One of Sacajawea’s great-grandsons, named James McAdams, who was the son of Nancy Bazil, daughter of Shoogan, contributed certain interesting information regarding the medal which Sacajawea had. This medal bore Jefferson’s head and his name, and had a gold rim about it.1
“I have seen it many times. At Salt Lake the people, when they saw this medal, said to Porivo or Chief, ‘Something grand!’ and they gave Sacajawea and her people who were with her a big feast in honor of her wonderful achievements for the white people when they were on their way to the big waters.”
Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from Sacajawea, Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, by Grace Raymond Hebard, 1957, pp. 200–1.
Washakie kept his band close to the Fort Bridger Agency. Often Sacajawea went to visit with Washakie’s Crow woman, White Curly Bear. White Curly Bear was always pleasant and always working hard. She was not old, but not very young, either. She had white hairs growing from a small mole on her chin.
One morning the two women were making moccasins together, each sewing on blue-and-white beads they had bought earlier from the sutler’s store inside Fort Bridger. Sacajawea was amusing White Curly Bear with stories about the antics of Ben York and the big dog, Scannon. “That black warrior was the envy of all the young native girls,” said Sacajawea. “They would trade anything to have a strong black child who resembled him, for strength and protection in their lodge.”
White Curly Bear looked up, her eyes big. She put a finger on her chin, then slid it slowly across her lips. “Shhh,” she said. “That is like a story of my own from long ago. Now, do not interrupt and I will tell you about a band of Crows that came to visit our tribe one spring. They had a magnificent chief who was dark as a burned log, except on the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands. His hair was curly like the buffalo grass, and he let it grow long and bushy. He had four women to take care of it. They tied it with grasses and put shining black crow feathers in it. He could speak the language of the white man and sometimes entertained travelers and mountain men. He trained one of his camp dogs to stand on its hind feet and bark for meat. He taught the dog to roll over and over. My mother told me he lifted me to his shoulders one time and danced around until I sang with delight. I was a child and remember only what my mother told. She said he went into council with the chief of our tribe and wore a beautiful white shirt with threads pink as the sunset on it. These threads were made into flowers like the wild rose. He was very careful with that shirt and would not let his women fold it. He himself did that, and he kept it in a parfleche high on a lodgepole peg—stop interrupting me.”
Sacajawea was waving her hands in the air. Shecould hardly keep her mouth shut in her excitement. “His name? What name did he go by?”
“How do I know? I cannot remember if my mother ever told me. He was a grand chief. He stood tall and big and black. He sang loud in a tongue that the Crows could not understand. He could sing up high and down low; he did not chant as the Crows do. My mother said he had once lived with white men.”
“The shirt—did he tell where it came from?”
“I do not know about that, except I think my mother said a white woman made it for him.”
“Did the shirt have lacing at the neck and wrists?”
“Ai, it did, and those beautiful pink flowers on that pure whiteness of the material. It was not like fine doeskin, but white as birchbark and soft and thin. Nothing like the Crow women could sew.”
Sacajawea was speechless. She did not know who else it could be but Ben York, wearing the shirt she had so carefully made for him in Saint Louis. She thought awhile. She thought about the people she had known and decided now that they did not die with the years, they came back to her. Her own world was as large as the whole nation of white men to the east, the Comanches and Mexicans to the south, the Mandans to the north, and now the Crows to the west.
“I cannot remember more except that the big black chief made little children laugh when he swung them up in the air and caught them in his powerful arms. He liked children, and he had many in his lodge.”
“It is some story,” said Sacajawea finally, her eyes fastened on White Curly Bear’s face as though she had not heard the end.
“You do not believe it?” asked White Curly Bear.
“Oh, I do, ai. It is just something that is gnawing at my thoughts. I think it is the Great Spirit telling us that we can all live together in happiness, no matter where we come from. If we get to know a person, we can like him.”
“Chief Woman, your mouth won’t stay shut. I feel like pinching it closed,” said White Curly Bear. “I tell you a childhood story, and you start telling about people getting along. Even members of families fight, you know. It seems to be the nature of people to be happy for atime, then to make some sadness, like fighting or death. Happiness is never long lasting. Now, why are you making a design of roses on those moccasins instead of the sun with rays?”
“I do not really know. It is just something that was in my mind,” answered Sacajawea softly.
“There is something going on that puzzles me,” said White Curly Bear. “That man called General Augur sent three men of the Arapahos to talk with my man. He would tell me nothing, except that the Arapahos wish to live with us on the Wind River Reservation. I could not believe it. The Arapahos are our enemies; they cannot be trusted. Why would they suddenly wish to join us now?”
“Perhaps if we knew them, we could be friends,” said Sacajawea.
“I hesitated to tell you this. But now it is time. It is the family of the man you call your son. There is a girl in that family who has made a friendship with an Arapaho youth. She meets him on the other side of the fort. It is the girl called Joy. You knew about this affair? That is why you talk about being friends with everyone?”
“No,” said Sacajawea, “I did not know.” She sat quite still, her head reeling with thoughts.
