Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “I do not want to be a slave squaw forever.”

  “But squaws do not ask for more. They are happy to serve their man and have his children.”

  Sacajawea raised her eyes. “I cannot live like a caged bird always.”

  “Your ideas are strange. Catches Two could beat you for them.”

  Sacajawea shuddered more from the air impregnated with the odor of putrefied flesh than from fear. She held her nose and moved in to watch the Minnetarees devour the soft meat greedily, thrusting their spoons into the meat that would scarcely stick together. Even the children crammed it down and seemed to suffer no inconvenience.

  Suddenly she felt sickened by this sight and the stench of rotting animals. She moved away from Antelope and edged her way toward the women collecting driftwood. Slipping out of her dress, she plunged into the icy water to wash away the odor in her nostrils and to help Talking Goose attach a buckskin thong to a floating tree and haul it in. When they had collected a great deal of wood, Sacajawea slipped her dress on and headed back to the warmth of the smoky lodge.

  She felt someone near, then an arm around her waist. Beside her was Bull Face. His leg was badly scarred where the dog had sunk its teeth. The skin was shiny pink, almost transparent along the long red scar.

  “Come. We will find warmth together in my lodge.” Bull Face laughed deeply, meaningfully into her ear. Then he put his hands around her back and moved them down to her buttocks, pulling her close.

  She pulled away, sickened. His stench was that of the rotting carcasses. It was on his breath and in his hair—nauseating. She felt as though she were breathing underwater in a rotting swamp.

  From somewhere nearby came a throaty growl. It was the dog.

  “You skunk! You little yellow-livered skunk!” His whole style had changed. He spat the words out. “That beast hangs like a burr in my hair!” He cuffed Sacajawea and sent her sprawling. She rolled over and sat up, scuttling crabwise out of his reach and letting out a loud yowl.

  “The dog is a friend,” she said, reaching out toward the animal.

  Bull Face caught her and clapped a hand over her mouth; the other he used to pinch her nostrils shut. She clawed and fought, but as her breath ebbed, she had to stop.

  “Come with me,” he ordered Sacajawea, “and I’ll give you something to howl about.”

  The dog growled again, closer now. Bull Face turned and saw him coming with his white teeth bared, amber eyes never wavering in their intense regard, his whole body taut with concentration; and like an arrow Bull Face hightailed it in the direction of the stinking, rotting, dead buffalo, running, running as fast as his moccasins could go over the soft snow.

  The dog stayed with Sacajawea.

  From then on, the dog followed at her heels each time she left the lodge until she entered it again. Sometimes she spoke to him when no one was around. The village whispered behind their hands about the dog and the slave girl.

  Even though the dog was near, Sacajawea found herself constantly on the alert, watching for Bull Face—who had now been shamed twice by the dog—or her master, Catches Two. She knew that if Catches Two found her with Bull Face she’d be whipped; on the other end of the stick, if she refused Catches Two’s desires, she’d also be whipped. This punishment was common practice among the Minnetarees, but for a Shoshoni, beating or whipping was the most degrading thing that could happen, even to a slave girl.

  She kept to herself, sewing moccasins and leggings for the people of the lodge. She washed their garments in the cold river, cut the dried squash, and dropped the hard strips of jerky into the stew. In her heart was a tocsin of fierce unrest. She had learned long ago to keep her face impassive, no matter what she felt. She could keep her tears bottled up inside so they would not slide down her nose. She managed to live above the fear she felt when Catches Two came inside the lodge. The dog was her only solace, a thing of faithfulness and devotion, yet he was completely wild.

  The dog trotted behind Sacajawea as she went to the water hole, but behind it were the spirits of coyotes. These ancestral ghosts dictated the dog’s moods, so that often it turned away from Sacajawea, grabbing the meat she brought and darting into the brush to devour it alone, unseen. But it would return.

