The once roaming bands of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico are Comanches, a branch of the great and widely distributed Shoshone family. Their language and traditions show that they are a comparatively recent offshoot from the Shoshone of Wyoming; both tribes speaking practically the same dialect. Once the tribes lived adjacent to each other in southern Wyoming, then the Shoshone were beaten back into the mountains by the Sioux and Blackfeet, while the Comanche were driven steadily southward by the same kind of pressure. How soon the Shoshoneans turned into Comanche Plains Indians remains uncertain. They passively took on Plains features, absorbing essentially material rather than social and religious traits. The earliest unquestionable reference to these people goes back to 1701 and places them near the headwaters of the A rkansas (Colorado); in 1705 they were found in New Mexico. Since Comanche and Shoshone differ only dialectically, their separation cannot date back many centuries.
ROBERT H. LOWIE, Indians of the Plains. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1954. Reprinted by The American Museum of Natural History, N.Y., 1954, pp. 216–17.
When the cold snap broke, the Quohadas moved on and made camp in the bottom of the southern end of the great canyon, which was sliced through by millions of years of cutting water, sculpted into twisted shapes by storms and sand-edged winds. It was not steep-walled; the sides sloped into massive steps banded with many colors of rock, not too steep to be climbed. The stream that had cut the canyon was there, on the floor, washing over the red clay. There were groves of scrub cedar and a few age-old sycamores primitively growing only the inner layer of its bark every year.1 The Quohadas knew the sycamores were ancients, surviving fungus diseases, storms, and floods to lend their branches for strong arrows and digging sticks. The Quohadas showed each tree respect by choosing each branch carefully before hacking it off with knives or axes.
The men found small game rabbits and fox to shoot with the polished sycamore arrows. There were wild carrots and parsnips near the stream that could be dug easily with the hardwood digging sticks.
The men planned a buffalo hunt as soon as the weather warmed enough. The hair on the beasts was loose this time of year, but it did not matter as the hide was to be used for tepee covers, anyway.
Sacajawea did not plan to go with the hunters because she was a third of the way through her time. She was pleased to have another child, but not as ecstatically happy as she had been a year ago. She was almost afraid to feel great happiness, as though it would be an omen of bad times ahead. She stayed in the main camp and watched after Ticannaf, Wild Plum, and Big Badger.
The sun was back in unbelievable warmth, and the stream flooded its banks. The canyon was faintly tinged with fresh green shoots. Big Badger took the small boys swimming in a quiet spot under some willows in the stream. For being only five summers old, Wild Plum swam well, his arms and legs churning through the water much the way a dog swims. Sacajawea had agreat pot of boiled rabbit ribs ready for them when they returned.
One day the sweetish, slightly sickening smell of bloated buffalo carcasses filled the canyon. The familiar smell brought Sacajawea’s girlhood with the Minnetarees sharply back to her mind. She wished to see for herself and suggested a walk to look for carrots to go with the boiled rabbit. Big Badger nodded and motioned for the two little boys to follow along. They pushed through soft clay where the willows were gnawed down to stubs, broken, mouthed, and gummed off by starving animals. The floodwaters covered the low spots. Sacajawea held her nose, then let go and smelled the rich, rotten, stinking carcasses as the redolent smell rolled upwind the way water runs upstream in an eddy.
She wondered why she had combed her hair so carefully and put on her best tunic, tied the sky blue stone around her neck, and put the small pouch with her few valuables on the string at her waist, just to walk in this horrible stench. It is like going to meet old memories, she told herself.
Wild Plum tugged at her skirt saying, “Wheee-ou! What is that smell?”
“You will see soon enough,” promised Sacajawea, noticing Big Badger hold his nose.
The floodwaters forced them out of the bottoms and up onto a wide ledge. Below, Sacajawea saw the stream, astonishingly wide, pushing across willow bars and pressing deep into the cutbank bends. She heard the hushed roar like wind as the water rushed below. There were the buffalo balloonily afloat in the brush where they had died. They saw a cow float around the deep water of a turn with her legs in the air, and farther on a heifer, stranded momentarily among flooded rosebushes, rotate free and become stranded again. Then, abruptly, ahead of them dead eyeballs stared from between spraddled legs, horns and tail and legs tangled in a mass of bone and hide not yet, in that cool bottom, puffing with the gases of decay. They must have piled against one another while drifting before one of the winter’s blizzards.
She clung to Ticannaf’s hand and with the free handeach pinched his nose shut. A little later the stench was so overpowering that they all breathed it in deeply as if to sample the worst, and looked to the left where a huge bull buffalo, his belly blown up and ready to pop, hung by his neck and horns from a tight clump of alder and cottonwood where the snow had left him. They saw the breeze make cat’s paws in the heavy winter hair.
“Ai, that is enough, when you find them in trees,” exclaimed Big Badger. “We will go back with no carrots for our meal. This is a bad year. You can see the bad. You can smell the bad.”
Sacajawea looked at Big Badger, weathered and scarred as the country had left him. His eyes were black and steady, though, marksman’s eyes. His long fingers plucked a strand of new rice grass. He bit it between his teeth. His head went slowly up and down.
“Lost Woman, you have been here before?”
“No, Big Badger, not here, but far up north, where the same thing happens to the buffalo—and the people”—her breath caught—“eat the soft, putrid flesh.”
“Pobrecita,” he said, “we would all be so ill with belly cramps we would die.”
“I could not eat.” Her eyes came down and found Ticannaf watching her steadily. “There are more beautiful things. We must find them for the boys.”
They hurried back toward the village, holding their noses. Wild Plum hung back and pointed. By his toe was a half-crushed crocus, palely lavender, a thing tender and unbelievable in the mud and stones.
“Beauty,” said Big Badger, “is here, where you find it.”
Sacajawea bent to pick it up. Smelling the mild freshness she handed it to Wild Plum, who said, “It will not take the place of wild carrots.”
“So—who can eat after this stink,” grumbled Big Badger, putting the five-year-old on his shoulders and trotting homeward. Sacajawea and Ticannaf trotted behind.
