June 21, 1823
The homes of the fur traders, two large houses, were scarcely more than a half mile further up on the right bank of the Missouri. I went to that place in order to visit the owners, the Messrs. Curtis and Woods. Neither of them was at home but the wife of the latter was there. She was a Creole, a daughter of old Mr. Chauvin, with whom I had spent the night near St. Charles. The whole population of this little settlement consists only of a few persons, Creoles, and halfbreeds whose occupation is the trade with the Kansas Indians, some hunting and agriculture. Here, I also found a youth of about sixteen years of age, whose mother, a member of the tribe of Shosho-nes or Snake Indians, had accompanied the Messrs. Lewis and Clark, as an interpreter, to the Pacific Ocean, in 1804–6. This Indian woman married the French interpreter, Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau later served me in the capacity of interpreter, and Baptiste, his son, whom I mentioned above, joined me on my return, followed me to Europe and has since then been with me. I remained for dinner with Mrs. Woods and after the meal went to the Kansas again.
PAUL FRIEDRICH WILHELM, HERZOG VON WÜRTTEMBERG, Erste Reise nach dem nördlichen Amerika in den Jahren 1822 bis 1824, vol II, 1835.WILLIAM G. BEK, transl.
and ed., South Dakota Historical Collections, “First Journey to North America in the Years 1822 to 1824,” vol. XIX. Pierre, S.D.: State Historical Society, 1938, pp. 303–4.
The following year when the land was losing its dead-brown color and tender, bright green leaves were coming back on the willow, with its blooms hanging like fuzzy caterpillars, and the redbud, dogwood, and haw stood in patches of pink and white, Sacajawea worked beside Eagle preparing packs. They were going on a trapping trip up the Missouri to the mouth of the Kaw River.1 Clark had told Charbonneau that a Mr. Woods was waiting in a small settlement for an interpreter and trader among the Kansas Indians. Clark suggested that Charbonneau take the job and take his family with him so that the boys could do some trapping.
“My God, that is what I say,” said Charbonneau. “Big boys like this should be out working, not inside turning white with their nose between book pages.”
Eagle wore her best tunic and leggings and a matted blanket held loosely about her shoulders. Her hair part was painted vermilion, and her hair hung loosely down her back. Tess, nearly twenty now, poked her in the side and hissed in her ear, “I would pay a good four-point blanket and a beaded belt to have a woman like you.”
“Your father paid ten ponies,” Eagle lied, grinning.
Shocked, Tess rounded his eyes at the young woman and lapsed into an affronted silence.
Sacajawea, in a plain tunic with fringe hanging to her knees, picked up the packs and took them outdoors. She went to the shed and brought the four ponies, one by one, to the front door so they could be saddled or loaded. She knew the men would each ride one and she and Eagle would share the fourth. They would each carry part of the gear needed for the summer trip.
Sacajawea’s work did not claim her full attention. Her mind was restless. When the last horse was tethered, she stepped to the back of the cabin and pressed herself close to the back wall, looking at the mound of soil with the gray slab of shale at its head. Spring beauties were growing near the small grave, and the brown needles of the cedar were sprinkled over the top. Her hands touched the rough logs of the cabin. It made herthink she could hug the child close, as if she could get back the child who had been irretrievably lost. She wept, thinking of all the vigorous life in that little body that was so quickly used up. She knew it was not right for her to feel this way—strange, how quickly the end had come! The end—when she should have been in the cabin with the child. She was weak. These were hopeless tears. She dried her eyes, knowing there were dangers for all life. This was not life, but eternity itself.
“Nobody gets cabin fever this summer, hein?” Charbonneau asked as he checked the leather straps around the bundles. His eyes squinted at Sacajawea, but she did not answer. He had never once asked her what had happened to Otter Woman’s child. She had tried to tell him, but he would never listen. She wondered if he knew who lay under that small mound of earth. She wondered if Tess or Baptiste had ever told him. She thought not. He probably would not have heard them. He would probably change the subject to something more to his liking, or to something he could brag about.
She sat back on the horse, looking down at Eagle, who carried a bundle on her back and was walking first. She gave one last look at the cabin, whose door was now closed. It was not locked against thieves, for there would be none. A hungry trapper might wander by, but he would take no more than he needed and leave the rest as he had found it, even chopping more wood to replace what he had used. This was the code of the times.