  One morning Sacajawea carried Antelope’s newborn boy to the bathing place. The dog, whose bare patches of pink skin were almost invisible now, hidden with new brownish yellow fur, followed behind them. When Sacajawea turned to look, it ran with its bushy tail pointing to the ground and hid behind the sagebrush. Then it trotted alongside, seemingly to have a look at the Hidatsa papoose. Sacajawea took the baby from the cradleboard and unwrapped the soft doeskin. The baby made soft whimpering noises. The dog stood off, watching, its yellow eyes glinting in the early morning sunlight. The dog growled deep from within its chest. Sacajawea turned her back on him and bathed the baby gently in some shallow water. The baby thrashed his legs about and waved his arms, howling about the cold water that was poured on him. She laid the baby on the doeskin and wrapped it tightly so that his arms and legs could not move. Certain that he could not roll downthe embankment, Sacajawea set about cleaning the soiled cattail-down from the cradleboard. Then she pushed fresh down against the back and sides of the cradle. She adjusted the wrapping of the doeskin on the baby and placed him in the cradleboard. It was now arranged so that he could water without being taken out each time.

  Sacajawea carried the baby, who had eyes like a bird, on her back up the trail, where she met Catches Two at the edge of the village. “I will have payment on the debt you owe me.” His ruttish eyes leered, and he reached his hand toward the fork between her bare legs; swiftly he pulled the cradleboard from her shoulders and hung it over a dead limb protruding low from a single cot-tonwood that grew near the trail. The baby was asleep. Catches Two held Sacajawea by the arm and pulled her off the trail, down a sharp gully, away from the watchful eyes of any guards at the women’s bathing place or anyone coming along the trail to or from the village. His breechclout was down, but in the next instant the dog stood between Catches Two and Sacajawea. The dog’s growl was still deep within its throat, but much louder than it had been before. Its mouth, half-open, was dripping saliva. Ina split second, Catches Two spun on his heels and disappeared. He did not return to the lodge until sundown. He was sullen and would not eat.

  Another time Sacajawea took the papoose to a small mound of hard-packed earth outside the lodge so that Antelope might rest. Sacajawea hummed and rocked the papoose and half dozed herself. It was several moments before she saw the dog, its belly fur gleaming white in the sun. It carried a small deer mouse in its mouth. The dog walked up close, dropped the mouse in Sacajawea’s lap close to the baby’s face, and then trotted off. In a few minutes it was back with another dead mouse. The dead mice themselves did not bother Sacajawea—she knew they were a delicacy for the dog— but the lice-laden, furry body next to the baby’s face was too much. Sacajawea said angrily, “Scram, Dog! Go!”

  She brushed her skirt furiously, tossing the dead mice to one side and causing the baby to awaken and cry.

  The dog turned, walked a short distance, then reared up on its hind legs and pounced, pinning its prey to the ground. The dog crushed the tiny mouse’s head, then trotted back to place this new prize in Sacajawea’s lap. She stood, brushing unseen lice from the frightened baby’s face. She placed the baby on the ground, and kicked the mouse toward the dog. She found a piece of dead wood and threw it at the dog.

  “Go away!” she yelled. “Or next time I’ll beat your head in!”

  The dog hunched himself and slunk down the trail and off into the woods without turning back to look at Sacajawea. She was panting with anger when she scooped up the screaming papoose, stepped over the dead mice and went back to sit against the outside wall of the lodge.

  For several weeks the dog did not return. Sacajawea felt glad, yet sad at the same time. Old Grandfather reported that the dog was living in the willow brake and that it had mated. “The
female and five pups live in an abandoned rabbit burrow, which the dog enlarged.”

  Catches Two smirked and brought out his dark thoughts on how to get rid of the wild dog.

  Sacajawea said, “Good riddance.” But in her heart she wanted to see it again. Antelope said she hoped it was gone for good. She didn’t feel her babies were safe around it.

  “That dog would not hurt anyone,” defended Sacajawea. “It only looks for friendship. It brought dead mice to me as a gift, and I did not like my gifts crawling with lice. That does not mean the dog is a monster. The dog never touched the papoose. Forget it. It is gone and I do not care if it ever returns.”

  “It had better never touch my papoose! That coyote!” Antelope shut her eyes and shuddered.

  Finally the dog did come back. It came to the edge of the bathing place one morning. Sacajawea saw it, and it seemed sullen, its brilliant, amber eyes seeming to question whether it would be welcomed. Sacajawea dumped a full buffalo paunch of water over its head. When it did not move, only shook violently until its fur was dry, she laid her hand on its head, then rubbedbehind each ear. It licked her arm, then began to lick her bare feet, enjoying the salty taste. Sacajawea laughed at the feel of the rough tongue.

