James I. Patten, who in 1871 became teacher and lay missionary to the Indians on the Wind River Reservation, wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, April 18, 1878:
Dear Sir:
I do not believe that much difficulty will be experienced in settling this tribe, Arapahos, on this reservation. It is known to be the desire of the government to have this accomplished. The Shoshones, although they are opposed to it, and look upon it as an encroachment of their rights, yet will make no great objections to the settlement of the former tribe upon their land, knowing that it is the wish of the Great Father to bring several small tribes of Indians together upon the same reservation. Washakie and the head men, though they dislike utterly to divide their property with other bands, have too great hearts to say no.
But my sense of right and justice is that if other tribes are brought upon the Shoshone land, that it should be with the full consent of the tribe owning the land by right of their treaty, and that such Indians should receive reasonable compensation for diminishment of their reservation.
I would, therefore, earnestly ask that the Shoshones be allowed a just sum for the relinquishment of a certain tract of land within the limits of their reservation to the Northern Arapahos.
Respectfully yours,
JAMES I. PATTEN
GRACE RAYMOND HEBARD, Washakie. Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1930, p. 210. Letter from James I. Patten to E. A. Hayt, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C., April 8, 1878.
Because Sacajawea had asked several times for one of her great-grandchildren to come help with her chores, Shoogan’s family finally persuaded the son of Nancy Bazil to go to her lodge. Speedy Jim had been baptized and named James McAdams by the Mormons at Salt Lake City.
“This boy,” Shoogan said, “is good, but a little wild because he has not been taught the old ways properly. He needs counseling. We wish you to take him, Porivo.”
“I will take him for the winter, to instruct him,” Sacajawea said, smiling, anticipating the companionship of a young person.
He was small, quick as a chipmunk, and more inquisitive. He was impulsive. He was sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. Sacajawea liked him.
Thin, wispy, gray hair hung against Sacajawea’s shoulders. Her forehead, cheeks, and chin were crisscrossed with fine, lined indentations. Dark, pigmented blotches spotted her face and beaklike nose, the backs of her bony hands, and her thin arms. Her bright eyes were large for her shrunken face, and her mouth looked pinched together when closed. She wore a government-issue, black woolen skirt and over that a soiled, blue calico dress that fit her like a sack. On her shoulders she held a tattered red blanket. She had cut the feet from her government-issue black stockings and wore them for leggings. When she walked she thrust ahead with her polished cedar stick. She did not walk frequently now, but received visitors when seated in front of her door on warm, pleasant days, or in front of her fire on cool, blustery days. The Lemhis had an interminable respect for this old woman. Everyone knew her and if they gossiped or laughed as they approached her tepee, they suddenly stopped, and resumed only after passing a courteous distance.
During the day Speedy Jim cut wood with a rusty ax and carried water. On allotment days, he carried the flour and bacon to her tepee and helped her store it in old leather boxes.
One day she was at the agency warehouse drawing her weekly rations herself. Toussaint was there, but he ignored the old woman, who was lying on her back, her shoulders resting on the fifty-pound sack of meat, around which was looped a strap, the ends of which were brought over her shoulders and held in her hands in front. She was just ready to rise with her burden when Shoogan came to her rescue and assisted her to her feet. Shoogan called to Toussaint, “The load is too heavy for our mother to carry. She is staggering. You can see she is quite old and weak.”
Toussaint said curtly, “Ai, pretty old. I should know; she’s my mother. But you have sent your grandson to help her, so she is not my concern.” He walked to where the Shoshonis were gathering up their rations, spitting on the ground as though defiling the path his mother took.
From then on, Speedy Jim was seen at the warehouse carrying the beef issue, tin of lard, sacks of salt, sugar, and coffee beans, and the heavy sack of meal loaded on a tired old horse.
At times he helped her strip out the meat and dry it over a slow fire.
At night they crouched together before the fire. Once Speedy Jim asked her age. She answered that she had probably outlived most of her girlhood friends. “I suspect I am older than my good friend Washakie. Some days I believe he is approaching his second childhood, but no need to tell him that.”
“But the new ways do not frighten you as they do some of the old ones.”
“Grandson,” said Sacajawea, “to children, age is something they cannot understand. To ignorance, knowledge is frightening. So that the new ways represent a learning which the old ones let pass by them. This is wrong. But even some of the young people have it. They have book learning and knowledge, and fear the wisdom which they have not yet. So then you learn to be unafraid of anything new or different. Then you will have reached true maturity, which is eternal youth.”
The fire faded. Speedy Jim threw on another stick. Sacajawea filled and lighted her pipe, sucking noisily.
“Ho-ho!” exclaimed Speedy Jim, keenly aware of what Sacajawea was about to suggest to him.
“Shhh!” Sacajawea raised an admonishing forefinger and continued slowly, speaking scarcely above a whisper. “I want you to go to the Carlisle School. I want my people to have the best they can of the white man’s knowledge and the Shoshoni wisdom.”
“But I hear at the Carlisle School one must learn about what has happened many years in the past in countries across the seas. I want to know of the future, not the dead past. I want to go on to the new. I am not afraid.” His black eyes glistened, and he brushed the coarse dark hair from his face with a dirty brown hand.
“You are like the coyote on the trail of a rabbit. He has no sense of the past, only a hunger to devour the future. But to follow the rabbit he soon stops and raises his head and sniffs the air. He sees signs and listens to the world around him. He sees the trail behind as well as the one ahead. But still the future is ahead, up toward the red cliff top covered with mist. He angles up and up. Wagh! That dreaded and hungered-for future is no more than the present which resembles the past. They are all one. But you must learn this for yourself. Each man must travel his own trail.”
And Sacajawea, with shining eyes that saw more, nearsighted with age, than when they had been perfect, reached for her little sack of tobacco. “When I am alone I can hear steps. I look up and see a man in my doorway. He might be the one called Jerk Meat, or a certain white man called Chief Red Hair—both dead these many years. No! It does not surprise me if he is any of these. There are shapes of men less alive than shadows of men. So then even I confuse what has been and will be with what is.”
In her wisdom she taught that winter the lessons that must be learned by each alone, and she saw the comprehension in the boy’s bright eyes and dreamed of his reading and writing at the Carlisle School.
She thought of the changes. The Indians always hunted twice a year, the white men hunted the year around. The Indians enjoyed the old raiding back and forth, but the whites preached tranquillity. Indian women took pride in a well-tanned hide, sewing, painting, and cooking, but white women had someone else do these things for them. How will a person distinguish himself from every other individual? she thought.1
She said to Speedy Jim, “The Story Writer Woman makes believe she understands what is in my heart through my words. But writing will only show my life cold and pale as the paper she marks on, for she can not feel my feelings as if she has been with me all those long-gone years.”
