Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “There is more on my mind,” said Redpipe, handing the pipe to Four Bears to refill.

  “Let us sit, then, and smoke your pipe awhile,” suggested Four Bears.

  “I know as you know that it is wrong for grown men to worry about women. They are of no consequence.” Redpipe paused, glancing at the seven women of Four Bears sitting at the far side of the lodge.

  “We are like women to talk or worry about even one of them,” agreed Four Bears. “But I have no man-child to think about in my lodge, so I do not find it unusual to worry or speak of a daughter.”

  Redpipe felt easier and he went on. “I had the fainting sickness. I went on a journey of not waking, and there learned that this new daughter of mine would go to a white man.”

  “And so—I believe she will be able to protect herself more than you think,” answered Four Bears after a moment of meditation.

  Redpipe stood up and walked a little. “I have a feeling that this daughter will someday link us with the white men. She will be a go-between. Do we want this?”

  “Now you speak strange thoughts.” Four Bears gazed at him in bewilderment. “The white man is arrogant and makes his own laws, even in our land. Do you think this daughter would go to live with that?”

  “Not of her own will. But she has been shuffled from one village to another, enough to know that she has no say about her destiny. The Great Spirit guides us all. But I am frightened for her now. I do not deny it. If the Hidatsas knew the Girl Who Loved a Dog was here— It makes a man shake.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “I am. But I am speaking as well for the members of my family who love this woman.”

  “Times have changed,” Four Bears said. “For every Hidatsa who would harm her, there are many more who want nothing but to be left in peace and not be bothered about a shrine of stinking bones.”

  “Aa-agh!” Redpipe agreed. “But now we go in circles, like a tethered dog.”

  “A dog”—Four Bears said it softly—“is not the only thing that might go in circles on a tether. Have you ever seen the body of a man who has done that, around a Hidatsa stake, with his own guts ripped out and tied to the post to tether him? Well, I have. At, you are right in being frightened.”

  Four Bear’s cheeks sucked in against his teeth, and his lips went flat and whitened. “My skin crawls. We must pledge not to speak of this to anyone outside our families. Women gossip. The Hidatsas can have their sacred pile of bones and you can have your beloved daughter and we will both live in peace. We will not tell what lies secretly in our hearts.”

  “But what if my daughter ever tells her story?” Red-pipe asked.

  “She will not tell, and if others mention it, you will deny it and make your shoulders shrug as though it is something that has nothing to do with your family. You will clean your mind of the event now, wash it out.”

  “Ai, you have given me much to work over this night.”

  “I do not hear the drums,” said Four Bears. “The young men have gone on the hunt. Your son has gone, too. Will you rest here for the remainder of the night?”

  “I find it good here.”

  “Then we will rest until the sun is in the sky. The night has walked its way across the sky already. And I have another thing for you to sleep on. Listen now. I would like you to come to our Okeepa Ceremony, in another moon. I would like you to bring your son, Fast Arrow, with you. Let him put himself in the Bull Dance as my son. With only women in this lodge, I need someone to smoke with once in a while. I would like someone to make arrows for. I am asking that you share your son with me.”

  Redpipe sat up. “You honor me! The man of my daughter, Rosebud, my son, Fast Arrow, who came to us from Black Cat’s lodge, will be honored to become your foster son. There is nothing to sleep on. It is a matter settled. You shall have my son for your son. We are friends. We share.”

  A smile crept up to soften Four Bears’s mouth.

  “Would you like another daughter? I have one or two I can share.”

  “Now you are making sport,” said Redpipe, puffing on the pipe, his eyes twinkling.

  “I must be completely truthful. The name Black Cat has brought something else to the front of my mind. Many seasons past, Chief Black Cat was friendly with a white man called John Evans. They talked many nights through about the beginnings of our nation and the significance of the few things left to us from our old, old grandfathers. Evans knew how valuable these things are to us. He told other white men. We have been warned that a woman of one of the white traders will try to take our sacred relics so that this man can trade for them. When I saw her looking into the medicine ark, I thought your daughter was the woman who was friendly with the white traders and had been instructed by them to take our sacred relics.”