Big Badger suddenly made the “stop” sign with one hand, slashing it in the air behind him. There was movement in the Quohada village. The camp should be quiet at this time of day. Only the grandmother of Wounded Buck was left behind, and she was asleep inher tepee. He held his hand behind him, slowly moving it back and forth, meaning, “Be still.” A dark figure moved without sound, as in a dream. It carried a rifle. It mounted a saddled horse. Another figure did the same. Sacajawea could see they had on blue jackets or coats. Her breath caught. They were white men. She felt a curious splitting sensation, as though she had suddenly divided into two people. She wanted to run to those men and ask them questions, to look into their eyes to see what they knew of her grown son, or of Chief Red Hair. Then her other half wanted to run, hide, get away from them; they were the enemy and she their prey. She was afraid of them.
The four of them waited, crouched down behind red sandstone and some sparse cedar. The village looked like a camp of the dead. There was no sound in it now and no motion. Suddenly the echo of gunfire came along the canyon walls. Acrid blue-gray powder smoke mixed with the rotten-carcass odor. Then some other men on horses came down into the canyon. They sat calmly and formed two lines, then waited. Then there was a piercing noise, familiar to Sacajawea. “The sounding horn,” she whispered. The charge had been sounded.
Twenty-two men let out a holler and rode madly into the canyon. There was no resistance. When they charged, they charged. The mud was churned up. They pumped bullets into the tepees. A man fell from his horse, then another, hit by their own lead ricocheting off the rock walls.
Big Badger was furious. He swore constantly in the Mexican-Comanche tongue.
The camp had been swept through by a scythe. The crumpled tepees were empty and covered with mud. Smashed drying racks lay broken in the sunshine. Cooking pots were overturned and left behind. Buffalo robes and discarded clothing were strewn all over the ground. Lodgepoles were scattered.
The white men seemed weary and disgusted that they had found no Comanches. They kicked at the pots and spat, then mounted their horses. Enough was enough. They put the two dead men across their saddles and led the horses up the canyon walls.
“Lie still,” warned Big Badger when Wild Plumsquirmed in the damp grass. “These men are out for revenge. It may be that they were attacked by Apaches and many were killed. The white man considers all Indians the same.”
“But, Big Badger,” said Sacajawea, “we did nothing to them.”
“Ai, nothing. But we are Indians. Indians killed their comrades.”
“That is not fair,” said Wild Plum. “Quohadas are peaceful, not ferocious like the Tonkas.”
“Ai, we know that even among the Comanches there are good and bad, but they do not. They have no understanding. It is bad,” sighed Big Badger.
The white men were not quite finished. Two men rounded up the Quohadas’ ponies and mules, and two others stayed behind to set fire to the tepees, then fled up the rocky wall. The lodgepoles burned, and then a stink of scorched hides filled the air. In less than thirty minutes the great village of the Quohadas was an inferno. The crackling tepees burned like torches, and then the ancient sycamores began to burn.
Deep inside her belly Sacajawea felt the knotted sickness of hatred for these white men.
The afternoon breeze fanned the flames, and tepees collapsed in showers of orange sparks. The old wood of the lodgepoles cracked with loud reports as the licking flames found their hearts.
Greasy smoke hung like strange clouds. It was hot in the canyon.
“A large village can make a lot of smoke when it burns,” said Wild Plum, lying with Ticannaf in tearless wonderment.
All night they watched the fires burn and smelled the stink that boiled up out of the earth. It was the first time Sacajawea had been fully aware of the enmity of the white man. She had no idea why they had come or where they had come from. She began to wonder if they were all like the Mexicans—friends one time and enemies another. She was hurt and confused. Now the only certainty in her life was the love she felt for her man, Jerk Meat.
“It is gone,” said Big Badger. There were tears inhis eyes. Wild Plum lay close to him and asked, “Is my mother all right?”
“That is the one thing we can thank the Great Spirit for. The early hunt took everyone out of the village.”
“And we can thank Lost Woman for wanting carrots for her stew,” added Wild Plum.
“Ai,” agreed Big Badger. “We wait here one more night to make sure the palefaces do not come back. Then we go down and look.”
“I’m hungry,” whispered Ticannaf.
“This is all the jerky I have. Chew it slowly,” said Sacajawea, pulling a piece of hard, stringy meat from a small leather pouch attached to her waistband.
They dared not build a fire, and they could feel the damp, cold earth through their clothing. When it became dark, they huddled together for warmth. Sacajawea slept fitfully with her legs curled around the small body of Ticannaf. The night dragged. Daylight brought no comfort. The place did not seem like home. When the sun rose, it helped. Big Badger went over the cap rock to scout around for the white soldiers. He was gone a long time.
Sacajawea and the boys played games with small stones as they lay in last year’s damp weeds. “Can we have a fire?” Ticannaf asked.
“No, it is better not to make any more smoke,” she replied.
Big Badger came puffing up the side of the yellow rock. He spoke fiercely. “Do not think about what you see. Go down and wrap the body of Wounded Buck’s grandmother. She was shot five times. Those white men are brave to shoot an old, helpless grandmother and then burn down a deserted village. Yaaagh!”
As Sacajawea went down the slope toward where the village had been, she was shocked by its appearance. A few of the lodgepoles had not burned. The whole area was trampled by horses’ hooves. Wild Plum hung back among the scrub cedars. “What is it?” she asked.
“My mother’s sewing basket is over there. See, all the things are spilled in the red mud.”
“You pick them up and wipe them off, then bring the basket and whatever else you find to the far end ofthe village. Big Badger is there cleaning off some lances and war clubs.”
Sacajawea gathered up the body of the old woman and gently laid it on a scorched buffalo robe. She rolled the body in the robe and tied it securely. She built a small fence for the burial hut from odds and ends of sticks. She put an iron kettle inside with the body and several of the better robes, along with a bone spoon and a skinning knife with no handle. She did the best she could to make a roof over the burial hut from sticks and mud and stones.
Then she began to pull out bedding and extra clothes that were not burned beyond use and put them in a pile. Big Badger was looking through the mess for tools and cooking gear. They put what was usable at the far end of the camp and covered it with extra robes. There were not many lodgepoles left. Pronghorn would have to move the camp to a place with lots of trees.
Wild Plum found the old blue coat that Sacajawea cherished, but there was nothing else to be found except some small blue beads and a couple of hawk’s bells around the burned hole that had been her tepee.
By late afternoon, clouds had come rushing over the sky. Big Badger made a small fire with twigs and dry grass. They ate some pemmican they had found in a leather sack half-buried in mud beside the stream. They slept. When they woke, the fire was out and a fine mist was falling.
The hunting party came back through a driving rain. The night was black and wild around them, and that was good. There was no chance of being seen.
