Streams to the River, River to the Sea

by Scott O'Dell

  He bought seven plump dogs for food and a bundle of firewood, wood being scarce. The chieftain gave us a large bundle of horsemeat, but it was too old to eat.

  On a cold morning soon after, we reached a plain and a broad green river, which Captain Clark said was the Columbia River. He was very excited.

  That night a chieftain appeared with more than two hundred warriors beating on drums. They made a circle around us and sang.

  Cruzatte played music on his fiddle and George Drewyer made signs showing that we had come in friendship. Captain Lewis gave the leader a large medal with a picture of President Jefferson on one side. On the other side were a flag and an eagle.

  We saw a high mountain covered with snow far off in the distance, which Captain Clark had heard was near the great waters. Birds I had never seen before—black ones called cormorants and big-billed ones called pelicans—flew around us.

  The next day we saw a large canoe, three times the size of ours, paddled by ten men. The bow of the canoe swept up high in a pretty curve. It was carved in the shape of an eagle, the stern in the shape of a bear with black eyes and a red tongue. The men called to us in a language I had never heard before. The slurping sounds were like the ones you make when you pull your feet out of the mud.

  Drewyer talked to their chieftain, Broken Face, making signs with his long arms and his big hands. Broken Face brought out a robe made of five beautiful skins. He wanted blue beads for it, a lot of them, two handfuls.

  The robe shimmered in the sun. Captain Clark gazed at it. "Our supply of these beads is low. Make a bargain with something else," he said to George Drewyer. "I want the robe. I've never seen anything so beautiful in my life."

  Drewyer tried to bargain with a gun and some powder, but the chieftain wanted beads, blue beads, a handful.

  I was wearing the belt Captain Clark had given me. The chieftain pointed at it.

  Captain Clark hesitated. Finally he said, "Do you mind if we trade him the belt?"

  I minded terribly. Tears came to my eyes. But he had set his heart on the otter robe, so I took the belt off and gave it to him.

  The river widened. I saw flocks of geese and ducks and more of the big-billed pelicans. The wind came out of the west and smelled of salt. Captain Clark said that the sea was close. Everybody cheered and paddled faster. When we camped Cruzatte got out his fiddle and the men danced.

  We were camped on a sloping bank, up from the river. In the morning, water was lapping at my feet. Captain Clark said that there were tides in the sea. Its water flowed into the river twice each day. Twice each day it flowed out.

  I drank some of the water, but only a little, remembering the bad things I had heard about it. They were all true. It tasted of bitter salt and fish.

  That day the river widened some more. Cold mist hid the riverbanks and a north wind began to blow. Then rain came down hard. I did my best to keep the baby dry.

  Toward dusk the rain stopped. Beautiful colors unfolded far out over the sea, though it was still hidden from us.

  "We'll go there tomorrow," Captain Clark said. "By this time tomorrow you'll watch big waves beating on the shore."

  We saw waves well before that. They came the next morning while we were moving along at a good rate in the middle of the river. There was no warning, no sounds like those we heard when we were near the rapids. Instead there was only the river, smooth as an antelope skin, stretching quietly toward the sea.

  Right in front of us then, the river suddenly sprang up. I was covered with spray, salty and cold. The three of us kneeling in the canoe pitched forward. The baby screamed. Charbonneau, who could not swim, lay where he was and clutched the rail with both hands.

  Captain Clark shouted for us not to move. To the four men who were paddling, he shouted, "Pull right, to shore. Pull hard!"

  The men pulled hard on the big paddles, but the dugout did not move. It stayed where it was. Some big hand was holding it back.

  I took the baby from the cradleboard and clutched him in my arms. Charbonneau yelled at me not to let go. His voice shook with fear. Captain Clark's fur cap had been blown away. His long hair swung wildly around his face. His face had turned white beneath his leathery skin.

  The hand swept us backward. Now we were in a valley between two hills of churning water. For a moment I caught a glimpse of yellow sand and black rocks, the very bottom of the river itself.

