Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “It is well that Rose heard her at the back door that night.”

  “Yes, she might have been dead next morning. I wonder what she went through to get here?”

  ‘The rumblings and quaking ground were enough to frighten her out of her wits, alone, way out there in that desolate cabin. Primitives are slaves to their environment.”

  On the third day, she was better, on the fourth she could speak, move, rise, and turn on the pallet. Rose brought her gruel and dry toast, which she ate with relish and felt stronger for it. On a chair beside the pallet were all her things, clean and dry. The traces of mud were removed from her tunic, the creases left by the rain smoothed out, and the bottom sewn with fringe. It was quite fine. Her moccasins were cleaned and softened. After a weary process she dressed herself. The tunic hung loose, but she pulled it tight at the waist with a leather sash and smoothed out her braids. Then her nose noticed the fragrance of new bread. Rose was baking.

  “Ah, this here morning when another earth tremor shook us all from our beds, you don’t notice a thing, child. Now you is dressed.” She smiled. “Come sit in the rocking chair.” Rose bustled about, looking at Sacajawea from the corner of her eye every once in a while. She took the loaves from the stone oven. There were more tremors during the day; dishes rattled, and pots slid from their hooks.

  “I can help cut up the potatoes,” offered Sacajawea, as Rose brought out a pan of them.

  “You ought to rest, child.”

  “But I must do something,” pleaded Sacajawea. “Let me have them.”

  Rose consented and brought a clean scrap of muslin to spread over her tunic. “Lest you soil it.”

  When the potatoes were pared, Sacajawea asked where Chief Red Hair was that day.

  “Gone to fetch the children. They ought to be back soon.”

  “Children?” asked Sacajawea.

  “Yes, ma’am. The boys from those schools in town.”

  Then they came in by the kitchen door. Clark had Baptiste by the hand, and with the other he shoved Tess into the room.

  “Janey, I’ve brought you a surprise. I hope you’re strong enough to stand the chatter from these two. Schools are closed early so that Mr. Welch can have the chimney repaired on his main building. Father Neil said he no longer had control over the boys and sent them to parents or guardians until after the holidays.”

  “The noise of a chimney falling woke everyone. We thought the sleeping room had split apart,” laughed Baptiste.

  “A brown bear wandered into the yard around Father Neil’s quarters,” said Tess, edging closer to Sacajawea. “He was looking for a place to hide from the ground grumblings. But I was not scared.”

  Sacajawea nodded her head, her eyes wide to show she knew how the bear himself felt—afraid.

  Baptiste said, “Mr. Honoré, who keeps our records and gets our wash done, told us to get up and look at the school. Bricks were all over the yard from the chimney. Then he took us to his parlor and showed on a slatehow there was a shifting within the earth. When this shifting settles down, everything will be quiet again.”

  “I was not scared when the candles went out and my cot bumped the wall,” bragged Tess, his thumbs stuck under his belt. “I closed my eyes, and it felt like I was in a canoe going through white water.”

  “Come here, Tess, let’s see who is the taller,” said Clark. The boys stood with their heels to the kitchen wall and let Clark make a mark with charcoal above their heads. “Well, Pomp,” Clark coughed, “I do believe Tess is eating more meat. He’s the taller.”

  “But I learn more at my school,” insisted Baptiste.

  “What do you know?” asked Tess. “Rien du tout.” He spoke French, the language he learned in school.

  “Yes, tell your mother what you’ve learned,” said Clark, sitting down beside the hearth with a cup of tea in his hand.

  “I know what is the shape of the earth.”

  “What?” asked Sacajawea. “All sensible persons know it is about the shape of Rose’s pancake, round and flat and smooth except for the mountains on top. The sky—why it is all over just like if that kettle were turned over the pancake.”

  “Do we live on the inside or the outside?” asked Rose.

  “We live on top of the pancake, which is under the kettle sky. That kettle sky covers us all over just like Miss Judy’s parasol,” said Sacajawea.

  “Under there we would all smother,” said Baptiste, wrinkling his nose.

  “Well, take my strainer instead of the kettle then,” said Rose.

  “No, the earth is round, and we live on the outside,” said Baptiste.

  “Good boy,” whispered Clark, grinning.

  “All round? Where did you get that foolish thought?” said Rose.