The Charbonneau family made their night camps where they found water. The horses grazed as they slept. The boys took turns at the night watch.
They pushed through hilly country and came down to the broad, sandy river. Clouds covered the sky. Eagle and Sacajawea erected the leather tepee near the small fur-trading settlement. Charbonneau went to find Mr. Woods. This was the only trading post in the Kansas country. Before this time the Kansas Indians had been served by itinerant traders who brought their loaded pirogues up the Missouri from New Orleans, or who came overland, as had the Charbonneaus, with loadedhorses from Saint Louis. The settlement was only about three or four years old.
Woods and Curtis, who operated the post, were traders licensed to do business with the Kansas Indians. Their wives were Creole women, and the rest of the population consisted of half-breed hunters and trappers who worked for the post.
Slowly Sacajawea became aware of sounds all around her. She looked and saw nothing but the few cabins of illegal squatters. She looked in a freshly leafed oak and saw a squirrel barking, then a skein of crows, noisy as they strung off from the top of a post oak, then a jay scolding from the top of a cedar. She blew out a gusty breath. For the first time she could see for herself the white settlers squatting illegally on Indian land. The Kansas tribes were being squeezed and pinched. Clark had told her this was one of his major problems. The Indians were bewildered and perplexed and angry, and Sacajawea felt they had every right to be. She was on the side of the Indians, and she herself had felt confused about their problems much of the time when Clark had discussed them with her. The U.S. government was determined to move the Eastern Indians west of the Mississippi. They had transferred tribes from their ancestral homes to this new country. Sacajawea often thought the Great White Father in Washington must be about as confused as anyone as he struggled to try to make everyone happy—the white men of the East, the Indians of the East, now the Plains Indians whose homes were being disturbed, and the settlers who were always moving westward.
Out of that huge land Jefferson had bought from Napoleon, there was so much territory that the eastern land could be freed from Indians so that the eastern land could be used only by white men. The government had promised the Eastern Indians it would move them, paying for their land, west of the Mississippi. There was land that was not occupied by white men and probably never would be wanted by them. The land was wasteland—only flat prairies, not good for farming, only good for the herds of buffalo roaming over it, eating the short, tough gamma grass. Sacajawea knew that Chief Red Hair was honorable and Nat Pryor a goodman—he was acting as a go-between for the Osages and the whites. Their hearts were increasingly heavy at the way things were going. It was not their fault promises were broken. She had taken Chief Red Hair by the hand and did not mean to let loose of it, yet seeing what was happening to the Indians was enough to make her despise all whites. The wind blew cold. Rain began to fall.
Sacajawea and Eagle ran about, gathering fallen branches for firewood. Before night they had built a snug camp, and the cool spring rain seemed good.
The next day, light showers fell. The women sat in the tepee sewing and stirring the fresh venison stew. They watched squirrels chase one another and hide in the tall grass.
Tess and Baptiste, tired of sitting around the damp camp, moseyed over to the settlement and found that one of the large log houses there belonged to Woods and his brood of dark-skinned children. The other house belonged to Curtis, who had fenced in his field of corn, beans, and potatoes.
“Look there,” Tess said, pointing. “Every spring that man plows and plants. All summer he pulls weeds and his back is tired. In the fall he gathers, and in winter he fences, cuts wood, mends, and patches, and not often can he take his gun to go in the woods. I’m going to depend on my gun for food, and go where I please, do what I please, and be as free as the wind.”
Baptiste looked at his half brother and grinned. “So—you pretty much do that now. I heard you were gravel in Father Neil’s throat most of the time, doing what you pleased.”
“You have got to make your own way.”
“A man has his own notions of what is best for him.”
Charbonneau met the boys. He’d found Woods, who thought that trapping would be complicated by the high water, but he thought this produced the best furs. Charbonneau puffed out both cheeks. “We’re going to set them traps tomorrow, early.”
Both boys learned that it was hardly too much to say that a trapper’s life depended on his skill. He not only worked in the wilderness, he also lived there, and did so from sun to sun by the exercise of total skill. Insteadof becoming tired of a trapper’s life, these boys, fresh from school, thrived on it. They used their heads, and intelligence, which had so recently been used in proving complicated geometric theorems, and their language mastery in English, French, German, and Spanish. They were awed by their father’s skill in the wild, and argued with each other as to whether Charbonneau had any specific craft, technology, theorem, or rationale, or whether it was only a rule of thumb that dictated his code of operating procedure. They agreed it was a total pattern of behavior.
