Sacajawea

Ann W. Hafen, Clyde H. Porter, and Irving W. Anderson have done remarkable, historical searches to trace the life of Sacajawea’s son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. They found that for fifteen years, after returning to America from Germany in 1829, Jean Baptiste spent most of his time as a trapper and fur trader with people who were prominent in the early, western history of this country.

Jean Baptiste worked first for the American Fur Company, and was with the Robidoux Fur Brigade in Idaho and Utah in the fall of 1830. In 1831 he was traveling with Joe Meek, and also in 1831 he was with Jim Bridger, reading Shakespeare and Chaucer to him on long winter nights. He attended the great fur trade rendezvous on the bank of the Green River in 1833 and was a guide for Captain Nathaniel James Wyeth in 1834.¹ Thomas Jefferson Farnham wrote of meeting Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the infant of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, in 1839 at Fort El Pueblo, five miles from Bent’s Fort.² By the end of that year Jean Baptiste was trapping furs with a party that included Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette. During the winter the party was holed up in a camp near Fort Vasquez and Fort Davy Crockett, close to present-day Platteville, Colorado. Baptiste took a great deal of pride in telling stories he’d either heard from his famous mother, Sacajawea, or his notorious father, Charbonneau, about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the spring the party brought out sevenhundred buffalo robes and four hundred smoked buffalo tongues in a thirty-six-foot long, eight-foot wide boat, traveling down the shallow Platte River and eventually into St. Louis.³

In 1842 Jean Baptiste was in charge of another party boating fur down the South Platte. This particular spring the river was too low for canoe travel, so the party had to send out several men for packhorses and mule-drawn carts. The remaining men stayed in camp on an island not far from the present Fort Morgan, Colorado. John C. Fremont visited the island camp and wrote about the good wild mint julep Jean Baptiste made and the tasty boiled buffalo tongue and coffee with the luxury of sugar that was served him. He noted that Jean Baptiste was the baby of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and had been educated in St. Louis with funds from General Clark. He wrote that Jean Baptiste called the island “St. Helena.”⁴

A month later Rufus B. Sage stopped at the island camp and made a note in his journal about Jean Baptiste’s extraordinary education, from St. Louis to Europe, and the ease with which he spoke German, Spanish, French, English, and several Indian languages. Not long after that the packhorses and carts arrived, and the party took the overland trek into St. Louis to sell several hundred bales of furs.⁵

The records show that Jean Baptiste was next on his way to the Rockies in the spring of 1843 with the Scotsman, Sir William Drummond Stewart, and his party of eighty men, all of whom were well equipped for sport hunting. William Clark Kennerly, a nephew, and Jefferson Clark, a son of William Clark, were with this expedition to the Yellowstone country. Jean Baptiste told stories he’d heard as a child about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Jefferson Clark told stories he’d heard from his celebrated father. The two boys formed a close friendship, bound partially by the fact that they shared the same nickname, Pomp or Pompey. Jean Baptist was hired as a cart driver and hunter for the Stewart outfit. The carts were two-wheeled, the wheels made from one block of wood. They had red covers and were drawn by two mules traveling side by side. This sporting expeditiontook no more than four or five months and in August Jean Baptiste was back in St. Louis.⁶

A Mr. Francis Pensoneau wrote a promissory note to Jean Baptiste: “I promise to pay to J. B. Charbonno the sum of three hundred and twenty dollars as soon as I dispose of land claimed by him said Charbonno from the estate of his deceased father, St. Louis, August 14, 1843.” On the back of this note Jean Baptiste wrote that the money was to be paid to Mr. A. Sublette. This last statement was dated August 17, 1843 and signed by J. B. Charbonneau. The note is among the Sublette Papers in the archives of the Missouri Historical Society.

By the next year he was at Bent’s Fort in the employment of William Bent and Céran St. Vrain. William M. Boggs, son of Governor Lillburn W. Boggs of Missouri, met him at Bent’s Fort and wrote in his journal that Jean Baptiste was the Indian papoose of the “elder Charbenau” that was hired by the Lewis and Clark Expedition when the party went from the Missouri River on to the Pacific Ocean. He described Jean Baptiste as an educated half-breed with long hair who was said to be “the best man on foot in the plains or in the Rocky Mountains.”⁷

During the spring of 1844 Jean Baptiste was with Solomon Sublette and Céran St. Vrain capturing antelope and bighorn sheep alive to take to St. Louis and ship to Sir William Drummond Stewart in Scotland.⁸

During 1845 Jean Baptiste and Tom Fitzpatrick were on a War Department exploration with Lieutenant J. W. Abert of the Topographical Engineers, traveling south from Bent’s Fort down the Canadian River.⁹ An English writer and sportsman hunter from Her Majesty’s 89th Regiment, Lieutenant George F. Ruxton, camped with Abert’s party a few nights. Ruxton was most impressed with the story that Jean Baptiste had been carried halfway across the continent on his mother’s back. He wrote that he was also impressed that Jean Baptiste “sat with Bill Gary in camp for twenty hours at a deck of Euker.”¹⁰

In 1846 Jean Baptiste enlisted as a guide for the Mormon Battalion under the command of Colonel Philip St. George Cook. The Battalion traveled from Santa Fe to San Diego, breaking new roads for their wagons across seven hundred miles of mountains and plateaus.

