The Great Treaty Council, officially known as the Fort Bridger Treaty Council of 1868, was highly significant as it was the last treaty council called for the purpose of establishing a reservation. Thereafter, all reservations were created by executive order.
A legend grew out of this council that Porivo [Sacajawea] spoke. The elders present insisted that she was there and that she arose and addressed her remarks to Washakie’s subchief, Bazil [Shoogan].
From The Shoshonis: Sentinels of the Rockies, by Virginia Cole Trenholm and Maurine Carley. Copyright 1964 by the University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 219–20.
In 1861, a stagecoach route was established along the Oregon Trail. A year later, because of Indian attacks, the mail and passenger coaches were withdrawn and transferred to the Cherokee Trail, which gradually became known as the Overland Trail. It was known that Washakie and his tribe were not involved in the killing of emigrants along either trail.
The white men let Sacajawea know that she could ride the stage to Fort Hall anytime. They seemed to think she was somebody important. She did not know that Bridger had told them she was the squaw who had guided Lewis and Clark to the west. She visited Suzanne and went to Fort Benton, and she followed the Bozeman Trail to Virginia City, where she set up her tepee among the Bannocks. Now she asked no one about Baptiste Charbonneau, but she looked and listened, still hunting her firstborn.
One evening, she was getting on the stage leaving Virginia City. She had decided to go as far west as California, leaving her goods in a pack with a friendly Bannock family. Henry Plummer, the road agent, serving as sheriff in the country around Virginia City, lounged up against the stage.
“I knowed they all let ye ride for nuttin’ because ye are something big to the whites and Injuns. Ye har headed southwest. But ye cain’t go this one time. Here, take these home to yer kids.” He placed three sacks of flour on the ground. Sacajawea looked from the flour to the sheriff. He motioned with his thumb. She climbed off, determined to go another time. That night the stage was shot up and robbed.
A scout for the government came into Virginia City looking for an interpreter. Sacajawea talked to the man, John Renshaw, after the stage pulled out and told him she would work as interpreter for him. He seemed overjoyed to find a squaw who could speak English so well. He slept outside her tepee that night in his bedroll, but before the night was over, he must have felt the cold wind and crept inside the tepee and lay on the robe beside Sacajawea.
“Will ye be my woman?” he muttered quietly.
She grabbed for the nearest weapon, the thighbone of an elk, and brought it down on his head. Renshaw left as soon as he got his bearings.
She struck her tepee and again packed her belongings and took the stage toward home, not even looking back. There will be a better day for going southwest, she thought.
When she arrived at Fort Bridger, she put her packs down by the gate and went inside to see what had been going on since she had been gone. Washakie and several Lemhis stood at the store counter. Jake rummaged around under the counter.
“This here came in a couple of weeks back with a load of provisions from the U.S. Govmint. It’s for you. Has your name right here. See? That there stands for your name.”
Washakie was perplexed at why the U.S. Government would send something so small to him and not to all the other men in his tribe. He stood where all could see him and slowly opened the package and then beamed with pleasure.
Sacajawea moved closer for a better look, then cried, “Yi-hi! It is something grand!” He was holding up a silver medal bearing the likeness of the Great White Father, Andrew Johnson. Washakie walked through the crowd smiling. When he passed Sacajawea he held out his medal and pointed to the Jefferson peace medal she wore around her neck. Then his smile became broader because her medal was smaller than his. It was a medal for a squaw.
“So, then—you are not the only one called chief in our band who wears a fine neckpiece,” he said.
“That must be a gift for your service and friendship to the white men over the years. Especially for staying out of skirmishes with emigrants on the Overland Trail,” said Bridger, coming through the Lemhis to shake Washakie’s hand.
A few weeks later, Washakie wore his medal on a visit to Salt Lake City, where he let his picture be taken. He was given the picture several days later. He thought his outfit looked so handsome with the medal hanging from his neck that he had the superintendentof Indian affairs at Fort Bridger send the picture, carefully wrapped in soft white doeskin, to President Johnson.
