Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “Umbea.” Pomp tugged at her leather tunic and patted her arm. His face was bright and full of laughing. A deer mouse scampered off, and the child tried to follow.

  Sacajawea caught his hand and walked in the direction of Grasshopper’s lodge.

  “I am happy you came first to see me after your friends left,” said the old woman. “You are a true daughter.” She clicked her tongue and smiled. “You are sad. I can see it. Sit and listen to your old mother for a while. The world will go on if you are not here. Boats will go up and down the river.”

  Looking up, Sacajawea said, “I worry about my people and the strength of their enemies, the Blackfeet.”

  “We are your people.” Grasshopper took a willow fan to Sweet Clover, who sat near the fire stirring the stew made with fresh corn. Sweet Clover did not look up, but began fanning her face vigorously, and her stirring became faster, so that Grasshopper began to shake with laughter. When the old woman looked at Sacajawea, she made herself calm and said, “The Blackfeet will kill and be killed. The sun will shine, and night and day will come. You are on Mother Earth to live and die. You can do and think what is best, but there is no use fighting things. You help others when you can, work, and live as best you can—that is all.” Her face puffed in and out in thought. “You can fight for what is right. It does not matter so much how you fight. It is what you fight for. A grandmother once said, ‘You have to stick to the row you are hoeing.’ In this life it is a person’s first right to live, even if he has to shed blood for that. And what you think is right has to come while you are alive. It is no good to you when you are dead. Am I telling you too much?” The old woman looked fondly at Sacajawea. “I am wearing on you?”

  “No,” Sacajawea said quickly. “I need your thoughts.”

  Grasshopper said softly, “It is good to hear you say so, my daughter.”

  “You have a right to hear this,” Sacajawea said. “Chief Red Hair asked to take my son to his village, to teach him understanding of the markings on paper.”

  “Your little Pomp?”

  “At! My son would have much in his head.”

  “You are young and silly. I doubt if you’ll take my word for it, but I will tell you. You think the white blood of a father dominates the mother’s blood. That is not even sensible.”

  “Sensible!” Sacajawea’s mouth was wry upon the word. “How can you judge that?”

  “Well so, then maybe not. I’ve done many things that were silly. If anyone had told me, three or four months ago, that you’d find your way back here, I maybe would have said he was in the world of spirits. And the day I took you into my arms and said you were my daughter—well, so there are times one has to be a fool. I did not have room to choose.”

  “That’s it. That’s my feeling. My son could learn the white man’s ways.” Sacajawea looked around the lodge slowly. Sweet Clover had fallen asleep beside the cooking fire.

  “You were forced on me. Was this offer for teaching your son to be a white man forced on you?”

  “I could do like my man and ignore it, as if it were never spoken.”

  “Why don’t you? Maybe that is the sensible thing to do. It doesn’t sound like sense to me to make a person into something he never was.”

  “Who can say what a person can be made into? I have been changed.”

  “You want your little son to be like the whites?” Grasshopper looked incredulous. “You like men who boast, who cannot shoot a straight arrow, who hit women, who want their meat fully cooked?”

  “So,” said Sacajawea calmly, “I never dreamed you thought all white men were like the one we call Charbonneau. Pah! He is but a dry bean dropped from a rotten pod. He’s a bad smell. There are others who have no fear of cutting out new trails, who can cut their feet to pemmican on the rock and half drown in the river, let the flies eat them, freeze, and eat their horses to keep from starving; and before they sleep they can make marks with a thin stick in what they call journals.” She was pacing up and down the lodge, her arms shaking. Her head tossed from side to side. “This other kind of men know of lands beyond the seas. But they have not been there. They learn of them from journals. This reading can do much. It is something I want for my son.”

  Grasshopper could see Sacajawea’s intention was as firmly fixed as her determination that Pomp should take on the characteristics of the white man. “And so—you would not be afraid to send your son to the white man’s village?”