They learned the whys, whats, and hows from Charbonneau, who was more of a braggart than a teacher. Why do you follow the ridges into or out of unfamiliar country? he would ask. What do you do for a companion who has collapsed from want of water while crossing a prairie? How do you get meat when you find yourself without gun powder in a country barren of game? What tribe of Indians made this trail, how many were in the band, what errand were they on, were they going or coming back from it, how far from home were they, were their horses laden, how many horses did they have, how many squaws accompanied them, and what mood were they in? Also, how old is the trail, where are those Indians now, and what does the product of these answers require of you?
Buffalo are moving downwind, an elk is in an unlikely place or posture, too many magpies are hollering, a Wolf’s howl is off-key—what does all this mean? A branch floats down stream—is this natural, or is it the work of animals, or of Indians, or of trappers? Another branch or a bush or even a pebble is out of place—why? On the limits of the plain, blurred by a heat mirage, or against the gloom of distant cottonwoods, or across an angle of sky between branches or where hill and mountain meet, there is a tenth of a second of what may have been movement—did men or animals make it, and if animals, why? It was unlikely that Charbonneau himself could detect 60 percent of these things accurately, but he knew what should be known. He knew that as a trapper’s mind dealt with these puzzle pieces, it simultaneously performed still more complex judgments on the countryside, the route across it, andthe weather. The boys learned to modify their reading in relation to season, to Indians, to what had happened. They could modify it in relation to stream flow, storms past, storms indicated, and modify it again according to the meat supply, to the state of the grass, to the equipment on hand. Trappers must master their conditions. Tess and Baptiste not only mastered their conditions, they enjoyed them to the utmost.
Later these boys saw soldiers, gold-seekers, and emigrants come into their country and suffer where they had lived comfortably, and die where they had been in no danger.
The days became warm, and the heat inside the tepee oppressive. The mosquitoes came in droves, and the women kept their skin covered with rancid bear’s oil. This only added to their discomfort in the heat as they perspired under the oil. They sat under the post oaks waiting for a cool breath of air. Their hair was tied against their necks with thongs as slick from grease as their moccasins. Whenever they passed the trading post, they left behind a strong smell of wood smoke and rancid grease.
“Them there squaws of old Charb’s keep to themselves and don’t buy none of that whiskey the others do,” remarked one of the itinerant traders to Curtis, who rubbed his chin, his blue eyes reflective.
“Yeah, but have you seen the one son? He’s in here with two, three pelts and asking for his pay in whiskey nearly every fortnight.”
“Sure, but the younger breed is the opposite. He don’t drink, and he stays out with the traps.”
“They’re both more like Indians than whites, even though they got some schooling,” said Curtis. “I heard that Governor Clark himself educated them two. He hopes they get into politics or Indian affairs one day.”
“This here chile bets they both end up living with Indians. You can’t never hammer out a gold piece from wet clay.”
The men looked up toward the north sky and saw clouds gathering. “If you don’t like the heat, it’ll soon be cooler,” said Curtis, moving off the steps to the inside of the post.
The trader shaded his eyes and looked at the churning, boiling clouds. The weather shifts fast on the prairie, he thought. A few minutes ago, I saw nothing to indicate a storm, only a low red haze against the northern horizon.
A spatter of heavy, noisy drops hit the dust, and Eagle hurried for shelter. Sacajawea pulled the kettle off the tripod and brought it into the tepee, placing it upon the floor. The handle was hot.
“Roasted fingers?” Eagle inquired mildly.
That night, a thunderstorm deluged the settlement and threatened to wash away everything, but it did not cool the air. It became sultry and hot. The short street in front of the post and the two cabins was knee-deep in mud. A couple of small boys rode their horses wildly down it, splattering the mud in every direction.
“My boys would like that horseplay,” said Sacajawea, ruminating.
“The sun is setting clear. Maybe the rain is over. Our man ought to be back. The streams are probably running bank-full and overflowing. He’ll have words to say if he loses some of his traps,” said Eagle.
The next morning, the rain came down hard again. The wind turned to the northwest, and the sultry heat was somewhat broken. The Missouri had flooded the lowlands, so that but little could be done by way of trapping or hunting.