That summer the Lemhis camped on the bank of the Sweetwater. Each day Toussaint raved against the white men who put boundaries on the Shoshoni land. He ranted against the Mormons because of their farming in lands no one wanted but which used to be a place the Shoshonis could wander through at will.
“So—the white men have not yet taken our horses or our guns,” said Shoogan, trying to calm him. Shoogan was even more a cripple now in his left leg. Whenever he walked, only the toes of his foot touched the ground, and his knee remained stiff. “Why do you think we can’t learn to grow vegetables and live peaceably with the whites if we must?”
Challenged to explain, Toussaint could not, but would only insist that they would all starve in time. “God! I don’t want to die like a hungry wolf,” moaned Toussaint. “That argument about the Shoshonis being farmers in order to live in peace is as old as shit. We’ve all seen it before. Instead, we’ll be like crazy, starving animals, scratching and biting at each other.”
‘Take hold of yourself,” said Shoogan calmly. “For many years our people lived in the mountains on roots and fish, and seldom had large game. We survived. Our chief, who was brother to the woman you call umbea, let no one go more hungry than another. Now Washakie is the same. None of us will go hungry if he does not wish it.”
Toussaint looked sideways at Shoogan. There was something in his words that disturbed him. He could not put his finger directly on it.
The next summer the tribe moved back to Fort Bridger. By then it was well known that the white men often killed the buffalo just for sport, taking the tongue, a piece of the choice hump meat, and perhaps a loin from the hindquarter, while the remainder was left to rot. The builders of the transcontinental railroads lived on buffalo meat. Their hunters left the thick hides to decay. Then the eastern market for hides opened, andthere was the last systematic slaughter of the remaining buffalo. Countless carcasses were again left on the prairie to rot.
Sacajawea found one such slaughtering ground near Black’s Fork while she was out digging sunflower roots one morning. The smell was so sickening she pinched her nostrils together. The screech of the crows was so disagreeable she could not stay. There were enough buffalo left to rot to feed Washakie’s band for four, maybe five years. Sacajawea recalled the dead buffalo in the Comanches’ land. She came back into camp with a look of disgust and sickness on her face.
Someone asked, “What happened?” Another said, “What did you see out there?” Others asked questions, then said, “Tell us.”
Washakie was angry. He sat with Sacajawea for a long time. “They’ve gone too far! I gave a promise not to raid the white hunter! But they take our hunting ground wherever they please and then insult us by this waste!”
Some of the men wanted to prepare for war immediately. There was little laughter in the camp. Washakie tried to keep his people calm. He spent much time in his lodge making medicine. Once or twice he came out and walked along the paths, frowning. Once Sacajawea spoke to him, but he did not answer. Days passed, and he came out searching for omens in the cries of the night birds, the pattern of rising smoke, or the formation of clouds. He could make no prediction or decision from any of the signs.
He seemed not to notice the other bands of Shoshonis that came to make camp near Bridger’s Fort; even the Bannocks moved in. By the second week in May, there were ninety-six lodges of Shoshonis and forty-nine of Bannocks. Rumors of another treaty council began.
Sacajawea spoke often with Crying Basket during this summer about living in the white man’s way. She was certain there was no other way open to them but to accept quietly the land, food, housing, and education the white men offered.
“There is an iron horse puffing black smoke through the village of the Cheyennes. Smell of Sugar told me of plans for a trail for this iron horse in the neighborhood of Bridger’s Fort,” said Crying Basket, combing her long black hair against the sides of her clear face. She resembled her mother; only she was taller and her hands broader.
Sacajawea put her hands to her mouth in disbelief, then wondered aloud when the white tops were coming with more supplies. “It does not take long to use the meat they bring or the flour in biscuits.”
“I can tell you something else,” said Crying Basket, lifting her small daughter, Berry, off the floor and setting her comfortably on her lap so that she could plait the child’s hair. “I hear that one of the women of your son Baptiste boiled the bacon of the white man in water and swore that the meat was not fit to eat. She threw her bacon portions out to the dogs, and she did not know what to do with the flour. I thought this Baptiste knew the ways of the white man and would tell his women what to do with such supplies. I think it would be good, maybe, if you taught them how to cook the bacon on sizzling-hot iron plates, and to save the grease to make flour biscuits.”