During the last week of November 1846, Colonel Cook moved the battalion of five hundred men through a mountain pass. Jean Baptiste was the one who rode ahead to look for water and game and point out the navigable passes. On November 29, Cooke wrote: “I discovered Charbonneaux near the summit in pursuit of bears. I saw three of them up among the rocks, whilst the bold hunter was gradually nearing them. Soon he fired, and in ten seconds again; then there was confused action, one bear falling down, the others rushing about with loud fierce cries, amid which the hunter’s too could be distinguished; the mountain fairly echoed. I much feared he was lost, but soon, in his red shirt, he appeared on a rock; he had cried out, in Spanish, for more balls. The bear was rolled down, and butchered before the wagons passed.”¹¹

Colonel Cooke, more than a year later, wrote in his journal, on January 11,1847: “I found here on the high bank above the well, stuck on a pole, a note, ‘No water, January 2—Charbonneaux.’”¹²

The Mormon Battalion arrived in San Diego in January, 1847. A few days later General Stephen Watts Kearny, who had Kit Carson as his civilian guide, bivouacked his “Army of the West” beside Colonel Cooke’s Battalion. These camps were near the Indian community of the San Luis Rey Mission, north of San Diego.¹³

The U.S. soldiers become acquainted with the Luisena and Digger Indians that had lived at or near the mission since the Spanish occupation in 1795. These Indians were coerced into serving as slaves for the Spanish and built the first adobe buildings of the mission. By 1822 the Franciscans were in charge of the mission. The Padres encouraged the Indian men to continue raising grain, grapes, figs, olives, and oranges, tending thousands of head of cattle, sheep, along with goats, pigs, horses, and mules. All the food and livestock raised belonged to the Franciscans. The Indian women were encouraged to weave the wool, use dyes, and sew for the mission personnel. They were so adept at pottery making that most of their products were used in the kitchens of the mission. The Indians were not abused by the Franciscans as they were under the Spanish, but they still often went hungry and died young of pneumonia andtuberculosis. In exchange for their hard labor, they were closely disciplined into a submissive mode of behavior. The Padres baptized them, married them, and buried them.¹⁴

Suddenly in 1826 the Indians were proclaimed Mexican citizens. As such, they had no obligations to the Franciscans. They were given title to small plots of land, but they floundered and were not able to live as a group without an authority figure. There were no leaders among the Indians because such assertiveness had been drilled out during all the years of being slaves to the Spanish and subservient to the Padres. The Indians had become lazy and fought among themselves, using their meager Spanish reals to buy whiskey.

The Indians were even more perplexed when the U.S. military took over the mission in 1846. At first the soldiers looked down on these sickly, destitute people. However, they were given medical treatment whenever they asked for it. Gradually the Indian men began working around the army camp—feeding, watering, and caring for the horses and livestock. Then some worked in the fields and orchards. The women worked as housekeepers, cooks, laundresses, and seamstresses. All the Indian workers were paid for their labors in cash or in livestock or other foodstuffs. This was dignified treatment they had never experienced before. The old people appreciated this unusual freedom and security and began to practice traditional customs and hold religious festivities. The young people mixed the old ways with the Christianity they had learned from the Franciscans.

Jean Baptiste understood these people. The poor Digger Indians were related in language and cultural practices with the Shoshoni, so that he could talk with them, and through the Diggers he was able to communicate with the Luisena people. He understood their need for tribal cohesiveness and a sense of identity. He began a school for the children. In November of 1847 Jean Baptiste was given a release from his civilian guide obligation to the military so that he could take an appointment as Alcalde at the San Luis Rey Mission. This meant that he acted as a kind of mayor, justice of the peace, and magistrate for the Indian community. At the same time, a friend of Jean Baptiste’s, Captain Hunter, was ap-pointed by Kearny to be the Sub-Indian Agent for this Southern District. Jean Baptiste and Captain Hunter worked well together on behalf of the Indians.

Another year went by, and Jean Baptiste was more than content with the work he was doing in his school and with the Indian people. He was certain he was bringing about a healthy understanding between the Indians and the soldiers. Thus, he was taken completely by surprise when he learned that he was implicated with an Indian rebellion. It was a false accusation. He had no previous knowledge of unrest at the Mission of San Luis Rey. Nonetheless, he was forced to resign.¹⁵

Porter wrote that Baptiste resigned as Alcalde “because of white dissatisfaction arising from his policy of treating the Indians too kindly.”¹⁶

As the Alcalde, Jean Baptiste wrote an order on April 24th, 1848, which stated that “a fair settlement” for an account of $51.37½, owed by an Indian to the general store and dram shop owner, Don Jose Aut. Pico, could be worked off at the rate of 12½ cents a day.¹⁷

Anderson pointed out that this also may have been a reason for Jean Baptiste’s resignation. Jean Baptiste was obligated to sentence these people to slavery if they worked for only 12½ cents a day to pay a debt, since the debt became greater all the time if there was a wife and children to support. A man like Jean Baptiste, with integrity, high principles, and moral convictions, would resign.¹⁸ On July 24, 1848, the Civil Governor of California, Richard B. Mason, received a report from Colonel J. D. Stevenson, who was Commander of the South Military District. The report stated that Jean Baptiste Charbonneau had nothing to do with the planned uprising, but being “a half-breed Indian of the U.S. is regarded by the people as favoring the Indians more than he should do, and hence there is much complaint against him.” Stevenson went on to suggest that the expenses of Jean Baptiste’s office be paid from the Civil Fund because “Alcaldes are not paid.” Jean Baptiste’s friend, Captain Hunter, put in his resignation at this time. He was given a six months’ leave of absence.¹⁹

Jean Baptiste and Captain Hunter went prospecting for gold together in the Sacramento Valley. Jim Beckwourth and Tom Buckner found the two on the banksof the Middle Fork of the American River, a place known as Murderer’s Bar, panning for gold.²⁰

The 1860 U.S. Census of Placer County, California, listed: J. B. Charbonneau, male, age 57, born in Missouri, P.O., Secret Ravine. Secret Ravine was ten miles from the town of Auburn, California. In 1861 the Directory of Placer County listed a John B. Charbonneau as a clerk in the Orleans Hotel, at Auburn.

Five years later on the editorial page of the Placer Herald, Auburn, California, for July 7, 1866 was the following article:

J. B. Charbonneau—Death of a California Pioneer.—We are informed by Mr. Dana Perkins, that he has received a letter announcing the death of J. B. Charbonneau, who left this country some weeks ago, with two companions, for Montana Territory. The letter is from one of the party, who says Mr. C. was taken sick with mountain fever, on the Owyhee, and died after a short illness.

Mr. Charbonneau was known to most of the pioneer citizens of this region of country, being himself one of the first adventurers (into the territory now known as Placer County) upon the discovery of gold; where he has remained with little intermission until his recent departure for the new gold field, Montana, which, strangely enough, was the land of his birth, whither he was returning in the evening of life, to spend the few remaining days that he felt was in store for him.

