Charbonneau

by Win Blevins

  When Baptiste finally got her around the fire and downstream, he cached for two days in the thicket, building no fire, not hurting, sitting completely still. Then he rode back uphill, over the ridge, and down into another valley.

  He had no idea where his friends were. He had lost his traps and his dried meat and his possibles. Well, at least he had his Hawken, his pistol, his Green River, his powder and lead, and he wasn’t afoot. Things could be worse.

  He turned west. It was the middle of October already. Bridger and Fitzpatrick were trapping Blackfoot country to the east and would likely winter far over on Powder River. Milton Sublette was trapping Salmon River country to the west. Old Gabe and Fitz would probably have been easier to find—they were closer right now—but Baptiste would have to ride alone through Blackfoot territory to cut their trail; he hadn’t any stomach for Blackfeet at the moment. The route to Salmon River country lay through Shoshone country. Shoshones were invariably friendly to the trappers—Gabe reckoned they were the best Injuns in the mountains, honest and dependable. Baptiste knew the Shoshones, not his mother’s band which was shy and stayed in the mountains, but the large nation that roamed the Great Basin. He’d rather throw his luck with them, if he had to meet any Indians.

  Baptiste leaned in the saddle to pick some rosehips. He was hungry, having had almost nothing to eat for the two days of hiding out. Riding toward the headwaters of the Gallatin, he dug some camas roots that first night. The second evening he sat by a dam and at length shot a beaver, which he’d never done before. He ate not just the tail but all the flesh. The third day he was lucky; he killed a small doe. He sat around a fire for three days while he jerked the meat—thin strips of it laying on wooden racks above a low fire, drying in the smoke, sun, and wind. He ate all the fresh meat he could. And he walked around quietly.

  He had never spent much time alone in the mountains. Now he was not purpose-ridden. He was idle, waiting for the elements to do their work.

  He had camped on the edge of a big meadow stretching away to pine-studded hills on both sides. Little creeks, some no wider than a man’s stride, criss-crossed the meadow, run-off from the snow that already covered the peaks. He sat on the grass sewing himself three pairs of deer-hide moccasins—he’d lost his others. He stretched the skin to use as a ground cloth—the nights were cold, and he had no buffalo robes, just his capote. He watched his mare munch the plentiful grass; he listened to squirrels chattering; he noticed the calls of the grouse.

  At night he lay on the deerskin and looked a long time at the stars; through the thin alpine atmosphere they were as thick as gravel in the sky. He smelled the clear, cold air. And he played his harmonika—not the jig tunes he was used to playing for the trappers, but his Beethoven, Mozart, and von Weber, sending the fragile melodies out into the cold night. The second night he doodled on the harmonika with tunes of his own. Tunes were already running through his head—graceful little themes with a hint of plaintiveness, most of them—and he found the notes and began putting harmonies to them. He must have played his own melodies for three hours that second night. He was damned cold by the time the yearling black bear came wandering into camp to see who he was. He shot it. He was already impatient with shivering all night.

  He rode slowly on west for the next several days. He saw no reason to hurry. He was sure he wouldn’t see any Indians in this country—it was too late in the season and too cold and the game was thin. He didn’t have to worry about food, he’d jerked over fifty pounds of meat off that doe, which reduced to half that behind his saddle. He doubted he could find Milton before winter camp, and that would be in December. He couldn’t trap. So he just rode, wandered, and absorbed, through the piney country that drained its waters down to become the Three Forks and the Missouri River. He saw a little spring trickling from between some rocks and stopped to drink from it. He spent two hours at midday stretched out on a grassy knoll looking at the immense sky and the circle of ridges that held it in shape. He watched beaver play at diving and swimming behind a dam. He got off his horse and walked to a ledge. A little stream of water was falling off the rocks above, and he stood for a moment, mouth open, with his head in the spray. He observed a water spider shooting magically across a clear pool. He found a hot spring, steam rising where it flowed into the cold crick, its smell of sulphur strong, and bathed in it, luxuriating in the warmth. At night he fooled with his tunes. He got one worked out, a sort of song except that it didn’t have any words, just a series of different musical sequences like verses and a chorus that repeated itself after every verse. It had a pastoral feeling to him, and he called it “Lone Mountain Song.”