“Oh, Grandmother,” said Speedy Jim, “certainly there will be those who read your story and will know you are somebody grand in the memories of both the Indians and the whites.”
“No, I say what I now feel”—she sat bent over the fire, her thin hand holding the red blanket together—“I shall never see this story on paper all together, and neither will you, nor any other person.”
Sometimes she told Speedy Jim stories about herself just before the reservation time. “Once I traded moccasins with Mr. Bocker at the sutler store at Bridger’s Fort. I traded them for a dollar and fifty cents and some blue and red beads. Another time I gave him a fine buffalo robe for three dollars, some hard candy, and a small looking glass. The next time I brought him a fine buffalo robe he paid me in ‘shin-plasters,’ or paper money. ‘I do not want this white man’s paper,’ I told him. ‘I want hard money.’ You see, I did not know the value of this kind of paper money. But I would know now. The Story Writer Woman and Jakie Moore have taught me how to count carefully, so that I get full value for what I trade.”
In the spring, Sacajawea said to the family of Shoogan, ‘This grandson of mine is not wild and no longer so ignorant of the old ways. He learns quickly. Let him go to Carlisle now and learn the new ways.”
To Speedy Jim alone, she said, “You have helped me well, Grandson. You can help your people now by going away. So leave this place. Go to the school.”
Speedy Jim was shocked. ‘To the white man’s school? Who will pay? I never thought you really meant I would have to go.”
“And so, then, you know.” Sacajawea went on quietly, “I have traded much at the stores and have saved. The money does me no good. It is yours.” And Sacajawea drew back into the loneliness of her tepee.
In the spring, Sacajawea could see the fields of corn and wheat that the reservation Shoshonis had planted. Small green shoots coming up from the yellow and reddish brown soil contrasted with the tall alder and aspen and slender, graceful birch on the upper hills.
Indian Agent Irwin at Fort Washakie planned for months with Finn Burnett, the Government Agricultural Agent, to have on some particular issue day a special feast and some horse racing to build a better feeling between the government employees and their Indian charges.
It was midmorning, and Shoogan walked with his family toward the large gathering of people in the open area north of Jakie’s store. Shoogan was old and withered with a face like a sick hawk’s. He limped and half hopped along on his bad leg. He grunted through closed lips, sending a small quiver through a sprout of turkey feathers he wore on his head. The others, held up, waited for him. Only their eyes stirred, looking here and there. Dancing Leaf walked proudly beside him, older and heavier, pulling her blanket tightly around her up to her neck. His other woman, Devoted, shuffled along behind. Andrew Bazil, squatty, wearing a white man’s hat, came next with his woman and children. The children darted around Nancy Bazil, her braids swinging as her face turned. She had put a red line down her center hair part. Her man had ambled off for a cup of coffee laced heavily with sugar.
Out past Jakie’s store a dance had started. They walked toward the beat of drums and the chants of the dancers. “This is some new dance,” said Dancing Leaf. “I do not recognize the beat.”
Some of the more forward young men had come to Sacajawea’s tepee not more than a week before and asked her about the Sun Dance of the Sioux. They wondered why the Shoshoni never had such a dance.
“What?” she asked, scraping flesh from a horse hide she had bought with that week’s rations. “You want to perform the dance of our enemies?” She shouted, after a look at their faces, “You are certain you could do such a thing?”
One of the young men said, “But, Grandmother, we just want to try it.”
“Can you not see I am busy making this hide soft for moccasins?”
“We want to see for ourselves if we like this dance.”
“It would not be in good taste for a Shoshoni to adopt a ceremony from his enemy.”
“Tell us how it is done.”
A broad-faced youth, knife-scarred from eye to jaw, growled words and stepped toward her.
She regarded the young men for a moment with a crinkled look of amusement about her eyes. “Grandsons, you are in a hurry,” she said. “Can you not wait for the story?”
Her thoughts came slowly—the remembrances of the Mandan torture rites, from which the Sioux had taken a small part and called it their Sun Dance. Then it had traveled to the Cheyennes and Arapahos, so that now it was well known that the Plains Indians had used the Sun Dance to prove manhood. She clearly remembered the voices of the women who had had men performing the torture ceremony. The sounds of their voices carried their own indisputable meaning; they were proud and frightened. Here in this different place it was true again. These youths with no deep understanding of the older ways were demanding that she tell them about the rites. How could she do that without making certain they understood the whole reasoning behind the rituals, the feelings of the families and friends, the pride and honor the ceremony brought, the anticipation and concern and worry? The voices of the youths were crass and disrespectful.
With fumbling fingers Sacajawea put down her hide scraper and pushed aside the pile of hair and tissue. “Keep your ears uncovered while I talk,” she said. “You chop weeds and sell it for grass. You stir up the dirt and grow corn. You build fences and pen up cattle. And so, the men who danced the old time Sun Dance did not do these things.” Then she held out her pipe to the broad-faced youth. “Please, fill it. My hands shake. I waste half my good tobacco.” Then she told, as best she could, the story of the Mandan Okeepa. After a few moments the boys settled down, their eyes fastened on Sacajawea’s expressive old face.
Shoogan’s son, Andrew, said the issue day festivities planned by Dr. James Irwin were to persuade the foolish families who lived poorly off the reservation to come and live with the loafers who lived badly on the reservation. “One senseless brave told me he would rather eat dung than be corralled on a reservation,” Andrew said to his father.
The fort’s soldiers made huge amounts of coffee in five-gallon lard buckets. Most Shoshoni brought their tin cups already prepared with sugar in the bottom.
There was a line of women with their yards of government-issue domestic cotton wrapped around themselves blanket-style. They laughed and chatted as they filed by various clerks who marked their cards and gave them their allotment of cornmeal, sugar, salt, coffee, and soap. The People were most eager for the coffee and sugar, but the cornmeal they fed to their horses.2
In front of the agency corral, the men, stripped to the waist, waited on horseback for the beef to be issued on the hoof. The cattle were soon turned loose in the field behind the agency. The men kiyi-ed and dug their heels into the horses’ sides and pretended they were on an old-time buffalo hunt. They fired pistols to bring down the animals. When all the cattle were killed the women and children ran out to help the men skin and butcher the cows. Several heated arguments took place, as more than one family owned each cow and the choice rump roasts could not always be divided among all the owners. Shoogan passed around pieces of raw liver sprinkled with a few drops of gall. Andrew thought the warm raw liver alone not too bad. It tasted like raw oyster. The women cleaned the cow’s entrails. Then they wound them around green willow sticks and let the squealing children hold the meat in the hot ashes of the roasting trench until the wound-up meat was ready for eating.