“Well, it is time they came in,” said Eagle, watching Baptiste and Tess riding through the mud past the settlement. She craned her neck suddenly, looking down toward the gap in the trees where the mouth of the Kaw began to widen. “Strangers coming in, too.”
“Our man with some trappers, I expect,” said Sacajawea, braiding a bridle for one of the horses.
“No. Strangers. Several of them. Walking.”
Sacajawea put down the horsehair rope and rose quickly to join Eagle outside the tepee. “Coming from the river?”
“Ai.”
They watched as the small group of men made their way, slipping and sloshing, heads down, across to the post. Sacajawea counted them. “Two—three—four.” As they watched, the men reached the end of the street, and Eagle chuckled as they sank over their boot tops in the deep mud and floundered, heaving to lift themselves step by step through the muck.
“Hey, we should have laid some planks down for these gentlemen,” said Baptiste.
“Not me,” called Tess. “It is plumb funny to see them, mired, not able to hardly move. If someone shot a rifle above their heads, they’d make that mud splatter.”
The four strangers had beached their pirogue at the mouth of the muddy Kaw. Now they looked about curiously, noticing the naked children on the ponies, the unkempt squaws carrying wood in their arms, the bleak-looking log houses. The lead man waved a hand that took in the street, the children, the squaws—the whole settlement—and said something to his companions in a voice too low to hear.
“He’s telling ‘em to leave this squaw village at once,” Tess said.
“Shhh,” Baptiste warned, and began unloading his gear and traps and pelts from his horse so that he could meander closer to the four newcomers.
The strangers made their way through the mud to the wooden porch of Woods’s house. There they scraped off as much of the slick clay as they could before the tall one knocked.
Rita Woods stood at the door. She was a woman in her early thirties, beginning to carry a little extra weight, to broaden in the hips and thicken at the waist. She was dark-skinned, almost swarthy, and her hair, which had been as black as a moonless night when she was younger, had gray wings along the temples now. She was a handsome woman, but not really pretty. The stranger spoke in halting English.
“Shhh,” Baptiste warned again as Tess pressed in close behind him, moving closer to the side of Woods’s house so they could see and hear better.
“Is this the home of Mr. Woods?”
“Si. He is not here, but running his own trap lines to the south.”
“I spent a night with a Seńor Chauvin in Saint Charles. I promised him I’d stop to see his son-in-law.”
The woman smiled, showing flashing white teeth. “That Seńor Chauvin is my padre. I am the wife of Mr.
Woods,” she explained. The men had difficulty understanding her Creole Spanish. Finally, she called a small, nearly naked child to her, and gave him some instructions in Spanish. She smiled at the four men and sat quietly to wait. The men—one named Caillou, another Louis, and an elderly Canadian called Roudeau—sat timidly on chairs while the fourth man sat back and relaxed, perfectly at ease, waiting for what would come next.3
The child ran straight to Baptiste and Tess and explained that his mother wanted them to come at once. “You know Spanish,” said the child. “You learned it at a school?”
“Yes,” said Baptiste, sensing something urgent about the child. “Then, come, you help Mama talk to the men.”
“Maybe we can earn us a gold piece,” said Tess. “What’s your name?”
“I am called Juan,” said the child, running back toward the house.
Tess and Baptiste stood on the porch a moment so the mud and water would run off their boots. Baptiste knocked. The child, Juan, answered and brought them into the sitting room.
“I beg your pardon, Juan would not even let me take my muddy boots off first,” Baptiste apologized. “He said it was urgent that I come in.” He spoke to the woman in Spanish.
She smiled and indicated the four men with her outstretched hand. Baptiste understood at once. “She wants us to interpret for her,” he said in English.
Tess stood behind his brother, looking from one man to another.
“Ja, go slow so that I understand all she says,” said the tall relaxed man, who had a German accent.
“Do you speak German, sir?” asked Baptiste.
The man was surprised and said quickly, “Ja, ich bin Deutsch.” He took Baptiste’s hand and shook it, then spoke in a deep, rich voice, using his native tongue. “We have been as near drowned as men can be and still breathe. The water has been overhead and underfoot. Oh, Caillou, Louis, and Roudeau here are gentlemen of my party. I am Paul Wilhelm. At home I am Duke of Württemberg.”
“I am Baptiste Charbonneau. And this is my brother, Toussaint.”