“And the man you call son has a loose tongue. He boldly told my man, Washakie, he was too old to be chief. He told him he could never win any battles or take a scalp now. He said further that the war blood has ceased to flow through his veins and that he, who was named Baptiste, should now be leader of the Lemhi Shoshoni.”
Sacajawea’s head reeled with the words. Several times she bit her tongue so that she would not say what came to her mind.
“Washakie has gone off on his horse alone. I do not know when he will return. He and I do not blame you for the ways of that man who calls himself Baptiste. We respect you as a true friend. What we do not understand is how you can have a son like that man.”
Sacajawea sat hunched over her sewing for a long time. To have publicly claimed a son that was not truly hers was neither right nor wrong. He was the son of
Otter Woman, her friend, and never would she let the spirit of this old friend find her rude or discourteous to something so valuable as the grown son of a true friend.
But she could not understand Toussaint. Maybe he’d had too much schooling or maybe it was the poor, thin cows of the white men he brought home pretending it was buffalo meat; maybe it was the raw trade whiskey that made him stormy one time and peaceable the next. She could not tell ahead what little things might set him off. She hated him and at the same time loved him.
Late one evening not long afterward, the girl, Joy, came limping to Sacajawea’s tepee. Her right leg was stiff. Sacajawea rolled up the legging and saw the two tiny holes with blood in them. By this time they were turning black and the flesh was beginning to swell and puff. Sacajawea pulled the lacing from the legging, and around and around she bound it as tightly as she could, just above the knee, twisting the knot with a piece of stick to stop the flow of blood. The girl fainted as nausea swept over her and the earth swam. At first horror filled Sacajawea; then, as it ebbed away, anxiety for the safety of this young life took hold of her.
“What happened?” she asked when the girl was conscious.
“I was out on the trail beside the water hole on the far side of the fort,” explained Joy slowly. “I waited for High Horse, the son of the Arapaho subchief Sorrel Horse. He did not come, and I grew impatient and stepped off the trail only to see the moon better.”
Numbness was climbing to her knee, and her leg was swelling terribly. Another great spasm of vertigo overcame the girl. She tried to fight the sickness.
Sacajawea’s decisive and authoritative voice cut across her nausea. “I’ll get your mother.”
“No, please, no. Do not tell them. Not any of them.” Then when the great twisting nausea was over, Joy knew she had vomited; her tunic was covered. She then found she was lying down on a bed of robes. She lay half-conscious as Sacajawea worked over her. Her clothes came off. A cotton cloth covered her.
“Be still now,” Sacajawea said. “Do not stir up your blood.”
The girl obeyed. She was small, light-complexioned, frail-looking. Her face seemed coarse and vacant. She seemed to have no volition of her own.
Sacajawea looked up as she heard footsteps. Dirty, the girl’s mother, pushed aside the tepee flap and entered. “The boy, Squirrel Chaser, told me she was hurt and had come here. I brought whiskey. It’s the one cureall. Where is she?”
“You’re not going to let her drink the whiskey?” asked Sacajawea.
“Ai.” Dirty’s fat fingers pressed at the leg’s swelling. “And so she found herself next to a rattler. It looks bad.”
Sacajawea wished she had called Dancing Leaf to come. Her mind seemed numbed for a moment. Crying Basket was gone with her man and baby to Fort Hall. She knew that drinking whiskey was not good for snakebite. Kicking Horse, the Comanche Medicine Man, would never use it. But he would use mescal powder to edge off the pain. And what else did he use? Her mind reeled and fell into her past.
“Please, do not give the child whiskey to drink. Pour it over the wound,” commanded Sacajawea.
Dirty did not answer. Her breathing was rasping as air hissed through her clenched teeth. “I can see my daughter has come where she was forbidden,” rasped Dirty.
“The child came for help. I could not refuse. See how the foot is swollen so it fills the moccasin? Take this knife and cut the moccasin off.”
Dirty put the whiskey to one side and began severing whang leather. The moccasin dropped off.
Sacajawea went out to find the yucca spears she remembered growing near the wall of Bridger’s Fort. Yucca spears to stab the swollen flesh. She was remembering what Kicking Horse would have done. Everything was dark near the wall and quiet. She ran holding out her hands to feel the tall daggers. She found the huge plant and whacked the long spears off one by one, trying to see where they fell in the darkness. The clouds moved across the face of the moon, and she saw clearly. Finally holding a bundle of sharp leaves, she ran back to her tepee.
Inside, she stood frozen. Dirty had put the girl’s swollen leg over a piece of firewood. “I’m going to cut the poison out.”
There was barely an exhalation from the girl.
Dirty then slid her arm back of the girl’s shoulders, lifting her. Whiskey went down her throat. The girl’s eyes flickered open.
Sacajawea’s face was beside the woman, disapproval strong on it. Dirty’s face mirrored fear and concern.
“No!” shouted Sacajawea.