  “You must judge more carefully,” scolded Redpipe. “Perhaps there is a woman in your own village who is friendly with the white traders and could do such a despicable thing. Sacajawea would take nothing she did not feel was rightly hers. Somewhere in her training she was taught by good people. You can be sure it was not the Hidatsas!” Redpipe spat the last word out as if it were spoiled, bitter gall.

  The Buffalo Dance had been a success. By the middle of the next afternoon, the hunters were back, leading loaded horses. Their hands and arms were dirty with dried blood. Sacajawea and Rosebud helped unload and open the great furry bundles brought by Fast Arrow. Rosebud was proud of her man. She thought she had never seen so much meat in her whole life. Every horse that had been ridden away had come back loaded. There were great hams, broad rib slabs, juicy hump steaks, rolls of thin meat, kidneys, livers, tongues, and great white chunks of fat. The air was filled with a strong, sweet blood smell.

  The men did not work, but lounged around smoking and talking in the arena of the village. Rosebud and Sacajawea took their horse out to pack the remainder of Fast Arrow’s kill. When they returned they werecovered with blood, their arms and legs caked. Sacajawea laughed at the sight of Rosebud. Rosebud scowled at her with dark eyes, but her mouth smiled. Then both looked up as Redpipe’s voice called to Fast Arrow, who was lounging in the shade.

  “Ho there, my son, you did find the buffalo plentiful?” Redpipe stopped and examined the buffalo hides. Fast Arrow made a quick jab with his knife, as though stopping a buffalo in its tracks.

  “We missed you,” said Rosebud, hurrying to the side of Redpipe. “Where did you go last night, father?”

  “I had a long talk with my old friend, Four Bears.” He turned away from her to smile proudly at Fast Arrow. “Four Bears has invited you to take part in the Okeepa. You are to make yourself strong for the Bull Dance.”

  Fast Arrow scowled at him. Redpipe scowled back— fiercely. Fast Arrow laughed. He bent, pawing the earth with his hands in the fashion of a charging bull buffalo, then pointed sternly and proudly to his bronze, blood-caked chest. He was ready. Redpipe saw and gave a grunt of grateful assent. They would return in a month for the ceremony. The two men went to join other men so that Fast Arrow could tell of his prowess at killing his buffalo.

  Rosebud and Sacajawea went about the task of roasting some of the meat. The liver and heart were cut and wrapped in a long piece of gut around and around a willow branch and then tied in place. Rosebud held the branch in the outdoor fire until the meat browned and the juices sputtered. Sacajawea sliced off thin lengths of meat and hung them on drying racks of willow she had bound together with rawhide. Flies swarmed everywhere around the makeshift Metaharta camp. Sacajawea was careful to throw away the pieces of meat where small piles of white eggs had been laid. The flies made it hard to get the meat cut. They found the bare flesh of the women’s arms and faces and legs. Bright blood welled up from the shallow incisions left by the flies. Rosebud put some decaying leaves in the fire to make smoke and eliminate some of the flies; Sacajawea wrapped a huge green skin around her waist so that itcovered her legs. They worked hard, talking to one another, sometimes eating bits of raw meat.

  Final
ly Rosebud could no longer tolerate the flies. “I am going to the riverbank for wet leaves. The smoke will be thick and roll around us.”

  “Ai, but we’ll have watery eyes!” Sacajawea said.

  A young woman who had been working several tepees to the left came slowly toward Redpipe’s camp as Rosebud walked away. The gaunt, hot-eyed creature had two small children with dirty tunics and dried blood on their faces. Their hair seemed fine and showed glints of red in the shaft of sunlight.

  “You are being careful,” she said. “You will not have maggots in the meat.” The young woman wiped her hands on the dirty skirt she wore. Her blouse was loose at the neck and the sleeves were fringed, but there were no other decorations. Her hair was long and black and piled on top of her head. It was held in place by sticks and thorns and daubs of mud. The insides of her ears were red, and she had a red line between her eyebrows, making her look as if the top of her head had been finely cut away from the bottom half. “My man would beat me if our meat spoiled.”

