The next day Shannon was well enough for the expedition to leave in the slow, misty rain. The river splashed under them. There was nothing to eat but soggy fish. They made camp early in the afternoon and immediately a few neighboring Chinooks were among them haggling over a few fish they had to trade. These
Chinooks were a sight with vests and breechclouts of woven cedar bark. Before they left they had stolen two blankets, a cooking kettle, some fishing gigs, and several of the men’s moccasins drying near the fire. Clark told them to lay the stolen goods down or he would shoot. He leveled his rifle at them, and they put the goods on the sand and ran.
On November 12, thunder, lightning, and hail were added to the misery of bailing water out of the canoes and wringing out wet clothing and bedding. Then the misery became worse when the rising waves began to threaten their camp and they had to move half a mile inland, leaving their baggage on the rocks to care for itself that night. The canoes were filled with stones and sunk to protect them from the battering waves. The next morning, the local Chinooks had taken some of the baggage and two of the canoes. Drouillard and Lewis had to go into the Chinook camp and demand that these things be returned. Seeing rifles leveled at a couple of the men in their village, the Chinooks sullenly returned the stolen canoes and baggage, including a peace pipe. They all seemed to be well informed on the power of the rifle.
“I don’t see any evidence of rifles in their village,” said Lewis, “but they all seem to know what it will do. This is evidence that someone was here with guns before us. And these people seem to think that if we do not present them with gifts right away, they are free to take whatever they wish. Where do you suppose they learned that?”
“These Chinooks are different from those back up the river,” agreed Drouillard. “Either they’ve forgotten manners, never had any, or were taught some bad habits by someone.”
In the morning one of the local Chinooks came dressed in a sailor’s jacket and trousers and made signs that he had some friends that could speak the white man’s tongue and act as interpreters. This was a new surprise. Clark immediately gave the man a small penknife and asked him to bring the men to the camp. The expedition sat in a circle on the sand waiting for the men who could speak English, wondering if they were white men, or Chinooks who had learned the language. The threemen who came back were Chinooks, dressed in cedar-bark vests and sailor’s trousers. They knew a total of four English words among them; “Damn, Haley” and “Come here,” and used this linguistic gift to cover the theft of a hatchet. A search of their greasy, grimy persons did not restore the hatchet. The captains sent them back to their village and decided to continue to rely on Drouillard as interpreter among these people.
“When we get to the coast do you suppose there will be white men in a camp or on a ship anchored in a bay nearby?” asked Shannon.
“I would bet on it,” said Lewis. “I would guess that there might be some traders from England there with all the things we’ve seen on this river. And maybe there will be ships from China or even Russia.”
“Let’s move on and see what is actually on the coast,” suggested Clark.
The river was nearly five miles wide at this point and very choppy midway across. The riverman, Cruzatte, said it would be best to travel along the shoreline. Even there the waves were so high that the canoes could hardly ride them. Sacajawea was the first to become seasick. Some of the men gently teased her. “The canoes do so much heaving that it causes those inside to do the same!” “Green is not your best color, Janey!”
Then nausea gripped Charbonneau’s stomach. LePage turned greenish and felt ill before some of the other men began to retch from the violent motion of their small canoes. Then the tide, which swelled the river, added to their troubles, and Captain Lewis ordered the canoes to turn in toward the shore. The expedition spent the next day at Point Distress,7 where a large shelter of brush was built on a hillside and a fire burned constantly in the front. They tried to dry out clothing and blankets and robes, even though the rainy mist and fog did not clear up. Sacajawea busied herself mending the men’s moccasins and trousers and shirts with what little good leather was left.
On the night of the fifteenth, the expedition camped in Haley’s Bay8 in huts made from the boards of a deserted Chinook village. The fleas had not deserted, but the huts were dry and that was heaven. The sight outside the next morning was unbelievable. The sun shone, clear and beautiful, and the men with sick colds and chest coughs saw the Pacific roaring up to the sand beach before them. Their joy was near hysteria. They tumbled out of the huts and ran along the sand barefoot. Some ran in the water and splashed those running beside them.9
“Never did I think I could be so miserable, nor so wet for so long,” said Captain Lewis. “That was some trip down the Columbia.” His dog, Scannon, lay contentedly in the warm sun.