Gulp, gulp, gulp—the fire swirled through the girl. It came too fast, and she coughed the sour, wet stuff all over her face. She felt it was all coming up; then the whiskey seemed to numb the sickness.
“She will take more!” scolded Dirty.
“No!” cried Sacajawea. “It is bad! It takes the poison through the blood faster.” She pulled the bottle from Dirty’s hands; half was gone.
Then Dirty’s rump was turned toward Sacajawea, the butcher knife in her hand.
Dirty spoke. “See there—the fang there? It has to be butchered out. Look at all that black blood.”
She had cut a sizable piece of flesh from the girl’s ankle. The flesh was dark and blood-covered. Sacajawea could see no fang in that mess. She wondered why she had not seen it before if it had really been there.
“Stop that!” shouted Sacajawea. “If you want your daughter to live! Pour some of the whiskey over the wound! Warm that blanket and tear it into thin strips. That hole in her leg has to be covered. Move faster, you butchering fool.”
“I think she’ll die, anyway,” sobbed Dirty. “No one can live with a leg that has such a big hole in it.”
Then Toussaint put his head through the tepee flap. He looked ready for a rampage. “Disgusting!” he said in a flat voice. “She’s a goner. No use working over her more. This is her reward for sneaking around with a dirty Arapaho. I just found out where’s she’s been. I ought to cut her nose off!”
It was not fear that answered. Sacajawea was not afraid. It was all the sores coming to one head. “She’ll pull through it if you keep your cheap whiskey out of her mouth and take your woman home with you. I’ll see to her this night myself.”
There was a moment of will against scared will. Toussaint’s words broke it. “A rattler’s bite means death. She let the Arapaho put his hands on her, and that’s same as a rattler’s bite to a true Shosoni.” He turned and marched out of the tepee, but halted at the flap and turned toward the inside, his face as black as anthracite. “Go to it! But her death will be on your hands!” He went on out.
These words of warning struck Sacajawea deep and added to her anxiety for the girl.
“She’s hardly breathing! You have killed my daughter!” Dirty wailed the death keen.
“Stop that! Her mind has only wandered away for a while. She may be all right.”
“No, no, she’s gone. She was a quiet child. Afraid of her father. She was going to run away with a rotten Arapaho. What would the rest of the tribe say to that? Arapahos are enemies, not some band to go to live with. Maybe you were helping her, you stinking skunk.” Dirty held the half-empty whiskey bottle to her own lips. Sacajawea pulled it away and told Dirty to find more firewood. Dirty wiped her hands on the shredded wool blanket and ran from the tepee.
Sacajawea washed the dark blood from the wound, noting that the leg above the knee was turning dark. Suddenly sharp lancets punctured the girl’s flesh. Wielding the yucca spears like a handful of daggers, Sacajawea stabbed again and again at the swollen leg, stabbing and striking with all her strength. Black blood ran in oily ooze from many holes at once. The smell of whiskey was in the enclosed air of the tepee, and it burned in the girl’s open wounds. Sacajawea poured most of it in the unnecessary hole Dirty had cut. Sacajawea wrapped hot wool strips around the leg.
Joy stirred. Her foot and leg throbbed with each beat of her heart. She tried to move the terrible hurting, but her leg did not stir. It was still night. The center fire glowed weakly. Somebody sat beside the pallet. “Mother?” said the girl through thick lips. “Mother, stop the pain.”
“Be still.” The voice was Sacajawea’s. “Your mother has gone.”
She brought the girl bits of mescal button. “Try to swallow without water. Water comes back.”
The drug took some of the edge off her pain and seemed to settle her stomach. Again consciousness slipped away.
When she awoke again, Sacajawea removed the binding on the leg and gave Joy more dry mescal bits. Joy felt the prickles of circulation creep down her leg, and the throbbing seemed less severe. She rewrapped the leg.
From outside in the early morning came the thin sound of high keening—the death wail.
“Who has died?” asked the girl feebly.
“No one has died,” said Sacajawea abruptly. “That is a coyote’s call, nothing more.”
The girl lapsed into another period of blackness. The next day, Sacajawea carefully unwrapped the bandages and soaked them in yucca suds; then she wrung them and replaced them on the swollen leg. She propped Joy up and forced some thin broth between her lips. Immediately the broth spurted to the dirt floor.
“Rest,” said Sacajawea’s compassionate voice. “You have plenty of time to try later.” Her cool fingers, with a grateful pressure, were on Joy’s forehead. “The one you call High Horse was here early, before dawn today, to see about you,” whispered Sacajawea. “He calls me grandmother and seems well mannered. His father is at the agency trying to make plans for a council. He is waiting for Chief Washakie to return. He says one day the Shoshonis and Arapahos will not be enemies. I like him.”
How did he know I was here? Joy wondered. Who told him? Did the boy Squirrel Chaser follow me? Her mind was too far away to concern itself. She lay back, and her consciousness again departed.
Long afterward, Sacajawea heard Joy groan, and she saw her eyelids open. The girl was as thin as a lodgepole. Sacajawea placed a cool cloth on her forehead and bent over her.