“It is my pleasure to find you in this wild country,” said Duke Paul. “I have sailed from Hamburg to New Orleans and was granted permission by Mr. Adams, your Secretary of State, to enter and travel at will through the United States. See, here is the note he has signed.”
Baptiste took it and, after reading it, translated for Rita Woods. “John Quincy Adams writes that the federal authorities of the west are to provide this man and his party with every means in their power to further and safeguard his movements and to furnish him military escort when it should be necessary. He’s someone fairly important.”
Rita Woods nodded her head. “Si, he stayed with my father downriver.”
Baptiste gave out a long, low whistle. “Did you meet with Governor Clark in Saint Louis?” He winked at Tess, never figuring that Duke Paul had even heard of Governor Clark.
“Ja, he gave me a passport from the Secretary of War to travel up the Missouri. I wish to explore for my own instruction. To learn the natural science of the country and to hunt.”4
Baptiste and Tess were stunned. Clark had talked with this duke. The country was getting smaller.
The duke was a young man in his mid-twenties, of medium height, rather slender, passionately fond of his pipe, unostentatious, and he spoke very broken English. He wore a white slouch hat, a black-velvet coat, and probably the greasiest pair of leggings Baptiste had ever seen. He had long black sideburns, curving forward to his pursing mouth, and hot brown eyes showing intense, fanatic concentration. Baptiste counted fifteen buttons on each side of the greasy leggings. He wondered where the party was going.
“I have a keelboat on the Missouri. It is waiting there for me to explore this Kaw River. Then I’ll travel up the Missouri to visit various Indians along the way.”
Rita Woods suggested that the men all stay for supper and dry out their boots by the fire. She pulled up a bench, and the men took off their soggy boots, outercoats, and hats, and held their chilled hands toward the fireplace.
Caillou was a man of medium height, thin, slope-shouldered, narrow-faced. Louis was a small-featured man, with a large nose and cleft chin. The elderly Roudeau was stocky, with swarthy skin and a shock of dark hair that was graying at the hairline.
That afternoon, Baptiste learned that Duke Paul had received military training in Germany, but not caring for military life, he had chosen to study botany and zoology. The King of England was his uncle, and he had suggested that the duke search for material in the New World. Duke Paul was fascinated by the life of an explorer. He confided that he had talked at great length with Clark about the famous western expedition.
“Herr Clark told me that he had educated the baby that was carried halfway across the continent during that trip. He said the boy was out on a trapping expedition with his father. How I would like to meet that young man.”
Tess coughed and nearly choked.
Baptiste drew in his breath quickly. Then he made his face bland and innocent-looking. He studied a thorn scratch on his thumb, rubbed it thoughtfully, and took his time about speaking. “I am the papoose of the expedition,” he said finally. “My mother is in our camp. She can tell you much about that long trail.” His eyelids were heavy over his narrowed eyes, only an edge of white showing beneath them. “My father is still with his trap line. He was interpreter and cook with the expedition.” Baptiste continued to examine the scratched thumb.
Tess squirmed in his seat, wondering what he could say about himself that would attract the attention of these important men.
“Do I understand you, sir?” asked Duke Paul. “You are the baby of the expedition?”
Baptiste looked into his face. “Yes, sir, I am that baby.”
Duke Paul inclined his head and studied Baptiste. Then he slapped his right leg, shouting, “Merkwürdig!”
“My mother is a full-blooded Shoshoni. I expect you know.”
“Ja. Well, I should have a talk with her before I go to the river again. Incredible. I still cannot believe my good fortune.”
Rita Woods was impressed with her dinner guests, but Sacajawea was not impressed with the strangers. There were many travelers going through Saint Louis, she said, and they were all much alike. But when Baptiste explained to her and Eagle that the duke had also crossed the Great Eastern Waters to get here, they were amazed.
Sacajawea had always thought that the Great Waters would stop the white men, as they had stopped the expedition. Hadn’t they camped the winter beside the Great Western Waters, then turned around and come back? But this man had come from the east! Now nothing could stop the white men. Her interest in this stranger grew. She began to ask him questions. “Did you walk overland from the Great Eastern Waters?”
“Nein, we traveled around the continent to the Mississippi Delta. We traveled up the river from New Orleans. Ja, we had to change to a smaller boat.”
Tess eyed the strangers suspiciously and felt a pang of jealousy as Sacajawea offered them food and hot tea with plenty of sugar to drink. Baptiste asked many questions about the homeland called Germany.
