere turn of a palm or the shrug of a shoulder—he included his whole body and its attitudes.
Sacajawea could see that Charbonneau loved living among people before whom he could brag and strut. He had no real desire to return to the land of his father. He preferred this life, where he could be lazy and blame his slovenly ways on his squaws.
“If you do not behave, I will do exactly what Kakoakis does.”
“What does he do?” asked Sacajawea, wishing right away she had not asked.
“He is master of his household. One of his womendisobeyed. She spoke out of turn. She went to stay with her parents, where she thought she had protection. But Le Borgne followed her. He entered the lodge, sat upon the ceremonial robe, which was presented him as a distinguished caller, smoked a peaceful pipe with the squaw’s father, rose, and excused himself. As he passed this squaw, he raised her by the hair and murdered her before the eyes of her mother and father. So!” Charbonneau drew his finger dramatically across his throat. “Let that be a lesson to any squaw who opposes me!” Scowling fiercely, he retreated to his sleeping couch, where a hushed and trembling silence greeted him.
Finally Sacajawea ventured to ask another question, “Did anyone defend the poor girl?”
“Mon dieu! You fool! Plus on est de fou, plus on rit. The sillier it is, the more one laughs.” Charbonneau guffawed and crossed himself. “Fear of Le Borgne is so great that no one rises to defend his squaws. That girl’s death will remain unavenged.”
“Qui ne sait pas être fou, n’est pas sage.” Sacajawea’s voice rebuked him. “It takes a wise man to make a fool.”
“I am not wise—me? You think that, hein?”
Otter Woman sucked in her breath, and her hands trembled as she poured more tea into Charbonneau’s cup.
Sacajawea bit her tongue and was grateful when he drank the tea and stomped out of the lodge, motioning for Otter Woman to follow him to Chief Kakoakis’s lodge. There the men listened eagerly to the things Charbonneau told, but they did not believe all he said because they remembered his old habit of exaggerating; often that evening, they let him know they thought he used his imagination generously by laughing uproariously, as if all he said were a great joke.
“It was not all la fête,” he said darkly.
When night came, Otter Woman came to get food for her man and his friends. Sacajawea had both children sleeping on their pallets. Wrapped in blankets, the small boys looked like carelessly dropped sacks of Indian corn.
“Our man loves storytelling,” sighed Otter Woman. “He told that I was the daughter of a great war chief, named Burnt Knee, and that he had to pay many pure white horses to get me from my father. There was no
Chief Burnt Knee that I know of, and he never had many white horses. His tongue is so crooked he could not say he bought me from a Blackfoot brave for a knife that had no blade, only a shiny handle, and that the Blackfoot was glad to get rid of me because I ate too much. Now, you tell me the story of that whale once more,” begged Otter Woman.
“This is not something I made up.” Sacajawea sighed deeply. “Even you know there are people and animals and trees on the other side of the mountains.” When she finished, Otter Woman could almost see the huge whale bones on the sand.
No, Otter Woman thought, Sacajawea’s eyes do not need a wash, she saw those things. No one could make up such a story. She backed out of the lodge carrying the kettle of stew carefully. Her hands became stiff gripping the cornhusk wrapping wound around the metal handle to keep off the heat.
Charbonneau spent more than half the night eating and telling stories, which grew more absurd as the morning drew closer.
Sacajawea lay on her couch wondering why Charbonneau did not go to the Rooptahee village to bring Corn Woman home. Why didn’t Corn Woman herself come back? Didn’t she know her man was here?
And when Charbonneau announced the next day that he was going to go up to the Mandans to bring Corn Woman back, it did not greatly surprise Sacajawea.
Otter Woman gasped, composed her face, and hurriedly fixed a small parfleche of jerky for his trip. Her mouth was clamped shut. She did not utter a word of farewell to Charbonneau, but brushed his hand lightly with hers.
For the next several days, while Charbonneau was gone, the lodge became filled with buzzing women who wanted to hear the story of the whale and saltmaking. Otter Woman began to tell things as though they had happened to her. Sacajawea kept her mouth shut. This sent the women into gales of laughter. At first she resented their laughing until Otter Woman pointed out, “See, it is a real achievement to cause all this merriment. There was so much to see and do on your trail. There is no harm in me telling the stories. It gives youa rest. Our man did not forbid me from talking. To give enjoyment is a good thing.”
Late each afternoon, Sacajawea escaped the giggling women by taking a bundle of wash and going to the long sandbar at the river. The bar curved in from midstream and formed a small cove under some cottonwood trees. Here she washed Pomp’s leggings or her tunic, then stretched her weary limbs in the cool air. Once she pulled on the old blue jacket Clark had given her, which she had hidden in the center of her wash bundle.
Thought after thought crowded her mind. She tried to relax and clear the thoughts. In the small leather pouch around her neck she kept the stone that was like a piece of blue sky. The stone reminded her of childhood and how far she had come since that time. She felt the smooth sides and put the coolness of the stone against her cheek. She tied the thin string around her neck, trying to see the chip of blue upon her breast in the graying light. She closed her eyes. She saw the stone bright in her mind. After a while, she replaced it in the pouch.