  “Afraid?” Sacajawea thought that Grasshopper did not even try to understand. She drew in her breath and held it, watching Pomp as he pushed a tiny red coal back into the fire with a discarded bone. “I do not believe I fear any place where Chief Red Hair would be.”

  Grasshopper told herself that she could name on her fingers ten times over squaws who lacked the courage to do what Sacajawea had in mind for her son; and yet just now she looked more like a wistful child than a squaw—even a squaw of only fifteen or sixteen summers.

  “And you speak this out loud? What if I should say the same words sometime to your man?”

  To your man. Startled, Sacajawea realized that it was the first time since coming back from the west that she had thought of herself as belonging to Charbonneau. The thought angered her; belonging to him meant nothing but drudgery. She shifted her weight to the other foot. She would do all she could to see that her son was not bound by the same kind of life. “I do not fear your tongue.”

  Grasshopper began to laugh. She sat with her hands flat against her broad thighs and roared with laughter that stung because there was so much to laugh at, that stung the more because there was so little humor in it. “And so—it is this Chief Red Hair who has tied your heart in knots, so much so that you would even let him take your firstborn son from you! Ho—ho—ho—OOO!”

  Sacajawea began to laugh also. There was no good reason to laugh. It was foolish; she sounded foolish to herself. For two years she had given her heart to one of the captains of the expedition, but her body had belonged to her man and her body had felt nothing; it had been dead. Her heart beat with its own life. She could see Clark, gentle and tough at the same time, and his red hair; it needed only sunlight to set the red sheen shining in it.

  “So—it is my daughter who seeks out the highest chief among the white men and permits him to take her heart. My daughter, who has a man—no, a dried bean—is to be commended because she does not telleither man her feelings. Sometimes it is good to stay inside yourself and not let on. My own mouth is sealed. Now it is time for something to eat. Your son must have a full belly to match the full head he is going to have. And your belly must not go empty, my daughter.”

  But emptiness came of another hunger. Forbidden hunger, and a forbidden man.

  Otter Woman and Tess were outside Charbonneau’s lodge when Sacajawea returned.

  “Where did you go?” asked Otter Woman. “Our man is looking for you. He wants you to clean these fish for cooking.” She pointed a dirty finger at the half-dozen fish with blue flies buzzing over them. The fish were not fresh.

  “How long have they lain here?”

  Otter Woman looked up, surprised that anyone would be that inquisitive. “Two, maybe three suns. Our man left them here under the wood so that the coyotes could not get at them.”

  “They have spoiled in this heat and will give us bellyaches.” Sacajawea threw them out toward the refuse heap in the back of the lodge. Then she made a broom from willow branches and began a vigorous sweeping of the lodge. Otter Woman sat on her sleeping couch wondering what had taken possession of Sacajawea since she had been gone. No squaw ever worked so hard, so fast and furiously. By evening the lodge was in order, clean above Minnetaree standards, and the couches were neat and sweet-smelling with sage laid in between the musty hides and blankets. There was fresh corn soup and antelope chunks sent from Grasshopper’s lodge in the kettle when Charbonneau returned. He glanced briefly around and shrugged.

  “The place shines like a new-minted louis d’or. Nom du b
on Dieu, my women also are as golden clean. It is past believing. Let me have some of that meat.”

  “That meat,” said Sacajawea, glancing at Otter Woman, who had done nothing but eat all afternoon, “has been saved by me from the wolves who infest this lodge and eat like a famine is to come.”

  “That could not be me,” said Otter Woman inno-cently. “But it could be your sons who have been in and out after food all day.”

  “Zut! If my sons are Canadiens like me, they are mangeurs de lard,” laughed Charbonneau. “With some disrespect, too.”

  “I would not mind being a pork-eater when there is meat like this.” Sacajawea filled a dried gourd with boiled meat and corn.

  “Oui, it is good.” Charbonneau chewed a mouthful slowly. His jaw muscles stretched his beard, and his bobbing head flung it from side to side. “You have become a nice housekeeper and fine cook since I have been gone. You are glad I am back? Oui. Keep your eyes there on my bowl. She needs refill.”