  The spring air was warm, and the women sat outside and sewed. Antelope had hung the cradleboard from a low branch of a nearby tree. The dog stood some distance away, watching. Then, slowly and silently, it approached and sniffed the cradleboard. The women watched it and it ran, with its black-tipped tail almost touching the ground, into the trash heap behind the lodge, there it sniffed around and found an old elk bone. With the bone clenched in its teeth it trotted off toward the willow brake.

  Antelope announced that it was probably taking the bone to its family. Sacajawea said it was going to charm its wife into having more pups.

  So Antelope’s distrust faded, and she let the papoose hang from a tree in his cradleboard when the dog lay lazily stretched on the ground—if someone were working nearby.

  Then came the fateful day Talking Goose and Little Rabbit were planting corn and beans; Old Mother was sunning herself, half-asleep, near Sacajawea; the dog lay in the shade of the cottonwood. Antelope had set the baby in its cradleboard against the tree, intending to hang it up when she came back from the lodge with her sewing. That reminded Sacajawea of the elk skins she was tanning on the far side of the lodge, so she went to see if they needed more soaking, or to be turned over in the sunshine.

  Sacajawea heard the scream and came running. Her throat tightened, and Antelope’s keening sounded louder.

  Catches Two came running from the lodge with a handful of feathers that he had been putting in the butt end of some fresh arrows. Antelope, her face the color of pale squash, ran sobbing to him, wild with hysterical fear, her arms flogging at his chest. Between sobs and crying she made it clear that a coyote or wolf had snatched her baby out of his cradleboard and eaten him alive.

  “That’s nonsense!” said Sacajawea. “No coyote or prairie wolf could have come near with the dog on guard.

  But Antelope was staring hard at the dog, and when Sacajawea turned and looked, she saw that its muzzle, chest, and right shoulder were plastered with blood. The left shoulder was once again bare of fur and showed pink skin. The dog gave a low whine and pawed the ground, just as Antelope kicked at it. It growled deep down in its chest as if it had been wakened from sleep.

  “I’ll kill you!” Catches Two yelled at the dog, who was now standing and looking around from one face to the other with yellow, luminous eyes. Then it turned and started to slink slowly away.

  Sacajawea looked incredulously from Antelope to Catches Two. She called out a warning and moved toward the dog. But Catches Two was quicker and reached the animal first, plunging his steel knife into the already bloody chest. With a grunt, he twisted the knife as he dragged it down toward the white belly fur.

  The dog lay where Catches Two had knocked it down. The lustrous amber eyes blinked, then remained open. The head fell back and the mouth was filled with frothing blood. Its dark yellow legs twitched and the air was saturated with a vile smell released from the dark scent gland at the base of its tail.

  In the sudden silence, a low whimpering sound drew everyone’s attention from the dead dog. Their eyes caught something unfamiliar. Antelope began to sob loudly once again and point with her finger. A dead female coyote lay in a puddle of blood just beyond the place where the cradleboard had stood against the Cottonwood. Near the tree lay a bull boat, bottom up. The whimpering came from under the old, discarded boat.

  Still sniffling, Antelope ran to investigate. The papoose was out of the cradleboard, on his hands and knees under the lightweight boat. He was dirty and bedraggled and crying now because he was hungry— but he was unharmed.

  “The dog saved him,” breathed Sacajawea, pointing to the broken straps on the cradleboard. The straps and lacing looked like something had chewed on them.

  Antelope picked up her papoose, cooing and soothing and cuddling him; but this sweet moment of relief was short. Without warning, Sacajawea leaped at Catches Two and began beating him about the face and chest.

  Old Mother felt a slow fear dawn in her heart, and her eyes became dark and glassy. Her lips were stiff as she took a deep breath. “What will happen?” she asked Antelope.

  “It is up to Catches Two,” said Antelope, looking at Sacajawea, who had stopped hitting Catches Two, although her fists were still balled in rage. She could say no more, but gave a sickish laugh when Sacajawea rushed to the dog and threw herself on its back, embracing its scrawny head with the lifeless, amber eyes. Something great was gone.