Mr. Charbonneau was born in the western wilds, and grew up a hunter, trapper, and pioneer, among that class of men of which Bridger, Beckwourth, and other noted trappers of the woods were the representatives. He was born in the country of the Crow Indians—his father being a Canadian Frenchman, and his mother a half breed of the Crow tribe. He had, however, better opportunities than most of the rough spirits, who followed the calling of trapper, as when a young man he went to Europe and spent several years, where he learned to speak, as well as write several languages. At the breaking out of the

Mexican War he was on the frontiers, and upon the organization of the Mormon Battalion he was engaged as a guide and came with them to California.

Subsequently upon the discovery of gold, he, in company with Jim Beckwourth, came upon the North Fork of the American River, and for a time it is said were mining partners.

Our acquaintance with Charbonneau dates back to ‘52, when we found him a resident of this county, where he has continued to reside almost continuously since—having given up frontier life. The reported discoveries of gold in Montana, and the rapid peopling of the Territory excited the imagination of the old trapper, and he determined to return to the scenes of his youth. Though strong of purpose, the weight of years was too much for the hardships of the trip undertaken, and he now sleeps alone by the bright waters of the Owyhee.

Our information is very meager of the history of the deceased—a fact we much regret, as he was of a class that for years lived among stirring and eventful scenes.

The old man, on departing for Montana, gave us a call, and said he was going to leave California, probably for good, as he was about returning to familiar scenes. We felt then as if we met him for the last time.

Mr. Charbonneau was of pleasant manners, intelligent, well read in the topics of the day, and was generally esteemed in the community in which he lived, as a good meaning and inoffensive man.”

A report of Jean Baptiste’s death also appeared in the Butte Record of Oroville, California, July 14,1866. The Owyhee Avalanche in Ruby City, Idaho, June 2,1866, stated:

Died.—We have received a note (don’t know who from) dated May 16, ‘66, requesting the publication of the following:

At Inskip’s Ranche, Cow Creek, in Jordan Valley, J. B. Charbonneau aged sixty-three years—of pneumonia. Was born at St. Louis, Mo.; one of theoldest trappers and pioneers; he piloted the Mormon Brigade through the Lower Mexico in ‘46; came to California in ‘49, and has resided since that time mostly in Placer County; was en route to Montana.”

Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, with “Jean Baptiste Charbonneau,” by Ann W. Hafen, Vol. I, 1965, p. 205.

Gertrude Inskeep Ropp of Yakima, Washington, pointed out in 1980 that the Inskeep (Inskip) Stage Station, the old Ruby Ranch and home, is located at the mouth of Cow Creek and Jordan Creek, near Danner, Oregon. Mrs. Ropp’s grandfather, Oliver Wilton Inskeep, owned the Stage Station, ranch, and home in Jordan Valley. Even today there are wagon wheel marks where the original toll road ran from Ruby City, Idaho, to Winnemucca, Nevada. Danner, which used to be called Ruby City, is three miles north of U.S. 95 and fifteen miles west of Jordan Valley, Malheur County, Oregon.²¹ In 1966 Chris Moore wrote:

Local legends tell of a half breed, presumably Charbonneau, and two soldiers and two children being buried there, all before the turn of the century…. Probably Charbonneau’s grave is the earliest of the five as the station was established in 1865…. It was rescued from complete oblivion several years ago by S. K. Skinner, a Jordan Valley rancher, who stopped a county roadgrader as it was plowing into the west end of the graves. He and his wife have done considerable research locating Charbonneau’s grave and hope to see it suitably marked and protected before it is completely obliterated.²²

The Danner burial ground lies next to the Inskip Station fortification, stagecoach stables, rock corrals, and a rock-enclosed well.²³

There was a wooden marker, put in place by local schoolchildren, indicating the grave believed to be Jean Baptiste Charbonneau’s. It was carved with the words: “Charbonneau—RIP—Baptiste, Son of Sacajawea 1805–66.” Nearby was another large sign erected by the Jordan Valley, Oregon, Commercial Club. This wooden marker read:

Grave of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, February 11, 1805

Born to Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau Interpreters for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Guide, Trapper, Miner, World Traveler, Scholar, and Politician. In the Spring of 1866 he set out for the mines of Montana, contracted pneumonia and died here, Inskip’s Ranch, May 16, 1866.

On August 17, 1971, a large wooden board became the Jean Baptiste Charbonneau Monument and Marker. William Clark Adreon of St. Louis, the great, great grandson of William Clark, was the dedication speaker on this Inskip site. The legend on the marker is:

This site marks the final resting place of the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Born to Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau at Fort Mandan (North Dakota) on February 11, 1805. Baptiste and his mother symbolized the peaceful nature of the “Corps of Discovery.” Educated by Captain William Clark at St. Louis, Baptiste at age 18, traveled to Europe where he spent six years, becoming fluent in English, German, French and Spanish. Returning to America in 1829. He ranged the far west for nearly four decades, as mountain man, guide, interpreter, magistrate and forty-niner. In 1866, he left the California gold fields for a new strike in Montana, contracted pneumonia enroute, reached “Inskip’s Ranche,” here, and died on May 16, 1866.²⁵

Sacajawea was more than seventy-five winters. Her skin was dark, dry, and wrinkled. She seemed shapeless beneath her smoke-stained leather tunic. She was like the shale behind her tepee, the thinly stratified structure eroded by weather and pushed earthward with slumping. The many snows weighed heavily on her back, and when she walked, she was like a three-legged horse, pushing along first with her burled cedar stick to steady her thin legs, all bone and hide.

She visited from one tepee to another, from one village to another, and inside Fort Bridger. She gossiped with Shoshoni women, Bannock women, once in a while with an Arapaho woman who did not recognize her as an enemy. The women exchanged wit and wisdom. She was known by all. Many a frantic mother came to her tepee flap in the dark of the night begging for some healing herb or ointment for a sick child. Chief Washakie came to smoke silently with her and consult on important matters, such as the white men building roads into the Shoshoni land or what to do with the Shoshoni men who hunted the white men’s cattle as if they were buffalo in the valley.