When it was time for the horse racing, the soldiers barricaded the long, level dirt road between the agency buildings with wooden horses and empty barrels. Along the road they laid out a half-mile track where two horses could race at one time. When one race was finished and all bets were paid, another race took place, as long as there were riders and horses to compete. In the nick of time, several frantic mothers pulled their young children from playing in the street. The galloping horses could have run them down. The freight wagons were detoured around the racers or stopped and detained until the show was over. Some of the losers were left without their horses. Some lost money earned from grass leases or hauling jobs. Some lost all the rations they had collected on this issue day. Shoogan watched the man who lost the last race explain to his wife that he had bet her ration of twelve yards of cotton goods. She was obligated to honor the winner. She and her children would go without the dresses and shirts they needed.
A broad-faced youth ambled toward Shoogan, grinning and pushing his big hat toward the back of his head. “Hi there, Grandfather.”
“Hello, Son,” said Shoogan, not recognizing the youth.
“How’s everything going?”
“Fine.”
“I’m sure glad to find you. You see over there?” He pointed toward the circle of young people dancing from left to right in a circle. “Some of us have started a real old-time Sun Dance, and we want you to direct us. To be director—master of ceremonies.”
“But—I’ve never—”
“Oh, we’ll tell you what to do. We got all the details from old Porivo.”
Bewildered, Shoogan limped between two young men who pushed him along the inside of the circle. “Now sing—anything,” instructed one. “Stamp your feet a little and hold your face to the south,” said another.
“But—”
“Go ahead,” someone said.
Shoogan glimpsed the shine of a hunting knife clasped in the right hand of the speaker.
“Grab hands and dance serpentine until you have circled the flagpole,” said Shoogan. “Come on, do as I say if you want a real dance. Where else can you find a straighter pole?” The youth with the knife grabbed his hand. Shoogan bent his head low to the ground and straightened with his head in the air, bent and straightened with each heel-toe step. The ones behind him did the same. They circled the flagpole. For a moment Shoogan watched a hawk caught in a high thermal. It flew above the mountain peaks against the clouds. The clouds were blown away and the hawk was left in a calm against the blue sky. Shoogan thought, Hawk, are you still my helper? He pulled from the circle and stood inside. He coughed once to attract attention. “Listen, I know a Shoshoni dance, older than the Sun Dance of the Sioux.” He was not certain what else he was going to say or do.
“Hey, Grandfather, old Porivo told us about the Mandans’ dance. You know that one? We want a genuine Sun Dance. We will give Porivo credit for telling us about the Sun Dance first. But you be the leader.”3
“Ai, my dance belongs to our people. Pay attention!” Shoogan looked at the top of the fort’s flagpole, where the stars and stripes snapped brightly next to the sky. “On a long, straight, lodgepole pine, your grandfathers hung their battle scalps. Can you imagine ten, fifteen scalp locks whipping way up there in the wind? What a sight! At sunset when the flag is brought down, we can pretend there are real scalps popping and flapping up there. The bravest man among you will recite about the time he actually counted coup on an enemy or a charging buffalo or moose or grizzly.”
“You mean like the time Joe Ptarmigan struck a marshal in Rock Springs?” called out one of the youths. The others snickered at the old joke of Joe getting liquored up on vanilla extract and punching the territorial marshal.
“You know what I mean. This is an old-fashioned, time-honored dance. Sing about the buffalo, moose, or grizzly, and dance. I will get my big whip so that it will all be really authentic. Someone else get a drummer. Clap and move back and forth until I get back!”
Shoogan slipped from the circle of youths and walked as fast as he could, limping behind the agency buildings through the brilliant red paintbrush and orange gaillardia to the barren, red dirt path to Sacajawea’s tepee. He wiped perspiration from his face with a faded red kerchief.
She had heard the clapping of hands and stamping of dancing feet. She could not make out the words of the leader, but knew it was old Shoogan. She sat in front of her door feeling the warmth of the sun on her head. She thought of boys and girls dancing in two circles, the girls on the outside. It was a relic of the past. But even then they enjoyed the flirting. Then she heard Shoogan’s uneven footsteps.
“Porivo, I have your rations and will bring them later, but now I feel like I am in a box canyon with no way out. Those piercy-eyed boys want me to lead a Sun Dance. They said you told them about the revered Mandans. I cannot do that dance! They cannot do that! I thought about doing a Shoshoni Round or Scalp Dance with the big whip. I told them I was going to get my whip, but I do not have one.”4
Sacajawea went into a deep chuckle for a moment, then slowly got to her feet and motioned for Shoogan to follow her into the tepee. Together they rummaged through several old parfleches and leather boxes. They discarded everything until Sacajawea pulled out a big wooden comb with pictures of leaves carved on the back.
“Ai!” yelled Shoogan, “that’s perfect! See, it is enough like the wooden blade with the serrated edge and the carved scalp symbols on top. Now, how can I put two otter-skin whips on the end of this handle?”
Sacajawea was pulling the binding off a cracked and peeled leather case. Several good beaver skins were inside. “I recall the Comanche also used the big whip to brag about their bravery,” she said, shaking out a skin and measuring it against the comb handle. “I can make a couple beaver-skin whips and tie them on here. What do those feisty youths know about the old ways? This will be a shabby fake. We both know that. But it will take you out of the box canyon. The dancers will be satisfied, my son.” She cut the strips with her butcher knife and tied them to the end of the big wooden comb.
Shoogan nodded and smiled his thanks and hurried back with a grin on his face.
Sacajawea put the parfleches and boxes in their places, picked up her cane, and left her tepee. She shuffled along the dusty flat to the agency grounds, passing the jack pines, mountain ash, harebells, asters, a chipmunk, and several ground squirrels. She smiled when people passed and nodded toward her. She rested on one of the overturned barrels the soldiers had moved to the side of the road after the horse races.
The mountains behind the agency had changed from blue to purple in the sunset. The bugle was blown and the flag lowered. She stood up and her mouth fell open when she saw the broad-faced youth hand the flag to the soldier. The soldier took it quickly before the trailing end touched the ground. She thought he folded that big bright banner more carefully than a mother would fold her baby’s newest blanket. She moved closer so that she could hear what Shoogan told the youths moving around the flagpole.