Their scouts had seen the taibo, white men, and they had been able to travel around them without being seen. They were tired. They had ridden hard and long and with heavy loads. Their hunt had been successful. But they were shocked at the desolation and destruction in their camp. They were disheartened at the news that all the extra horses and mules were gone. The women began to make temporary shelters from the scorched hides and robes that Sacajawea had piled up. No one complained that someone else was using her robe. They were too shocked and worn out. They worked together to make a dry place for the children to sleep, then builtthemselves temporary lean-tos. The smell of smoke and wet, burned leather was strong in their noses that night.
Spring and Hides Well asked Sacajawea to sleep in their shelter. It was small but warm, with the men on one side and the women on the other, making no space at all in the middle. They all slept fitfully, listening to the water run down the lean-to and drip off the ghost-white sycamores.
They woke late. The rain had stopped, and the hides were damp and steaming. They loaded the scorched remnants of the village onto the shivering horses and moved out, seeking a fresh spring camp.
The evening winds blew across the purpled plains. The pecans that lined the muddy stream whispered in their dark branches. Doves called softly to each other. Sacajawea cooed softly to her small son, Ticannaf. She had found peace again. She and Jerk Meat were together, and the village was whole again in a sheltered place where the food supply was good. No one spoke of the Time of Blackened Tepees.
Sometimes scouts came in with reports of white hunters in the base area of the mountains and along the wide river. Pronghorn did not understand how the presence of the white men could be so widespread.
Jerk Meat delighted in Sacajawea’s changing moods. Sometimes she was like a small child, and then she would be altogether a woman, as complete and as complex as a woman could be, passionate and eager, strong as he was, sometimes so violent that he fell back drained and aching with the hollow pain of his love for her. Sometimes she was almost like another man; they walked and hunted together, and it was not correct to say he loved to be with her in the forest. She was the forest. She was everything he saw and listened to and smelled. She was the same as the birds and the wild animals they found. She was the waters of the stream and she was Mother Earth.
He learned laboriously to speak her broken English and French, the love phrases first, and then in the depth and extent of her passion with him she forgot the alien expressions and reverted to her own Shoshoni tongue. He was studious and eager in his quest to find thatwhich she loved best when they were together, and it was not long before she forgot that she had ever known a man before him.
When he went on raids he came back and told her everything he had done during the time he was away. As she listened gravely, he found himself remembering unimportant little things he thought would amuse her and in some way bridge these short periods of separation. He pictured his world as being filled with people and events of only minor importance; he wanted her to know, as he knew, that his lodge and his life was with her.
And she was as full of gossip when he came to her as he was. He listened to all the things she told him with great soberness.
One night they entered their tepee, and, seeing Ticannaf asleep, she slipped out of her clothes and felt the quickness in Jerk Meat. She could never get over her feeling that there was something of the untamed animal in him. He pawed at the earth in pretense of tackling a black bear alone with only his hunting knife. His hand moved toward the unseen beast. Quickly he plunged the knife at the throat. He made the death roar of a bear deep in his throat. He pantomimed butchering the bear and offering a choice bit of meat to the east, west, north, and south. He pretended to shove the meat into his mouth. He wiped his hands on his bare thighs and chest.
“Woman, wash me!” he commanded.
She brought the buffalo paunch full of warm water and poured it over him. “I will get more.” But he grabbed her up in his arms and danced around with her on the muddied ground of the tepee.
“My Little Fox, my woman. Together we live.”
Neither cared about the muddy floor as they danced until they fell. They rolled until they were wedged against a tepee pole and a leather storage box.
Later, lying next to her, half-asleep, he asked if they could revisit the place where they had spent their first days and nights.
“You know it should never be,” she said.
“Why not? For us?”
“Ai, for us, but if we do all these things that webelieve are all right for us, and others do the things they think are all right for them—no one will obey the tribal laws and there will be no respect for anything.”
“You are getting older and wiser, Little Fox.”
“So—we can think of that time,” she added, “but we must not try to relive it or go there.”
He stroked her body. “I thought about you all the time I was in San Fernandez trading with the Mexicans.”
“Are there pretty women there?”
“No, I can see no pretty women but here, Pajarita.”
“You call me Little Bird?”
“Ai, you are beautiful and your voice is music. Remember the times you played the metal mouth box, the harmonica? What sounds! Would you like me to trade for another in Mexico so that you can sing our papoose to sleep?”
“But Little Bird? Why?”
“Oh, Pajarita! I am so much in love with you.”
Softly she said, “That was my girlhood name.”
“Oh,” he said, smiling. “It is a most suitable name. I should have thought of it before. I shall always call you Little Bird. You are my Bird Woman.” Then his eyes shone and he teased, “Still, you are foxy at times.” There was laughter in his voice. “Why did they not notice that also when you were a girl?” He kissed the soft part of her neck.
“It is good here,” she whispered into his ear, holding his hand very tightly over her heart. “There is nothing between us, nothing. Remember how you said we would be just one, you and I? That is how we are. You and I know it is the custom not to make love from the moment we are sure of making a new life until the child is weaned. Yet we have never heeded this custom.”
“Ai, customs—we have broken many, you and I.”
“What about others? I have thought about that.”
“Perhaps—no one talks.”
He lifted her chin and kissed her.
By late summer Sacajawea had a papoose strapped to her back. The child was named Surprise, because she was the first female grandchild for Pronghorn and Hides Well.
One afternoon as Sacajawea added wild parsnips to her cooking pot, she looked up and saw how things seemed stained a sickly yellow by a weird cloud light. “I hope there is no more rain in those dirty gray clouds,” she said.
“We ought to get some nice hide for moccasins tomorrow if this heavy buffalo sign means anything,” said Jerk Meat, unconcerned about the coloring over everything.
Wounded Buck wandered by, then stopped to talk and smoke with Jerk Meat. He swatted his arm. “That buffalo gnat—” He looked around for a stone, found one, knocked out the dottle from his pipe, blew through the stem to get the spittle clear, and started again. “The buffalo gnat is a no-see-him—no bigger than a speck of dust in the tail of a man’s eye. He will bite you on the hands and face and make you think someone is poking at you with a burning stick. Or maybe with porcupine needles. He will crawl under your shirt and leggings and in your moccasins and pinch you until he is full and fat with your blood. He will leave a bump as big as the mound on the front of a prairie dog’s hole”—he held up his thumb to show the actual size—“and as sore as a moccasin blister.”