Often she sat in silence on a grassy spot in the red shale behind the village. She mulled over the words spoken by her gray-eyed foster grandchild in Fort Hall. “Pomp really went to find news of his mother. He got a sick fever in the mountains He died.” In the fading evening light she looked at the sixty-some lodges of her people. They were beautiful white cones, some with colorful paintings on the outside, others plain so that the fine stitching could be admired. She tried to recall what her firstborn had looked like. Sometimes tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks. I could cry all night, but it does not help brighten my faded memory of my Dancing Boy, Pomp, Jean Baptiste, my first son.

What was he during his lifetime? She knew he had traveled and worked for the white men. She knew that the white men respected him as a leader. She was satisfied he had withstood the ebb and flow of the seasons, the sullen hostility of man, the anesthesia of the whiteman’s religion and wealth—all the passions that warp the mind, flesh, and spirit of man. She had given him a good beginning. She no longer sought him with every passing white-top wagon, and she forgot to ask travelers if they had heard his name.

She seemed to withdraw inside herself a little, and so to make herself immune from all but the ultimate destruction of her nonessential outer shell.

Late one afternoon during the annual midwinter thaw as Sacajawea built up her cook fire, she noticed Toussaint sitting outside her doorway on the damp ground. When she went out to speak to him she saw that he had been drinking. He wore government-issue clothing and appeared half-comical, half-tragic in black, shoddy pants made for someone weighing at least two hundred pounds. The seat was cut out, revealing the back flap of his breechclout and the tail of his red flannel shirt. The sleeves were cut off his large black coat, converting it into a vest.

“I came to tell you that Washakie is getting senile,” said Toussaint. “He wants to move the whole camp back to the Carter Station and let the white men show us how to run water in a ditch to irrigate the wheat.” He lurched a couple of steps sideways, then sat down cross-legged in front of the lodge.

“I have heard some talk about this,” she said. “Is that what you came to say?” She was surprised he would bring her this old news. She thought everyone was ready to go.

“Well—you know what happens when water goes into a ditch and fills up the gopher holes. The gopher comes out, looks at us, and we die.”²⁶

“Yes, do it right away. I do not want to plow up land to grow grain.” He hiccoughed. “That is hard work. So, then I do not want to die.”

“You are a disgrace,” she said, watching him carefully. “You fortify yourself with the white man’s firewater before you have nerve to talk with your mother. Is that being a man?”

He laughed at her. “It is true I traded a buffalo hide for a little whiskey. The bottom of the bottle was filledwith hard buffalo tallow and I suspect that white trader diluted the whiskey with water and colored it with tobacco juice. So you see I did not have so much that you could accuse me of being drunk. Ha! Tee-hee! That was no buffalo hide the white son of a bitch got off me. That was a damn cowhide and he didn’t know the difference!” He had to hold his sides he laughed so hard.

Some children chasing dogs around heard him and came to see what the joke was. They hung back in the drifted snowbank beside the leafless cottonwood trees.

“If you will not talk to the chief, maybe you will see Jakie Moore at the post store,” said Toussaint. “He’s white, but he’s a friend of mine. You get him to persuade that confused old man that the braves of his band do not want to be farmers. You tell Jakie to tell Chief Weasel Guts Washakie his warriors can race horses or go on a buffalo hunt and do a better job than farming.”

“Everyone knows you do not approve of Washakie. Why do you ask me to speak for you? I know there is no buffalo left to hunt. Some in the band are hungry because of that.”

“Oh, I am hungry. The white man’s firewater makes me hungry. My good mother, do you have something delicious in your kettle?”

“Not for you!” she cried. “I have told you that there is no welcome here for you. Go, or I will break your brittle bones.”

Toussaint laughed, “Tee-hee!” He threw his arms around his head and looked foolish. The children by the cottonwood laughed out loud at his antics.

Sacajawea went inside her lodge and built up the fire again. She opened the tepee flap, but did not invite Toussaint inside. She sat close to the fire, her eyes half-closed. After a few moments she called to Toussaint. “Hey! Ai! You who calls yourself my son! Listen, I know Jean Baptiste is not living. My true son is dead.” She fumbled for her tobacco pouch at her waist, filled and lit her pipe from a stick in the fire, and drew a few deep puffs.

Toussaint roused himself out of his drunkenness. “That is not a certainty. You should not repeat that.” He got up and began to stumble around the outside of the lodge, slashing at it with his hunting knife.²⁷

She called to him, “Stop that! If you sit I will give you coffee with plenty of sugar.” She added another fistful of crushed coffee beans to a blackened lard bucket of day-old coffee already warming beside the fire.

He poked his head in the doorway. “That does smell good, old mother. I’ll stay. But if you say or breathe one word about my half-breed stepbrother, I will bury an arrowhead in your back.”

She looked at him with sad, soft eyes, turned her back to him and got an empty tin cup. She rummaged around under her bed to find a small bottle of laudanum that had been given to her by Jakie Moore to ease the old, dull ache in her arthritic knees. She upended the bottle in the cup, covered the bottom with sugar from a hard leather box, and poured in coffee. The mixture was stirred with an old, bent spoon.

Toussaint found the cup handle too hot, and he pulled out his red shirt tail to wrap around it. He blew on the coffee to cool it, then tasted carefully and smacked his lips. “You know how to make coffee, with lots of sugar.”

She grunted and made herself sit quietly. When she felt it was time, she looked. He was lying on the wet ground, snoring. Sacajawea yelled to the children. “Go home and tell your fathers to come here. You can see this man needs to be taken to his lodge. He is very tired. Go!”

They scampered away. She closed her tepee flap and quietly prepared her supper of thin vegetable stew. In the middle of the meal she heard the men come. At first they tried to waken Toussaint. Someone said, “He will be a red-eye by morning. I smell the bay rum, you know—like in hair tonic.” Someone else said, “That lousy stuff makes me cough up my insides. I drink it for the kick it has and get the Devil inside my belly.” Another said, “We can drag him to his lodge. It’s a pity the son of Chief Woman lets firewater rule him.” The first voice agreed, “Ai, and the dog drinks anything. He ought to share something good with us for lugging him home so he will not freeze in the night.” Finally they were too far away for her to hear them talking.