  In the next breath, the sand and rocks disappeared and we were lifted up, up, higher than the riverbank. We seemed to hang in the air for a long time deafened by thunderous sounds, the shrieks and moans of evil spirits.

  Then it was very quiet. The mighty hand flung us aside and we were bobbing around against the bank. Captain Lewis and the rest of the men were well behind us, so they saw what had happened in time to reach the shore.

  Waves of dark fog were racing in. I still clutched the baby in my arms. I could barely see him in the fog. He looked like a little ghost. Poor baby, poor Meeko!

  We made camp in a grove of towering trees. It was hard to find anything dry enough to burn. Around a dismal fire the men talked about the happening on the river.

  "The Columbia River flows out," Captain Lewis said, "and the sea flows in. River and sea clash. They fight to see who will win."

  "Where did you hear all this?" Captain Clark asked him.

  "I read it somewhere. In a journal. It happens twice every day."

  Captain Clark was not pleased to know something he should have known before.

  We were very close to the sea. All that night through the fog, I could hear it roar. The next morning, when Captain Clark crawled out of his lean-to, he asked me if I was glad that we had reached the sea.

  "I heard it all night," I said. "And I hear it now. But where is it?"

  "Beyond that far hill," he said.

  He took a breath of the salty wind. He raised his hands to the sky. "The sea in view," he shouted. "In view, in view. Oh, the joy!"

  He could not see the Great Waters. "How do you know that it is around the hill?" I said.

  My words were lost in the pounding of the waves. I must have had a disappointed look on my face.

  "I thought you would dance and sing with joy," he shouted. "Instead, you stand there like a lodgepole."

  It was the first time he had criticized me. Tears leaped to my eyes. I turned and brushed them away.

  He put his hand on Meeko's head. He pointed toward the Great Waters beyond the hill and said, "You see them, don't you, Pomp? Whether your mother can see them or not.

  Meeko gurgled. He liked the sound of the name the captain used for him. Pomp! It made him kick at his cradle-board. The name sounded like an arrow striking a buffalo.

  "Dry your tears," the captain said to me. "You'll stand beside the sea very soon."

  "I would like to do that," I said. "We can walk up the hill and look at it now."

  "Tomorrow," Captain Clark said. "Now we get out of the rain."

  I did not stand beside the sea the next day. Or the next. Many days passed before I even caught a glimpse of it.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The next day and the next we changed our camp three times. The thundering water kept the men awake at night, so we moved back two miles. Then the canoes were swamped by the tides in the bay where we camped. At the third camp, wood and water were scarce. Captain Clark named the place Cape Disappointment.

  Of all our troubles, rain was the worst. It rained night and day, gently or hard. It never stopped. Our clothes, our moccasins, our blankets, which were worn from the long journey, began to rot, and we had no hides to make new ones.

  Some of our troubles were the natives. They called themselves Clatsops. When they were babies their mothers put their heads between two boards. In this way as they grew up their faces widened and their heads flattened so that their heads and foreheads were in a straight line. It made me shudder to think of Meeko's head flattened out between two boards.

  Clatsops dressed in strange clothes.
Captain Clark said that they had bought the clothes from the white men who sailed up and down the shore in ships many times larger than our largest canoe. The Clatsops traded otter pelts for coats that did not fit, satin breeches too long for their legs, wool hats too big or too small for their heads.

  They stole things right under your nose, while you were looking at them. They were greedy besides. Captain Clark offered one of them his watch, a handkerchief, a bunch of red beads, and a piece of silver money—all of these things for one otter skin. The man shook his head. He wanted also a handful of blue beads.

  Captain Clark told him to leave the camp and not come back. The man and his wife left but on the way the wife picked up a tomahawk. They ran into the woods and hid.

  Captain Clark went looking for them but never found them. When he came back he was out of breath but not angry. He said, "They've been trading with men from the American ships and learned some of their tricks. I don't blame them too much."