“How do you feel?”
“My head,” she answered thickly. “My head.”
“You’ve been far away, but I hoped you’d come back.” There was a catch in Sacajawea’s voice.
“You did not believe the others when they said I would die?”
“They had never seen one bitten so by the rattler live. I thought you could fight such an enemy.”
Sacajawea lit her pipe, her hands trembling as with palsy. She steadied the bowl and held a lighted stick to it. She studied the dirt floor through the slowly rising smoke. Her voice seemed weary with its burden of dead days remembered. “A storm is coming on. The sun is covered, and the wind comes very strong and cold. I need more wood for the fire.”
The girl moved across the pallet. “High Horse says nothing bad about my family. He is not bad, as my father thinks. I can put my foot on the floor. The pain is gone.”
“You must not be too quick,” Sacajawea objected. “The flesh must fill in your ankle before it is strong enough to stand on.”
Sacajawea left to gather an armload of cottonwood chunks Shoogan had piled beside a stump outside the circle of tepees. She met Dancing Leaf, also gathering wood against the oncoming storm.
“How is the girl?”
“She will be all right,” answered Sacajawea. “The swelling is about gone. She may limp—that is all.”
“I saw her mother going to visit. Her eyes were red and puffed, and she mumbled the Death Song. It is not good for Dirty to carry on so when her daughter is getting better.”
Sacajawea’s face turned white. “Hmmm,” she said high up in her nose and hurried back.
When she raised the flap of the tepee, she stooped in a puff of pleasant warmth and placed the armload of wood chunks beside the fire. Then she noticed Dirty in the shadows against the wall, her hair straggling to her shoulders about her aquiline face, which had been handsome, surely, before her niggardly way of life had squeezed the flesh down to the bone.
Dirty moved forward and threw the robe from Joy. Sacajawea gave a cry that stopped halfway up her throat. The girl seemed a stranger. Her hair was caked with sweat, her eyes were empty, her face was ashen, and her mouth was still open for the words she was sayingwhen death took her. Blood clotted on her ankle and on the pallet; she had the smell of sour whiskey.
“What happened?” said Sacajawea accusingly. “She was well enough when I went for the wood.”
“I gave her whiskey to stop the ache in her head and cut the leg to let the last of the poison out.”
“But the swelling of her leg was hardly to be noticed. She had asked to put the foot down!”
“Porivo, you think you know all! You think you have some mysterious power, some great medicine, but see—you could not make my daughter well!”
Dirty flung the empty whiskey bottle on the floor and staggered to the tepee flap. “She was going to live with an Arapaho. She would have disgraced me.” Her keening was loud outside the tepee.
Sacajawea wept quietly. Her anger was as strong as her sorrow. She peered at Joy for a while, still letting the tears roll over her cheeks. Finally she said to herself, I am old and have learned so many things that I do not know much anymore. Maybe I was wiser before my ears were troubled with so many forked words.
She washed the girl and rubbed her body with bear’s oil and sage. Then she unbraided her hair and combed it. When it was shiny, she braided it very carefully. She painted a thin red line down the center part and put red paint inside Joy’s ears. “Your black road of trouble has ended,” she said out loud to the girl. “You will go to a place where the grass is green forever and the sky is always blue and no one is afraid and no one is old.” She dressed the girl in a soft white tunic with a yoke of small blue beads. The tunic was too large, and she cinched the middle with a leather belt, decorated with porcupine quills.
When she had finished, she walked to the far side of the village to the tepee of Toussaint. Outside, she called, “I have prepared the body of my granddaughter for her long journey.”
Contrary Woman poked her head out, followed by two boys, who recognized Sacajawea immediately. “Dirty is with you?”
“No, I have not seen her since morning,” said Sacajawea.
“She said she was going out to see her dead child.
But we had not heard that she had actually died until this moment.”
“Nor I,” said Sacajawea.
Contrary Woman helped Sacajawea wrap the body in a buffalo robe and tie it with thongs until it was only a large bundle.
“She was not really a bad child. She was shy and had few friends. She seemed lonely, sad at times. Is it really bad, loving one of the enemy?” said Contrary Woman.
“I do not think so,” said Sacajawea. “They have the same feelings as we.”
The two women sat with tears shining on their cheeks in the firelight and sang a low song over and over so that this daughter would have courage on her journey to the Spirit World.
After a while, Toussaint came to the tepee and suggested that Sacajawea give away her most prized possessions in honor of the granddaughter who had died there. “I will take the silver medal,” he said. “Joy was my daughter, and I ought to have some payment for her death.”
Sacajawea looked at him, stunned. “I have nothing but sorrow now,” she answered. “When this day goes to the Spirit Land, I will look to see what I wish to give you.”
Toussaint placed the bundle on a drag behind his pony and started for the hills. Behind the drag were Contrary Woman and her boys, Squirrel Chaser and Race Horse, and the toddler, Yelling Falls. Sacajawea followed. As they walked, they wept.
In the fading sunlight on the hilltop was a new scaffold that Dirty had had Toussaint build a week before.