“Maybe we’ll sight a ship that will give us all quick passage home,” laughed Captain Clark. “But not today. Look how clear that ocean looks—not a ship, canoe, or even a log on her. There’s water clear to the horizon.”
“Oh, am I glad to be here!” shouted Drouillard. “How about giving me and a couple of the men permission to look around for some kind of game? Maybe we’ll find a camp of Englishmen! Wouldn’t it be something if we had the company of white men instead of Chinooks this day? And it would be something if we had meat instead of fish to offer them.”
“Yes, of course, go,” said Clark, “and please find some meat.”
Suddenly George Gibson was standing out on the beach in his bare feet. It was a rare treat to hear him play his fiddle. He placed it under his chin and played several tunes. Pomp danced around and clapped his hands, finding it hard to stay on his feet in the deep sand. He laughed every time he fell.
Someone yelled, “Hey, Cruzatte, where’s your fiddle?”
Cruzatte pulled it out of one of the packs and rubbed his hand across his whiskered face. He plucked the strings and said, “Oh, well, what the hell, any music is better than none.” He played an accompaniment with Gibson, and then noticed Charbonneau off to one side playing his French harp. Pomp was dancing around the three men and laughing out loud, not only when he fell but when his father, Charbonneau, took a deep breath.
By now the entire expedition danced and cavorted and sang as though they were all children again, with complete abandon. York took Sacajawea’s hand andskipped in a circle with her while he sang loudly, “Praise to the Lord! We’se here!” over and over.
“Hey, get the water out of that music box!” Shannon, feeling quite well, teased Cruzatte.
“It ain’t water,” Cruzatte called, pointing his violin bow at Shannon and wagging it to and fro, “it’s sand you kick up with your feet as you jump around like a hyena. You act like you’re getting rid of fleas!”
Drouillard and a couple of the men came back with two deer slung between them. The outfit welcomed them with a loud cheer. York built a fire with driftwood right away, holding back the really wet pieces until the fire had a good start. The meat was skinned out and put on spits for roasting. “We saw no sign of Englishmen today—we’ll look again tomorrow,” promised Drouillard.
CHAPTER
26
The Blue Coat
All the coast Indians coveted, and demanded blue, or “chief,” beads, but unfortunately the expedition had exhausted its supply of blue beads. One visiting Indian had a gorgeous sea-otter robe that the captains were determined to secure. Sacajawea gave up her belt of blue beads so that a trade could be made for the robe. In compensation she was given a coat of blue cloth.
From Sacajawea, by Harold P. Howard. Copyright 1971 by the University of Oklahoma Press, p. 84.
The Chinook chief, Comcommoly, reminded Sacajawea instantly of Chief Kakoakis, for he had only one eye. The empty socket was filled with yellow matter, half-dried, half-oozing. His right eye was small and beady. He was short and stocky and wore a highcrowned, woven cedar and grass hat on his flattened forehead. Around hi
s shoulders was an otter robe that covered most of his squat body but did not hide his bare, crooked, fat legs. His teeth were brown, jagged, worn down to the gums. He smelled like putrefying fish.
Captain Lewis, unable to sit calmly seeing Chief Comcommoly’s beady right eye darting here and there, and the festering left socket, offered to wash the soreness away with alcohol and medicate it with the expedition’s famous eye ointment, dilute silver nitrate solution. The chief was grateful, and after that, he showed great consideration for the men of the expedition and admitted he had been quite suspicious of them at first.
Chief Comcommoly and Chief Chillahlawil from nearby villages had come accompanied by a few people from each village to trade around the white men’s fire. The visiting women squatted beside the campfire while the men began to bargain with Captain Lewis over woven rush mats, fish, cranberries, and fish gigs.