“Anytime during the dance, if I point the big whip at anybody he must stop and tell of some bravery or good hunt, as I said before.”
The youths nodded in agreement.
“The story ends with the sun curse, which goes like this: ‘Oh Father Sun, shine on me, draw away all my juices so that I am crisp as a leaf in winter if I speak with a forked tongue about my brave exploits.’”
The youths nodded again. They understood and for the first time thought it was an honest Sun Dance if the dancers called upon the sun to prove their truthfulness. Most felt it was better than the Sun Dance old Porivo told about. Hers was a violent, grisly affair that was probably made up to frighten them, they thought. The Sioux might subject themselves to hanging by thin thongs from wooden pegs implanted in the chest and shoulder muscles, but only a crazy would also add heavy buffalo skulls to his arms and legs.
Shoogan continued, “When I point my big whip at somebody, he has to come to the center by this tall pole and tell of a coup. If not I give him a sound lashing.” He swung the whips through the air, stopping suddenly so they cracked. “If your coup is not as good as the one I will tell, I can whip you four times.” He pointed at the chest of the young man who had the knife. The man looked around and gave a stifled laugh. He told about stealing watermelon in Riverton and being shot with rock salt in his butt and legs. He pulled up his black woolen pants and showed scars on his legs. “I ran like a cougar, doubled back, and picked up another melon before the night was gone.”
Someone said, “Good coup.”
Shoogan growled deep into his throat and looked at the circle of youths. He was amazed to see that a few young girls had joined in the circle and were holding hands with the smiling youths. This made him growl again in disgust. In the old times the females danced behind the braves. He looked through the circle toward the crowd sitting on the dry grass watching. He wondered how many of the old people knew the dance was only a flouting of the real thing, a big sham.
Sacajawea was sitting in the front row with some of the other grandmothers when the watermelon story was told. She was afraid to look at the others, so great was the feeling of sick distaste. Was this what the youths who had listened to her speak had come away with? Was this all they honestly believed the Sun Dance was? No, it could not be. The young braves were doing this because they could not bring themselves to try a true Sun Dance. Now there was no need for the real thing. So, maybe the youths had kept their ears uncovered, she thought.
“I tell about counting coup on the enemy and getting one of my legs shorter than the other,” said Shoogan. While he recited, the young men and women circled around him and the steel flagpole, slowly heel-toeing, bending, straightening. As soon as he finished he pointed the big whip to the boy with the knife. “You must stay in the dance until the end,” he said. “Your coup was weak.”
He did not strike the boy four times with the whip, because he felt it was useless and would only rile him to some unpleasantness. Not thinking straight, he carelessly pointed the whip toward a young woman. She had nothing more to recite than how she fought off an overly passionate brave in the juniper breaks. “You must dance until I announce the end,” he said, feeling shame for his part in this watery imitation of the old ways. Another young woman told how she had licked the whooping cough by regularly eating a little bit of the gray-green, spineless cactus brought in by some traders from the south. “I no longer felt worn out, but instead felt I was a living part of all the tribe. And see, now I do not cough.”
One of the young men told about how he wrapped a thong with sinew, softened it in warm water, and pushed it down the throat of a younger brother who was choking from lung congestion. “That cleared his throat better than my finger,” he bragged. Shoogan indicated they all must continue dancing by cracking his big whip four times above his head.
When the stars became visible a bonfire flared up in one of the meat-roasting trenches and threw a flickering yellow light in a wide circle on the field behind the agency. The drummer got up and sauntered toward the fire. Then the dancers stopped. One couple followed the drummer, saying they were tired of dancing and wanted some hot coffee with sugar.
“I did not end the dance!” shouted Shoogan.
“It is ended, Grandfather,” said the young man with the knife.
Several of the grandmothers Sacajawea was sitting beside got up and shuffled toward the bonfire. “The dance was a fake,” whispered one.
“Our young people didn’t seem to notice or care,” said another.
“The dance is officially over!” announced Shoogan. He knew the momentum was gone and it could not last through the night as the old dances did.
Sacajawea waited until Shoogan came limping from the flagpole area. She shook her pointing finger at him. “I have been thinking. Maybe this white man’s peace is nothing. On the other hand, when the red man had war there was death. Can there be only two directions?”
Shoogan ran his kerchief over his face and through his graying hair and grunted. “As I see it, maybe we are all in a box canyon with only game trails marking sides that are steeper than man can climb, and a swift creek running in the narrow gorge that is too treacherous for a canoe and too deep for wading.” He searched for his women and children and found them around the crackling bonfire holding tin mugs of coffee.
Sacajawea started toward her path home, then noticed a white man, well dressed in dark trousers and a dark coat. On his head he had a black, wide-brimmed hat with a chin strap. His hair and mustache were gray. She knew who he was, but could not recall seeing him more than once or twice before.
He held up his hand and said, “Ho!” Then he began to make clumsy signs. Sacajawea held out her shaking left hand and said impulsively in English, “Hello, Dr. Irwin. How are Sarah and your two daughters?”
The agent was surprised at the good English. He was pleased and said, “What is your name, Grandmother?”
“I go by many names,” she said. “Your woman has come often to my tepee. She calls me Porivo.”
“So you are the one she has been writing about.”
“I guess so,” Sacajawea said. She was thinking, This man does not really care about the People. He does not even know where it is his woman goes each morning.
“May I say good-bye?” He tipped his hat. “This is our last day at Wind River. We are moving to the Pine Ridge Agency.”
“The Sioux Reservation?” Surprise showed on her face. The Story Writer Woman had not mentioned this.
“Grandmother, I am a doctor, and my duty is where I am called. I’d like to have you cooperate with the new agent as soon as he comes.5 Tell the mothers to keep sending their children to Bishop Randall’s church and mission school.” He again tipped his hat and turned away.
It was not lost on Sacajawea that the man had mentioned Bishop Randall when there were so few that attended his Sunday morning services, but most of the reservation children went to the school. Whether the statement reflected on the agent’s ignorance or forgetfulness, she could not guess.
It had been debated at the agency before Dr. Irwin was transferred about bringing the Arapahos in to live on the Shoshoni Reservation a short while, until a reservation of their own could be laid out. It had been discussed for several weeks during issuing of rations, in the camps and degenerating councils. Finally, after many words, Chief Washakie and Chief Black Coal, of the Northern Arapahos, gave their reluctant consent. Chief Black Coal’s final speech was, “My people have no land to call their own because the Cheyennes drive them off hunting grounds, the Blackfeet drive our camps away from drinking water. Our women are thin, and our children cry out at night with hunger pains.”