  Otter Woman smiled, accepting the compliment and refilling his bowl. She ran her fingers through his greasy hair.

  Sacajawea’s hands balled into fists.

  “Ma petite furie,” he said. “Little storm, do not scratch a man’s eye out. Cut those long nails.” He pulled away Otter Woman’s hands and laid his head in her lap. “I have needed a squaw like this—one with big tits a man can hang on to.”

  Otter Woman giggled and began rubbing his shoulders, bending low over him.

  Sacajawea’s fists dropped helplessly, and her voice dropped with them. “Come, little sons of the man called Charbonneau, it is your time to eat this tender meat.” It struck her suddenly that there were streaks of white in Charbonneau’s hair that were beginning to overrun the black.

  “Kakoakis, that old one-eyed chief, wants to hear more stories. He likes the one about me killing the grizzly. She had the biggest mouth I ever saw. Oui, the biggest. And I shoot right into that bear’s mouth. Pouf! She is dead. The chief listened to me tell how I kept the canoe from upsetting in fast water. Your man is important. Le grand esprit guides me. You a lucky squaw to be in the lodge of such a big man in this village.” He pulled Otter Woman close and whispered something; then he sat up and looked at Sacajawea, who dipped small gourds of water for the boys.

  “Where did you go this afternoon after the boats left?

  Kakoakis would not believe the story of the whale, and I looked for you to tell him it was so and to clean some fish he gave to me three, four days ago.”2

  Sacajawea did not answer, but began to stir the meat after pouring more water in the kettle.

  “I am giving orders. Next time I want you, you be in this lodge. You hear. Little Bird?”

  “Ai,” she said, not wishing to begin an argument.

  “Give me some tea.” Charbonneau talked to the fire. “If you do not do as I say, I will take a tough leather thong and smack your legs with it. My squaws behave. You will not act like you did when Capitaine Clark was around. And you keep your mouth shut about that trip. It had nothing to do with you. It was a trip for soldiers and strong men, not sick squaws. So do not brag about your part or I will tell how you lay in the bottom of a bateau for many days moaning and letting spittle slide past your lips.”

  Sacajawea blinked. Then she noticed on each side of his leather shirt hung pieces of bright green ribbon. “Kakoakis will be jealous of your shirt’s ribbons.”

  “Le Borgne says I sing my life away and strut like a jeune coq to be gazed at and admired. That means rien du tout—nothing at all—to me. You are right, he is jealous. From now on, Little Bird, you say nothing, only answer my questions.” Charbonneau’s eyes were like dark molasses. He took up a tin cup for tea. Being French, he had a feeling for drama and its uses, and for the details that made if effective. Expression, costume, gesture—all these were important. A gesture was often more than the mere turn of a palm or the shrug of a shoulder—he included his whole body and its attitudes.

  Sacajawea could see that Charbonneau loved living among people before whom he could brag and strut. He had no real desire to return to the land of his father. He preferred this life, where he could be lazy and blame his slovenly ways on his squaws.

  “If you do not behave, I will do exactly what Kakoakis does.”

  “What does he do?” asked Sacajawea, wishing right away she had not asked.

  “He is master of his household. One of his womendisobeyed. She spoke out of turn. She went to stay with her parents, where she thought she had protection. But Le Borgne followed her. He entered the lodge, sat upon the ceremonial robe, which was presented him as a distinguished caller, smoked a peaceful pipe with the squaw’s father, rose, and excused himself. As he passed this squaw, he raised her by the hair and murdered her before the eyes of her mother and father. So!” Charbonneau drew his finger dramatically across his throat. “Let that be a lesson to any squaw who opposes me!” Scowling fiercely, he retreated to his sleeping couch, where a hushed and trembling silence greeted him.

  Finally Sacajawea ventured to ask another question, “Did anyone defend the poor girl?”