  “I learned it in my geography. Now, this big gourd hanging by the door—”

  “Don’t you take that gourd!” cried Rose. “I keeps my best sage and herbs in that there gourd. Why don’t you experiment with that nice round pumpkin over there on the table. But don’t go bustin’ it.” “I won’t. I’ll just stick this pin in here on the top, and we’ll pretend that’s you.”

  “That’s pretty thin for me. It’d better be your mammy.”

  “Then I’ll stick another pin near the bottom, and that is a black man in Africa—like old York, a long time ago. Now I’ll light this candle.”

  “Who’s that, the light of the Lord?” asked Rose.

  “That is the sun. Now, the earth moves slowly up to the sun, and it gets lighter and lighter until it’s daylight.”

  “Don’t you drop that even if it is getting lighter,” said Rose, her brown eyes wide.

  “Then it moves around until the earth gets right under the sun. That’s noon—dinnertime at school.”

  “Careful, now, or there won’t be a dinnertime.”

  “Then it goes around, and it keeps getting darker on your side until it gets here and it’s night for you.”

  “I’m standing all alone in the dark?” asked Sacajawea, marveling at her son and his knowledge—or foolishness.

  “But look at the man, old York, in Africa—he is in the daylight. Then the earth moves around again, and you are again in the daylight. Now, all this time the sun has stood still, and the earth has been moving.”

  “I think you should put the pumpkin down and stop this moving foolishness. You ask me to believe that nonsense?”

  “It is true. Mr. Welch said so.”

  “You expect me to believe that I live on a slippery yellow ball that goes sailing round and round with my head now up and now down? You can’t fool this old squaw that is your mother. You better go to York on the other side of that pumpkin. See if he will listen.

  I’m no ignorant, uncivilized savage that knows nothing.”

  Miss Judy had come in, and she began to dance around the kitchen, giggling to herself. Clark guffawed twice, then stopped when Baptiste looked crosswise at him.

  “Umbea, don’t you understand it?” Baptiste asked Sacajawea. “You have lots of imagination.”

  “Ai, I do. But I have sense enough to know that if Iwas like that pin, hanging on the side of that pumpkin, I’d just fall off and break every single rib in my body, and when the world turned over, I’d just pitch headfirst to the who-knows-where, and then crack my head clear open, and when I get around again to this side, I’d fall over backward and break my neck.”

  “But, Umbea, the pin does not fall out.”

  Tess began to laugh and stomp his feet on the floor.

  “You are a foolish child, my son. Foolish! That pin is sharpened down to a point and stuck in the earth, but am I sharpened down to a point? Look at me and say so. Now, if that was the case I’d stand right here and you’d starve to death. If what you said was so, I’d be afraid to go to bed at night—afraid I’d roll off to nowhere. And besides me, what would happen to the soup kettle, the water pails, and the woodpiles? What—wake up in the morning and find everything spilled and gone way down to nowhere? Uuuhh, not
me!”

  “But, Umbea, Mr. Welch says it is just as if there were a great strong man in the center of the earth that holds the ropes that you are hitched to, and the same with the water buckets, and—”

  “Now stop that right away! That nonsense is like telling lies. You can hear Chief Red Hair laughing at you, and Tess is stomping his feet, and Miss Judy is making fun by dancing around you. Suppose there was ropes hitched onto things, wouldn’t the water get out anyway—you just can’t hitch water to anything, son. You just can’t. And I know there are no ropes tied to me.”

  Rose rolled her dark eyes and nodded her head, agreeing with Sacajawea.

  “I didn’t say there were ropes hitched to you.” Baptiste flung his arms out toward his mother. Then he said slowly, “I said it was only as if there were, and you are not really trying to learn, and I do not think I like you anymore, because you don’t believe what I’m trying to teach you. You’d rather be an ignorant squaw.”

  Sacajawea stared at Baptiste. She felt as though a dirty trick had been played on her and she knew it but she wasn’t sure yet what the trick was.

  “There, now, my son, don’t mind my ignorance. Youwon’t, will you? I’m as dull as that old meat ax over there. Certainly the earth is round. It is rounder than the roundest apple that was ever grown on Monsieur Chouteau’s apple trees. And it always was, and always will be. I’m the fool if I can’t see it. My eyesight hasn’t been good lately. Maybe I’m getting old. Can’t even stay on my feet. See?” She pushed out her tightly bandaged ankle. “One day you won’t have your old umbea hanging on to this earth sharp as a pin no more.”