Toussaint unhitched the pony and leaned the drag against the scaffold. He climbed up and pulled the bundle to the top and tied it down with thongs. That night the coyotes heard the weeping and moaning and raised their high, sharp song of sorrow. When they stopped, the night was large with the howling wind, and Dirty sat among them, and nothing mattered.
The next day they sat where they were and felt bad, and the young women squabbled between themselves.
The old times were better, thought Sacajawea, wandering alone and mourning and praying. Then it was like dying with the dear one and coming back all new again and stronger to live. Now when someone dies we do not go anywhere, and we quarrel; we have forgotten how to learn.
After a while, they went back to the village.
Late that afternoon, White Curly Bear called out to Sacajawea, “I can wait no longer, but must tell you about Washakie.”
Inside the tepee, she seated herself in front of Sacajawea, saying, “This morning my man came into camp holding seven scalps. The men came out and greeted him. Shoogan held his horse as he dismounted. Women and children came and formed a circle around their chief, and circled him from left to right. ‘Let him,’ said Washakie, ‘who can do a greater feat than this claim the chieftainship.’ And he held the scalps high above his head. ‘Let him who would take my place count as many scalps.’ Then he told that he had been out on the warpath single-handed to test his skill, that he had come across a band of Sioux, and that each scalp was his own trophy.” White Curly Bear had a mock-serious crinkling about her eyes. “I am glad to find you back among the living.”
Sacajawea smiled broadly at her friend. “Ai, it is good to be here. It is even better to hear the news about your man.”
When Toussaint heard the news of Washakie, he stayed in his tepee, avoiding the other men of the tribe. He wished to speak to no one about his foolish talk with Washakie. He told his women his grief was large and he could not bear to go out among people.
So—from that time until his death, Washakie was the unchallenged leader and chief of the Lemhi Shoshonis.
The next day, Washakie rode his horse to the agency to meet in council with Sorrel Horse, Medicine Man, Friday, and other important Arapahos.
Many waved to him as he left. He sat high on his horse, wearing his medallion and shaking his good-luck token, an old dried buffalo scrotum filled with small pebbles and sewn back up. When he could no longer be seen, Sacajawea went about her daily chores, wishingthat Crying Basket had left little Berry for her to look after. Crying Basket and her man had gone by horseback to Fort Hall to trade Joe Coiner some beaver furs for a few bear skins to use on the floor of their lodge. Joe was well known as one of the best skinners. His hides had no slash marks nor splits. Suzanne had learned to tan most any animal skin to perfection.
A dark figure came to her side and pulled her blanket. “Porivo, my umbea,” said Toussaint, “my heart is heavy. To lighten it I would like to wear the medal you have. I will look distinguished then.”
Sacajawea stumbled once, then caught herself, saying, “I think there is something the matter with you. I think you have been drinking too much whiskey.”
“Oho!” he said, uttering with explosive force the syllable of emphasis. “Oho! So what about it? I want Washakie to look at me and say, ‘He must be a big man to wear such a neckpiece.’”
“You mean you would wear my medal to make you look big? You who would not keep your woman from causing the death of your own daughter?”
He was silent. He blinked, then stared at Sacajawea. He let go of her blanket and stumbled backward. Swearing, he picked himself up. “I will come for the medal when the sun slants across the sky. I will have it then.”
Sacajawea sat in her tepee alone, drawing hollow-cheeked upon the stem of her pipe. She smoked awhile and brooded in the little cloud she made. Then she got up and went to see Dancing Leaf.
“But won’t you let me tell your son where you are going? They will worry,” said Shoogan’s woman.
“No, those women will not miss me. They would only say I should act my age and sit in my tepee before the fire all day. I go now to think. I will visit Suzanne myself and see my grandchildren there. I will be back before the moon is full.”
Sacajawea walked to the road that ran through Camp Augur, the white soldiers’ camp near Fort Bridger, carrying an old leather case that held her calico dress and a clean skin tunic. The stage stopped in front of the headquarters’ building. It went on to Fort Hall.
The stage driver recognized her as the old Shoshoni squaw who, some said, guided some white soldiersthrough the Rocky Mountains. He had never heard her tell it personally; in fact, he had not heard her say any English except, “Hello, Chief,” “Thank you, Chief,” or “Goodbye, Chief.”
“The soldiers here tell me you ride without fare. So, get in, Old Grandmother.”
“Thank you, Chief,” she said.
He squinted in the sun and spit a long brown streak of tobacco. “I heard a week or so ago President Johnson was impeached,” he called to her as he was rubbing down the horses. “General Grant might be the next President.”
Sacajawea knew that Jefferson had been the name of the Great White Father at one time. But she did not know the name Johnson nor impeached, and so she tried not to hear things she did not understand. The driver came around to put away the baggage and help the womenfolk into the coach. Sacajawea put a moccasined foot on the step and was boosted. The stage had an arched roof and a thin, brass railing around the outside.2 Under the driver’s seat was the treasure box, which held tools, a water bucket, a dusty buffalo robe, and mail pouches. On the back was a platform covered with leather flaps. The driver tossed Sacajawea’s case on that platform along with the other grips and packages.