“That man can tell his women how to cook if he wishes hot biscuits or his bacon crisp. It is not my affair,” Sacajawea said sharply.
On July 1, 1868, Sacajawea stood with the other women to watch the supply wagons come in with bacon, flour, sugar, coffee, beads, mirrors, trade cloth, stockings, tobacco, and woolen blankets.
The Shoshonis pushed and shoved to get their share of food and gifts being distributed by the agent, Mann, who sat with a ledger at a small wooden table set out in front of the fort’s gates. A steady file went on until the Shoshonis were all given their share of food, stockings, a blanket, and tobacco, and ticketed so that Mann would know which Shoshonis had been through the line already.
Finally, when the goods were distributed and the happy families sat on the grass in relaxed picnic groups, General C. C. Augur came through the fort’s gates. Sacajawea looked at him and wondered if he was somebody newly appointed to give out more gifts. She pinched Crying Basket and pointed, saying, “I think the menwearing the best clothes should shake hands with this important stranger.”
“Oh, Mother,” hissed Crying Basket, rocking gently to and fro on her haunches with Berry, who was nearly asleep, “he is going to tell us who he is. Then the men will know what formality to take.”
“Well, he moves slower than I,” Sacajawea hissed back.
Augur was perhaps thirty years old, with a ruddy, smooth-shaven face, wide-open blue eyes, and a good, though somewhat plump, figure. On this day he was dressed impeccably in the uniform of the U.S. Army. He had been authorized by the Indian Peace Commission at Fort Laramie to come to Fort Bridger for the sole purpose of negotiating with the Bannocks and Shoshonis.
Washakie stepped forward. Sacajawea nodded her approval. Washakie took the pipe offered him and passed it through the four cardinal points, to the sky, then the earth, then took a long puff and handed it back to Augur. As unobtrusively as possible, another man came to sit cross-legged between Augur and Washakie. He was the interpreter. Crying Basket pinched Sacajawea and pointed. The interpreter was Shoogan. Augar told the Shoshonis and Bannocks to seat themselves in a great semicircle to hear the council of the generous white men. “The Great White Father wishes to give you land into which no white man will be permitted to go.”
There was a formidable grunt from Washakie. Some of the Shoshonis seated alongside him let the air out of their mouths in a loud manner. Sacajawea looked expectantly to see what the white man might do next.
General Augur continued speaking, his face not changing expression. He suggested the bands move as soon as possible to this land, where there would be wooden lodges and men to show the right way to plant seeds and harvest vegetables. He said the children would go to school. Augur’s voice went on, in a humdrum manner. Shoogan waved his arms and tried to keep the Indians awake as he did his best to translate.
“For each man there will be a coat, hat, trousers, shirt, woolen socks. For each woman, a skirt of flannel, trade cloth, and woolen socks.”
Sacajawea moved her shoulders in the warm sun. She removed the new red blanket and got up. This was too much talk. She was going home. Crying Basket pulled her back as Chief Washakie stood to put an end to this talk.
“We will come here again tomorrow,” translated Shoogan. “At the end of all the talk, if it is satisfactory with our chief, he will mark the paper with an X. The paper must say the white hunters will never come on our land.”
Sacajawea looked at Chief Washakie. He had dignity and confidence. His people loved and respected him; the whites respected him. She thought of the leaders in the Comanche nation and could think of none so great as Washakie, none who would sit calmly in the hot sun listening to talk of supplies of sickening sweet meat of the cow, and of giving the children the cow’s milk with its sick taste. This Washakie fully understood what was happening to his people under the overriding push of the white men in Shoshoni country. He wore his eagle feathers and a fresh breechclout, the wide apron hanging to his knees in front and behind, and new moccasins and leggings to the thighs, and across his arm hung the thin red-wool blanket.
The next afternoon, Augur stood and held up his hand. The People murmured.