  “Beat you?” said Sacajawea. “But if it was not your fault, why would he beat you?”

  “Ai,” cried the woman, dropping the neck of her blouse over her shoulder so that unhealed burns between her shoulders were visible.

  “He hit me with a smoldering chunk of wood only this morning when I had not built up the morning fire.” She swayed and grinned at Sacajawea. “My man is very important in the other village. He can speak the language of the Metaharta, and Mandan, and two tongues of the white men.” She held up two greasy fingers, her eyes snapping with pride.

  “Did your man go on the hunt?” asked Sacajawea, wondering why the woman had not put melted buffalo fat on the burns.

  “No, my man has gone north to trade with other white men. I am preparing the meat of some of his friends.”

  “Your man is white?” asked Sacajawea, unbelieving.

  “Ai, Jussome, a Frenchman.” The woman grinned.

  “My man is bearded—on his face, on his chest and back, and on his arms and legs.” She laughed.

  “What is French?” asked Sacajawea.

  The woman shrugged her shoulders and sat down near the smoking fire. Sacajawea wondered why this woman had come to talk with her, why she was not working.

  “Recently there was a Becoming a Woman Ceremony,” the woman said unexpectedly.

  “Ai. I was honored by my mother, Grasshopper,” said Sacajawea with a hint of bragging in her voice.

  The woman got to her feet and danced to the right and to the left. “Hih-hih-hih. I knew it. The food was good there.”

  “I will tell Grasshopper. She will be pleased with your comment.”

  “Will she also be pleased to know that I found the weasel collar she left in the trash heap?” the woman said. “Kakoakis would not like to know his present was so poorly treated.”

  Sacajawea felt her forehead crinkling in a frown, and her eyes pulling together as though she were trying to see through the smoke. This was the woman Grasshopper saw running from the refuse heap! Who was this woman? Why was she here?”

  “Why would you tell Kakoakis?”

  “You are not very smart,” said the woman, tapping a finger to her head. “My man is friends with all the chiefs, and especially Kakoakis and the Wolf Chief. They are three important men. Hih-hih! Jussome is a go-between for the white traders and the Mandans.” She stuck her grubby right hand inside the front of her blouse and, pulling the weasel collar out, placed it around her neck and paraded in front of Sacajawea.

  Sacajawea felt no compassion at all for the woman and her burned shoulders anymore. She felt blind anger. “You had better take that off,” she said, trembling. She searched for Rosebud for help, but Rosebud had not yet returned from the riverbank with the wet leaves.

  “I will take it off and maybe let you have it if you will tell me what is in the bottom of the sacred medicine ark.”

  “I will tell you these things are very old and belongto this village! They do not concern you. They were left by the first Mandans who lived here, ages before us.” Sacajawea reached out her hand for the collar.

  “I’m wearing it while I eat at the lodge of the Wolf Chief in the company of Chief Kakoakis,” said the woman with a sharpness to her tongue that cut deep into Sacajawea.

  “But you said—”

  “I wanted to know why you were looking in there yesterday. My man has asked me to get a talking stone from there. He said he could be a rich man if he had that. Will you get it for me?”

  “No! It belongs here. It is of no use to anyone personally. It is a village thing. It is something from their past. Only the Great Spirit remembers the significance of it. For you it would be a bad token.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Ai, something that would make your man soft and your children find an early death. Like the root of the mayapple when held tightly over a deep wound. Perhaps by morning you would be dead.”

  The woman gaped wide-eyed at Sacajawea. “Dead? You are making a mistake.”

  “Grasshopper made a mistake with the gift Kakoakis gave to Sweet Clover, and I will take the collar as you said.”

  “Grasshopper’s mistake! Hiiaaa!“ The woman stepped closer to Sacajawea, her children on either side of her. “I know your sister. I was there when she became sick. It was only in fun, but she was soft, a weak one. I played the man-and-woman games, too, and it did not make me crazy in the head. Ai, look what it got me.” She pointed a dirty finger at her boy and girl. Then she made an obscene gesture with her hands and hips toward Sacajawea, and broke into a barking, staccato laugh. Controlling herself, she added, “Handsome, aren’t they?”