“I do not wish to see anyone starve or have little children freeze to death on the cold plains or in the icy mountains,” said Washakie with his head bowed.
‘Perhaps these people will stay only during the cold winter until another place can be found for them,” said Jim Patten, the teacher. He shifted his seat on the ground, finding patience in the thought that their talk did not matter now because they all knew once the Arapahos came in they would stay. He looked off to where dusk was putting a dull shine on the Wind River.
Chief Washakie was also staring at the river, thinking it was good water before the people had begun coming in to spoil it, bringing plows to rip up pastures and cattle to graze ranges, and now the Arapahos with sheep to make affairs worse. This was the new way—too many people, too much stock, too many homestead claims, so that wildlife disappeared and streams ran tame and clouded.
Chief Black Coal spoke. “You won’t be sorry.” He spoke as if he wanted to say it again so that Washakie could hold tight to that thought and not lose it, an elbow resting on his cocked knee, his upheld hand fixed to his pipe.
The Shoshonis accepted this brief alliance only as a necessity.6 “The filthy Arapahos can sleep on the prairie with their sheep!” some said. Others said, “Why don’t they eat their sheep instead of trying to sell them to the white men? Then they would have full bellies and warm fur robes!” “We don’t want them near us!” “They cry like old women in a snowstorm.”
Some talked with Sacajawea, who shook her head and grinned at them. “I have no confidence in the Arapahos,” she answered. “I have seen them offer large amounts in trade for rifles and ammunition. They cannot be trusted. But someone must listen to them if they wish to live with the Shoshonis on the reservation. Someone must tell them they must live without arms and ammunition except for hunting meat.”
“There are more of us than them. One of our men is worth three of theirs,” someone said.
Sacajawea believed it was a natural thing that the strong dominated the weak. But she was against any deliberate wrong done by someone in power which advanced the powerful, but was paid for by the weaker underdogs. She believed in individualism, though the progress brought about by individual self-interest was slower than that achieved by one strong leader pushing around the masses. Her way required much patience and much time.
She saw the white man’s government temporarily place the Arapahos with the Wind River Shoshonis in 1872, then move the Arapahos back to Pine Ridge with their allies, the Sioux, and now return them to Wind River. The government men seemed at a loss for finding a home for the Arapaho, maybe because they repeatedly attacked miners, settlers, and other Indians in the Sweetwater, Bridger, and Wind River areas.7 The government men were now demanding that titles for the most productive portion of the Wind River Reservation be cleared for the Arapaho.
Sacajawea saw the shadow on her mind. She and Washakie had talked about the plight of the Arapahos, who had no land of their own and never enough to eat. Both agreed there was plenty of suffering, but it would be an injustice to reward the Arapaho by making them a permanent gift of the Shoshonis’ best land. The Arapahos were traditional enemies, the same as the Blackfeet, Sioux, and Cheyenne. Washakie admitted that he was sick and cold, meaning he was troubled. “I will hold a council with them. When I see their faces, I can understand their intentions,” he said.8
The wind had come up again. It shrieked through the pines, whistled over the rocks, and blew up the dust. Another winter was coming. Sacajawea would need plenty of wood before she would find herself slowly walking the trail to Shoogan’s wooden house next to the agent.
Now the Shoshonis did not refer much to the old times and the fights with their enemies. They had stopped referring to the winter tales and legends because they began to question them. But they passed around the story about some suspicious Arapahos who had murdered eight white men and escaped with live-stock and horses. “Stinking Arapahos,” they said. The settlers from a Sweetwater mining settlement organized and went into the Popo Agie to hunt the Arapahos and met a small band under the leadership of Chief Black Bear. The white men killed Black Bear and ten of his braves. Black Bear’s woman and seven children were captured. The word had been, “Serves them right.”
One small boy was brought to Fort Washakie by General C. A. Coolidge. This Arapaho boy had hidden from the white men and was wandering dazed when Coolidge, of the Seventh Infantry, found him. He was given the name Sherman Coolidge and dressed in soldier blue. “See the crybaby Arapaho who thinks he is white,” some Shoshonis said, pointing a finger at the child.9
The morning air was cold when Sacajawea walked behind her cedar stick to Jakie’s store. She noticed that a crowd was gathering near the trail to the fort. She recognized Toussaint, by himself. The winter before, both his women had been sick and had died not more than a day apart. He seemed small and withered, brittle as a dead twig. He looks old, she thought. His face was sharp and sallow. She began to follow the crowd; she was mostly curious.
On March 18, 1878, 938 starving Arapahos were brought en masse to the Wind River Shoshoni Reservation under military escort.10 The Arapahos were taken to the eastern side of the fort where the ground was not strewn with shale, but was covered with fertile soil, so that in summer it was thick with prairie grass, sage, and camass. The grass could be scythed and sold to the soldiers as hay. Now the grass was damp and yellow and lay close to the red soil wherever the fierce winds had blown the snow off the land. The sage looked like upright, gray skeletons.
Most of the Shoshoni and some Bannocks had come to stare at the newcomers. The gaunt Arapaho men staked out their few horses. They beat bare arms across their chests to keep warm, or crossed them on their chests so that they could keep their hands warm in their armpits.
Frail-looking women cleared off the wet grass and put some cooking pots on the frozen ground. Then they sent children for sticks, old cow-pies, or dry grass for a small fire.
Toussaint shuffled near and spoke English to them, and French, and bits of nearly forgotten Mandan. They only stared, not even offering hand signs.
The young man with the broad face yelled, “Are you just a band of old women?”
The Lemhis were surprised because a poorly dressed man stepped over and spoke to them in Shoshoni. “I am their chief, Sorrel Horse, and we wish to thank you for your generosity.” Another sad-looking man stepped near, saying, “I am Friday, a subchief. You will not be sorry for this kindness.”
Sacajawea watched the man called Sorrel Horse entertain the children and white soldiers. She decided he was an Arapaho medicine man because he performed magic tricks and feats of ventriloquism. His woman stood close behind him as protection from the chilling wind. She had no blanket. The children’s lips looked purple in the cold that blew from the snow-covered hills. Sacajawea’s fingers picked at her old red blanket. It had seen better days, but it was still warm. She turned to face her own people and said with a loud voice so they could hear past the rush of wind, “I am stunned! You Shoshonis walk around like you have always lived on a high horse! Get down and look at these newcomers and remember how an empty belly pinches and how the wind bites your bones.” The people were silent. “These people have no skins nor canvas for tepees.” Her body straighted a little and she pointed to a huddled group of shivering children. “I will put my blanket here to start a pile. The rest of you give what you can to give some comfort to these people.”