Eagle crept back inside the skin tepee. She could not understand the words of these strangers, and she could stare at them better through the front flap without seeming so discourteous. Her wonder at Sacajawea grew as she watched her talk with hand signs and English words slowly with the four men. The men seemed to enjoy their visit with her. Sacajawea wore her soft buckskin gown loosely belted at the waist, beaded moccasins, and a narrow band of beadwork across her forehead. Her long black hair was parted in the middle, oiled back in smooth wings, and hung nearly to her waist in two long braids. Her smile was like a flash of lightning across a cloudy sky.
Eagle’s face was somber and passive as she watched Sacajawea shuffle around the cooking kettle. The men were offered portions of tender meat from the kettle.
The duke shook his head and held his belly. “Nein, danke.” He had eaten much not long ago at the table of Rita Woods.
Never before had Eagle heard a guest refuse food. This rude refusal did not seem to disturb Sacajawea. She ignored it and went on making hand signs and talking with the men. Eagle watched, her face lowered, wondering what it was in the eating courtesy she had missed. Then she saw with her own eyes Sacajawea take up the horn spoon and dip into the kettle for a large piece of meat. She held the meat so that it cooled, then slowly picked off strings of it and ate as she talked with the men. Baptiste did the same, which was acceptable. But a woman talking and eating with guests—with strangers!—with men! Eagle shook her head, thinking, I have come to live with a family that is half-savage, with no manners—brazen. What if our man should hear of this?
Tess pushed aside the tepee flap and stepped inside. A thin blanket was wrapped around his middle. Eagle drew back. Tess’s gaze was silent and fixed. Eagle spoke. It was true that his mother did not observe the proper courtesies expected of women.
“So—you would have me speak to my mother about being corrupted with evil white ways?”
Eagle stretched her stiff, bent legs, and straightened her back. “I would have you speak to your own father.”
Tess had a fine beaver pelt in his hand, which he wanted to show off to the visitors. He stood in the doorway scratching his dirty red-wool shirt. “What the hell!” he said. “You trying to start something?” Then he was outside explaining how easy it was to trap such fine specimens to the man called Caillou.
The duke was still talking with Sacajawea. “I would like to make a request,” he said. “I ask your permission to take your son as an interpreter for me.”
She looked swiftly into his face.
“We are going up the Missouri. He will be well fed and paid for his efforts. He is the first young man I’ve found who can translate so that I fully know what he is talking about. His mind is most agile.”
Baptiste blushed as he translated for his mother. Sacajawea drew a deep breath and puffed it out slowly, with silent thanks. She smiled and nodded her consent.
“Ai. He will go. His papa will like it. He thinks the boy should have a job.”
The duke gave her a straight look. “We start in the morning to catch the rest of our party. Have him meet with us down at our pirogue.” He shook the boy’s hand, nodded his thanks, and filed down the trail, through the mud, to his pirogue and camp on the Kaw. Not one of the other men said a word until they were halfway to the pirogue; then Caillou, Louis, and Roudeau began to talk at once. “A boy for an interpreter,” they laughed.
Charbonneau came in telling how the Kaw had overflowed the bottoms until it was several miles wide, three or four miles above the mouth. It was a sea of water; the banks were gone; only the slow eddies down the middle showed where the main channel was. Traveling was difficult, even by horse, and he was glad to be home. His horse was loaded with beaver pelts. Charbonneau ate his supper in silence; then he began to storm. “The boy is too young! That is a job for me! Is it true that a German duke was here who speaks French?” He faced Baptiste.
“Yes, quite well,” answered Baptiste, stiff-lipped. “Some English, mostly German, and he does not know Spanish. I had to translate to Mrs. Woods for him.”
Charbonneau eyed Tess. “You said you translated for the Woods woman.”
“We both did,” said Baptiste quickly, gently.
Charbonneau’s dark, wrinkled face remained a rusty iron mask. “I will speak to this man.”
“Speak to your older squaw first,” suggested Tess. “She is the one who made the arrangements and ate, like one of the men, with the strangers.”
“My woman?”
Tess closed his eyes and stalked peevishly back and forth. “That there duke,” he said, “is an idiot.”
“The man,” Charbonneau said bluntly, “he is a damned fool.” Then he added, “He is a fool who can’t see beyond his own nose that there are older, more experienced men around who make excellent interpreters.”