Sacajawea sat facing forward on one of two benches inside. The seats had leather cushions and padded backs. Between the seats was a leather strap fastened crosswise that could be used as an extra seat if necessary.
She nodded and smiled as the other passengers seated themselves. Fort Hall was a two-day, one-night ride. Each station was about twelve miles apart. At the swing station the horses were changed; the home station was larger and there the drivers were changed and the passengers had an opportunity to eat. No matter what time of day the meals were about the same: bacon and eggs, biscuits, tea, coffee, dried peaches, apples, and raisin pies. Sacajawea carried several silver dollars tucked in the bottom of the possibles bag that she had tied to her belt.3 The price for any meal was a dollar.
There was always the chance that Arapaho or Sioux might attack a stage in this area, but there was also achance that the attack would come from robbers interested in the mail or packages of currency going from one bank to another. The miles of telegraph poles strung with lines, called “talking wires” by the Indians, and the miles of railroad tracks laid for the “iron horse” caused the Indians to hate the whites for intruding on hunting lands. The intruding whites feared the wrath of the local Indians.
Sacajawea closed her eyes. She looked forward to some time spent with her memories. One of the men sitting on the same seat with her said in a hushed tone to his companion in the seat opposite, “It’s a wonder they permit Indians to ride on the stage. That squaw could attract Injun raiders.”
“Oh no,” said the other fellow wearing a tall top hat made of beaver fur. “I’ve seen her on here before.” The man spoke in a normal tone as though they thought Sacajawea were hard of hearing or could not understand a word of English. “She’s just some squaw that likes to visit relatives. She may be the wife of some important chief, because I hear she rides free. Her presence means a safe ride. No war party or horse raiders will be after this stage. And you can bet they know. They have a communication system that is uncanny. It’s faster than the telegraph.” Both men laughed knowingly.
Sacajawea gave no indication that she understood.
At the end of two days everyone was weary and very irritable. Sacajawea was glad to pick up her leather case and head down the road that led into the walled fort. Just outside the fort was a row of log cabins and in front of the cabins was the inevitable line of tepees. She grinned when dogs came out to bark and smell at her heels, but not follow her. The old trick of putting a dab of skunk urine on the back seam of her moccasins had worked. She hoped that Crying Basket and her family were still here. She counted three in from the west to make sure she was headed for the right one. She passed a cabin with a tin roof, home of the Chinese laundryman. The next had a large canvas tent attached to one side; this was the local hotel for itinerant miners who came to the fort. The mercantile or trading post was located inside the fort. She saw Little Joe swingoff the porch of the third cabin and run to meet her. He wore leather boots instead of moccasins and he had on a cloth shirt.
“Granma, come in! We gots another baby. He looks terrible.”
Sacajawea gave the five-year-old a hug and handed him her leather case. She almost forgot her stiff legs in the rush to get inside. From the open doorway she saw Crying Basket sitting on the floor holding a newborn. Berry, who had grown so pretty, was helping put bear’s grease on the red, wrinkled body. The other little boy, also with boots instead of moccasins, stood beside his father, Joe Coiner. Joe had one foot resting on a packing crate, his arm around the boy. Smell of Sugar sat on another wooden crate. Suzanne was asleep on the rope-and-lath bed built into one corner. A red and green cotton comforter was under her chin. Dark circles were under her eyes. White man’s pillows of blue strouding, stuffed with goose down, were pushed to one side.
“Umbea!” called Crying Basket as soon as she saw Sacajawea in the doorway. “We have a new boy! He arrived not so long ago.”
“What is wrong with him?” she asked fearfully.
“Nothing. Come and see, sit down and hold him. I will pack and wrap him so he cannot wet you.”
“But—Little Joe said he was terrible,” she insisted.
“Mother, Little Joe is feeling left out. Besides, he wanted a brother at least as big as Jack. He does not remember they come little. He had one look and stuck his tongue out in disgust, saying that the baby was shriveled up like an old man with no teeth, weak legs, and no control over wetting and messing itself. He wanted to send it back.”
Sacajawea chuckled and examined the papoose. It was well formed and had a head of thick, black hair and seemed far from being an old man. She was about to put the baby over her shoulder when she felt Little Joe nudge her thigh. “Wait till he wails. You’ll have to hold your ears. I’m going to pinch his nose so he can’t breath if he does it once more.”
“You hold him.” She pushed Little Joe down to the floor. “Hold him while I tell you about riding the stageand show what I have in my possibles for you.” She opened up the little bag and suddenly the other little boy, called Jack, was there standing next to her. She gave Joe a biscuit. The other little boy held out grimy hands.
“Tell me which one of you is Jack and I’ll tell you which is Joe,” she said. The smaller child pointed toward his chest. “There.” She gave him a biscuit also. Then she took the silver dollars out and shook the crumbs and dried fruit from the beaded pouch. She picked up the dried chips of peaches and passed them to Berry. “You are not too old for gifts.”