Sacajawea packed her belongings and struck her tepee. She was ready when the band moved to anothercamp. Some were afraid to cross the iron road of the Union Pacific Railroad. They thought the horses were also afraid, but one by one they crossed it on the run. They hid when the great iron horse went by, snorting smoke and pulling many big wagons.

She watched her people during this year of scant meat and heard them go out on frosty mornings hunting for game; anything, even a white man’s stray cow, would taste good. It all went on outside her as it went on in memory inside, changing but changeless, and so a kind of illusion. What stood out was the common core. It was this reality she pondered.

Wind and snow matted her straggly hair. Sun and frost made leather of her cheeks and hands. Her eyes took on a remoteness. At times her steady gaze seemed turned inward—as if it had gone around the earth and returned.

Sometimes her meditations were interrupted. She had gone long to her people and neighbors; now they came to her.

“Chief Woman,” a mother would say, respectfully standing before her. “Forgive this interruption, but many are sick with the fever and there is talk about the spotted sickness. It has come to some of the northern camps.”

“Oh, no! Old Puffbelly, our Shaman, came and put dried buffalo dung around the eyes of my children who were ill.”

Sacajawea grunted. “And he carried a buffalo skull and danced from left to right, which is the sacred manner, stopping to face the place where the sun comes up?”

“Go to the Blanket Chief. He has a new way to keep your children well. If he has no time for talk, see his woman, Rutta. Tell her I sent you.”

“Porivo is strange and wise,” her own people said ofher. “Even Chief Washakie consults with her on matters his mind is forked on.”

Jim Bridger came to the village. He rode in a rattletrap wagon pulled by two piebalds across the white, trackless road. The snow was deep and heaped along the creeks. He came with flour and dried beef. He told the Shoshonis and Bannocks to drink much water with the beef and soon the fever would be washed away.

He was the guest of Chief Washakie, who confided in Bridger that he was now anxious for his people to remain on a reservation and farm. The children should learn at the school. He realized game was scarce and his people would have to find another way to have full bellies, and the only way left was to join with the white men. Change was coming. It was better not to fight something that could not be stopped. For he was wise and knew that there were ten or twelve white men for every native, and never could these strangers be wiped out. It was far better to try to live with them and understand their thoughts.

Bridger bent his six-foot frame over the chief and clapped him on the shoulder. Bridger’s cheekbones were high and his nose hooked, giving him the facial appearance of a hawk. If he had been shorter, he could easily have passed for one of Washakie’s old warriors.

Washakie was taller and lighter complexioned than most Shoshonis. He resembled his Flathead father, Paseego. That morning he wore his government-issue, high crown, puritanical black hat with the wide brim. On the hat he wore a prized possession, a silver casket plate which read, “Our Baby.”²⁸ He also wore another favorite ornament, a translucent pink seashell, as his kerchief holder. On the left side of his large nose was a deep scar left by a penetrating Blackfoot arrow. Two thick, graying braids hung over his bare chest.²⁹

“I’m not young now,” said Washakie, cocking his head to one side. “It used to be I spent much time and energy trying to get things done that don’t really seem so worthwhile now. But this change is something the white men are bringing, and it will defeat us if we spend time and energy fighting it. The Shoshonis would be wiped out. I do not want my people wiped out. I wantthem to stay and see what is going to happen on the bosom of our Mother Earth. The young ones will learn the new ways easier than you and I. You ancient bastard,” he added in English, giving Bridger a crooked grin.

Bridger was shrewd. After he completed his talk with Washakie, the two smoked awhile, then he called for a council—not a council with the important men of the camp, but with the women. He began with his own woman, Rutta, and Sacajawea, taking them with him around the camp as he called out the other women. He spoke to them softly about their recent illness and about their children who still had the fever. He then led them slowly to the idea that the spotted sickness could come to any one of them in an unsuspecting time if they had just been sick or fighting off the pangs of hunger.

Next he bribed the post physician at Camp Augur to give cowpox serum. The man refused, but only at first.

“Well, then,” said Bridger, his broad face beaded with perspiration, “you go and explain to a couple hundred savages why they ought to have their arm scratched to prevent scarifying their faces. Smallpox is goin’ through Injun camps like dried prunes through the soldiers. Think of the little brown children, not knowin’ what ails ‘em, or the same with old folks, so they wander alone out in the field grass.”

The post physician had no interest in Indians and their general health, but he cared even less to spend a day among them, or to have them spread smallpox to one another and die like bloated cows in a peyote patch so that he and other soldiers had to bury them after the rest had fled trying to outrun the sickness.

Few of the squaws understood what Bridger was talking about, but they knew the dreaded spotted sickness. They could not see how scratching an arm could ward off the disease. Protestations, pleas, tears—nothing availed against the Blanket Chief. With a set, stern face, he sent out Sacajawea to explain to the People.

“Ai, it is something good,” Sacajawea explained, memory flooding back to the time Chief Red Hair hadscratched her leg and even the leg of her baby, Pomp. “See the scar?” She pulled up her tunic hem. “It is like a badge to scare off the sickness. I have been with those who are sick, but I remain well. See, I have no face scars.” She bent her face around the circle of women. Some put their hands on her juiceless, wrinkled skin. “When the smoke whirls around inside your tepee, as if afraid to go outside in winter wind, the sickness will pass over you and your children.”

The women returned to Bridger and formed a line, pushing their children forward so they could be scratched first. Some were yet weak from the fever, and some coughed or wiped their runny noses on the backs of their hands.

“Ai,” the women told Bridger, “Chief Woman is wise. The sickness could come to any of us. The scratch is small, but important. Our men will come for the scratch also.”

Rutta showed where she was scratched. Washakie’s women and all twelve of his children submitted to the vaccination. Toussaint and his two women stayed behind. They would not admit that the white man’s medicines were of any value. Their grandchildren, however, were among the two hundred that Bridger vaccinated that day.

During this time, the white men in Washington, D.C., were busy assigning new names to old posts and establishing new posts in the west. On March 28,1870, Camp Augur was renamed Camp Brown in honor of Captain Frederick Brown, one of the victims of the Fetterman Fight. That summer, Camp Brown was made independent from Fort Bridger, and remained on the Popo Agie until the next year, when it was moved into the Wind River Reservation and renamed Fort Washakie.