  Catches Two was bewildered by Sacajawea’s behavior. “It is unforgivable,” he said to Old Mother, “for a slave to beat her master and defile his lodge with a wild dog.” And then Sacajawea pulled her good sleeping robe out of the lodge and pushed the hulk of the dog onto it. Catches Two sat on the earth and began to laugh softly, unregenerate laughter. He was unstrung after his encounter with the dog and the pounding he had taken from Sacajawea.

  Sacajawea promptly restrung him with a sharp, dark look. “I’ll lodgepole you,” she warned, “if you or anyone makes another sound.”

  His laughter broke off and he glared at her. “No woman talks to a Hidatsa brave that way,” he said, but then fell silent.

  Carefully she tied the robe together with thongs found in the lodge. Then she dragged the huge parcel across the cultivated field, toward the willow brake. She tugged and heaved until it was firmly caught in the lower branches of an old sycamore. She tore at her hair until it fell loose. She tore her face with her fingernails until it streamed blood. She tore her tunic. She scooped up dirt and spread it on her head and face. The riverbank was filled with her high animal howl.

  “We must get rid of her,” said Catches Two. “She cannot stay here.”

  “Where can she go?” asked Antelope.

  “I think the old chief Black Moccasin would take her,” said Old Grandfather, pointing his pipe to the four corners of the earth and offering a prayer in behalf of the spirit of the dead dog.

  “He has many slaves,” said Old Mother.

  “Give her to Bull Face. He is shriveling up for want of a slave girl,” snickered Talking Goose.

  “It is the Moon of the Trading Fair,” Catches Two said. He sounded worried. “There is much to do, and it will not be good if the girl continues to mourn. It will not look good to the village. If she does not come to her senses, we must end her comings and goings.”

  “It is up to you,” said Old Mother, looking closely at Catches Two. “You are the one who brought her to us.” Her mouth bunched up and she scratched in the earth with the heel of her moccasin. Sacajawea’s howls were still to be heard as Old Mother began pushing dust over the pools of dried blood left by the dog.

  Antelope clutched her baby son. “Will the wild beast’s spirit kill us because we did not believe in him?” she said.

  It was a new thought. “A
i,” said Talking Goose. “What do you think about that, Old Mother?”

  “I do not know,” she answered. “But perhaps the forces that made the dog react the way he did will be angry because the dog has been killed. We will offer an especially rich gift to the dog’s spirit to show that the members of our lodge feel some remorse and will never again harm a wild dog.”

  Everyone supported her except Old Grandfather. He said, “I am not so sure this is necessary.”

  Old Mother ignored him. She said, “If we place many animal bones together under the tree in the willow brake where the girl took the body of the dog, the sun and the moon, and the trees and living animals, will see, and they will know that we wish the spirit of the dog well.”

  “Just how will they know this?” asked Old Grandfather.

  “They will know,” said Old Mother.

  And so the women of Catches Two’s lodge built a pile of bones as high as the branches that held the last earthly remains of the dog, and left a fresh hunk of bear meat on the top of the bone monument so that the spirit of the dog would not go hungry.

  In the morning, Sacajawea was found sitting between the rows of new-planted corn, making believe the dog sat watching on his side of the brake. The meatthat Antelope had left was gone, and there were wild dog or wolf tracks around the huge stack of bones.

  “Those are the tracks of the dog’s spirit,” said Old Mother positively.

  The story of the bone monument was long recounted in the big Hidatsa village, and each spring new bones were added to the heap by the descendants of Catches Two.

  CHAPTER

  6

  The Trading Fair

  If the Indians are right they went east to the great fur fair of Montreal in the late 1630’s and returned with white-man goods. Gradually, visiting tribes brought meat and furs to the upper villages of the Missouri River, trading them for corn, beans, and squash. In spite of the competition and the growing wars among the crowded tribes, the Hidatsas managed to keep a hand on the good share of the trade through their favored upper-river position. For years now, the goods had been brought right through their gates by the British, enlarging the importance of the villages as a marketing place, rivaling the early fur-trading posts of Lake Superior, Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, etc. Thus it became a sort of Grand Portage at rendezvous time, but operated by Indians.