Sacajawea tried to keep her distance from these inquisitive Chinook women, who were so flea-infested that a bath was needed after each close contact. The women were eager to paw over Pomp, to examine his clean buckskin shirt and his tiny, quilled moccasins.
Captain Lewis had smoked the pipe with the two Chinook chiefs and given each a Washington seasons medal. He gave a flag to Chief Chillahlawil, who had a big head and huge shoulders, and nostrils that continually quivered, opening and closing, as though he were trying to pick up a fleeting scent. Comcommoly held out his hand for a flag. Captain Lewis shook his head no, and pointed out by hand signs that he had his sore eye medicated, so they were even.
After the two chiefs had admired their medals andsmoked again, Captain Lewis began his usual harangue about the Great White Father in Washington who had sent the white men as friends to keep peace with all the Indian nations and to encourage the nations to make peace with each other so that there would be an end to all fighting and sadness in the Chinook families.
There was some shuffling around as one of the men in an otter robe got up, blew his nose clear with a loud blast, and spoke to a woman who was picking at the quills on Pomp’s moccasins. The woman left. The man was tall, had great muscular bulk, and big hands. His face was rough, like the back of a toad. It was more round than oval, with rolling, flashing eyes. There was an air about him suggesting that on the least provocation he was ready to go down the violent path with someone. Soon the woman returned carrying a medicine bag, which she gave to the man as he danced energetically in the sand. He danced in front of Captain Lewis and sat down, opening his dirty, red-striped medicine bag, pouring out fourteen dried fingers in the sand. These, he explained by hand signs, were from his enemies. He had a way of talking all over, with his face and hands, and even the muscles of his body. “If the white chief is pleased that I so bravely took the lives of so many enemies, I will paint these fingers red and never kill again.”
Captain Lewis tried to stand up to the man’s eyes, but found he was not quite up to it. It was the first time he had seen anything except the scalp taken from an enemy. “That is exactly what I want. No more killing and only peace from now on.” Then Captain Lewis really looked at the man’s otter robe. It was the most beautiful robe he had seen. It was made from a pair of closely matched sea otters and seemed to have a denser, finer underfur of dark gray-brown, overlaid with a heavy coat of long, straight, glistening dark brown guard hairs, than any he’d noticed. He began to move his hands, telling the man how much he admired his robe. The man stood up, and his feet danced close together. His eyes began to glow. Cautiously Captain Lewis began to bargain for the robe.
The man shook his round, flattened head no. He didnot want to trade his robe. Then he shook his medicine bag. He would sell the fourteen fingers from his enemies for an ax. Captain Lewis shook his head no. The man then explained that his woman had spent many hours making the robe beautiful for him and it was hard to get the sea otter.
Captain Clark came into camp with his party of men. They had explored some of the coastal region around their camp. Clark started to tell Lewis about the huge pine he had carved his name in, then stopped and stared at the otter robe on the man. He saw its beauty instantly. Clark knew otter was hard to trap or shoot, since they invariably sank and were lost. Pat Gass was with Captain Clark. “That there is the finest set of furs I ever saw,” he said, reaching out to feel them. For a few moments they watched Lewis bargain desperately for the Chinook’s robe.
To all of Captain Lewis’s offers the Chinook glanced scornfully at the trade goods offered and shook his head no.
“Two thick blankets. Very warm,” offered Captain Lewis.
“No.”
“Five blankets, pretty colors.”
“No.”
“Beads?”
“Tiacemoshack? Blue chief beads?” His hands made the signs as he spoke the Chinook jargon. His feet were still.
The captains had discovered before that one of the few errors they had made in planning the supplies was the large store of red, white, and yellow beads. They never dreamed the natives across the continent preferred blue beads. To all nations they were the only valuable kind, fit for a chief, and so called “chief beads.”
Captain Clark could stand being an onlooker no longer. He moved in closer and offered his pocket watch, a handkerchief, a string of large red beads, and a silver dollar. He pointed out that the dollar could be worn around the man’s neck like the peace medals of the chiefs if a hole were punched in the top.