A woman in the crowd yelled, “Old Grandmother, they are Dog-Eaters.”11
“I am ashamed you said that. Maybe their dogs were the only thing that has kept them alive. Look how skinny they are.” Just then a baby cried out with a thin, piercing wail.
“Skinny and ugly and noisy!” some discourteous Bannock yelled.
“I add my moccasins to the blanket,” said Sacajawea, kicking her fur-lined winter moccasins next to the blanket. She shivered and looked at her people, whose eyes were downcast, until someone moved forward and dropped his robe on the blanket. One by one they came forward until the pile of warm outer-wear was good-sized. Sacajawea smiled at them, and her large, sunken eyes seemed to emit two points of warm light.
Someone else gave the chief, Sorrel Horse, a blanket. “I have some old skins you can build a shelter with,” another called and hurried back down the trail to get them. Someone else brought up their ration of cornmeal and gave it to an Arapaho woman. Toussaint called out in an oily, crude voice, “I have some skins I will trade for hard coins.” Then there was much laughing and making of hand signs until the Shoshonis and Bannocks left to go about their own business, each thinking in his own way, The Arapahos aren’t so bad. They are in need of many things; they are as hungry as the Shoshonis have been.
In time, Washakie went to the tepee of Sacajawea to tell his feeling about the Arapahos occupying the best farmland of the reservation. “I do not think it is just,” he said, his bony finger pointing in the direction of the circle of canvas tepees. “If the government wants the Shoshonis to be happy on this reservation, the Arapahos must go to a reservation of their own. Our people have less meat because they had to divide with their friends the Bannocks, and now they are without flour and must eat cornmeal, which they do not like, because of the Arapahos.”
Sacajawea placed an arm about his shoulder and pulled him close. Then, as though she were making an announcement to the universe in general, she said, “You are an old goat! You are like an old grandfather! I would have thought you would look at life more closely than at the things of this day. Days change, but life endures. To have a little less meat is not so bad, but the meat is not the same. It has no strength to it. You and I cannot chew it because most of our teeth are uprooted. What you truly long for is the first young calf you killed when you were a boy. That meat was tender, and you believed it would make you stronger. Ai?”
Washakie searched her face with a vaguely grieved, apprehensive look. “Ho-ho! But then, surely you are right! I am an old goat! Ho-ho!”
When school was over in May, Jim McAdams left Carlisle and went back to Sacajawea’s lodge on the Wind River Reservation. The two of them talked about the Shoshonis’ land division. They talked about the bitter hatred between Arapahos and Shoshonis. They talked about Washakie withdrawing more and more into his dreams: dreams where the mountain streams were thick with trout, where there were plenty of deer in the meadows, and where the horses never tired; dreams in which his women never scolded, but saw to his every need, and his people lived in comfortable lodges and did not know hunger.
“It was this lack of reality in our chief,” said Sacajawea, “and the idea of living so close to the Arapahos that drove off some of the tribe under the leadership of Norkuk, the half-breed. They are living in the Green River area.”
“I know Norkuk,” said Jim. “Some say his father was a white soldier. He is crafty, but mostly ambitious. He wants to be civil chief, but Washakie is in his way.”
“Washakie’s heart is still great. He will never push the Arapahos away now. Everyone will have to learn to walk in the new road, even Norkuk.”
“I heard Norkuk took his warriors to Utah to get washed,” said Jim. “They will come back calling themselves Mormons.”
Sacajawea sat silently. She passed her pipe to be filled and lit. She thought about the young people, like her grandson, who were not as stoic in their fear of the white man as the old people were. The young people had discarded their comfortable leather clothing for cowboy boots, blue jeans, and wide-brimmed hats. They earned diplomas from the mission schools and some went on to Carlisle with a cardboard suitcase tied shut with a horsehair rope. The rope was the same braided lasso they had used in calf roping on reservation field days. Jim McAdams transferred his feelings to his great-grandmother, Sacajawea. These were the same feelings other Indian youths throughout the country were beginning to experience—restlessness and discontent.
Together they spoke quietly about human beings and their place on Mother Earth. They did not talk of laws and property so much as the value of a man’s life.
In the twilight of midsummer, Jim found his great-grandmother bent to a horizontal from the hips, her thin hair white against the background of the dark earth, her sharp face shining with beads of perspiration, plying an ax among the gnarled remainders of the woodpile.
“Wagh!” she remarked, smiling brightly up at him and panting. “You see, I can get my own wood if you stay overlong with your white friends in the wooden lodges.” Yielding the ax to Jim with some reluctance, she shuffled toward the tepee, apparently unaware of the worn moccasins that gave no protection to her heels and toes against the stones and prickly pear.
When the evening cook fire was going merrily, Jim said, “Grandmother, I have brought you a gift.”
With something girlish lighting her face, she made a nasal sound, an elevated crescendo of pleasure and surprise as Jim handed her a pair of high, gray kidskin, side-button shoes.
“I traded some used schoolbooks for them,” he said.
She held them in her hands and giggled like a schoolgirl, then kicked off the ragged moccasins and pushed her bare feet into the new, hard-soled shoes, pulling and pushing until her feet settled comfortably inside. “Thank you, my grandson,” she said, her eyes squinting at him for a few minutes. “I am very old, though sometimes I do not feel so old. But in my heart I know that I have learned so many things that I do not know much anymore.” She was quiet for some minutes, and Jim sat patiently waiting for the old woman to emerge from her reveries. Finally, as she gave no indication of emerging, Jim broke the silence. “There is a funny story going around Carlisle. I want to tell it.”
“All right.” She nodded and was silent again while she filled her pipe carefully and lit it.
“The story is about a legendary dog that was sacred to a tribe up the Missouri River as far as the Knife. The tribe was wiped out by smallpox, but their legend lasts.”
A tension tightened the muscles like a little wave in Sacajawea’s face; then she relaxed and said, “You can tell me, my grandson.”
