During the summer and early autumn of 1809, Meriwether Lewis found his problems as Governor of Louisiana Territory growing and his personal popularity decreasing. He was at odds with Frederick Bates, Secretary of Louisiana, who privately did everything he could to undermine Lewis’s position. Lewis feared his health was failing, and dosed himself continually with pills and medicines, in addition to drinking heavily.
On July 15 the Secretary of War wrote refusing to honor a draft of $500, which Lewis had drawn to provide Pierre Chouteau with tobacco and powder for Indian presents, to be used by the expedition that was taking Sheheke, the Mandan subchief, home. Lewis had to go to Washington to straighten out this mess.
In September, before he left Lewis appointed William Clark and two other friends as his attorney with full power to dispose of his property. On the eleventh of September he made a will. Then he wrote to his friend, Amos Stoddard, to forward his mail to Washington, D.C., until the last of December, after which, he expected to be back in St. Louis.
On October 11, 1809, at Grinders Stand in the last cabin on the border of the Chickasaw country, Governor Lewis died at the age of thirty-five. No one is sure if it were suicide or murder. Thomas Jefferson believed he was murdered. The evidence for murder is not strong, and the stories that came from Fort Pickering, the armypost at Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis) where Lewis had once commanded, strongly suggest suicide. None of the evidence is really conclusive.
ERNEST KIRSCHTEN, Catfish and Crystal. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1965, pp. 771–72.
Charbonneau came back in early fall in a dither because he had not trapped enough furs to see him through the winter, with two squaws and two children. When an offer to trap for a fur company on the branches of the Arkansas River came, he accepted. He would be in Comanche country. He had heard that the Comanche language was similar to Shoshoni. “Comanches, they are relatives of the Shoshonis, first cousins, like.” He had lied a little to get the job. “I have two Shoshoni women,” he’d said. “And if a man cannot learn to talk to his squaws, he must surely starve and have no moccasins made for him. I learn to talk Shoshoni plenty fast. So—I speak Comanche also, if they are the same.”
“You are our interpreter, then,” said the patron. “We leave day after tomorrow. Get yourself extra clothing and traps, and be here at dawn.”
Charbonneau took the paper notes from the man and rode his horse to Chouteau’s trading post. While Charbonneau was gone, Clark came to his cabin to tell the family good-bye for a time and to leave a hindquarter of young deer.
Clark sat on a packing crate warming himself before the fire. “I am going to talk with some important men. Charbonneau’s heard of them—Governor Harrison, General Johnathan, and my own brother, George Rogers Clark, also called general. I am going to talk about keeping on good terms with the Indian nations. It is my job to keep peace between tribes and nations. And my job to prevent or punish murder, drive squatters off the Indian lands, keep the Indians off land they have sold to whites, recover stolen horses and kidnapped children, punish robbery, and keep whiskey from the thirsty Indians. I am going to get these men to help me. And York is coming with me to Kentucky. He’s found a girl, says he’s in love with Kentucky—but I believe it is Cindy Lou.”
“York?” Otter Woman giggled. She liked the big black man. “So—he is moving toward the sunrise as he said he would.”
“We’ll go east, all right,” said Clark. “To Louisville, then on to the cotton plantation where Cindy Lou lives.”
“Is she all black?” asked Otter Woman, her eyes wide with curiosity.
“Oh, I’m sure of it. According to York, she’s a tiny black girl who laughs and sings all day. I have it in the back of my mind to set York free, to let him be his own master. I would like to set him up in business with a wagon and team of four to six horses, hauling freight between Richmond and Nashville. He can have a job and a wife and be a free man.”
“Will he like that?” asked Sacajawea, puzzled. “Will he like it after looking after you for so long? Do you think he can change his thoughts and habits?”
“Certainly he can. That is the burning desire of all manservants these days—to be freedmen and run their own lives. York deserves this. He’s worked hard for me.”
“I have something for him,” said Sacajawea, looking for a piece of leather to wrap around the shirt she’d made for York.
“Let me see that,” said Clark, holding up the shirt. “Oh, York will be mighty pleased. I can see him showing off with a jig or two when he puts this on. Can’t you?”
“Ai,” said Sacajawea, glad she had finished the shirt in time.
But given his freedom, Ben York was not happy, and he had little success as an independent businessman. He did not take good care of the six horses Clark gave to him. He let two of them die and drove a bad bargain selling the remaining four. He sold them because the freight run was too long. York was away from Cindy Lou from early spring until midsummer, then from fall until winter.