“I’ve been eaten by some in my life—it was nothing,” said Jerk Meat.
“No, by themselves they are nothing, but in clouds or swarms thick enough to choke a mule, they are something.”
“Like what?” asked Jerk Meat, scratching himself.
“Like”—Wounded Buck stretched the statement long—“like causing the horses to stampede, run wild in all four directions.” He pointed four ways.
The cloud of gnats drifted in shortly after the Quohadas had eaten their evening meal. For several hours the people in robes, the horses at the pickets, and the loose herd, tail-slapped, bit, brayed, scratched, cursed, or groaned—each in his own way fighting off the waves of invisible insects.
After a little letup came a second, thicker horde out of the night sky. The suffering of the Quohadas and their animals became more intense. Ever the camp dogs yipped.
Jerk Meat’s face was a beefsteak of welts, his hands swollen and puffed until they could scarcely open and close, yet when he went out to the horses with some of the other men, he found he had just begun to suffer. There was a fearful whining hum of the tiny winged invaders, and the mules were braying and kicking, the horses whinnying, and the children crying. Ticannaf tried to stay under his robe, but it did no good. The baby, Surprise, kept up an incessant screaming, her tiny eyelids swollen shut. Sacajawea found it was all she could do to keep from screaming herself. She wished for rain, snow—anything to stop these invisible stingers. She tried keeping Surprise under a robe, but it was too warm and the baby cried. She scratched and thought she must be going insane as the hum became louder.
A third swarm hit the camp. The horses broke before it to go plunging and whinnying off into the night with the braying mules, the hammering drumfire of their panicky hooves rising briefly above the ear-ringing hum of the insects and the screaming, helpless curses of their human pursuers.
Then there was nothing but the continued whine of the whirling black host muffling the bitter profanity of the weary, nerve-worn Quohadas.
The morning following the gnat stampede was spent in riding into prairie draws and gullies, rounding up what was to be found of the horses. Several of them were so swollen and totally blinded that the men shot them. They had lost half the herd.
The people were hideous with puffed, inflamed faces, splitting lips, bleeding ears and noses. Some of them, too, were actually blind, their eyes swollen to sightless slits.
Surprise’s eyes and mouth were so badly swollen that she could not nurse. On the seventh day, her fever burned so hot that her small body could not be cooled. Her stomach cramped, and her screams turned to moans. Sacajawea made a salve with squashed yucca leaves and rubbed it on the infant’s face, arms, and shoulders. This was as good a remedy as any. It was simple and did not cost anything. Hides Well came in and questioned the salve. She thought perhaps it lacked authority, and she wanted to call the Medicine Man,
Kicking Horse. Sacajawea said she could not imagine what else Kicking Horse could do, and anyway, he was busy applying salves to others with swollen faces.
The news of the baby’s illness traveled quickly among the tepees, for sickness was second only to hunger as the enemy of the Quohadas. And some said softly, “It is a shame to lose so many babies. It brings any mother to her knees.” Some of the women nodded and went to Jerk Meat’s tepee. They crowded in and make little comments on the sadness of sickness affecting such a small one, and they said, “She is in the hands of the Great Spirit.” An old woman with swollen hands squatted down beside Sacajawea to try to give her aid if she could, and comfort if she could not.
Kicking Horse hurried in, scattering the women like prairie hens. He took the child and examined her and felt her head. “I will try,” he said, “I will try my best, but I have little hope.” He placed the down from a dried milkweed pod on the baby’s feet to give her power for running later in life. He shook his rattle and squatted by the unconscious child. Twice he spread his spittle on her closed eyelids and prayed deeply. She died before the sun reached its midpoint in the sky.
Again Sacajawea was engulfed by grief. She was afraid to be alone. She begged Jerk Meat to take her hunting, on raids, anywhere. She cried, “Do not leave me alone with my thoughts.” She pleaded with Jerk Meat to let her go to Mexico. “I will skin your animals and pack your meat. I will be no burden. Spring has already told me Ticannaf can stay with her.” She knew that with the concentration required by physical effort, time passed rapidly. It was the passage of time that would heal her broken heat.
“My Little Bird, you are a fox today,” said Jerk Meat, picking at anything to bring strength back to his fragile woman. She had always been obedient and respectful and cheerful and patient, but now she was none of these. She could stand fatigue and hunger better than most men, but now she would not eat and she was constantly tired. She could arch her back in childbirth with hardly a cry, but this grief made her weep until her eyes stayed red and swollen.
“I was wondering,” said Jerk Meat hopefully, “how
I would get all the meat packed and put on the one extra horse I am taking. Now I have the answer. I will take two extra horses and you.”
“Ai-eee!” she cried. “I am happy. Thank you.”
The next morning they started, passing old buffalo wallows, shallow ponds with a few puddles of muddy water. The water was fouled with green scum and dead flies. It smelled bad. Some of the Quohadas dismounted, broke off handfuls of grass, spread it on top of the water, sucked the muddy fluid through the grass. Sacajawea was not that thirsty. A few stemless yuccas dotted the sand, and some stunted piñons began to appear among the jointweed. A river flashed its crystal waters as it tumbled out of the tableland. Now Sacajawea became unbearably thirsty.
Pronghorn guided the party down a series of natural steps in the stone, hitting the bank of the river without trouble. For a long moment nothing could be heard but the sucking sound of water going down hot throats. To Sacajawea’s surprise, the river was shallow and the water tasted warm. They forded to the opposite bank, and along a similar series of rock terraces, which looked as if they had been carved centuries before, they climbed out onto grassy tableland. The air was cool and refreshing. There were Mexican traders under the mesquite trees. Their oxcarts stood on the gray-green galleta grass that stretched into the distance.
Three days they camped here and feasted with the Mexicans, playing games of chance, pocar robado, pocar garanom, and showing off their horsemanship, the Comanches riding so that only the toe of one moccasin could be seen over the top of the horse. They would swing under the horse and come up on the opposite side. All the while they shouted, “Hiii-eee!” There was much tequila drinking.
On the third day, Kicking Horse saw a small pistol lying near some silver trinkets and brightly colored rebozos. He picked it up and turned it over. He liked it. “How much? What do you want for this?” he asked the first Mexican trader he saw.
“Quién sabe?” answered the trader, swaying and staggering after one of the señoritas who were with his party.
Kicking Horse found another trader. “Con su permiso,” he began.