Shoogan translated loudly. “This I have to say first. The Bannocks will receive four thousand dollars’ worth of goods from the treaty funds and a place in the Shoshoni Reservation land.”
Another murmur went through the crowd. The Bannocks were standing, each one moving forward to press the hand of Augur to seal the bargain. Augur held up both hands and made the cut-off sign. He was through talking, and it was time for Washakie to say something. The Bannocks stopped and stumbled back to their places in the semicircle.
“I should get up to walk around myself,” sighed Sacajawea. “My legs would feel better then.”
“Do not complain, Mother,” said Crying Basket. “Mostof us have the patience to sit politely while our chief speaks.”
“Humph,” muttered Sacajawea, wiping perspiration from her forehead with the red blanket.
Washakie shook General Augur’s hand, then took Shoogan’s hand and pumped it. Solemnly he pointed his own redstone pipe to the four directions and to heaven and earth. Then he stared into the bright sunlight at the semicircle of Shoshonis and Bannocks. No one stirred. No one was disrespectful. He handed his pipe to the general. After a few moments his deep voice projected to the outer edge of the semicircle.
“I am laughing because I am happy. Because my heart is good. As I said one day ago, I like the country you mentioned, then for us, the Wind River Valley
“I want for my home the valley of the Wind River and the lands on its tributaries as far east as the Popo Agie, and I want the privilege of going over the mountains to hunt where I please, never to be disturbed by white hunters.”
Then Chief Taghee of the Bannocks spoke. He had a straight body and an impassive face with jutting jaw, strong, flat-planed cheeks, and deep-set eyes. He wore denim trousers, a cotton shirt, a broad-brimmed black hat, and moccasins.
“As far away as Virginia City our tribe has roamed. But I want only the Port Neuf Country and Camass Plains. We are friends with the Shoshonis and like to hunt with them, but we want a home for ourselves.”
Augur raised his hands to tell the assembly to return to the council tomorrow, when the formal treaty would be read. He unbuttoned the top of his coat, then quickly rebuttoned it, saying, “I am not acquainted with the country to locate a reservation for you, but when someone comes to lay it out, then the Bannocks will be told to move there.”
There was much buzzing about this treaty around the evening fires. The Bannocks were still not happy. The Shoshonis made it a time of feasting and merriment.
In the firelight Sacajawea caught sight of Toussaint sitting far on the edge of the camp with his two women, Dirty and Contrary Woman. His children ran aboutnoisily, ragged and unclean. Her heart sank to see these children learning no responsibility to themselves or others. She’d caught two of the boys creeping up to her tepee and peering inside the rolled skirts on warm afternoons. She longed to invite them inside and hold them. But she could not. She had told Toussaint not to come to her lodge, and that meant his family also. One child, Race Horse, looked much like Toussaint—with tousled, thick hair and a round, flat face with shining, large eyes. His mouth seldom smiled, but did not seem sad, only resigned. The other, Squirrel Chaser, was small and built like his mother, Contrary Woman. Yelling Falls, a little girl, was not kept at her lodge, but permitted to toddle everywhere after her two older brothers. She was naked and streaked with dirt and grease. Joy, a girl of about fifteen summers, was oldest. Joy was Dirty’s only child. She seemed shy, staying close to her lodge.
Several times Sacajawea knew the boys pilfered small things from her tepee, like a butcher knife, a leather box half-full of tallow, and bits of meat. Toussaint never seemed to challenge where the youngsters found their new items. Neither he nor his women seemed to have an understanding of children. Toussaint possessed a certain amount of natural affection, but he never showed it, and he was erratic in his dealings, so that the boys never knew whether they would be punished severely for some minor offense or ignored when guilty of some far more serious misdeed. The children naturally feared their father, and Toussaint sensed this. They ignored their mothers. But they held Sacajawea in some respectful awe, always hoping that one day they might be permitted to hear the mystical stories she could tell.