“Damn this here freedom,” he told Cindy Lou. “I have never had a peaceful day since I got it.” He felt certain his business had been poor because the whites preferred dealing with other whites; they seemed to feel a black, even a freed one, was not to be trusted with valuable freight.
Eventually York left Cindy Lou to come back to General Clark. He told her that he would send for her assoon as he was settled in Saint Louis once again. But she did not hear a word from him. Once an itinerant black preacher told of a freedman who had died of cholera in Tennessee and was buried there as an unknown. “That man was free, but he was sick and poor and had no folks to care for him. Sometimes so much freedom does not suit a man,” said the preacher. Cindy Lou questioned him, and it seemed to her that the description fit her husband. She sent word back to General Clark by way of the preacher that York was dead.
“I just can’t believe it,” said Clark. “It does not seem like York to go off to die alone. Mark my words. That unknown buried in Tennessee is not my Ben York.”1
In the fall of 1809, there were many days of freezing rain around Saint Louis that glazed the foot trails with a sheath of ice that was like hobnail glass. Then a warm wind from the south came in, and the ground became soft as mush, overlaid with widening pools in low spots. The sunsets were orange under the low, scudding clouds.
One evening, Otter Woman was mending moccasins and coughing in the funny choked way she had developed that fall. She coughed deeply, but she tried to cut the cough off before it came from her throat so that it would not be so noticeable. “I think it is the smoke from the old prairie fires,” she’d say when she was outdoors; or, ‘Too much smoke blows back from this smoke hole,” she’d say if she were in the cabin sitting next to the fireplace.
“Maybe it is caused by the warm winds,” said Sacajawea, who went out back to find dried grasses and seed pods to put in the granite bowl on the windowsill, as she had seen Miss Judy do. The boys, who had suffered from cabin fever during the freezing rains, were outside pretending they saw black bear or wolves coming through the maple thicket. Suddenly Tess stopped.
“Someone’s coming!” he shouted. “I heard feet splashing through water, and a wet moccasin spat on the oozy trail.”
Sacajawea looked past the cabin. A black-caped figure was running up the path. The moist air was warm, too warm this evening for a thick cape. Who was it? She stepped quickly around the side of the cabin to the front. Miss Judy was knocking frantically on the door.
Otter Woman let her in as Sacajawea and the boys quickly followed. Miss Judy’s eyes were red, and she looked frightful. She stood in the middle of the floor and looked from one woman to the other, shaking her head.
“What is it?” Sacajawea asked.
“Oh, Janey,” Miss Judy whispered. “I had to come as soon as I heard. I had to tell you.”
“What?” repeated Sacajawea.
“It’s Meri. Lewis. He’s dead.”
Sacajawea’s hand went to her mouth. It was not true. Not the sandy-haired co-leader of the expedition, dead. Not after all he’d been through and survived as healthy as anyone. A cry escaped her lips, a soft moaning, a high-pitched keening, not loud but intense; then she stopped, sensing that Otter Woman was perplexed.
“Get coffee warmed for our guest,” said Sacajawea softly to Otter Woman. “Take her robe. It is warm. Open the door.”
Otter Woman muttered something about being treated like a servant. She looked at Miss Judy, who wept quietly, then she closed her mouth and ran to do as she was told.
Miss Judy sat on the edge of the bed, composed herself, and slowly told as much of Governor Lewis’s Tennessee tragedy as she knew. “Pierre Chouteau came to tell me so that I would know when Will comes back. Even Rose York, Ben’s mother, felt the sorrow and kept saying she wished Ben were here to sing prayers.”
Still stunned, Sacajawea could find no words to explain to Otter Woman how she felt. Her sorrow made her lash out with commands to hurry Otter Woman in making their guest feel welcome. “Get the chair for Miss Judy.”
“Ai,” said Otter Woman, scraping the chair across the floor to where Miss Judy could easily move from the bed to the chair with only one step.
“Meri sent us his favorite pair of ivory-handled dueling pistols as a wedding present,” Judy said, as if to herself. “Will was so pleased that he promised to name our first boy after him. And you know we did. Will begged him to come live with us when we first came to Saint Louis. But in that charming way of his he said,
Thank you, but no, I’m going to move in with Auguste Chouteau. It is better for two wayward bachelors to live together.’” Miss Judy pressed her face with a small white handkerchief.
Sacajawea sat on the floor close to Miss Judy’s chair. She could not hide her sorrow; tears ran down her cheeks.
Otter Woman sat the boys against the wall and gave them each a granite cup filled with a mixture that was half sugar and half bitter coffee.
“The guest is fed first,” Sacajawea said, sniffing and glaring at Otter Woman, who hurried to fill a cup with coffee for Miss Judy.