  We moved from this camp because game was scarce and hordes of fleas lived in our blankets. Before we moved, Captain Clark carved some words on a pine tree.

  First, he chopped the thick bark away with a hatchet. Then he drew the words with a piece of charcoal on the clean place he had made. With a knife he carved out the words. It took him a long time. When he was done, I asked him what the words said.

  "'William Clark, December 3rd 1805. By land from U. States in 1804 & 1805,'" he read, very pleased with himself.

  He held out his hands. They were covered with blisters.

  "I would carve your name if I could hold the knife any longer," he said. "You came, too, all the way from Fort Mandan. Aren't you proud of yourself?"

  I did not answer. Was he proud of me? That was all that mattered in the world.

  "We could never have done it without you, Janey," he said.

  My heart beat loud enough to hear.

  "Your name belongs there, right beside mine," he said and kissed me.

  That night when everyone was asleep I found the knife and a candle and went to the pine tree. The first word he had taught me to write was my name. There was a space just below everything he had carved. In it, by the light of the candle, I chopped out the word "Janey" as best I could.

  In the morning light it looked crude, not so nice as the words he had carved out, yet it could be read. I doubt that he ever knew about it, for we moved that day. But I knew that my name was there beside his.

  We moved across the river to a place the men had built. It was called Fort Clatsop. A stockade sixteen strides square, it had three cabins facing four cabins and an open space between them.

  Life was better here. Our clothes got a chance to dry out and there were fewer fleas and mosquitoes. But food was still scarce, though our hunters went out every day.

  For a long time we mostly ate the same things as the Clatsops ate—roots of the fern, rush, sweet licorice, and thistle. The men caught a beaver in their traps, and we feasted on fat beaver tail. I chewed up a piece and fed it to Meeko. He liked it as much as I did; he smiled, wanting more.

  A friendly Clatsop and his four wives came to the fort and brought us a basket filled with the fat of an enormous fish. A fish as big as the fort had perished on the shore nearby. Our men thought this fish tasted like dogmeat:. Not having tasted dogmeat I cannot say.

  The captains decided to go down to the shore with some of their men and bring back a load of fat. I wanted to see this enormous fish very much.

  Besides, since we reached the mouth of the river I had never laid my eyes on the sea. The men had talked about it since the day we left the Minnetarees. I had almost drowned in the waves the sea made. I had heard it and smelled it. But never in all those days had I stood and looked at the sea and shown it to my baby.

  I asked if I could go with them. Captain Lewis eyed the cradleboard on my back.

  "You and the baby?" he said.

  "I can leave the baby with his father."

  Charbonneau had told me already that he was not going to go on a long walk and carry a heavy load of fish fat around on his back.

  "They not hire Charbonneau for carry fat," he said. "Hire him for guide. Anyhow, Charbonneau's feet, they have more blisters than toes."

  Captain Lewis said, "Your husband and I have had a talk. He's decided to go with us. So you can't leave the baby with him."

  "I can carry the baby," I said. "I have carried him for many sleeps. From far away, from Fort Mandan to this place."

  Captain Clark said, "Come! I'll carry Pomp."

  I gave him the baby and the cradleboard, which he strapped to his back, and we started off. We climbed to the top of a high hill. I could hear waves pounding on the shore. The Big Water, the Great Water, the sea, lay below us, but I could not find it because of the mist.

  Clatsops had made a trail to the shore, but it was very steep and we had to hold on to bushes as we went down one step at a time. We met a band of Clatsops coming up from the shore with loads on their backs.

  We came to a wide, sandy shore, much like the shores along the Missouri River, except the sand was much whiter. I stopped and peered, looking for the big sea. I saw nothing except swirling mist, but as I walked farther down the shore, water curled up around my legs and drew back. Then more water came up and drew back.

  "At last, here's the sea you've heard about. How does it feel?" Captain Clark asked me.

  "Very cold," I said and took a mouthful.

  "How does it taste?"

  "Very bad," I said, getting rid of it.

  "The tide runs in and it runs out."