  The life seemed good. It struck him one evening that he had no reason to go on. He could set up a lodge here—even build a shack if he wanted to—and simply stay. He doubted anyone would ever disturb him. There was good water, good wood, plenty of meat for one man, lots of roots, and all the berries he could gather in the early summer. But he would have to go to rendezvous sometime for powder and lead and another horse or two. And riding with the boys was fun—trapping, carousing at rendezvous, swapping stories. He believed he’d go on.

  The next morning he was sure he’d go on. These mountains were too cold. He needed buffalo robes. So he started watching to the south for a pass. On the third day he saw a way—he might find some snow up there, but nothing he couldn’t ride through easily enough. He cut toward the pass, and came out of the mountains two days later onto the plains. And smack into a band of Shoshones.

  He rode up on them before he saw them, three braves on horseback. His best chance was to brazen it out. He held up his hand in the sign of friendship, and told them in his bad Shoshone that he came in peace. They motioned him into the camp a hundred yards away. He rode in without hesitation, for a show of confidence. Since there was no sense in taking chances, he went straight to the biggest lodge, the council lodge, dismounted, and stepped inside. If their hearts were bad or their faces blacked against the white man, parley would slow them down.

  Four braves came in quickly, seeming a bit excitable, though he wasn’t sure of all they were saying. Then the chief walked in with the pipe, and he felt his throat tighten. It was Mauvais Gauche—Bad Left Hand, the only Shoshone chief with a reputation for malice and double-dealing. Baptiste had picked himself one.

  Gauche (pronounced Gosha) lit the pipe, saluted the earth, the sky, and the four cardinal points, and passed it to the left. Everyone was seated around the fire, in descending order of importance from Gauche’s left; Baptiste was on his immediate right.

  When Baptiste smoked, he declared that he was a friend to Gauche, to his band, and to the Snake people.

  Did he bring presents? Gauche wanted to know.

  He regretted that he did not. He had presents—plews, tobacco, and beads—but some evil Blackfeet, who were his enemies and the enemies of the Snakes, had stolen the presents and his other horses. He did have one humble gift for Gauche, the scalp of one of the Blackfoot thieves. And he handed Gauche the Blackfoot scalp that was tied to his belt.

  This pacified Gauche some, but it wasn’t enough. The Frenchman (the Shoshone name for all whites) was hunting on Shoshone land, feeding on Shoshone meat, drinking Shoshone water, riding under the benevolence of the Shoshone gods who gave all good things to this country. Did he expect to take what did not belong to him without tribute? Such was typical of Frenchmen, who made Shoshones poor without recompense.

  Baptiste started to apologize again for coming empty-handed when he heard a woman’s voice outside the lodge. One of the braves jumped up and stopped her from coming in. He could hear them talk for a moment. The squaw was insisting that they take the Frenchman in as a friend and give him the hospitality of their lodges; the brave was arguing with her. Baptiste was astounded. He had never heard any Indians pay attention to the council of a squaw, even to the extent of bothering to deny it. After a moment all the braves left the lodge, tying him up first, and held council with the squaw outside the lodge.<
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  There was no sense in getting heated up about the whole thing. No place to go anyway. Equably, he set about working the rawhide off his hands. After a few minutes he freed them, listening always to the deliberate palaver outside, following it loosely, thinking how odd the squaw’s voice sounded; he undid the rawhide on his feet without making it look untied. Just as he was finishing, he heard some angry words outside, someone jerked back the hide flap of the lodge entrance, and a middle-aged woman stepped in, talking over her shoulder. She was a slender woman, wirily strong, with gray hair and eyes that seemed too large for her tiny head. She had a knife in her hand.

  When she looked at the prisoner, she hesitated oddly. Baptiste stood up, almost tripping from the ties still partly around his feet, and tried to find the right words. He saw her recognize his medicine-stone necklace. The words felt strange, and doubly strange in Shoshone: “Hello, Mother.”