Otter Woman was careful not to spill anything on Miss Judy’s black wool skirt and ruffled, white-lace blouse. She kept her eyes downcast, then asked Sacajawea why they wept over a white man who had died far from Saint Louis and never came to see them as Chief Red Hair had done. She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a cough, then said, “I do not understand this deep feeling for this man.”
Miss Judy straightened, wiped her nose, and reached deep into her black-velvet handbag. “Here, I nearly forgot this. I brought you a throat balm. Dr. Saugrain made it up. It’s pine pitch and honey.” She handed Otter Woman the bottle and a pewter spoon. “Meriwether Lewis was a friend—more like a relative. A brother.”
“Ai, a brother.” Sacajawea nodded, her eyes still wet.
Otter Woman licked her lips and tried a spoonful of the cough syrup. She bent to let Tess have a taste from her spoon. Then Pomp hitched forward and took a taste.
Sacajawea made clucking noises, and the boys moved against the wall, their backs straight. Their brown eyes watched Miss Judy.
“I call our baby Meri, but Will calls him Lew, or sometimes Looie.”
Otter Woman spoke up. “I know about that. I wanted to call mine Kakanostoke, but my man say non, he is Little Tess.”
“What is that name?” snapped Sacajawea.
“It is Blackfoot for Owl; it means Ears Far Apart.”
“I like it,” said Miss Judy, settling further back in the chair as she sipped the coffee.
The little cabin darkened in the deepening twilight. Sacajawea got up, her face now calm, closed the door, lighted two candles she took from the wooden shelf, and put them on the kitchen table. She put bowls on the table and poured stew from the pot beside the fire. She took a bowl and a large spoon to Miss Judy. Otter Woman sat beside the boys and ate her stew, letting them dip their spoons into her bowl. Sacajawea did not eat, but when she thought the boys had had enough, she pushed them outside, saying, “Stay on the step.” Soon they came in quietly, and she pushed them up on the hand-hewn bed; she took off their moccasins, shirts, and trousers, and placed them neatly on the shelf. “Too warm for a blanket,” she said.
Otter Woman sat on her couch of furs in the opposite corner and complained it was too dark to sew. Soon she was snoring.
Miss Judy pulled one of the gray-white blanket sheets from the shelf and spread it over Otter Woman, who coughed in her sleep. Then she blew out the candles and sat on the floor beside Sacajawea. Both stared into the flames of the fireplace; neither spoke of the grief that drew them together. When the fire was only coals, Miss Judy curled up on the floor, using her arms to rest her head, and said, “He was always kind and fair. He took in that old Creole, Piernia, and made him decent again. He liked to hold our baby son. He told how he was afraid at first to hold your little son. Said he’d never seen such a small human before. Oh, Janey, tell me what he was like to you.”
“He made dumplings for the men, and they teased him, but they ate and asked for more. He saw a bent fern and knew what size animal had been by. He found flowers and seeds no one else saw. He loved that big dog, Scannon. He traveled past plains barren of trees, beyond the mountains that shone night and day. He followed the river that flowed westward into the Stinking Waters, and he went right on until now he journeys to the Land of Everfeasting. We cannot speak his name,” Sacajawea whispered.
Shortly after daybreak, Sacajawea awoke, refreshed by a deep sleep. Her eyes, still puffy from weeping, moved to the corner where Otter Woman still lay, thento the boys, who were grinning at her from their bed. She moved to the empty pallet where Charbonneau slept when he was home. It was mussed, as if someone had slept on it. The door opened and Miss Judy pushed her way in, carrying a load of wood for the fireplace. She dropped the logs, took off the black headkerchief, and her dark curls flowed down her back in long ropes of braid. Her large brown eyes were serene, but the lids were still red and swollen. She said not a word, but found a straw broom and swept the room, smoothed out Charbonneau’s pallet, showing she’d slept there, then straightened Sacajawea’s pallet, put moccasins and shirts on the boys, and began preparing porridge. She showed a complete familiarity as to where things were and what to do. As she mixed the meal to go in the pot, Sacajawea spoke softly, “Why do you do the morning cleaning and cooking as though you, too, lived here? Why?”
“We need more water from the spring,” Miss Judy said to the boys, then faced Sacajawea. “Janey, I could not stay in my big house alone—without Will, I mean. I kept thinking how he will feel when he hears about Lewis’s death. And I kept thinking about what that old dog Scannon will do now without him. Rose talked to me, but it was little help. Finally she suggested I come to you. She said you’d understand more than anyone that the Lord had called our good friend to his side because his work on this earth was done.”