“Tell him I should be the one to go.” Tess opened his eyes petulantly. “I can speak French and a little German.”
“But you don’t know Spanish,” said Baptiste.
“Pah! You make me want to puke!” said Tess.
Charbonneau hesitated. He had the feeling that this matter was the beginning of something larger. Abruptly he caught Sacajawea’s wrist and twisted her around to face him. His whiskers had grown, making his face look shaggy and dark. The rusty mask was broken. His mouth was half-open, and his breath came in small gasps. “I should beat you.” He picked up a long leather thong and wound it around his wrist to lash against her. She sank to the ground and covered her head with her arms. She kept silent and bit her upper lip so as not to cry out.
Eagle watched from one side. She was truly half-sorry to see her friend treated so roughly—and half-sorry that Charbonneau did not lash out harder. After all, Sacajawea had entertained four men and had eaten with them. That was wrong. Yet Eagle also knew that Sacajawea seemed to do things easily, with no conscious thought of Indian etiquette. She used either the white man’s or the Indian’s manners whenever it suited her purpose.
Charbonneau lashed out with a loud snap of the whip. It caught at the back of Sacajawea’s tunic.
Eagle also knew that she wished she had the easygoing ability to talk with strangers that Sacajawea had. She watched their man puffing, his whiskers moving in and out as his cheeks moved with his breathing. His forehead was red and perspiring. She dared not interfere or she would also be whipped.
Both boys shouted for Charbonneau to stop. Baptiste tried to grab at Charbonneau’s hands, but he was pushed away.
Sacajawea seemed to crouch lower, but still no sound escaped her lips. She endured five strong, deliberate lashes. Her dark eyes gleamed.
In a burst of courage Baptiste dragged his mother out of the whip’s reach. Charbonneau let the leather thong fall to the ground. He spat and walked over the black string of leather, leaving Sacajawea to her shame.
Sacajawea stood up. Deliberately, before all of them, she spat toward Charbonneau, then walked slowly, contemptuously away.
Away from the camp, she threw herself on the wet ground and opened her proud and stubborn Shoshoni shell and wept. She lay facedown, her arms outstretched above her head, her fists clenched.
“A man has to keep his woman in line,” sniffed Tess. “I would never have a woman who speaks up the way our mother does. She matches wits with anyone, man or woman. That is not proper for a squaw. She acts as though she has been to the white man’s school herself.”
“She thinks and can express her thoughts,” said Baptiste.
“Would you like your mother to speak up to your schoolmaster? To Mr. Welch?”
“Well—”
“See—that would be an embarrassment. If she went to my school and spoke up to Father Neil, he would soon have her muzzled. No one speaks up to him. Our father is master of this camp, and he knows how to run it. His blood boils fast, and this is good. I will be like him.”
“What a temper you’ll have!” sighed Baptiste.
Near dawn, Sacajawea rewrapped her braids with thick grass stems, brushed off her skirt, and strode back into camp.
Eagle bathed the long red welts on Sacajawea’s back and arms, making guttural sounds in her throat the whole time. Charbonneau left the tepee but soon came inside and took a bowl of water from the water bucket and rummaged around in his roll of clothing for a straight razor.
They did not see Charbonneau all day. He had gone to the camp of Duke Paul with Baptiste. When he did come into camp, he looked triumphant.
“That duke fellow, he hired me; Baptiste, he stay here,” he announced. “He agreed to wait one more day before pulling out. He was impressed with my knowledge of the Big Muddy. Maybe we go up as far as the Mandans.”
“You have a job as trader for Woods,” Tess reminded him. “I thought you’d talk him into taking me. I’m older than Baptiste.”
“You keep your mouth shut or I give you the whip. I am the man. I do as I please. I am boss.”
Tess backed away, and Charbonneau spoke more briskly. “Do this, do that! Get the job for me! Zut! You get your own work. You go to hell! I decide what I do!”
Sacajawea felt heartsick. She had hoped that Baptiste would have a chance to be on his own for a few weeks—maybe learn how to do interpreting well so that he could get away from Charbonneau. Yet, there was something else. She could not look at Charbonneau without pulling her blanket up over her mouth to hide her laughter. His face looked as if it had been put together from two faces that did not match. The upper half was deeply tanned and weathered. But his cheeks and chin were as white as those of Chief Red Hair’s new woman, Miss Harriet, who never went outdoors without a veil to shield her complexion. She tried not to stare, but she could not help giving a quizzical glance now and then at Charbonneau’s face where he had shaved off his whiskers so that he would make an impression on the strangers. His dark eyes bored into hers.