“No,” the Chinook sniffed.
Captain Clark was thinking how Judy Hancock wouldlook in the luxurious otter robe. Into it, he thought, she will disappear almost completely, wrapped up like a queen in a mantle of softness. He took out a pocket knife and added to the pile he already had on the ground for the trade.
“No.”
Sacajawea had been out of the way of the Chinook women, but watching the bargaining for the otter robe. “Blue chief beads.” The words pounded in her head like the surf pounding against the rocks when the tide rolled in. She could feel the light blue flowers worked in the pattern of darker, sky blue beads and the row of green leaves on her belt. She loved the belt of beads made by Chief Red Hair. It was the only material thing she prized except for her sky blue stone on the thin leather thong. She knew it was precious for its own sake, but only to her. If it was the only thing that would buy the otter robe for Captain Clark, should she give it up? To be able to do something for Chief Red Hair was what she wished. This would be doing something. She would give the belt, and in return he would have something he prized highly. That would surely be putting the precious belt to its best use, she thought. After all, the beads did come from the captains’ stores in the first place. She unfastened the belt and, without looking directly at him, handed the beaded belt to Captain Clark.
“Buy the robe,” she said almost inaudibly.
“I have nothing the Chinook wants,” Captain Lewis said to Clark, spreading his hands apart. “Good Lord, Clark, buy the robe if you can. You’ll never get another chance like this!”
Captain Clark stood motionless with the belt in his hands, Sacajawea’s body warmth quickly leaving it. Her face was always alert and her mind swift. Her expression changed readily with her changes of thought these days, so that a man who was used to her could tell what was in her mind even when she wanted to conceal it. He studied her. She tried to remain impassive, calm.
“Go ahead; it will make me pleased,” she whispered.
Captain Clark’s eyes focused on the belt. He fingered the leather thongs that had tied around her waist; they curled because of the tying. He thought of the moment he had given her this gift, a token of his appreciationto her for saving his life. He haggled within himself over his own exact shades of feeling. He looked up at the black wall of spruce behind the camp and the long heads of white timothy jarring and shedding seed with the boom of the sea. The wind was sticky with salt. He did not think about Judy Hancock now. She had faded from his thoughts.
“A sensible man would trade it for the robe he wants,” urge
d Captain Lewis.
“I’m taking it, Lewis,” said Captain Clark, with a sudden feeling of sadness overcoming him. “And thanks a lot for knowing what this fellow wants,” he said, turning to face Sacajawea, who neither smiled nor frowned.
The Chinook’s wolfish eyes danced. His pocked face glowed like pitted pipestone in the sunlight. He stared intently at the belt. Finally he held the beaded belt with his dirty fingers, squatting near Captain Lewis. His smell was very strong, and his rotten-fish breath hit Clark squarely in the face. The Chinook became so excited that he broke into song. “Tyeekamosuk, aye, aye!”
“Sell, now?” Captain Clark asked him.
The Chinook sniffed a quick, nervous breath, then expelled it with a blast. He burned a fixed, unwavering eye upon Clark. “Sell, sell, sell!” Greedily he grabbed the belt and held it with his mouth as he pulled the otter-skin robe off. Saliva dripped over the beads and off the thong ends.
Sacajawea ran her hands down her tunic. She drew it in. Something was missing, lost. She recalled how she had always liked putting on the belt and adjusting it over the folds of her tunic. Never again would envious women feel it and smile and cluck and ask her to take it off so they could feel and feast their eyes on its beautiful pattern and workmanship. Never again would Pomp pull at it with teasing baby fingers. She would have never grown tired of it. Never. Now she would never forget what it had looked like.
Then her logical mind turned. Why did Chief Red Hair want the robe so much? Was it for himself? Was it for the Great White Father in Washington? With a stab of jealousy she wondered if it might be for the paleeyed girl in his village, the one he called Judy. A sobshook her shoulders, and she could no longer control her stoic expression. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. The rain began slowly matching her tears; then it came faster and faster.
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