  "Out where?"

  "Around the world."

  "World? That's a new word for me. I have never heard 'world' before. What does it mean?"

  "It means the place where we live. Here. All around us. And beyond. The streams and rivers, hills and mountains, meadows and prairies, the Great Lake, the sea that lies before you, and many other seas just like it beyond here. The world is round just like a prickly pear and it spins like the tops children play with."

  My head spun too. I saw a picture of the land and the streams and the rivers, the big waters, the seas going on and on. But I could not see these things, all of them, in a round ball like a prickly pear spinning round and round.

  Sun broke through the mist. I saw rocks covered with brown weeds. Water washed over them and the weeds trailed out and glistened. Among the weeds were animals lying on their backs.

  "Sea otter," Captain Clark said. "The Clatsops kill them and sell their pelts to the white traders."

  Beyond the rocks, fish were swimming about, diving and coming up. They were blue and flashed in the sun. I asked Captain Clark what kind of fish acted like that, like children playing a game.

  "Dolphins," he said. "They are not fish, I'm told by Captain Lewis. And they don't have fur, so the Indians don't kill them."

  Tired of answering my questions and fearing more, I guess, he handed me the cradleboard, turned away, ran down the beach, and disappeared.

  Water was washing against my legs. I scooped up some of it and washed my face and Meeko's face. Then I took him out of the cradleboard and let him stumble around in the water, which he tried to drink.

  I raised my hands. I said a prayer to the Great Spirit who ruled over everything. Over the Great Sea that went on and on forever, over the world that spun and spun.

  The chieftain we passed on the trail had stopped with his women halfway up the cliff. He pointed up the beach to let me know where Captain Clark was and called down a jumble of Clatsop words. The women put down their baskets. The chieftain called again. The women picked up their baskets, the chieftain waved, and they all went up the trail laughing.

  I should have known from their laughter what I would find.

  When I followed Captain Clark's tracks around a bend, I found him and his men staring at a strange sight. It was as huge as a long house. It looked like a chieftain's house that is just being built, when only the bare poles show.

  It wa
s the enormous fish. The Clatsops had stripped it clean. Only bones and a great gaping jaw were left.

  All the camp looked toward a day they called "Christmas." Christmas morning there were songs and shots from the cannon, and twelve twists of tobacco were divided. But we had little to feast on, just some spoiled elk, pounded fish, and small helpings of a black root the Clatsops said was shan-na-tah-que. That night Drewyer sat by the fire and told stories about what he had seen and done.

  Some of them were hard to believe, like the story about the time he was riding down among the Spanish peaks in the winter, where it had snowed for eighty days and in most places the snow was eighty feet deep.

  "I was riding along over the treetops," he said, "and after a while I came to a canyon where there wasn't any snow, and when I crossed over to the other side I came to a valley where grass was growing green and there were green leaves on the trees.

  His face was serious.

  "It seemed like a good place to camp," he went on, still looking serious. "I was hungry. Sitting up on the limb of a tree, I saw a fat partridge, so I brought up my gun and shot him right through the eye. The bird fell off the limb and broke into a dozen pieces. Fell in the grass and the grass broke into pieces. I went down to the stream to drink and the water was stone. I saw some raspberries growing, but I broke my teeth when I went to eat them—they were rubies. I thought I would make a fire and got out my ax and chopped on a log. But the log was hard, like the water, and I smashed tie ax. I was in a stone forest, for certain."

  "What did you do with the rubies?" Sergeant Ordway asked.

  "Gave them to some Spanish girls," Drewyer said. "I was young and foolish in those days. Wish I had the rubies now. They were as big as plums."

  Captain Clark smiled. "Big as plums?"

  "Bigger," Drewyer said, his face still serious. "And a sack full up, right to the top."

  The men laughed, but I didn't. I wondered if there could be such a place somewhere in the Spanish peaks. I thought of the great waters that went on and on around the world, and the mountain cave where the Great Spirit dwelt, and other things, too.