“Lobo, give that to me!” The trader grabbed for the pistol. Kicking Horse hung on, and as he did so, the pistol was fired, hitting the man in the foot. Instantly the camp was pandemonium—Quohadas fleeing, Mexicans running to their carts for protection, firing helter-skelter at anything that moved. In the confusion a young Mexican girl, near twelve or thirteen, and her baby brother, about two summers old, ran to the opposite side of the camp and found themselves surrounded by Quohadas. Kicking Horse tried to fire the pistol at pursuing Mexicans, but there was no other bullet. He waved the gun about. Other Quohadas were nocking their arrows into bowstrings, then fleeing for their horses. Sacajawea was mounted and into a grove of gnarled piñons before she stopped to look around for the others. She spied Jerk Meat, then Wounded Buck, Pronghorn, and Red Eagle. Then she saw Kicking Horse coming toward them at a fast gallop with the Mexican girl and her baby brother tied in front of him.
“Let’s get out of here!” ordered Pronghorn. They rode fast and hard for the rest of the afternoon. By evening they were camped under a heavy, orange-colored sky. Then they learned that Wolf, son of Kicking Horse and Gray Bone, had been left behind, dead, on Mexican ground.
The Mexican girl sobbed quietly, her brother asleep in her arms. Sacajawea offered her water from a skin paunch. The girl spat at her.
“Agua fría?” Sacajawea asked.
“No, never!” shouted the girl in Spanish.
Sacajawea knew of the custom of the Comanches, to take women and children from other villages to use as slaves. The small children were adopted and raised as Comanche children. They were loved and treated well. She also knew that the Quohadas seldom took slaves. Her heart went out to this dark-haired half-child, half-woman Mexican. The girl’s hands were bound tightly. Sacajawea spread the soothing juice from a crushed yucca on her arms and wrists, but she could not undo the binding. The girl submitted with teeth clamped shut and eyes tightly closed. Sacajawea bathed her face withcool water and gave the baby a drink and a strip of dried jerky to chew on.
“Try to rest. You will not be treated badly. I will promise you that,” she reassured the girl in broken Mexican and with hand signs.
From then on, they traveled slowly, stopping when any shade appeared on the trail during the heat of the day, camping here and there a day or more to hunt antelope and buffalo or pick wild fruit.
A week after the skirmish with the Mexicans, they were nearing their permanent camp when they all heard a strange noise carried by the warm wind. Some rode a bit faster. The noise sounded to Sacajawea like the cackling of wild geese. She scanned the heavens but saw nothing. As they drew nearer, some said the noise sounded human.
With a loud whoop, Kicking Horse dug his heels into the flanks of his tired horse. The horse dodged overhanging branches of mesquite as it plunged forward, urged on by strikes from Kicking Horse’s quirt.
Then they all heard the voices, wild and savage. In the clearing was Gray Bone in the lead, mounted on a large roan with a stripe of white paint on each of its flanks and a black stripe running down each hind leg. A few other women were mounted on ponies; others ran awkwardly on foot, holding on to the legs of the mounted ones. They were all moaning the death chant. The scouts had arrived in camp in advance of the main party and spread the news of Wolf’s death. Then someone in the hunting party shouted, “Tell her about the two children you have brought to take his place, Kicking Horse! Tell her not to grieve! She has two for one!”
The wailing of the women stopped. Sacajawea looked around her as the women headed for Kicking Horse. He watched them for a few measured minutes, then pointed to his short-cropped hair—the mark of mourning—then to the two Mexican children. Without warning, he shoved the girl and baby off his horse to the ground. The girl, shaken, looked at the approaching women running straight for her. She bent over her brother as the women felt her arms and legs and pinched her here and there. All agreed that she was plenty strong and would be a good worker in the lodge of Gray
Bone. Gray Bone stepped forward and struck the girl across the head and shoulders with painful blows. As she beat her with her fists, her cries rose to maniacal fury.
Sacajawea thought of the time she was a girl and a captive of the barbarous Minnetarees. She kicked at the flanks of her horse and rode through the crowd. “Stop!” she shouted. None could hear. “Stop, she is only a child. She is badly frightened.”
The crowd fell away and turned to greet their men, brothers, and fathers. Gray Bone turned her back and ignored Sacajawea and the Mexican children. Sacajawea saw Spring, who grinned back broadly, but looked as though she had run for miles in the heat to meet the hunting party.
Sacajawea dismounted. “Ticannaf?” she asked first.
“He can ride better than Wild Plum. He has learned to make a slingshot and has a skinned knee.” Spring gave Sacajawea a quick glance, then looked at the Mexican girl holding the baby. “We have missed all of you and had no idea you would bring strangers to us.”
Kicking Horse, leading his horse, walked to the girl, pulled her to her feet, and indicated she was to lead the horse. Amidst the mob, he carried the baby boy triumphantly on his shoulder to his lodge.
“The girl is afraid,” said Spring.
“Ai. The Quohada life is strange to her.”
“I hope Gray Bone is not strange in her ways with her,” sighed Spring.
At her tepee Sacajawea had a sudden desire to pull her son up into her arms, but she knew she must not show that much emotion. She rumpled his long black hair and saw him run off to greet his father.
Every young Comanche boy learned to be self-reliant. By the time he was five years old he could manage a pony and a year later he could use a bow and arrows. He learned the signs and tracks of birds and animals. He learned the customs of the band and was seldom reprimanded. He learned to catch the night-flying bull bats with arrows whose foreshafts were split horizontally and hummingbirds with arrows whose foreshafts were split vertically. He was adept at shooting the large, prairie grasshoppers with the hummingbirdarrows. The young Comanche enjoyed eating the grasshoppers’ large, muscular legs.
The winter camp was five days south of the camp that had been burned by the bluecoats. The Quohadas were heavily loaded as they moved through the rough country hoping to find Mexican traders so they could buy more guns. Some of the men wanted to make a trip into Mexico before the cold came; some even suggested going to Fort Sill for revenge against the bluecoats. Others, including Chief Pronghorn, thought the bluecoats would leave them alone because they had fought a dead camp and did not want to be so tricked again. A few said they would like to find a wagon train and raid it for supplies.
After they settled in the winter camp, a council was called and the men decided to go to Mexico, attacking any wagon trains they found along the way. No women were allowed to go on this journey. Six-year-old Ticannaf begged to go and prove his bravery. Sacajawea held him close and pointed out gently that Big Badger was staying behind, and his cousin, Wild Plum, who was older by several winters, was not going.