Chief Washakie took his people to Utah, where many were washed or baptized by the Mormons. Lance, the son of Shoogan (earlier given the name Bazil by the Mormons), was given the new name Andrew Bazil. Little Red Eyes was named Eli Bazil. Their young sister, Stay Home, was renamed Nancy Bazil. The daughter of Toussaint and Contrary Woman, Yelling Falls, was renamed Barbara Baptiste, because earlier the Mormons had given her father the name Baptiste. One of Chief Washakie’s sons was named Dick, another Charley, another George, and a fourth Bishop Washakie.

This renaming was acceptable. The Shoshonis often were renamed by their family or friends according to some deed or mishap that came their way. Sacajawea sat beside her small fire, nodding in approval, as Andrew Bazil told her all the new names. After all, she had worn out several names herself.

“There is no strength in this meat,” she remarked one fall morning, stirring her kettle. “A fat buffalo cow—that is meat, and so tender even I could chew it with these few teeth.”

“When spring comes,” said Andrew in English, “we will put seeds in the earth and have corn and squash. That might taste good to you. Better than this stringy beef cow.”

She was suddenly thoughtful. “Even an old horse would taste better.” Andrew smiled, then laughed. He wore a white man’s shirt and trousers and hard shoes; his unbraided hair hung to his shoulders.

“Grandmother,” said Andrew, sobering, “do you know a man called Brunot, Felix Brunot?”

“Oh.” Her eyes lit up and she sucked in her cheeks, making hollows. Then a sadness came into her face and she was silent.

“Maybe he comes from Washington,” said Andrew. “We could mosey over to the post and see what he talks to our chief about.”

She followed behind. The grass was brittle and dry on the red soil. Dozens of yellow-winged grasshoppers flew up in front of them, their wings whirring, their jumping legs popping. Sacajawea had no trouble keeping up. Her cedar stick cane tapped out little dust puffs where the grass was thin. She never shrank from walking, although her bowlegs seemed better for hugging the sides of a horse. She looked short and squat. Andrew’s legs were straight and he looked tall. However, he did not like to walk and much preferred traveling by horse.

“Look at this parched grass! I suppose it is green and tender on the other side of the mountain.” Sacajawea chuckled.

Felix Brunot, chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, was sent to buy the title to the land occupied by Miner’s Delight and to clear title to certain land that had been taken up by white settlers prior to the Fort Bridger treaty.

Despite the hot fall morning, Brunot wore a coat over his white shirt. His trousers matched the blue of the coat, and his heavy black shoes wore a thick coat of yellow dust. He stood on the wooden porch of the agent’s new house. Some of Washakie’s subchiefs stood beside the chief on the steps. Among them was Shoogan, or Bazil, Andrew’s father.

There were twenty-four square log houses a story and a half high, built for the Shoshonis by the Great White Father in Washington. Few of the houses were really occupied. The house nearest the agent’s was given to Shoogan and his family because he was able to interpret and use fairly good English. Toussaint, generally called Baptiste, lived farther down the street. Several hundred yards away were tepees scattered along a running stream. The older Indians preferred them to the one-room cabins, which were too close together and too much side by side for their liking.

Sacajawea’s old patched tepee was down beside the creek. At times when the winter was its bitterest, she stayed in the log house with Shoogan and his children and grandchildren.

Farther down the stream was another square wood house and a plank barn. That was the home of the boss farmer, Finn Burnett. Farther away, beside a crooked rail fence, was the cabin of James Patten, the reservation teacher.

Back beside the agency offices and home of the agent was the Moore store and the church.

It was a fine autumn morning. Brunot cleared his throat and twisted the end of his mustache. He had blue eyes, fair skin, and a sharp tongue, which lurked behind a perpetual smile. He had little regard for the welfare of the Indians, and had maneuvered Washakieinto agreeing to give up some of his best land. In trade, land, and argument, Brunot was shrewd.

Sacajawea felt uneasy watching him. Something did not set right with her, as if she had eaten spoiled fish. She thought about this man. He had power. Yet, she thought, all men are like brothers. Each has the same lusts, thirsts, hungers. The desire for land is common to all. The white men have it, and so do I. Man is but his land. It rises to shelter him in life and holds him in death. By eating its game, seeds, and roots, he builds his flesh into walls of his own land. He has its hardness or its softness. So—I know my own land, and I want it, and that is right. Does not a baby cry for his mother’s breast? But when this white man desires my land, it is not right. It is bad. For he would not belong to it. So, then—I suspect this man.

Sacajawea listened, sitting in the shade with her grandson beside her, and remained silent but watchful.

Fingering his mustache, Brunot stepped directly in front of Chief Washakie. “President Grant appreciates all the fine deeds Washakie has performed to help the white men and knows he has saved the lives of many innocent women and children in the early days of the Oregon Trail. This Great Father in Washington knows that you have helped to educate the Shoshonis in their farming and by sending your grandchildren to the mission school. Take, then, this saddle, Washakie, as a gift from one of your admirers.”

This was a surprise. No word was spoken by the old chief, who stood up straight and tall, arms folded.

“What word shall I take back to your Great White Father?” asked Brunot, placing the saddle in the chief’s arm.

“Nothing,” said Chief Washakie. “I cannot speak. My heart is so full my tongue will not work.”

“Try to say a few words,” urged Brunot, “so that President Grant may know how pleased you are.”

The chief was thoughtful. No one spoke. Then he held his head high and spoke slowly. “When a favor is shown a white man, he feels it in his head and his tongue speaks. When a kindness is shown to an Indian, he feels it in his heart. The heart has no tongue.”³⁰

The saddle had bright silver mountings, red, blue, and yellow ribbons. There was much applauding and stamping of feet. “Fine thing,” the Shoshonis said to each other. “Fine thing.”

The Shoshonis received cattle for the land they had ceded to the government—601,120 acres, or all of their reservation south of the North Fork of the Big Popo Agie.