“Grandmother, of course not. Tell us about the stage ride.” Now the adults crowded around as she began to tell how it felt to ride on something that lurched back and forth and rumbled like thunder for two days and a night. She used her hands and facial expressions and frequently looked at Little Joe, who rocked his upper body back and forth so that the papoose slept in his care.
Joe Coiner smiled. He was as much at home among this adopted family of Suzanne’s as he was with his own family. He was impressed with their easy ways and special concern with each other’s feelings. He had seen how this grandmother had made his oldest son feel a part of the family once again, erasing sibling jealousy as if it had never been.
After a supper of boiled potatoes and jerky, Sacajawea took Crying Basket aside and scolded her for giving Suzanne meat. “It is not like the old times when there was no mistaking the rules and they were all kept.” She clicked her tongue. “And so, I suppose these men and children were here while Suzanne moaned and bared her teeth and clenched her fists and pushed to pop out the papoose. Oh, my daughter, it is from bad to worse.”
Crying Basket tried to explain that Suzanne took the white man’s path and did not even go to a special birth lodge. The afterbirth was thrown out with the bloody wash water on the garbage heap and white lime was sprinkled on top to speed decay and hold off the stench.
“Pah, that should be buried or thrown in a creek and the cord wrapped in a soft cloth and hung in a tree orelse wrapped and buried in the ground. The life of the new papoose will be short if the old ways are so completely ignored.”
“Mother, none of the whites follow those ways and some live a long while.”
“Well, there must be something else they do. Do not let Suzanne cut the new one’s fingernails with anything metal. You bite them yourself, or I will, so his fingers will grow long and beautiful as his mother’s.”
Suzanne called to Sacajawea. “I heard what you said. I know we do not do everything alike, but you will always be a mother to me. I will bite his fingernails. I bite my own, see!” Suzanne pulled Sacajawea down laughing and hugged her.
“You also pick your nose,” teased Sacajawea.
Suzanne sobered. “I have to tell you before I forget. Little Joe goes to school. One of the miner’s women has a school for the little children when she comes in for supplies. Her man has the trading post at Miner’s Delight and she gets the supplies from here about once a week. She spends part of the time talking and singing with the children. Little Joe goes each time, but Jack is too little to sit still that long. Before you leave promise me you’ll ask Little Joe what he learned. It is something you should hear.”
Sacajawea nodded. She would try to remember. Little Joe was curled up on the floor asleep beside the papoose, who was still wrapped as tight as he had been before supper.
Joe fixed her a corncob pipe with real tobacco. “It is better if the tobacco is pounded to shreds and mixed with crushed sumac leaves,” she told Joe with a twinkle in her eye. ‘There was a time when white men smoking the brown-paper cigarettes irritated me. Maybe it was because I can almost remember the time when the People had little tobacco. Then I saw the Comanches trade for it with the Mexicans. They rolled cigarettes in leaves of catbrier vine because the Mexicans kept the paper for themselves. Now I’ve learned to enjoy a pipe in the evening. I think more things are changing than I would like to believe.”
Joe smiled and puffed contentedly on his own pipe, and after a time said, “Buffalo are going. Beaver areabout gone—maybe all the coal will be dug out of the earth one day. People have to change. I will bet you that more people ride the iron horse by the time I am your age than ride regular horseback now.”
She smiled and took his hand. “And they will all become stiff-legged from not using them. I do not want to live to see that.”
Four days and a dozen cups of snowberry tea later it was decided Suzanne could take care of the new papoose and the others all right. Sacajawea dallied over the morning meal and asked Berry to bring in water for the dishwashing. She went out to the trash heap and poked around with a stick. Finally she found what was left of the placenta and cord. She pushed the dried, black mess onto a small square of hide, folded it up, and with the stick she dug a shallow hole in the ground by the northeast corner of the cabin. She put the package in the hole and she scraped the dirt over with her foot, tamping it firm. Just as she finished Little Joe slammed the back door. He was dragging a stiff buffalo hide along the ground and he motioned for Sacajawea to come sit on the crackling hide with him. He lay on his belly and reached out in the dirt to draw a wide ring. “I’m going to show you how to play white man’s marbles.” His marbles were rounded plum pits.
“What did you bury by the house, Granma?”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything. Just something the People did for long life years ago.”
“Whose long life?”
“Your new brother’s.”
“Did you do something for mine?”
“Ai—I did. If we go inside Berry will have the hot water ready. Help your old grandmother wash bowls and cups. I’ll tell you about a time before you were born.”
Joe looked up from his marbles. “Oh, Granma, I gots to tell you something, but I cannot do woman’s work.” He put the plum pits in his pocket.
“Does your father help your mother, sometimes?”
“Ai.” He said the word like Sacajawea did.
“Then, you can see it has not hurt him. Come in with me. I want to hear about this woman who tells you stories and has a school inside the fort each week.”