Miss Judy scrubbed the kitchen table and laid out the bowls and spoons Sacajawea had just washed.
Sacajawea went to the shelf and brought down a small leather pouch. She pulled up the old packing crate and seated herself at the table to open the pouch in her hand.
“See this blue ribbon? Your man gave it to me. And this comb and looking glass. See this red feather? Hold it. It reminds me of my father and my brother. Our friend gave it to me when we came back over the mountains in the snow. And so—here is the chip of blue sky on the leather lacing. I like to wear it. It was once my mother’s, then my grandmother’s. I do not know where it will go after I leave this earth. And see, here is my chief money.” She took out the peace medal Sun Womanhad given her. “Here is a red piece of glass I made myself. See the bird on it? These are things, but they bring memories. Things can be taken away, but never memories. You and I cannot ever forget our friend, the sandy-haired white chief.”
Miss Judy put the red feather back into Sacajawea’s hand. “And so, you keep it to remind you of our friend.” Sacajawea dropped the cardinal’s feather back into Miss Judy’s lap.
“Janey,” Miss Judy began, deeply touched, “we are about the same age, yet I feel you are so much wiser.” Her voice became a whisper. “I do not understand, but I accept. I have seen goodness and love.” She bowed her head. “Oh, Lord, this has not been our will, but yours. Now, while my heart is tender, speak to me, Lord.”
Sacajawea was moved by this conversation between Miss Judy and her Lord. She felt a strength come to her as she sat quietly listening.
“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” Miss Judy whispered.
Otter Woman stirred and said that she would get up after she had taken another sip or two of her cough syrup.
Quietly Sacajawea washed the boys’ faces in a wooden basin and sent them outside to dry off. She gave Little Tess a bucket to fill with spring water.
“Why wash faces? Who is to see?” asked Otter Woman, grabbing a bowl and spoon from the shelf, then moving toward the hot porridge.
“Dishes are on the table,” said Sacajawea. “I will serve you there.”
Otter Woman looked surprised. “At the table? Just for eating? I don’t want to eat at a table. I’d feel like it was in that school Miss Judy tells about with those desks.”
“Otter Woman! You should not speak that way with guests,” said Sacajawea.
“I like to sit at a table,” said Miss Judy, dragging up the birch chair.
Most reluctantly, Otter Woman also dragged up a crate. Sacajawea looked relieved, but Otter Woman asked, “Miss Judy, do you always eat at a table?”
“Whenever there is company,” Miss Judy said.
“Sometimes Will has his journals and scrapbooks on it, so there is hardly room for anybody but him to eat there.”
“But,” objected Otter Woman, “here there is no company. We all slept here together last night; there is no company.”
“There is a friend who is our guest,” Sacajawea insisted.
“That is true,” Otter Woman agreed, “and because she is my friend she should not have to eat at a table. We’ll eat like last night. Fill my bowl. I am hungry.”
“But Otter Woman, you are thoughtless. Miss Judy wants to eat at a table, and the boys like to also. The coffee is ready. You pour it.”
Otter Woman stared at Miss Judy as though she found it hard to believe. “I’ll get the coffee. You get the bread,” she said belligerently to Sacajawea.
Sacajawea piled cold fried bread on the table and began ladling out the porridge into the bowls from the pot hanging near the fire. Pot was the right word, for it was the tall type of granite-ware chamber pot with a wooden handle on a wire bail. A smaller pot was on the hearth holding the stock for stew.
Miss Judy tilted her head, listening. “There’s the sound of a horse coming. Someone is singing. A man, I think.”
“I hear it, too,” said Sacajawea.
The door swung open, and there stood General William Clark. He had been in Kentucky with Cindy Lou when the news of Lewis’s death arrived.
Otter Woman came to a standing position, holding back a coughing spasm. Sacajawea stood. One of high rank had entered.
“Rose told me I’d find you here, the three of you gaining strength from one another. Sit down. I’ll have some of that hot porridge, too. Smells good.”
“You have come to mourn the loss of our friend?” asked Sacajawea in a whisper.
“Yes,” said Clark, “and no. I have also come to fetch Judy, to bring you news of Charbonneau, to praise the Lord for such a fine day, and to tell you I believe York has gone out west somewhere.”
Sacajawea snatched up the peeling knife and began to push it down on the first knuckle of her right little finger.
“Janey, what are you doing? Stop that!” shouted Clark.
Miss Judy looked from one to the other, her face pale.
“You wish to do the cutting of your own finger for mourning our friend first?” Sacajawea asked, bewildered that Clark did not understand her action.