“A young girl was taken captive when she was but a baby and she lived with this tribe, which was called the Big Bellies. She was unusually bright, but not friendly with the Big Bellies. She worked in the fields and always wore a covering robe, even on the warmest days. She sang as she planted, and her corn came up out of the earth greener and stronger than her neighbors’. The women began to watch how she worked. Her bright smile seemed to be the sun that warmed Mother Earth beneath her feet, and her flowing hair the cool breeze that kept the land from parching. They asked her advice, and soon the harvests were bountiful. But the girl did not care about the people and their crops; she loved only the beasts she romped with when the moon was bright. She was leader of a pack of wild dogs. And it is said she was the mate of the most powerful dog.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Jim knew he must not say anything foolish, yet he must go on. The words were in his throat, but they stuck. He took a deep breath and wondered what he feared. Would his grandmother be angry? Would she laugh? Would she sit back with tears in her eyes and say the story was false, made up by someone with a forked tongue? He went on without answering Sacajawea’s question.
“Once the dog became bold and wanted to come in the lodge with the girl. The owner of the lodge became frightened and killed the dog.”
“Who thinks this is funny?” asked Sacajawea, her mouth twitching.
“The girl danced as she wept, keeping her head lowered, and the Big Bellies saw she never opened her eyes. She danced like a being far away, with no part in what surrounded her. ‘She is not of us,’ the chief of the village said. ‘She is with the wild dog even now. We must do away with her.’”
Sacajawea put her two hands over her face.
“During a period of feasting they left all the meat bones under the sacred tree where the dog’s remains were tied. At the end of the feasting, the bone pile was so high it covered the lower branches of the tree. At night they heard the spirit howls of the dog. They believed he was crying for his mate.”
Sacajawea was rocking in the hard, leather-heeled, kidskin shoes. “There was no feasting and the girl was not mated to any dog, which was more coyote than anything else!”
Jim went straight ahead in the telling. “The Big Bellies shot arrows into the girl, and she was not wrapped or cleansed, but given back to Mother Earth, ragged and dirty and wild, and she was placed on top of the bones. Then their crops began to fall off and shrivel in the summer heat. Some Big Bellies saw the spirit of the girl. She lived with a neighboring tribe. They left more gifts on the bone pile. But they lay down and died like dogs in their lodges. The spotted sickness destroyed them. But their neighbors say it was the spirit or memory of the girl that really destroyed them. The Big Belly land is barren now, as it was in the beginning before any came to live there.”
Oddly enough, Jim found it hard to continue with the most important part. His mouth was dry and his hands were sweaty. He was not so sure his grandmother would answer his final question. He wondered if he ought to not ask, but just make a statement and see her reaction. He tried licking his lips. “I heard you once say that you were a small girl among the Big Bellies and that you tamed a wild dog yourself.”
Sacajawea was silent now for a long time. Then, drawing hollow-cheeked upon her pipestem, she smoked awhile and brooded.
“In the story going around Carlisle, what did you hear was the girl’s name?”
Jim’s mouth was so dry he had to prime himself with a drink of water. “They mentioned a name that is neither Comanche nor Shoshoni.”
“I was thinking,” she admitted with a deep, explosive chuckle, “of making you stop in the middle of the story—but then I wanted to see what the Big Bellies or their neighbors made up next.” She rubbed her hands together as if to loosen the tension.
“Can you say the girl’s name?” asked Jim, feeling now as if something had been released inside his stomach.
“Ai,” she said.
“Then say it!” he said. “Say it! I can’t wait to hear if it is the name used for the woman who traveled to the west with the soldiers.”
“Sacajawea,” she said as the tears welled in her eyes.
Jim stared at his great-grandmother in awe. After a time he said, “Then it is true, all the stories you have told and what some of the Carlisle boys say? You have traveled and seen more than any other woman alive. You met the white men after you left the Big Bellies, and you came back and lived near the Mandans for a while. You have relatives that call you Wadzewipe, from the south in Indian Territory, going to Carlisle. These boys said their grandmother went to the Great Western Waters with white soldiers. When our teacher told us about two captains appointed by President Jefferson to go west, these relatives of yours asked many questions about a Comanche woman who went with them. Then someone from Dakota Territory told the story of the Big Bellies, because he said he’d been told this girl’s spirit followed the white men to the Great Western Waters. I’ve waited all this time to ask you. But I believe I knew the whole time who they were speaking about. My great-grandmother!”
“See, it is legend now. I belong to my time, and it has passed. Even the old Hidatsa story is turned inside out and put together wrong. People try to blame something they do not understand on something they do. It will always be that way. And when you listened you heard those Comanche boys say that the woman they knew was Comanche—but you knew she was Shoshoni.” She dropped her sunken eyes down to her new boots. “Your thoughts come out in a straight line. I think if it were the other times now, you would be in line to be a chief because I can see you standing above yourself. And you are generous with old people.” Again she glanced at her new boots. “Bring me the leather pouch that hangs just inside behind the tepee flap.”
When Jim returned, she had stretched out on an old torn gray blanket. “This Mary you visit in the wooden houses of the whites—is she pretty?”
Jim colored and mumbled, “Of course she’s pretty.”
“I have never seen her, but her smell I know well. When you come back from the agency, you bring it on your shirt and in your hair. Oh, do not deny it. You are a man, and it is time you sought out a woman. The spring of life rises in you, and it cannot be denied. Now, I have a gift for you.”
She fumbled with the pouch strings. Into her lap fell a blue feather, a small red feather, then a small, smooth polished stone, rusty red, with a white free-form bird embossed on the surface. One clawlike finger darted inside the pouch and dug out a thin leather thong that had the sky blue polished stone threaded in the center. It was an exquisite piece of rare turquoise. “A woman needs pretties,” Sacajawea said, passing the sky blue stone on the thin thong slowly to Jim. “She will make a good woman and mother, and her sewing will improve each season.”
Jim knelt beside his great-grandmother and whispered near the sallow, wrinkled face, “I shall not forget this day. I think you should know that Mary is half-white. The other half is Shoshoni from Tendoy’s band. She is going to Carlisle.” He placed the knotted hands of Sacajawea over his heart, signifying love between them.
Sacajawea leaned toward her great-grandson. Her voice seemed caught in her throat. “I am lonely for the people I used to know. The longer one lives, the shorter life seems. At night when the stars are close to the earth I think I can reach out and touch one. I know I never can and I know that I am nothing in the big scheme of the Mother Earth. When I was your age I thought everything I did was important and meant something, but now I see nothing is of much importance. People all go, their bones crumble to dust and finally no one remembers them. Only a few live on in memories. Some that linger in memories are not the ones that were most important.” She sat still, as though half-frightened by her own words. Her thin, bony hands shook. “People make heroes from anyone, because they need to believe all life’s activity is important. It’s important to respect each other. I have known some highly esteemed people—they are gone now and forgotten by most. In another age or two no one will know they were even here.” She began to sing softly to herself.