“That is what I have to tell.” The boy forgot about the marble game and went in behind her, slamming the door again. He waited until there were several bowls, cups, and saucers before he dried them on a clean, threadbare, old, cotton shirt. “You tell your story first,” she urged the child.
“Well, there was a girl that went on a long hike with some men toward the setting sun. This girl put her baby on a backboard and took him. She made moccasins for the men and picked berries for their food.”
Sacajawea had stopped washing. She watched the child, and when he hesitated, helped him along with his storytelling.
“Did they walk all the time?” she asked.
“No, they went in a canoe and on horseback.”
“Was there a dog with them?”
“Granma! Don’t make fun. This is a real live story.”
“Where did they find horses?”
“The girl asked the chief for some. He was her brother. He was Shoshoni—like you.” Little Joe looked at her through squinted eyes and she was half-afraid to hear more.
“The baby was named Pomp. The girl was named Sacajawea.” He paused. “Granma, you told me about the big, black man, whose color would not rub off. Remember?”
“Ai, and did your teacher tell you what happened to the girl and her papoose?” She tried to express no emotion.
Little Joe looked at the floor where a line of ants had come in to carry away crumbs from under the washstand. Now she was afraid he would lose interest and not go on with the story.
“Captains Lewis and Clark were the leaders, the chiefs of that journey.” She said her words slow and steady.
“I know that. The girl, she wandered away or went back to her people. The boy, Pomp, grew and went on other trips, even across the ocean and back. When he was older and in a place called Cally Forny he made a school for Indians. Did you know?”
“No.” Her eyes were wide open.
“Then one day he and a friend went north to the goldmines. Pomp really went to find news of his mother. He got a sick fever in the mountains. He never got to the Montana gold mines ‘cause he died.”
Sacajawea felt the tears. She could not hold them back.
“The ending is sad. He did not find his mother either,” whispered Little Joe. “You want to know what Captain Clark called the baby?”
She nodded and wiped her face on the sleeve of the dish towel.
“My Dancing Boy! Like you called me! It is your story, Granma! I told Miss Ginny it was. She said my tongue would turn black and fall out if I told lies. But it is not a lie! Is it?”
“No.” Sacajawea shook her head as she dried her hands. She reached with both hands for the leather string around her neck and pulled it over her head. For a long time she looked at the silver peace medal swinging on the string. Little Joe stood close to her. She could hear him breathing through his mouth. She wiped the medal on the hem of her cotton skirt and held it up to the light coming through the open back door.
The bucket of dirty dishwater cooled and congealed.
“That is a likeness of the Great White Father years ago. And see the hands?” She held the medal so that Little Joe could look. ‘That is the friendship sign. See, I hold your hand in friendship.” She clasped his right hand in hers. “Look, there is a peace pipe and a war ax. They are crossed for peace between the red man and the white man.”
Little Joe put his fingers on the medal. “Oh, Granma, this is something plenty strong. How valuable is it?”
“Little Joe, here is proof your tongue is not forked and will not turn black and fall out. Wear this and people will know you are distinguished.” She fingered the small colored beads she had threaded on the buckskin thong. She tied a knot across a thin place. “Here is the medal Sacajawea carried on the journey to the Western Sea and back to her own people.” She lowered the string with the silver medal over Little Joe’s head until it rested on his chest. It looked good right there. “You must not lose it. If you give it away, you giveaway the story at the same time. They go together. Can you remember?”
“Ai.” Little Joe’s eyes were wide. “I was right. You are Sacajawea.”
“You are right; you are the next generation to bring peace between your race and mine.”
She leaned against the wooden washstand and closed her eyes. She thought it fitting for her white foster grandchild to be the bond between herself and the Shoshonis. He could be a bridge for understanding and tolerance between the red and white men.
“What is your story, Granma?” The child’s voice brought her back from her visionary notion. She had actually forgotten she had a story to tell. She threw the cold dishwater on the scraggly bed of field daisies Suzanne had transplanted by the back steps, giving herself a moment to think.
“My own grandmother was a girl and camped in Dinwoody canyon one winter. The buffalo and antelope were gone because the snow was three squaws deep. The People were starving and wanted others to know they had lived and suffered. So, they carved a great picture story on the steep side of a rock wall. The work gave them something to look forward to each day. They wanted their story to live after them. All those people are now gone, but today you and I can read the story of that bad winter in the canyon.” She helped Little Joe dry the pewter knives and forks and the work brought a vivid memory of the little girl, Lizette—another story.
By midmorning Sacajawea was riding the packhorse, with a bundle of well-tanned bear hides behind her. “I’m glad I came to Fort Hall when I did,” she said to Crying Basket, “but the gait of this old packhorse is even worse than the shaking and joggling of the stage. I’ll be bound-up four days after this trip.”
Toussaint did not mention the Jefferson peace medal again. He must have noticed she no longer wore it. Maybe he thought she’d lost it. Maybe he looked through her things on the sly and found nothing. Once he called her a muddle-headed old squaw when she could not remember where she left her little beaded bag with a few silver dollars inside.