Jerk Meat looked at his son. “It is time you had man-training. Do not let your mother teach you squaw-cooking or berry-picking while I am gone. Go to Big Badger. Tell him you wish to learn the art of arrow-making.” Jerk Meat made his eyes small slits and looked at Sacajawea, who was still hugging the boy. Ticannaf suddenly cried out in some distress. Sacajawea freed him and watched as the child put his forefinger in his mouth and explored. After a moment Ticannaf grinned and showed his mother and father a small white tooth. He rolled the tooth in the palm of his hand. He was a sturdy child with olive-brown skin and a mop of raven hair, which had never been cut. “Why did it come out?”
“It all began when Old Man Comanche walked beside a big river looking for trouble.” Sacajawea began laughing down at her son.
“Do not fill our son with made-up foolishness, Little Bird,” growled Jerk Meat, taking his shield from Sacajawea. He had four or five horse tails and a couple of mule tails attached to the rim to indicate he was anaccomplished raider. These tails were attached with leather thongs to the underside of the shield. An outside cover of thin hide protected the shield, and around the rim of the cover were six feathers held in place with sinew.2
As they watched the men leave, Sacajawea continued with her story. “Old Man came to some ducks swimming in the reeds. They asked what he had in the skin pouch over his shoulder. Old Man told them it was songs. They asked him to stop and sing so they could dance. ‘I’ll sing you a legend of the People,’ he said, ‘if you keep your eyes shut.’ He was thinking how good they would taste on a roasting stick. Old Man sang, and the ducks came out on the sand and danced. Then he took a stick and hit them on the head, one by one. But the last duck was suspicious and opened his eyes in time to save himself by flying away. Old Man built a fire and found a roasting stick, but he found one duck was missing and went off to look for it. While he was gone, Coyote came along and ate all those delicious roast ducks. Then he filled the empty carcasses with stones and put them back on the stick before he slunk off. Old Man came back empty-handed and hungry. He bit into the first duck, and all his front teeth broke off. He was madder than a mud dauber whose home is trampled on by a thick-skinned moose. He spit blood and swore and could not find anyone to get even with, so he picked on the small, teasing boys—like you, my son. He said that from that time on, all the young children would lose their teeth.”
Ticannaf laughed, pushing his tongue in the gaping hole in front of his mouth.
Sacajawea pulled a chunk of venison from the cooking pot over the outside fire and carefully handed it to Ticannaf on a cedar stick. ‘There are no stones in this,” she said, and went inside the tepee to pick up clothes for mending for the coming winter.
Buffalo were still present in the canyon, and some of the old men left behind went on hunts. Big Badger brought down one. The buffalo hair was good and thick at the start of winter, and the women decided to make a new bed robe for Big Badger. Spring and Sacajawea cut the meat in thin strips to dry on the rack. Hides
Well saved the heart and liver to dip into the gallbladder as delicious snacks for the next couple of days. Try as they would to shoo them away, flies, sweat bees, and yellow jackets gathered on the raw meat. Ticannaf washed his snacks off before eating. Wild Plum teased him, but he explained it was a protection that his mother had learned somewhere long ago among some strange people she had been with.
One afternoon as spring approached, Ticannaf tired of boiling hooves for arrow glue. Sacajawea took him with her as she rode up the rim of the canyon and onto the broad plain. They felt good. The early spring sunshine was warm on their faces. Ticannaf was beginning to ride very well.
He stopped and pointed down into the flat river valley where a stink was coming up on gusts with the wind. There were acres of whitening bones and the meat that had not been pulled off the slaughtered buffalo carcasses by scavengers was black with blow flies and putrefying in the hot sun. They were accustomed to the stench of bad meat, but this smell combined with the sight of the awful, plundered waste sickened mother and son.
Sacajawea was angry. As far as she could see, there were enough buffalo on the ground to feed the entire Comanche tribe, all the different bands, for nearly half a dozen winters.
“What did this?” asked Ticannaf.
“It must be the white men,” she answered slowly.
“Why?”
“They wanted only the hides to make them rich so they can live better than their neighbors. It is a greed that some men have.”
“What is this greed?”
“Oh, my son, it is a desire beyond reason for things—food, clothing, tobacco, guns, buffalo hides—or to manage other people. Greed makes men disrespectful of their friends, dishonest, and unkind. It is all bad.”
“No entiendo.”
“Men sometimes want things so much they will destory to get what they want. These terrible white men have destroyed good meat to get the thick hides of the buffalo. They can trade these hides for many suppliesand lots of tea, tobacco, coffee, even for the women they wish.”
“Were they soldados?”
“Quién sabe?”
Sacajawea gazed at the scene for a long time, thinking that the great beasts had been dead more than a week, and no one in the Quohadas’ camp even knew the hunters had been so near. Her heart was on the ground. She knew that not all white men were friends. She turned crosswind back to camp in the secluded canyon.
She wanted to call a council immediately, but most of the important men were not there and it was not the place of a woman to call a council.
Sacajawea was angry.
She waited four days. In the meantime she talked with several of the old men as they left the Smoke Lodge, where they usually gathered each evening to smoke and talk. No boys or women were allowed in there with them. They went because they were mostly interested in the past. As they smoked they could enjoy the latest gossip or talk about deeds they performed long ago. Sometimes they had fun asking each other such embarrassing questions as, “Did you ever run away from the enemy?” They had no need to struggle for prestige and were wise, giving sound advice to prevent quarrels and the making of enemies.
They told her what they had heard or seen. White shooters could kill as many as thirty to forty buffalo a day. Each shooter had a dozen hide skinners and they came with white-topped wagons. The skinner stripped off the buffalo hides, leaving the carcasses along with the big woolly head. They sold the hides to other men in the forts. It was hard to understand why the white men needed all those hides.
She stood in front of the Council Lodge and called everyone to listen to her news. Those that saw a crowd in the center of the village came to see what was going on. She began by telling about the thousands of skinned buffalo lying in the river valley and ended with, “The white men are trampling upon our hearts. What are we going to do?”
“Hey-yah!” There was general agreement. A solitary drum began to beat slowly.
Sacajawea moved away from the circle, letting some old men step forward to give their ideas. She went close to Spring, who had Ticannaf and Wild Plum beside her. Wild Plum was making faces at the young girls who were skipping among the crowd. The sun was sinking toward the treetops.