She took out the now-tarnished peace medal Sun Woman had given her for good fortune on the long journey to and from the ocean in the west. Someday, she thought, I will let my son wear this around his neck—when he is someone important among the white men. Next, she held the rusty red piece of glass with the white bird raised on one side. This, she thought, I’ll always keep to remind me that my name is Sacajawea, Bird Woman.
Inside the pouch were several blue jay feathers, a red feather, blue ribbon, and also a small bone comb and a pewter mirror. She combed her hair, thinking of the time Clark gave the comb and mirror to her. She imagined him saying, “We will meet again, Janey,” his freckled face smiling. She pulled the jacket around her bare shoulders and smelled the coat’s familiar odor, breathing deeply into the folds. This was her medicine. This was the thing that preserved her courage and reminded her of places beyond the river villages. It was more tangible than memories.
Like the young brave when he grows into manhood, she, too, needed a medicine. It was something to giveher strength to meet the hardships of life. The young brave found his medicine by praying alone long hours with arms extended toward the sun, not eating until in a dream his totem was revealed. She thought of the trip to the Stinking Waters as her medicine dream—for now it seemed only a dream.
She saw Charbonneau coming between the lodges alone. Why hadn’t he brought Corn Woman? She hastened her steps and was about to call out when she saw that his head was bent and his shoulders hunched in a look of complete dejection. He walked with a bent-kneed slouch, deliberate and swift, his lips pressed tightly together. His face was like oiled deerskin. His mustache, whose uneven curls hung down on either side of his mouth, increased his melancholy look. The cries of the locusts came in broken chirps.
“Where is she?”
Charbonneau folded his bent legs under him and sat beside the hard-packed trail. “She went to the Land of Shadows during the deep snow.” Even and patient and never stopping came the song of the locust. All else was silence. Behind the clear, close sounds were others, more distant, and still others, more faint.
Sacajawea sat, placed her clothing bundle between them.
“She had a coughing sickness, and bad smell. She’s white as bone and food come up from her belly. She’s light as feathers and not wake up again. C’est vrai!” He crossed himself. “The family say she is my fault. I think they lie. Listen, how can it be my doing when I am not here?” Even sitting down, with his legs under him, he managed a most creditable swagger as he brushed off his hands. He wiped them clean of the incident, even though it still lingered to trouble his mind.
Sacajawea stared at the dusty trail. Her memory of Corn Woman was as bleached as dry bone. She could not imagine what she had looked like. She thought the locust sound was like the blowing of wind, spreading everywhere across the prairie, always there ready to be heard by those who wished to listen. It was a help, a familiar thing. But she could not put it into words for the man who sat with his head in his hands.
“La malchance me poursuit! I am cursed with badluck! They say I left her too long with no hope of me returning. Those dirty Mandans! They knew I would be back! They are the ones. They let her die, telling her all the time I was gone and would never return. ‘Do not think of the man who has fled with palefaces,’ they said. She sat, never speaking, only coughing. One time her family, they scolded her for not eating. But she only sat watching the river, and when they said the boats of palefaces never would glide there again, she screamed and cried on her pallet. Her family say I am an ungrateful heart. Dieu, que je suis fou vous le demander! I am ashamed of myself.”
“It is no fault of yours. They miss their daughter and look for someone to take the blame for their loss. You are faultless.”
Charbonneau stared at the woman who spoke with understanding. He marveled at her this moment. She had a man’s logic in that slim body that was like a child’s. She was soft and slight; to have such a hard stubbornness about her seemed out of place.
“Her memory cannot be taken from you. It lives forever within your heart.” She looked down at him.
She spoke like a grown woman, he thought. “A memory, she is cold like my Corn Woman. I want something warm and soft. Pouf! You are here. You are warm. Ma pauvre squaw!”
Sacajawea smelled the dampness among the tules at the edge of the river, and felt the unyielding roughness of a stone under her hands.
Charbonneau boldly pushed aside her clothing bundle, then pushed upward on her tunic. His hands were knotted, tanned by the weather. They ran down the sides of her body, feeling with a surprise and familiarity that it was firm and warm.
“Otter Woman lays soft and warm in her couch waiting for you,” Sacajawea whispered, repulsed by his boldness, sympathetically aroused by his grief.
“Mais non! It is not Otter I feel my hands tingle for. It is for you I have the hotness in my belly. I want you here, in the twilight, struggling on Mother Earth beneath me.” His hands were shaking as he crossed himself.
He pushed her down before she could escape. Hisbreath was hot on her face; she let out a strangled groan. She felt the silent texture of the stone with her hands, and the powdery dust of the earth — like a thing heard, like the locusts.
“This is your duty to me,” grunted Charbonneau. His leather trousers lay around his ankles.