“You want more of that whip, Little Bird?” he asked.
“If you do it again, I will leave and you will not see me again,” she said, her eyes hard and black.
By the next morning, Duke Paul was anxious to move up the Missouri, and he came to help Charbonneau carry his gear out. He watched Baptiste brush the horses to get the mud out of their hair. The boy smiled. The duke began to talk with Sacajawea and motioned for Baptiste to help translate for them. Again he remarked on Baptiste’s likable personality and responsiveness. Sacajawea felt pleased and puffed up a little. She made him a cup of tea with extra sugar.
Charbonneau cupped his hands and shouted to the other three waiting men.
“Patience,” said Duke Paul. “I want to ask your good woman’s permission to take that young boy, Baptiste, to my homeland. I will stop in Saint Louis for him in the fall.”
Baptiste looked at his mother. “He said he would be in Saint Louis when the aspen grow orange and theoaks are fire against the sky. He will take me to his home across the waters.”
Sacajawea was dumbfounded. This man from the faraway land wished to take her son with him. When would he let him come back?
“He says I should stay a year, maybe two, maybe three.” Baptiste held up his fingers. “I am to learn his tongue even better than now, and speak to his people about the land here.” His heart was pounding.
“Ai,” answered Sacajawea quietly. “Now ask your father.”
“Oh, all right, if you want to go for a while,” said Charbonneau with no thought, eager only to get on with this trip.
“It is then a promise,” said Sacajawea, smiling. “He will go with you. You will take care of him, then return him to me.”
“You can be sure of that,” said the duke, his face reflecting his astonishment that the Indian mother would be so willing to have her son travel to a land she’d never heard spoken about before.
He did not know her thoughts. She was thinking about all the things her son would have in his head when he came back. Maybe as much as Chief Red Hair. This was the thing to do. Let him go. Her love for her firstborn shone from her eyes. Could she be without him? Not know what he was doing? She looked at the duke and saw his brown eyes soften and felt his great strength, and she knew he was the one to finish making a man out of her son. He would not break the gentleness in the boy as Charbonneau would. Her heart would drop without him, but it would break if Charbonneau took over the training of him.
For a long time there was silence. No one noticed Tess edge up until he spoke. “He gets pay for traveling to your homeland?” he asked laconically.
Duke Paul whirled around. “I never cheated anyone.”
Baptiste reached out to shake the duke’s hand on their agreement. “When the aspen change, we will leave.”
“I will be at Chouteau’s store inquiring about you, you can bet on it.”
The sun rose high and warm. The men walked on the high spots, trying to avoid the mud holes.
“We cast off now!” shouted Charbonneau.
“Fine,” said the duke, bowing low toward Sacajawea and Eagle, who had followed the men for a last farewell.
“I know this river well,” said Charbonneau, nodding his head up and down. “We’ll use the poles as long as we’re in the overflow here. When we get farther upstream, there is a point that rises high and pushes out into the river. The river has not overflowed there because the banks are high. We’ll tack across to the other side.”
Roudeau nodded, understanding. “We’ll take the ropes, then.”
“I’ll handle this,” Charbonneau continued. “We’ll take to the bushes.”
“Bushwhack?” Roudeau said slowly.
“Certainly—grab the bushes, hang on, and pull the pirogue along by hand. This is the best way.”
“Won’t that be slow?” asked the duke.
“Nothing’s slower. Maybe when we get to the bluff we can use the sail. You have one?”
Roudeau nodded. Then the men took up their poles and at the duke’s signal felt the bottom and pushed away from the shore. Slowly the pirogue moved forward as the men fell into a sort of rhythm of walking and hauling. When they had made a hundred yards of progress, Eagle waved and turned to return to the tepee. Sacajawea waved and shook her head wondering how long it would take Duke Paul to discover that her man did not know how to counsel others, especially about river travel. Charbonneau was a hog. She thought, Perhaps he will speak to the duke about going across the water to his homeland in place of his son, taking this other thing away from Baptiste also. She felt certain that after the river trip the duke would come to Saint Louis and ask only for Baptiste. He would be glad enough to let Charbonneau stay behind.5