  She stepped in, put her hands on either side of his face, looked long, then buried her face in his chest. He held her. When she raised her head, she was not crying, though her eyes glistened. The braves were gathering around in the tent, standing off, uncertain. He pushed her head against him again. She came barely to his shoulders. He looked at Gauche and the other men. “This is my mother,” he said.

  There were stories to tell, of course. Sacajawea would not tell her own until she had heard about the rest of his years in St. Louis—about his meeting with the prince (which made her puffily proud), about the great house that rode the salt-water-everywhere, about the wooden-shoe white men, about Africa—everything. He thought that he would stupefy her, but she absorbed it evenly. She asked him questions and questions. The most important was: “Do you have the secret of the marked-down signs?” He chuckled. He had been able to read and write when he last saw her.

  Her story was briefer, cryptically told, for she was only a woman. When she ran onto the plains that night west of the Ree villages, she had wandered for two days. Then a Pawnee war party, out raiding the Sioux, had found her and taken her to their village. The man who kept her, Jerked Meat, had given her five children, and she had been contented. But he died several years ago, and his brother then treated her as a slave. That she would not endure. She took her daughter, then less than two, and ran away.

  She walked up the Platte and the Sweetwater, seeking her own people. Some trappers helped direct her, for she was past the age of child-bearing and of no interest to anyone. She found the Shoshones near South Pass after the rendezvous of 1830. True, she did not find her own band—they had dwindled and dispersed.

  She might have been an outcast, wanted by no one, except that she discovered among them her son Bazel—the son of her dead sister whom she had adopted when Lewis and Clark had met the Shoshones, and whom she had never seen again. Bazel was a good man. He gave her a lodge and a fire and meat. She had an honored place in his household.

  And did she always argue with the braves in council? Baptiste laughed.

  Well, she knew that she was only a woman. But she had done things beyond a woman—she had been to St. Louis, she had lived with the white man, she knew his ways, she knew his heart. Sometimes, when bad Shoshones wanted to leave the trail of friendship, she told them they were fools and cowards. She would always be a friend to the white man. The Red-Headed Chief was the best friend she had ever had, and the best man she had known.

  They talked long into the night by the stewpot in Bazel’s lodge. Baptiste evaded some of her questions. Did he understand the white man’s god? He could not tell her that the white man’s god was false, as her own gods were false. She glowed when he said that he did. Would the white man send medicine men to show them how to make the marked-down signs? Baptiste said he thought so.

  He lay beside her that night. He fell asleep thinking how much he hated the white man.

  Bazel was a stout, affable, cheerful man, a little older than Baptiste. In the morning he declared solemnly that he welcomed Baptiste as a brother; as a sign of his friendship he would give his brother two horses. He added the hope that Baptiste would stay with the tribe, as his experience would enable him to give wise counsel.

  “My heart is grateful for the horses,” Baptiste responded in his awkward Shoshone, “for I come to you poor and have need of them.”

  Sacajawea, who was rebuilding the fire under the pot in the center of the tipi, spoke up promptly: “I hope that you will stay with us a while, after these many years. But he must go back to the Frenchmen, Bazel. He is an important warrior among them. He can win their friendship for our people.” Bazel nodded.

  Baptiste was relieved. “I will stay for a time before I go,” he said. “I know too little of my own people. I will sit at your feet for now as a learning child.”

  Baptiste, who thought of his mother and foster brother partly as children, was surprised at how much there was to learn. This band was on the move. It had come to the mountains as protection against the summer heat; now it was meandering for a final hunt before the snows came, laying by meat for the long winter. It would join most of the Shoshone nation, with more people than there were needles on a pine tree, for the big winter encampment near Soda Springs on the Bear River.

  Every step of this march was ordained by the spirits. Tipis were pitched with their flaps facing east, so that on awaking in the morning the people would be aware of the rising sun and give thanks to the One-who-created-all for its light and warmth. The first puffs of smoke from the morning fire were dedicated, with looks and little prayers, to the spirit that lives beyond the clouds, the smoke carrying the prayers to him.

  Buffalo Horn, the medicine man, and Buffalo Cow, a squaw, had had visions of buffalo when they were small, and therefore lived under the power of that animal. Each of them made calls every day to bring their brothers near the band so that the people might have enough meat to eat and skins to keep them warm. The buffalo pair was consulted every four or five days, when the band moved, on the direction to take to find their brothers.