Cattle have some virtues, no doubt, thought Sacajawea. There are no large buffalo herds left, and the Shoshoni are not good farmers—their corn crop is small. Now with a big herd of cattle and the promise of more government money to buy cattle each year, there will be no hunger pains or starvation deaths among the Lemhis. There will be milk for the children. The white teacher, Mr. Patten, said it makes them grow strong. But what a taste! A child had to be strong to drink that!

This white man says he is a brother to the Shoshonis, she thought. He says, “Just put your mark on this paper to show that you will not forget what we have agreed upon.” And then the white man very quickly takes away Shoshoni land. Whoosht!

Wagh! Can one believe a man who says he loves his family, when he allows them no room to ride their horse? Can a man love his land, and then build iron roads through cornfields?

Sacajawea was no fool. She realized there is no love of abstract humanity. There is only the love we show each man as an individual.

So several weeks later, Sacajawea questioned Colonel Lander’s intent to benefit the Shoshonis when he negotiated a treaty with Chief Washakie for a right-of-way through the country owned by the Shoshonis. The road would extend westward from the Sweetwater to Fort Hall. She questioned Lander so much that he finally made certain that the Shoshonis were paid for this right-of-way in horses, rifles, ammunition, blankets, and some trinkets Washakie wanted.

Winter passed quietly, and spring came to the land. Sacajawea pulled her red blanket closer around her shoulders; the spring air still had a winter chill. She smoked her pipe with Chief Washakie. “Why is it the white men are always in a hurry?” she asked. “It is not good.” Then for a time she seemed unconscious of Washakie sitting inside her tepee. She seemed to be studying the ground. “It is bad!” she whispered.

“Old people have strange dreams. But after I was stolen from the People as a child, I had plenty of dreams. More than once I saw bearded men come from the sunrise. The buffalo changed to bones on the prairie and the People starved. Their bones were beside the buffalo’s. Next the face of Mother Earth was scarred and the bearded men made odd, square houses from many lodgepoles.”

“At, we have seen it. I did not know what it meant when I was a child. I have not thought of it since. It was especially my own grandmother who had these mysterious dreams. I do not like the square wooden house to live in. Yet, would you believe that long ago in a white village I lived in one and was happy for a time? Things change, then come back to their beginnings. Like the circle of the sun and moon, the sky, the bodies of men and animals, nests of birds, the days and seasons—all come back in a circle. The young grow old, and from the old the young begin and grow. It is the Great Spirit’s way,” she sighed.

“My adopted son in the gray wooden house is good; he feeds me of the little meat he has, and my grandsons bring me wood. I was born an Agaiduka, and so I will die in a tepee, for I have seen it in a dream. I have seen another dream where some of our young men will have their bones scattered on the prairie to show where they fell in battle. Perhaps it is good—for it is hard to grow old.” For a while her mind turned inward and she was silent, staring at the ground.

Washakie moved a little and cleared his throat in preparation for speaking. “While riding alone, I have been thinking. Two days ago, two men came to see me. They were sent by Three Stars, General Crook. The men were Left Hand and Straight Tongue. I have met them before in councils with the white men. They told me that the Great White Father told Three Stars to ask us to help him. They said Three Stare’s camp is on Goose Creek and he has many soldiers and some of our new friends, such as the Crows from the village at themouth of Grapevine Creek. I am inclined to help this man. He has many soldiers, and we will all destroy our old enemies, the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos. This will be a fight for peace.”

Sacajawea took a deep breath, then said, “I do not feel so old. I have many thoughts not yet put into talk. Perhaps it is really not hard to grow old. Maybe this talk of fighting for peace, here on our reservation, is a waste of time. Maybe we are fools.” She stopped and relighted her pipe. “Our fights over land with the Sioux and Blackfeet have always been fierce; too much of it has killed us also. Now we have our own land marked out on the white man’s paper. The Sioux have their land, but they will not stay on it; they run into the white man’s land. Should we fight this white man’s battle against our enemies? Do we feel that friendly toward the white man?”

Washakie knocked the dottle from his pipe and laid the empty pipe in his lap. “There is no other way. We cannot join our enemies, and there are more white men than there were buffalo. We have to join them. To help them will make them our friends. We have always fought the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos, anyway, so why not now?”

Sacajawea puffed deliberately. She knew Washakie’s mind was made up—not because he loved the white men who were crowding other tribes into Shoshoni lands, or because he hated the three enemy nations, but because he saw plainly that this course was the only one that might save his land. It was the only way to act.

Chief Washakie collected one hundred and eighty warriors—some Shoshonis, some Crows. Luishaw was his war chief.

It was late spring and the warriors had not come back. The winds howled in the night and the smoke whirled around inside Sacajawea’s tepee as though it were afraid to go out. She crawled deep under her blankets on the buffalo robe. The night when the wind went dead, she peeked out through the tepee flap. The stars were big and sharp, and everything was listening. She let her fire die and carried her blankets to the warm square cabin of Shoogan.

In the morning, she watched her grandchildren go to the mission school. Dancing Leaf explained that the boys learned to farm and the girls learned cooking vegetables and pancakes and sewing with cotton goods. They both learned to wear stockings and heavy shoes.

Later there were footsteps on the warped pine steps. It was Sarah Irwin, wife of the agent. Dancing Leaf smiled and beckoned her to come in out of the cold. Sarah, a powerful, heavy woman past fifty now, shrewd, dominating, yet strangely childlike, had studied astronomy and botany in the east before marrying a physician, James Irwin. One day he came home and announced he was going west to a mission that had been an Indian school. He taught Sioux children reading, writing, and arithmetic. School attendance constantly fluctuated. The Sioux did not relish reservation life. Dr. Irwin was then sent to Wind River as the Indian agent. His wife now made grim jokes about those early days. “Hair-raising times,” she said. She had taught the Hunkpapa girls to sew and wear sunbonnets and worship the one Father named Lord who was more powerful than the Great Spirit.

Sarah, red-faced from the last stinging snow of spring, came blustering inside the log house. Sacajawea was lifting a cottonwood chunk into the sheet-iron stove.

“I have come to learn Shoshoni,” Sarah indicated by hand signs. “I will teach you my tongue in payment.” Behind spectacles the eyes of the white woman were soft blue and kind.