  “What is Jussome that he would want the sacred relics in the medicine ark?” Sacajawea said.

  “Yiiii,” the woman burst out mockingly. “What is Jussome? What is French? That is the language of my man. He calls it français. You take a lot of time asking questions. You do not know much!”

  “I am finding out,” said Sacajawea, disliking the woman more and more. “Your man is from the nation of Jussome, and he speaks français.”

  “I ought to give you a good pounding for talking smart, but instead I am going to wear this collar and not give it back to you.” She rubbed her grimy hand on it and smoothed the white fur. “Kakoakis owes me a gift, anyway, and I have wanted this for moons. He knew it, too—the filthy skunk.”

  “Does Kakoakis owe you a present? What for?” asked Sacajawea, once again holding out her hand for the weasel-tail collar.

  “Why, I ought to—I ought—that just shows how dumb you are! Kakoakis likes the roundness of my body and my hard breasts thrust against his bare chest. It is the sight of them that holds his one glittering eye and makes the saliva drip from his loose-lipped mouth. He owes me a lot!”

  Sacajawea took a step backward in surprise. The woman looked wild and disheveled, primordial, pagan. Her hands were filthy, and her clothes smeared with grease and blood. Her hair had loosened and was coming down about her shoulders in uneven lengths. The way she looked, it did not seem possible that anyone would like her. The woman had caught her breath and started again. “And my man likes the presents he gets from the Wolf Chief and Chief Kakoakis, so he sells me for a night or two.”

  “Sells you? Trades for you?” asked Sacajawea, low-voiced. “And you do not mind?”

  “What can I do?” the woman asked. “I have nothing to say about it.” She wrung her hands in helpless resignation. “But I do not care. They play games I enjoy. My man is nothing compared to the excitement those chiefs can bring to me. Eeeeiii—they make me wild with urges, and I will do anything for them. They are devils. Like the devil of Okeepa.” She looked toward the heavens and pushed her full breasts together, squeezing tightly.

  “Why did you come to talk with me?” asked Sacajawea. “You talk longer than an old squaw. What is truly on your mind?”

  “Do you think I did not observe Kakoakis’s foolishlooks at you during your ceremony? And you danced with no man. Tha
t made others swing their glances in your direction. They forgot about me. Kakoakis is still hot for you. Then I found you here, talking to Four Bears. I want you to think of those sweet small breasts under your chin that Kakoakis finds so exciting, even though he has not seen them. How would you like one of them cut off?” She made a slash with her hand toward Sacajawea.

  Sacajawea stepped quickly backward. She felt the blood leave her head, and her feet felt heavy. Then her anger returned, and she reached out and snatched the weasel-tail collar from the woman’s neck.

  “Give that back to me!”

  “I will not! And if you do not leave, I will tell Four Bears that you plan to steal the relics from the ark.”

  “You would not!”

  “Ai! I would.”

  The woman turned and walked away, with her two children following. Her backside moved with each step as though she were put together with extra loose sinews. “Kakoakis is becoming completely blind!” yelled the woman.

  Rosebud came back, flushed of face, with a great skirt full of wet, soggy leaves, which she dumped near the fire.

  “Do you know her?” Sacajawea asked, pointing toward the swaying hips.

  Rosebud began an angry guttural discourse. “She is Flower Who Awaits the Bee, woman of a white trader. She is also known as Squaw of Any Man. She has another name that will stay with her for a long time. The Mandans call her Broken Tooth, because one time her man hit her on the mouth with the end of his firestick after she sneaked out to Kakoakis’s lodge without his permission. Everyone knows about her and her white man, who has strange laws. If he gives his permission for her to go, it is all right. If he does not tell her to go, she must not. But everyone knows she goes to Kakoakis when she wants.”

  “She is the woman Grasshopper found at the refuse heap. She had the weasel collar,” said Sacajawea. “Itook it away from her. She talked of many strange things.”

  “So—it was Broken Tooth! I am not surprised. She thinks she is the answer to all men’s desires, and she does not like anyone who has things prettier than she.”