  “Mon dieu! You fool! Plus on est de fou, plus on rit. The sillier it is, the more one laughs.” Charbonneau guffawed and crossed himself. “Fear of Le Borgne is so great that no one rises to defend his squaws. That girl’s death will remain unavenged.”

  “Qui ne sait pas être fou, n’est pas sage.” Sacajawea’s voice rebuked him. “It takes a wise man to make a fool.”

  “I am not wise—me? You think that, hein?”

  Otter Woman sucked in her breath, and her hands trembled as she poured more tea into Charbonneau’s cup.

  Sacajawea bit her tongue and was grateful when he drank the tea and stomped out of the lodge, motioning for Otter Woman to follow him to Chief Kakoakis’s lodge. There the men listened eagerly to the things Charbonneau told, but they did not believe all he said because they remembered his old habit of exaggerating; often that evening, they let him know they thought he used his imagination generously by laughing uproariously, as if all he said were a great joke.

  “It was not all la fête,” he said darkly.

  When night came, Otter Woman came to get food for her man and his friends. Sacajawea had both children sleeping on their pallets. Wrapped in blankets, the small boys looked like carelessly dropped sacks of Indian corn.

  “Our man loves storytelling,” sighed Otter Woman. “He told that I was the daughter of a great war chief, named Burnt Knee, and that he had to pay many pure white horses to get me from my father. There was no

  Chief Burnt Knee that I know of, and he never had many white horses. His tongue is so crooked he could not say he bought me from a Blackfoot brave for a knife that had no blade, only a shiny handle, and that the Blackfoot was glad to get rid of me because I ate too much. Now, you tell me the story of that whale once more,” begged Otter Woman.

  “This is not something I made up.” Sacajawea sighed deeply. “Even you know there are people and animals and trees on the other side of the mountains.” When she finished, Otter Woman could almost see the huge whale bones on the sand.

  No, Otter Woman thought, Sacajawea’s eyes do not need a wash, she saw those things. No one could make up such a story. She backed out of the lodge carrying the kettle of stew carefully. Her hands became stiff gripping the cornhusk wrapping wound around the metal handle to keep off the heat.

  Charbonneau spent more than half the night eating and telling stories, which grew more absurd as the morning drew closer.

  Sacajawea lay on her couch wondering why Charbonneau did not go to the Rooptahee village to bring Corn Woman home. Why didn’t Corn Woman herself come back? Didn’t she know her man was here?

  And when Charbonneau announced the next day that he was going to go up to the Mandans to bring Corn Woman back, it did not greatly surprise Sacajawea.

  Otter Woman gasped, composed her face, and hurriedly fixed a small parfleche of jerky for his trip. Her mouth was clamped shut. She did not utte
r a word of farewell to Charbonneau, but brushed his hand lightly with hers.

  For the next several days, while Charbonneau was gone, the lodge became filled with buzzing women who wanted to hear the story of the whale and saltmaking. Otter Woman began to tell things as though they had happened to her. Sacajawea kept her mouth shut. This sent the women into gales of laughter. At first she resented their laughing until Otter Woman pointed out, “See, it is a real achievement to cause all this merriment. There was so much to see and do on your trail. There is no harm in me telling the stories. It gives youa rest. Our man did not forbid me from talking. To give enjoyment is a good thing.”

  Late each afternoon, Sacajawea escaped the giggling women by taking a bundle of wash and going to the long sandbar at the river. The bar curved in from midstream and formed a small cove under some cottonwood trees. Here she washed Pomp’s leggings or her tunic, then stretched her weary limbs in the cool air. Once she pulled on the old blue jacket Clark had given her, which she had hidden in the center of her wash bundle.

  Thought after thought crowded her mind. She tried to relax and clear the thoughts. In the small leather pouch around her neck she kept the stone that was like a piece of blue sky. The stone reminded her of childhood and how far she had come since that time. She felt the smooth sides and put the coolness of the stone against her cheek. She tied the thin string around her neck, trying to see the chip of blue upon her breast in the graying light. She closed her eyes. She saw the stone bright in her mind. After a while, she replaced it in the pouch.