To Toussaint, Sacajawea seemed the consistent ally of his children. This gave him a feeling of being defied in his own lodge, which added greatly to his resentment. Yet he never hinted that he wished to move out, nor did he ever speak to Sacajawea about his feelings. She knew he was irritable whenever his children came near her tepee. She never once invited them even to sit with her during a tribal meeting or festival. She watched the four children with pity in her heart.
She often thought, Is this the way all our people willbecome? Will they be irresponsible and shiftless when the white men give them land and provide food and clothing? Will the incentive to be a proud, dignified being be lost? Even Toussaint, a man who received the white man’s learning, has lapsed into a state of dependence upon the white men for food and clothing.
And the white men—what are they? Some are leaders and learn quickly. There are good and bad among them. The white man will not let himself be dominated by another and also wishes to be free in his own way.
Toussaint sat there at the edge of the camp to remind Sacajawea of old Charbonneau and his sullen ways, to remind her of the good times she had with Otter Woman when Toussaint and her firstborn, Baptiste, were small.
One evening Sacajawea asked Shoogan if one of his children could sleep in her lodge. The child chosen was Little Red Eyes. He was old enough to ride a horse, but not old enough to hunt. He was pensive, but not sad. He sat quietly with Berry around the stew pot until it was his turn to eat. Then he asked, “Grandmother, tell the story of another feast day. The one that honored you where the whites gathered around.”
“Oh, that was when the Saints from Salt Lake gathered around and touched the silver medal I wear.”
“What did they say?” begged Little Red Eyes.
“Oh, ‘Something grand,’ they said.” Sacajawea took the child’s hand and let him sit close to her.
Berry sat in Crying Basket’s arms. Berry was small, with piercing black eyes.
“My father has papers the men from Salt Lake gave to you—why?” asked Little Red Eyes, as though it were a secret he should not have told.
“Ai, those are precious papers, signed by the leader of the Saints, their chief, Brigham Young. He said I was a good woman and his God approved of my ways. That was on the paper. He told me to keep it forever. I will not live forever. So—I gave it to your father to keep because he will live longer. He can pass it on to one of his sons—Lance or you—to keep forever. Then you will know, when you are a man, that your grandmother was a friend of the whites and tried to understand and live in peace with them.”
“Did you make the design on the leather wallet the papers are in?”
“Ai, I learned to sew the wild-rose design from the Mandans, who live to the north.”
“Oooo, you have lived everywhere,” said Little Red Eyes, yawning sleepily.
“No, not in the east, where the white men come from, and not in the far west, California, where many whites are taking the trail now.”
“But that is why our people call you Chief Woman,” said Little Red Eyes. “You have been over more land than most any other woman.” He patted Sacajawea’s knee. “I believe you are Chief Woman.”
“That is because I am your grandmother,” laughed Sacajawea in a pleased way. “Every child loves a grandmother who has time to tell stories and listen to what is in the bottom of a child’s heart. Here, you wear this medal while I tell you a story to make your eyes grow heavy with sleep as Berry’s have done.” She slipped the Jefferson medal over Little Red Eye’s head and watched it settle on his bare neck and chest. It was large for a child, but it did not seem to weigh him down. It is good-looking on a child, she thought. She took it off and slipped it back around her own neck, after telling the story of the great whale on the west coast.
“Something grand,” repeated the child. “Only you and Chief Washakie wear such a thing, and yours came first.”
Early the next day, the Shoshonis and Bannocks were in their large semicircle before General Augur, Washakie, Taghee, Shoogan, and other important men.
Washakie did not wait for Augur to begin talking. As soon as the pipe-smoking was over, he stood up and asked, “How is the land going to be marked off that the Shoshonis can call it their own?”
Augur looked surprised that a Shoshoni would ask such a thing. He began to explain the meaning of latitude and longitude as determined by the sun and stars. Shoogan began to use hand signs and stuttered in his interpretation. Washakie was respectfully silent. When Augur was finished, Washakie asked, “Would an Indian ever measure the height of a mountain that hecould climb? No, never. The legends of his tribe tell him nothing about quadrants and baselines and angles. Someday I hope that I learn more about the sun and stars and how to measure the land from them. For the present I prefer to have the boundaries of my reservation explained in terms of rivers and mountains.”