“Grandmother,” interrupted Jim, “everyone is important, because what each of us does is built from what those before us have done. One bead on a string might be forgotten if it is lost, but it is missed. With all the beads in place, one after the other, the string is something good to look at, and to keep adding to. You know what I mean to say?” He rubbed his hands together and looked at his grandmother, whose beady eyes seemed to have a faraway, watery luster.
When summer was over, Jim made a large woodpile for Sacajawea, and together they dried half a dozen large boxes of beef strips. On the day Jim left for Carlisle Sacajawea said, “Please, make the sleeping couch in my tepee comfortable with more pine boughs. Also, I would like some sweet wild parsnips for my stew, my grandson.”
That winter was mild and she spent no more than six weeks in the wooden lodge of old Shoogan and his family. The noise of the great-grandchildren was harsh in her ears and she was happy to be back in her quiet tepee. She talked to herself for company. “When I was getting wood this morning, I could see the snow on the Wind River Mountains was shrinking. The wind is warmer and carries moisture. The month of melting snow is here.”
The chinook wind rose by evening, and there was water running deeper in the streams. The tepee skins bellied out with the warm gusts of wind and Sacajawea found more rocks of red sandstone to hold the skirt firmly to the ground.
When the snow melted or was blown from her pathway she walked slowly and stiffly with the help of her cane to pick up her rations. The agency had a new Episcopalian Minister—the Reverend John Roberts, who was called White Robe. He was middle-aged and wore a brown beard on his chin. He was determined that the Shoshonis and Arapahos have the full benefit of Sunday school, church, prayer meeting, Bible reading, and grace. There was to be no working on the Sabbath, except what could not be avoided. There was to be no laughter, no card playing, no dancing, no gambling, no horse racing, and positively no drinking. Whenever he passed a group of young men sitting on the ground gambling with hidden plum pits, drinking eighty percent alcohol, fruit-flavored extract from innocuous tin cups, they all rose up and smiled. He bowed and said, “How do you do?”
Sacajawea could not figure him, so she avoided him as much as possible.
Late one night the chinook wind died and the last cold snap of the season fell over the land, making the melted snow hard and slick as glass. Then just as suddenly it was April and the snow was nearly gone, except for the deeper drifts on the north sides of the hills. This was the month when the meadowlark’s song brightened the greening meadows. Sacajawea sat, wrapped in a thick blanket, against the cottonwood near her tepee. She dozed in the sunshine while listening to the sounds of spring.
Her grease-stained tunic seemed as old as the ground she sat on. The sun moved down little by little, giving the mountains a rose-colored glow and casting a gold shimmer on the river’s water. Then, without warning, a strange radiance lit up the dusky evening. The light seemed to come from the agency. It flickered brilliantly over the tops of the wind-stunted trees, then died and left only a fleeting smell of charred pine resin.
Sacajawea rose unsteadily to her feet, feeling no sense of emergency. She took her time checking the adequate woodpile and stack of brush behind her tepee. She went inside and poked at the small pile of molding parsnips. She looked in her coffee tin and saw there was some left. She opened the cornmeal sack and saw only a few weevils on top, so she knotted the sack closed. She had forgotten to go after her last rations. She had not been hungry and even now did not eat much. But she felt fine and her mind was clear as the mountain air.
She scuffled around with the high, side-button shoes on for a while, then she pulled them off. She rested a few moments before slipping her stockinged feet into the comfortable old frayed moccasins. She turned her head to one side, listening. The sound of footsteps came up the trail and stopped outside her tepee. She got up and shuffled out. She could see a lighted lantern swinging back and forth held by a man in heavy, black wool coat and wool cap. His eyes were watery blue, and his mouth pulled in a tight line above the neatly trimmed brown beard on his chin. It was Reverend Roberts.
“How do you do?” she asked in a low but clear voice.
“I have come to tell you not to be alarmed—there was a fire at the agency, but it is under control now and nothing to worry about. We saved most everything, except a box of old papers and some things left by Dr. Irwin and his wife. He probably won’t miss it. Don’t worry now. Goodnight.” Then, as an afterthought, he turned back. “Could I send someone out Sunday to bring you in to church, Old Grandmother?”
“Thank you,” she said in a calm voice, without anxiety. “You are considerate. But by Sunday I shall be gone. Goodnight.”
“I don’t advise you to go anywhere in this upcoming weather, Old Grandmother,” Reverend Roberts said. “It seems mild now, but it will be raining by tomorrow or the next day for sure. Can’t you smell the rain coming in that wind? Take care.”
She listened to his receding footsteps.
She went back inside and put her side-button shoes on the shelf. She undid the cornmeal sack again and scooped a heaping pie tin full of the meal for her old horse. After feeding it she left the horse unhobbled for the night. Then she scooped out more cornmeal and scattered it on the ground for the birds and chipmunks. When she came back inside to close the cornmeal sack, she left the tepee flap pinned open so that the night spirits could come in or go out as they wished. The night air was chilly, with a feel of frost, so she pulled on her woolen skirt and wrapped the blanket tighter about her shoulders. She was breathing heavily and sat to rest on her pine-bough couch. When her legs stopped shaking and she felt stronger, she got up and pulled down the old, beaded leather pouch. Her bent, clawlike fingers fished out the polished, rusty red stone with the white bird marking. She held it in her fist until it took in her body warmth.
Keeping the red stone in her fist she clumsily folded two thin, but new, woolen blankets given to her by the government. She put them beside her open tepee flap along with several of her favorite cooking pots and polished horn dippers and stirrers. She broke the tops off the limp parsnips, and threw them out the doorway. She dipped the parsnips in her water bucket and washed them, then dropped them in the kettle of simmering stew. She did not build up the smoldering fire. She swept the dirt floor with a straw broom, so that it looked as if a fine rake had gone over it. All the while she held the red stone in her fist. Then she lay down on the couch to rest. When her breathing steadied, she pulled a worn buffalo robe over herself.
After a short nap, her scrawny, hooked hand came out with the red stone. She fumbled with the old, thick blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders and then she reached under her tunic and placed the warm stone between her sagging breasts. This was the only thing that held many memories for her. She had a long lifetime. She knew nothing was lost, only the forgotten memories. Nothing was gained, only the addition of remembered knowledge.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the smoldering coals turned cold, as did the body warmth of the old woman on the pine-bough couch. All was dark and still inside the old tepee. Outside, dark clouds hung low, ready to rain in teardrop-size splatters over the Wind River area, making the dust and rock deep red and shiny. The heads of all the prairie plants bowed with the wind.