He understood. “Don’t mourn for Lewis in that way. The white man’s God does not require him to mutilate himself to show his sense of loss.” He wrapped his handkerchief around the cut and bleeding finger. “Lewis would not ask you to do that for him. You know what he wants us to do?”
Sacajawea shook her head. “You must not speak his name.”
“That is something else we do differently,” Clark said, sitting on a crate beside Sacajawea.
She felt somehow ashamed that she had displeased him with traditions deep-seated within her—something that her nation and even Minnetarees did. She had wished to show she honored Lewis as much as one of her relatives. She held up her left hand so that Clark could see where she had cut the first joint from her little finger years before.
Clark touched her quivering shoulders and spoke softly.
“Lew’s brother, Reuben, is up the Missouri somewhere, so it is up to me to get his affairs in order. Lewis’s papers and baggage have been sent here to me. He left everything to his stepsister, Lucy Marks. See, the white man can tell from a piece of paper who should have his possessions after he leaves this earth. I am going to get all the diaries Lewis kept, and those I kept on the trip west, and make a book. It is up to me now.”
Sacajawea understood. The talking book was something both white chiefs had worked on. Lewis had asked her about flowers and roots that were edible. He had asked her about leaves and bark that were medicinal, and she had shown him what she remembered from her childhood or had learned from her Minnetaree captors.
Clark looked into her tear-swollen eyes. “I will askyou questions about our trip so that I will have everything correct in the book people read. You’ll help me?”
“I cannot read,” she said.
“Pomp will learn. He will read to you from our book.”
“Ai, that will please me.” Sacajawea looked at Clark and tried to smile.
“Early this morning I came home,” continued Clark in a voice faintly touched with humor, as though a man cannot help his voice. “I was muddy, weary from riding, but there was no wife to greet me at my home, only Rose, the other servants, and my young son, Lew, howling for someone to feed him.”
Miss Judy looked up, almost tearful again, but Clark took her hand across the plank table and continued, “I think I will ask Nick Biddle to edit the journals for me and to visit us at your old home in Virginia.”2
Judy’s face brightened. “Oh, are we really going to have a holiday in Virginia?”
“I am ready,” said Clark. “Do you think you can get your howling young son ready?”
Sacajawea sat quietly, thinking. She did not know this Nick Biddle, but she knew George Shannon and she knew he was studying to be a rule keeper3 to help the white men and Indians keep rules and live peacefully. She had little fear anymore of speaking up when she had an idea that seemed good in her own mind.
“How far is it from that Virginia to Kentucky?” she asked.
“Well, Kentucky is on the way to Virginia,” answered Clark, now dangling Pomp on his knees and winking at Little Tess, who was on his other side.
“I think Shannon will do best with the talking book. He was there.”
“That’s a thought! George would like to do it, too. He’s a fine scholar. For that matter, he’s a good teacher—taught both these women English,” he said, winking at his wife. “On the expedition he sometimes asked me what words were most important for Janey to know.”
“You told him the words I learned?” Sacajawea was surprised.
“No, not really. I told him to teach you as much as he knew.”
They laughed, seeing the absurdity, and Clark remembered how Shannon had struggled to get Otter Woman to pronounce any English word correctly. She always had trouble with the b, f, j, and I sounds because those did not exist in the Minnetaree tongue. At times she sounded as though she had a cleft palate, and her Minnetaree speech patterns made her English sound so matter-of-fact that dramatic effects were heightened. Her tense and word order struck him as hilarious, and now Clark tried to remember choice examples, but these and other qualities of her early English eluded him.
“If only you’d been here last night,” said Miss Judy. “What would you have done with one simple gloomy thought?”
“We will be neither simple nor gloomy. We have work to do, and we will keep the memory of our friend alive forever,” answered Clark. “That is an order. Come home now, Judy. Let these women set their house in order. There is a change in the air. Winter will be here. And that old rascal Charbonneau is coming home. That is what I came to tell you.” He stood up and took a step toward Sacajawea. “Before he left for the Arkansas, we had a long talk. There will be school next fall for these two boys. Why don’t you ask him to take you and Otter on a trip before it gets too cold?” Clark put his arms around the shoulders of both Indian women, who were now standing beside the door. Miss Judy filled the mugs with hot coffee and sent the boys outside on the front step. When the coffee was gone, they were all outside saying good-bye. There was laughter, there was hope, and there was work to be done.
Otter Woman went back inside and began washing the cups and bowls, complaining of the mess left for her to clean. She ordered Sacajawea to put fat meat in the simmering stew because if Charbonneau were on his way, he’d certainly be hungry when he got home.