Washakie then looked through the surveyor’s transit that had been brought out. “White man’s medicine,” he murmured.
Augur ran his finger between his neck and collar several times. Then he pointed out that the reservation would be temporarily shared with Chief Taghee and his Bannocks until they could move to Fort Hall the following year. The reservation would begin at the mouth of Owl Creek and run due south to the crest of the Divide, between Sweetwater and Popo Agie; along the crest and the summit of the Wind River Mountains to the North Fork of the Wind River; due north to the mouth of the North Fork and up its channel to a point twenty miles above the mouth; then in a straight line to the headwaters of Owl Creek and along the middle of its channel to the place of the beginning.
Chief Washakie smiled broadly. The boundaries of the Wind River Reservation had been defined in a language he could understand.
The remainder of the treaty had been gone over the day before, and nothing was left but the official signing.
Sacajawea stood up as if to stretch her legs. Crying Basket motioned for her to sit down until the signing was over. But the urge to add something to this important treaty was greater than she could bear, and she found herself standing in front of the semicircle blurting out her words before they could be swallowed.
“The white men are great chiefs. Our chief is great. The Bannocks’ chief is great.” Her heart was beating so fast she thought everyone could see. She moved slightly so that she could see Shoogan. Her hands shook, but the words could not be held in. “I listen and wonder. Does the white man know that the Bannocks want a place of their own now? If they are going to live near Fort Hall and it is already known where, send them today. They will be happier. You gave the buffalo hunters of our tribe a plow to break up the land. What is aplow? Why would anyone want to break up the land? Seeds can be put in the ground by making small holes with a stick. I can show the hunters that. Maybe I should show the white men before they open up our land, the way you heard the man called Augur explain, with this thing called a plow. It is nothing we want. And these stockings the white man gives to us, we do not need them. But if we did, we need more than one pair. I know these stockings, they do not wear—whoosht—gone before one season has passed. Moccasins are better.”
Sacajawea looked over the crowd of people, then at the general. Her nervousness came back. Had he understood her words? Shoogan was making hand signs. Was her tongue plain enough, her English words slow enough? Shoogan’s head shook as though he approved, and there seemed to be a smile at the corners of his mouth. She breathed deeply and faced him.
“These red blankets are so thin. They will not keep a small child warm in cold weather. We need two of these. Or we need to throw them away and use our buffalo robes. They keep the wind off our backs. But even so—my heart is glad. The white men have given back our land, our woods to walk in. A woods where I can walk for half a day and never come to the edge is one of the finest gifts to give anyone. On this land I can place my feet on some old, grown-over trail of our ancestors and follow it until it ends; then I can make a trail of my own. In this land I can feel the springiness of moss and leaves beneath my feet, hear the crunch of pinecones and the snap of dry sticks. The outcropping boulders covered with lichen will cause me to stop and marvel at their small green twigs, like a painting.
“In spring I will find a patch of bloodroot, dogtooth violets, and wild moccasins. There is peace in those places where trading and squabbling are not known.”
She was more calm now, and her voice low and slow. Her words were absorbed by the whole assemblage; no child cried out as she talked, and when she lapsed into Shoshoni, Shoogan, noticeably moved, spoke her words accurately to the white man.
“There will be squirrels and birds to greet me. I may sit on a rotting stump and see the new sprouts of kin-nikinnick coming up, telling me that life dies, but life lives on.
“In summer I will see branches overhead, making it cool underneath. I will look through at Father Sun and the blueness of the sky and wonder about the endlessness of our land.
“I will go to the hills in the fall and drink in the tangy smell of the yellow grass, leaving behind the noisy trading post, to walk in quietness.
“In winter the trees with no leaves show the backbone of life. They teach us to face the stark realities of life. I will feel the crystal coldness of wind in my face, and the cold, deep sleep of Mother Earth. The white chiefs have given us back the land that belonged to us for all ages. I am grateful.
“I, then, give this gift to the white man. I let him walk alone in our woods so that he will receive peace with himself.”