“I think we had better all go to our lodges and get our evening meal,” said Hides Well, moving among the women but staring intently at Sacajawea. “The men are not here, and we cannot do anything yet about the white raiders of our buffalo.”
A few of the women got up to go. A few more followed. The singing continued, and Sacajawea heard “Hey-yah” over and over as some of the older women stamped their feet when they sang.
Big Badger passed from the old men’s circle on his way to his lodge. “Bad, bad”—he shook his head—“this will be a bad night.”
Sacajawea did not understand his remark. She was still angry from seeing all those wasted, rotting buffalo. It was hard to fathom the irresponsibility of the act. The night air had a chill on it. The smoke of fires hung everywhere.
While Sacajawea and Ticannaf were putting their bone spoons away, they heard someone singing. It grew louder, like a death chant. Sacajawea felt her pulse pounding in her throat. Something unusual was happening in the center of the village.
They walked until the lodges thinned out and they came to the center of the village, where the ground slanted downward into a natural arena. Here half a hundred women squatted along the gentle slope on all four sides, with twice as many children and half again as many old men. At the sight of Sacajawea, a heavy silence settled over the crowd. Nobody moved; they were watching. Everyone knew that a turning point was at hand. Gray Bone’s lodge witnessed the first struggle. Not long before, Gray Bone had come out carrying the Mexican baby and dragging his resisting sister.
“It takes more than barking dogs to drive the fox from cover,” someone had called.
And Gray Bone had answered back, “And so that non-Comanche, Lost Woman, talks fire to you, but her deeds are ashes! I make the flame!” She directed the placing of two posts of newly hewn cottonwood into the ground. Leather thongs were hung from each post. Several gaunt-faced women, shockingly pale, and a lone woman drummer sat in an open space beside the posts. A fire of cedar was kindled nearby. Its light glanced off the feverish eyes and bared teeth of the women, who began to sing and whose fervor increased as the Mexican girl and her brother were dragged to the fire.
Contempt was on Gray Bone’s dark face. She moved to the center. The air was rent with her arguments for punishment. “We must not shrink from any measures!” she shouted. “These are offspring of the vile dogs who kill the buffalo, taking away our meat and hides! I have proof. This girl also takes. She takes extra broth for the wretched, squalling boy here. She steals a robe to cover herself at night. Hey-yah! I knew these two were sent to this village to gorge our food, pilfer our robes, so that we starve and freeze. Then their relatives will come and take over our village and our land. They are the enemy living in our camp!”
The children were bound hand and foot. The Mexican girl kicked and struggled; the baby cried.
Sacajawea sucked in her breath. She knew that Kicking Horse had kept them in his own lodge, treating them as well as his own children. The girl helped Gray Bone and the younger woman, Flower, with the lodge chores, and she seemed well liked. The baby was being raised as a son by Kicking Horse. He was to take the place of Wolf. Sacajawea pressed forward, using her elbows, until she reached the front row. In her everyday voice she ordered Gray Bone and the others to set the Mexican children free. “That,” she said, “is not the sort of children they are. They are innocent. They can be Comanches, and we will be proud to have them in this tribe. So—that should be your choice. Take them home. They are frightened.”
A few women raised objections. They wrangled for some time. Sacajawea repeated that Gray Bone had no other choice. The children were captives of her man,
Kicking Horse, and it was Gray Bone’s duty to care for them.
“I’ll take care of them!” Gray Bone shouted back.
Disconsolate, Big Badger moved behind Sacajawea, smiling helplessly. “You must come back. Lost Woman,” he said.
Sacajawea stopped, and the crowd behind her was suddenly silent. Her face was as gray as the skins in her tunic. She stared at Big Badger as though she did not know him.
“You must come back, Lost Woman,” Big Badger reiterated, nearly weeping with distress. “You cannot stop it now. You will only be hurt.”
But Sacajawea took one step farther and began to shriek, “Children, can you hear me?”
The Mexican girl flung her head up and screamed.
“Can you hear me?” shrieked Sacajawea, waving her arms like banners. “We are not savages who mistreat children. I gave you my promise. No one will mistreat you. We all know Gray Bone has seen justice done and now goodwill is to come.” Her Spanish was bad, but she used her hands out where she thought the girl could see.
A few in the crowd laughed; the rest were silent. A coarse voice cried, “Wait until Pronghorn comes—he’ll put a stop to it all.” Other voices joined in; the whole arena roared. Big Badger, near tears, pulled Sacajawea back. Still she shrugged off his hands.
‘Tree the children. They are not slaves!” she shrieked.
His eyes agape, Big Badger receded a step. His neighbors right and left quickly put out their arms to bar Sacajawea’s way. It grew very quiet, and Sacajawea suddenly realized she stood alone in the empty space between these Quohadas and the others, Gray Bone’s friends. Her knees gave; she reeled. Hides Well leaped forward because she thought she had been pierced by a skinning knife from the others, and supported her with her arms. The rest surged forward, too, and the empty space was obliterated by the crowd that pressed around the Mexican children.
There were several old dried scalps swinging from peeled white-willow wands implanted in the dirt. These seemed a clue to the occasion.
Gray Bone was in the center. In a shrill voice she recited glories that the Quohada men had performed in battle and then bragged about the number of slaves they had brought back from raids. Sacajawea could not recall anyone ever mentioning any other captives used as slaves since she had been with the Quohada band.
“And from now on, this tribe will punish anyone who kills our relatives or rips hides from our cousins, the buffalo! That is good, good, good,” Gray Bone sang in a high, reedy falsetto. “We must give our enemies a lesson if they do not behave.”
Some of the spectators’ mouths tightened at the effrontery of the boasting, but a few of the women applauded with approval after each recitation, stamping their feet, clapping their hands, and vigorously shaking their gourd rattles.
“We must punish them.”
Again there was agreement with hand-clapping, gourd-rattling, and shouts of ”Hey-yah!”
A dancer in a long-fringed tunic with vermilion-and-black stripes painted on her face and arms, her beaded ear pendants and copper wire wristband glinting in the firelight, burst into a frenzied gait. It was She Cat. With a long, slow sweep of her hands through her hair, down her sides, and over her hips, she indicated that her enemy was the Mexican girl. She Cat crouched and looked wildly about, as though her victim had escaped. She bounded after her and, with a grunt of rage, went through the action of grabbing her by the hair and swinging a club downward.