Sarah sat down with Dancing Leaf on the floor and began using hand signs, then single English words. Dancing Leaf used hand signs and Shoshoni words. Sacajawea could not contain her tongue, and often she interpreted for one or the other. After almost an hour, Sarah got up and shook Sacajawea’s hand, then excused herself. She came back the next morning at the same time for another lesson.

“No,” said Sacajawea. “It is better for my grandchildren to learn. It is late for me. My life is coming toa close. I can look back to times that you cannot remember.”

“Would you tell me about those times?” asked Sarah, leaning toward Sacajawea.

“Tomorrow we’ll start. I’ll bring paper and pen and ink. After the talking lesson, you will tell me something you can remember from long ago.” Sarah pushed her glasses back on her nose. She was eager. She wanted to get the whole life story of this old Shoshoni woman, who it was rumored had crossed the continent with Lewis and Clark nearly seventy years before.

“Ai. Tomorrow I will tell a story that will make me young again a short time, and you will put it down on the paper as my tongue says the words. There are strange things to be remembered, strange ways, and strange faces. There is a man’s face that is black; there is a boy who cries out in the night for his mother.”

Sacajawea lit her pipe, and her lean cheeks hollowed with a long draw upon the stem. Her brooding face went dim behind the cloud of smoke. When it emerged, it was shining, and a light was in her eyes. “Boinaiv! My grandmother is calling to me. It is what I see clearer than all the rest. And that is strange for it was the farthest away in my memory.” She thought awhile, a slow smile spreading until she fell to giggling like a small girl. Then her face went sober, and fixing her eyes upon Sarah, she said with great dignity and deliberation, “It is a long way back, and I am weary. You come tomorrow, and we start.”³¹

The weather became warm, and she moved back to her own tepee. Each morning Sarah knew when Sacajawea was up and waiting for her by the thin stem of smoke from the tepee fire.

One morning Chief Washakie was sitting outside the tepee. The summer sun was already hot on Sarah’s back as she walked alongside the stream to write more of Sacajawea’s story. She did not want to stay and interrupt the first guest, but Sacajawea waved her to sit on the ground outside.

“You must sit quietly, my daughter,” Sacajawea said. “Washakie has seen much with the soldiers, and he is telling me. Do not write his words, for they are about your people.”

“Shhh,” cautioned Sacajawea again. “Try to be more patient. It is polite to sit and wait a few minutes. You can enjoy the sun on your back.”

“It is all a mistake,” Washakie began after they had sat silent for a while, listening to the warm wind and the whipping of the leather on the tepee poles. “I have known, forever, it seems, that we cannot drive all the white men from our country. We fought beside them on the Rosebud, and it was a great victory for the Sioux and Arapahos. They moved their whole camp into the valley of the Greasy Grass. The white men claimed the victory on their side because the Cheyennes pulled away from their chase of the mule soldiers of Three Stars. I was a scout for Three Stars, and I heard that Sitting Bull forbade any celebration for that fight. He was preparing Crazy Horse and himself for another. He had a vision of a hundred white soldiers dropping dead in neat rows around his feet.

“The white soldiers laughed at this dream. They sat in their camp on Goose Creek and licked their wounds and lied to themselves about the strength of Sitting Bull’s dream and his warriors. I tried to make them understand there would be ten thousand hostiles gathered along the banks of the Greasy Grass.” Washakie clutched at his brown, wrinkled face, remembering how the white pony soldiers had prepared for the coming battle.

His husky voice began slowly. “While the white warriors drilled with Straight Tongue, Tom Cosgrove, each morning our warriors hunted and fished. Once I held the peace-waver of the Shoshonis, a standard of eagle feathers attached to a lance staff twelve feet long. My warriors wore a small piece of white cloth in their headdress as a distinguishing mark so that the soldiers would know we were their Shoshoni friends. But the Sioux heard of this and also placed white strips in their hair.

Creek camp telling about what happened to Son of the Morning Star, Custer, and his soldiers on the Greasy Grass. I believe the white men might have done a better job in their fights with our enemies if they had been more careful and had kept together better. Son of the Morning Star was killed because he did not wait for his friends to help him do a big job. Three Stars was waiting and drilling his pony soldiers, but no word came to him to help on the Greasy Grass, so he just stayed in camp, not knowing about that fight. Son of the Morning Star with two mortal wounds was destroyed, and so were all his white pony soldiers.

“I believe that the Other One, Terry, told Son of the Morning Star to look a little for Three Stars, and that when Son of the Morning Star saw the enemy’s trail he forgot, because he wished to fight. The Other One must have known the country between him and Three Stars was full of hostiles—any soldier would have known it. Each morning on Goose Creek I looked over the hillside with the bring-close glasses of Three Stars, and each morning I saw the Arapahos skulking behind every bush and tree.³² And so—I believe Son of the Morning Star disobeyed his orders and did not wait for more reinforcements, and so all was lost that day.³³

“I talked one evening to Three Stars and plainly told him that my warriors would not remain any longer with him because his transportation of supplies was too terrible. With those mules nothing could be done. It slowed us all the way. So—then I brought my men back here because they were ready to come home.

“I have finished my story, and I am tired.” Washakie folded his arms over his leather shirt and closed his eyes. “I do not believe in fighting any more battles than we are forced into. Sitting Bull has run into Canada.” He seemed to forget the two women sitting in front of him.

“Chief Washakie,” Sarah said at length, “this is the first I have heard of this fight and the great loss by the whites. Is it truth?”

The old man regarded her for a while with a crinkled look about his mouth. “Granddaughter, you know I do not speak with a forked tongue. If you listen now, you can hear the mourning of the women for the Shoshonisand Crows who did not come home with us. My power is gone. I could cry all night.”

Indeed, there was the sound of the piercing wails of women carried into the treetops by the warm winds. Sacajawea sat quite still, her eyes toward the other tepees farther down the stream sympathetic and understanding.

The land in that direction was nearly flat. It was rich, sandy brown, with grass thick and yellow. The broomweeds held tiny flowers and a resinous oil in their leaves that lent a faintly spicy scent to the summer air. Locusts sang in the grass.

CHAPTER56I Could Cry All Night

CHAPTER
56
I Could Cry All Night