No one stirred for a few seconds. The quietness spoke as an ovation for something reverent, akin to a prayer.
In later years this speech became something woven into the winter tales and traditions of the Shoshonis. It was to be forever remembered. Those who heard it kept it alive by retelling it to those who had not heard. It is still told on the Wind River Reservation.
With their X’s Chief Washakie and his subchiefs, and Chief Taghee and his subchiefs, signed the treaty officially titled the Treaty with the Western Shoshoni and Bannocks, but more generally known as the Great Treaty of July 3, 1868. This signing was actually an anticlimax after Sacajawea’s speech. The reservation was almost as large as the state of Connecticut. To have, however, was not to hold. For later, by the cessions of 1872, 1896, and 1904, it was reduced to less than one-fifth the original area.
Despite treaties, atrocities were committed by both whites and red men against one another. During the Shoshoni fall elk hunt, the women put up a temporary hunting camp and went with their men. Sacajawea, Crying Basket, and Dancing Leaf were waiting for Shoogan and Smell of Sugar to bring down the grazing elk ahead. The women were hidden behind some tallcottonwoods watching the men approach the elk slowly. Crying Basket moved quickly to the other two women. “Quick, my man motions that enemies are near. Quietly, now.”
Hidden behind some brush was Smell of Sugar, who motioned for the women to stop and squat down. In the valley below they saw several braves strutting in ladies’ bonnets. Colored silks were thrown garishly around their shoulders and waists.
“I think they are Cheyennes,” said Shoogan. “The whites were in that white top. See out on the trail. They were going west, maybe following a group of white tops that went by two, three days ago.” He breathed deeply. “I will ride my pony around the other way and warn the other hunters. It is best if you go quickly back to camp with the children by going around the other side of these hills.”
He was gone. No sign, no noise was heard in his direction. Below, they heard the cries of a white woman and her children as her man was killed and mutilated. The leader of this small group of Cheyennes grabbed the younger child and hit his head against a tree. He dropped the jerking body and brained the second child in the same manner.
Sacajawea made a low, guttural sound in her throat. “It is not right. It cannot be,” she murmured. Crying Basket moved around the hill and retched in the bushes. Berry stood waiting for the older women to lead her. She was pale and shaking.
That evening, the men came back with only two elk. They had not seen what the Cheyennes had done.
Around the evening meal, Smell of Sugar told about the white man called Chivington. ‘This man was given a feast in a white village because he killed the Cheyenne chief Left Hand, and the same day he also killed women and children in another Cheyenne camp. Now the Cheyennes are avenged with what you saw on the trail of the white tops.”
Shoogan spoke up. “I heard that the half-breed son of the man known as Bill Bent led his own band of Dog Soldiers and lives as a Cheyenne constantly raiding the whites.”
Sacajawea’s hand went to her mouth. She recalledthe Cheyenne woman of Bill Bent, Owl Woman, and how kind she had been years back. Was this half-breed her son? she wondered.
Smell of Sugar said, “Half-breeds are not the same. Their world is split, and there comes a time when they can no longer straddle it. They will become white or Indian all the way. When they become Indian, they become more wolflike. When they become white, they are dandies, not wanting to do any hard work.”
Shoogan said, “If Bill Bent were in charge, he could have all the Indian nations at peace. It is he and Kit Carson who know how to deal with hostile men of any nation. It is said that he wept like a squaw, alone in the woods, when his Owl Woman was scalped by Pawnees.”
Sacajawea gasped. The voice of Shoogan went on, “But those whites do not interest me. They are traitors to their own people. They are nothing but Cheyenne-lovers. I think a man ought to work for his own tribe and not mix in the affairs of another, the way the white men do. We ought to stand up to those white men and tell them we will live in the old way, the way we know and love best. They have no business ordering us around on our own land.”
All the way back to the main camp, Sacajawea felt the ground was cut from under her feet. To know that Owl Woman was gone caused a penetrating loneliness to pervade her body. The old ways were leaving. Her friends were leaving.
The next several days, little things seemed to go wrong. She could feel her own emotions shaking her usually fine balance. The grandchildren had the power to disturb her as never before.