Sacajawea’s legs began to shake uncontrollably. The pantomimist pulled a knife from her bosom, stooped, and pretended to tear off the scalp. Then Gray Bone decided there had been enough pretending and snatched up one of the scalp poles. The black hair on the small willow hoop stirred in the air. Flourishing it triumphantly, she whirled around, arms spread, facing the four directions, one after the other, and tapped the Mexican girl on the head with the wand. A roar of approbation echoed off the canyon walls.
A wave of anguish overcame Sacajawea.
The Mexican girl and her brother were lashed to the two posts, back to back, the right hand high on one postand the left high on the other. Their bound legs were loosed so that their ankles could be secured to the bottoms of the posts. The two-year-old cried in pain, turning his head from left to right and keeping his eyes shut. Tears streamed down the girl’s face, and her tied-up arms twitched again and again as she wanted to wipe the tears off.
Sacajawea looked from right to left at the women clustered about. She was remembering that when an enemy kills a Comanche, the Comanche’s tribe kills or tortures its enemy captives in return. And at this remembrance a seed of fear germinated in the pit of her stomach.
Everything grew ominously quiet. The drum was hushed. All around, the audience stood gravely still, as if waiting for a new and more significant scene to start.
Big Badger moved with deliberation to the center, his arms flapping to the crowd. “Something is growing here that is bad,” he said, trying to shout above the women, who now began to chatter. “Stop and all go home. Take the children home. Our chief is not here to advise us. Nothing must be done this night that we cannot undo or that would cause the men who are gone to look upon us with shame.”
Gray Bone was not listening, She Cat was not listening, and the drummer, who was Weasel Woman, had begun again even before Big Badger finished. His head hung on his chest, and he was swallowed up by the crowd. Feet stamped in a rhythmic beat on the dirt to the beat of the drum. There they were, led by She Cat, the dancer, a long line of painted squaws with their hair plastered upward with cactus spines and river clay. Each carried a skinning knife in one hand and a gourd rattle in the other.
Sacajawea stared at them, entranced by the deliberateness and confidence these women showed. They seemed in no hurry, advancing slowly, with a half shuffle. They glided forward; then back, left and right. The onlookers remained still.
Sacajawea gaped at Gray Bone. Her stomach twitched, her buttocks jiggled, and the strands of hair poking up from the cactus spines waved in the wind. Bowlegged and pigeon-toed, she looked old and wizened,
her slit-eyes boring hypnotically into the eyes of the crowd. The rattling gourds grew louder, and Sacajawea braced herself. If Big Badger could not stop them, how could she? Ticannaf was clinging lightly to her skirt, yet his eyes were fixed on the spectacle in front of him.
The Mexican girl screamed shrilly. With a swift, dextrous stroke of Gray Bone’s knife, a tiny patch of thick black hair was scalped off. Next, the women dancers drew their knife points across the midsection of the girl and small boy, ripping their clothing and cutting deep red gashes.
Rage and revulsion shook Sacajawea. The chanting women formed a serpentine line. Sacajawea called out, “Stop! Stop! Do not harm them! They have done nothing to you!” The line slithered around the children, slashing at them. Sacajawea lifted her gaze to the stars. She sucked in a long gulp of the night air and began to pray to the Great Spirit. “Stop them, stop them, stop them!”
She heard the barbaric uproar, the advancing and retreating. Her legs were locked in terror and in an effort to keep them from shaking. In another moment a dull rushing of air sounded in her ears, the sky turned black, and the singing retreated to someplace far away. She felt ill. Hides Well again pulled her up. Her legs were so deadened that she found it difficult to walk.
“Do not do anything more!” Sacajawea croaked. “Go home! These are only children. They are frightened and hurt. Take them home!”
Gray Bone made more slashes across the shoulders of the girl. Her knife stabbed at the baby. His howling stopped. Blood flowed down from his chest to the dirt.
Sacajawea began to push forward.
“No, not now,” Hides Well said. “You cannot stop this. Even together we cannot stop this.”
Sacajawea had seen the dull fish-eyes of Gray Bone and the great sadness that lay like a lake behind her pupils. She also saw that the Mexican girl no longer breathed. The girl’s face was mutilated with knife slashes. Her entrails lay bloody upon the ground.
Gray Bone yelled, “They killed my son, but they will kill no more! Dirty Mexicans!”
Sacajawea realized Ticannaf was standing at her side.
She put her hand on his shoulder and wished he had not witnessed this evil thing. She thought there must have been something of the same kind of brutality, the same indifference to suffering and rights of others in those twenty-two white men who raced through the empty Quohada village, setting fire and burning tepees in a furious desperation to destroy the thing that would not fight back.
She could not sleep. She heard the restless turning and moving about that Ticannaf made in his bed. Her logic finally made her admit calmly and quietly in the middle of the night that it was she, Sacajawea, who had stirred up that great, black, ugly thing in Gray Bone and the other Quohada women this night. She had not meant that to happen, but not meaning such a thing did no good. It was that impulsive thing in her—the thing that caused her to speak before the women and children and old men as if she were a chief in council—that had been bad. She was the bad influence. She bit her tongue. Jerk Meat would have a perfect right to beat me, she thought. I am truly a bad squaw. Her tears of self-pity spilled into the darkness.
The next morning, Sacajawea rose in the gray dawn and with quick steps hurried to the center arena. There the two cold bodies hung lifeless, mangled, and crusted dull red. Sacajawea unbound them, stuffed the cold entrails into the gaping cavity of the girl’s belly, and dragged them to her own tepee, one at a time.
“Mother!” cried Ticannaf. “What do you do?”
“I am washing my conscience,” she told her son. She washed the bodies with warm water and wrapped them in clean white doeskins. She then wrapped them in heavy buffalo hide and bound them up together. The load was much too heavy for her now. She went to the lodge of Hides Well.
“Mother, I must have help. I must have help in making the burial hut for the bodies of the Mexican children so they will be safe from wolves and coyotes.”
“You, Lost Woman, have prepared their bodies for burial?”
“Ai, my mother. It is I who killed them.”
“I have thought of that. I have also thought it was bound to happen because I think something evil possessed Gray Bone. Maybe you started her last night, but if you had not been so angry with the white hunters, and had kept your tongue silent, something else would have unleashed the dark spirit in Gray Bone. It is tangled with the heavy grief she carries for the death of her son.”