  Once every day Bazel sang prayers over the medicine bundle. He took the bag off the tripod in front of the tipi and spread the objects on the skin. There were several—a sacred pipe, four golden eagle feathers tied together, a bear-claw necklace, a small piece of onyx, a tuft of bear hair.

  As a boy becoming a man, before his first battle, Bazel had sought a vision. He needed this vision as a guide to his course in life and as protection against his enemies. So in May, after the winter camp and when the tribe was preparing for its hunt and its wars of the coming season against the Blackfeet, he walked into the mountains alone to fast.

  He went humbly, on foot, taking nothing but a bow and a few arrows. He followed a small creek up into the mountains. The first evening he heard a bear in the darkness, but it stayed away from his fire. The second afternoon he came into a small glade, with grass for some distance around the creek, then forest stretching away. It seemed a good place. He sat cross-legged by the creek that afternoon and all the next day, taking nothing but the clear, cold, sweet creek water for nourishment. He ignored the aching of his stomach, looked at the huge blue sky, and waited for the spirits to speak to him. That night spirits teased him nastily, but he could neither see nor hear them clearly. He wondered whether the NunumBi, the elfin men who waited in the rocks, were tormenting him with their arrows of misfortune. On the fourth day he felt listless and stupid. Instead of sitting, he sprawled on the grass by the creek; he forced himself to be patient for whatever might be revealed to him.

  And that night the bear appeared to him, the magical bear that had visited his camp and must have watched him ever since. Though the bear seemed to say nothing at the time, he heard its meaning without words. Sometimes it had the head of an eagle, and he understood that he must emulate the eagle’s high-flown daring. And he understood that he must seek the stalwart fierceness of the bear. He was disappointed at the time that it seemed to teach him no dance or song.

  But when he returned to his tribe, he purified himself and then ca
lled them together to tell them of his vision. He discovered then that he knew somewhere inside himself the dance that the bear meant him to have. The people joined in it solemnly. Then the shaman told him that he must kill a bear and eat its heart to gain courage, and eat its hair as well, and keep the hair and claws as sacred objects, and trap an eagle for its feathers. Then he must revere these objects for the rest of his life in tribute to these animal spirits who put their sacred power in his keeping. That he had done so, Bazel explained, was the reason for his good health and fat belly and many horses, and the reason he had not been wounded in battle.

  The entire movement, the routine, the very existence of the tribe, bound, as it was, inevitably to the mountains, canyons, creeks, trees, grass, and the animals, was a kind of tribute to the powers of these creatures; for all were creatures and none inanimate objects. The band’s reverence expressed itself in ritual that governed every detail of their hunting, migrating, cooking, eating, and sleeping; it governed their lives as a slow and stately dance, a dance that embraced every waking and sleeping moment.

  Baptiste found the ritual irksome and unnecessary in some ways; he thought it had more to do with airy magic than with concrete topography. But he found the spirit behind it, in a way, beautiful.

  He imitated the sacred songs on the harmonika. His new friends were charmed and fascinated, but they wanted to hear his own songs, the songs revealing the magic he had learned from the white man. So he played for them his arrangements of some Mozart airs and Beethoven sonatinas and his own “Lone Mountain Song.” Though he could see that the music made no sense to them, they listened in rapt attention, with the deference due an appeal to sacred invocation. Then they promised, when the season came, to teach him the Wolf Dance, and the Buffalo Dance, and the Sun Dance, exchanging their greatest secrets of power for his.

  NOVEMBER, 1834: The bands came in to Soda Springs one by one, setting up their lodges in tribes, in the sheltered places close to water, about a dozen tribes of two to four hundred people each. The people made Baptiste welcome. It was good that he was son to Canoe-Launcher, who had traveled with the Red-Headed Chief. It was better still that he was friend to Old Gabe, the Blanket Chief, whom they all knew and respected. Was not the Blanket Chief husband to the daughter of one of their chiefs, Hawk in Hand? Was not the Blanket Chief their son, and his children their children? Baptiste was an honored man in camp.