One day she found herself on her knees, hugging the weeping Berry to her breast in a passion of self-blame. She had just taken a beaded necklace away from the child that was made as a gift for Dancing Leaf. Oh, oh, she thought, why do I take my feelings out on a baby? She should be permitted to look and to feel the necklace. Why didn’t I give it to her? I could easily have made another. Why did I grab it away from her childish eyes so fast?
It was that very evening that Toussaint hesitatingly came to her tepee in much embarrassment.
“I want you to leave my boys alone,” he said, shamefaced. His head hung toward his moccasins.
It was after the evening meal and Sacajawea was tidying the lodge before the others came back from some visiting. She was alone.
Toussaint looked around the tepee. It was the first time since his arrival that he’d been inside. Now he looked strangely complacent.
She looked at him questioningly, not understanding his request.
“What is the matter, Mother? You want to deny that you let those boys have this?” He took the Jefferson peace medal from his back trouser pocket. He knew full well she had not given the boys the medal—they had seen its shininess and taken it.
But Toussaint knew that Sacajawea would deny it.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I did not think to tell them they had no real use for such a thing and it was best left here with me. Perhaps they liked the neck string—see, I have beaded it a little.”
“Mother,” said Toussaint, “you mean to tell me that you would let them have this and say nothing?”
She shook her head. She was not sure what she would have done if she had found that the medal was missing. Toussaint had jockeyed her into a position of appearing to have condoned the boys’ taking anything they wished. She was thinking it over. Angry as it made her, there was nothing much she could do about it. She had long ago decided never to criticize Toussaint and his women, never to offer them advice, never to really notice them if possible.
“This medallion rightfully belongs to me. I am called your son, and so it is mine.”
Sacajawea was appalled and stepped back. He was trying to take advantage of her. Her arm darted out, and she pulled back the medal.
“It rightfully belongs to Baptiste. It is mine until I find him or until I see fit to give it to someone,” she said.
“You will give it to me, or at your death it will be given to me,” he sneered. A secret look of triumph wasin Toussaint’s eyes. “Years ago, just after my brother came back from Germany acting like some kind of dandy, the two of us were in Saint Louis selling peltries and we met Bill Clark in Chouteau’s trading post. Old Bill Clark was so glad to see Bap he hardly noticed me at first. When he asked about you, I was the one who stepped up and told him right out about how you’d run off. Bap still felt so bad about that he went off to look at some tooled saddles while I told Clark the details.”
Sacajawea’s hands flew to her mouth.
“So I told him that wolves had found you sleeping on the prairie and devoured your flesh to the bone. I said I knew it was you by the little blue stone on the leather thong around your bare neckbones. And I saw the surprise and hurt that came to his face.”
Sacajawea stared, stunned.
“I used my head and suggested that Clark not say a word to Bap about your death because it had upset him so. Clark knew how sensitive he was and had seen how he’d left me to tell the facts. So he agreed not to discuss it with Bap.”1
Sacajawea could think of nothing to say, nor did she really wish to say anything. The perfidiousness—the utter perfidiousness—crushed her. She drew herself down into a knot, staring unbelieving, wounded beyond any power of expression.
Toussaint looked at her, standing away from him. Suddenly there came conviction. He truly had known all along she’d been alive, even though no one could find her. Sacajawea could take care of herself no matter where she went—on the prairie, in the mountains, anywhere. Why had he made up such a story and told it to a man he really respected, Bill Clark—and then half believed it himself for a time?
She had withdrawn to the side of her tepee. Her face was averted now, and she placed a hand on her pallet and guided herself down upon it. Toussaint could not see her, but he knew she was crying—crying deep inside herself, not sobbing or weeping, but breaking far within, her tears being tears of the soul and infinitely more poignant than any tears of the surface.
He said no more. He’d come again and see to it shegave him the old Jefferson medal. Then the Shoshonis would think he was something—maybe look up to him the way they looked up to old Washakie. Slowly he moseyed on toward his own tepee, grimly, stubbornly silent.