  “You aren’t old and sharp. You’re young and round just like the earth, and I’ll stick to you even if you don’t believe in geography.”

  “Woof!” shouted Rose. “Look at that pancake just from the oven. Burned to a crisp! That what come of ignorant people like me listening to talk about people way on the other part of the earth that are all black like my old man, Old York, God rest his soul.”

  Miss Judy’s face loosened. “Rose, make us another pancake, and we’ll all have tea with it.”

  “Someone better get Tess some tea or he’ll choke,” laughed Clark, pointing to Tess, who had stuffed his mouth full of freshly baked bread.

  “I certainly will, and I’ve a mind to swat his snitching hands,” sighed Rose. “Lordy, what they going teach in the school next?”

  Book Five

  LIFE AND DEATH

  Henry Brackenridge, an author, statesman, and lawyer from Pittsburgh, wrote in his daily journal that Charbonneau and his wife, “who had accompanied Lewis and Clark to the Pacific,”1 were along on the same keelboat as he, going up to Fort Manuel in the spring of 1811.

  There is no doubt that Charbonneau talked with Brackenridge as he did with Jussome, who was also on Lisa’s keelboat. If he told Brackenridge his wife accompanied Lewis and Clark, the assumption is that the woman was Sacajawea. Yet Charbonneau was known to be a braggart and not above a lie or two. If the woman was not Sacajawea, but Otter Woman, she may not have understood all the English words. If she did, she would not have contradicted her man in front of anyone. Jussome would not have bothered to straighten out Brackenridge if the woman was not Sacajawea, but in all probability would have added to Charbonneau’s story for his own amusement. However, there are many who believe that this woman was actually Sacajawea going to Fort Manuel with Charbonneau in 1811.

  The Missouri Historical Society, Saint Louis, has an unsigned journal, found in 1912, telling about the life at Manuel Lisa’s fort on the Missouri River in northern South Dakota during the years 1812 and 1813. The writing in the journal has been established to be the work of a clerk, John C. Luttig, of the Missouri Fur Company.2

  There were about sixty-five persons living in the fort. Each day Indians brought news of tribal wars and threats of attack on the fort. In this journal, Luttig wrote that Toussaint Charbonneau made wild overstatements of dangers from Indians in order to excite fear among the engagés. Luttig could not understand why Lisa kept Charbonneau on his payroll as an interpreter.

  On December 20, 1812, Luttig wrote:

  This evening the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake squaw died of a putrid fever; she was good and the best woman in the fort, aged about 25 years; she left a fine infant girl.

  In March 1813, the fort was attacked, and the Indians killed many of Lisa’s men. Charbonneau quickly escaped and left for Mandan country, leaving his small daughter in the care of an Indian woman belonging to another engagé at Fort Manuel. Some historians think the Indian woman may have been the squaw of Charbonneau’s old friend, René Jussome. Many historians believe that this entry in Luttig’s diary is about the death of Sacajawea.

  Luttig thought that Charbonneau had been among the men killed in the Indian attack, so that when the remaining men and their families were sent downriver to Saint Louis, in June 1813, the baby, Lizette Charbonneau, was sent along. In August 1813, Luttig made an application at the Saint Louis Orphans’ Court for appointment of himself as guardian for the children of Toussaint Charbonneau, deceased:

  Toussaint Charbonneau, a boy, 10 years old

  Lizette Charbonneau, a girl, 1 year old

  The girl would be near her brother, Tess, whom Luttig recalled Charbonneau saying was attending a school for young boys in Saint Louis. No one knows why Luttig did not add the name of Jean Baptiste, the eight-year-old son of Charbonneau. Perhaps Luttig did not know that Charbonneau had another son, or Luttig knew that Charbonneau had left Sacajawea in Saint Louis, and she was the mother of Jean Baptiste. In this case Jean Baptiste would not be orphaned.

  General Clark was not in Saint Louis in August 1813. When he returned, he heard of the Indian attack on Fort Manuel and some days later crossed Luttig’s name off the guardianship papers and wrote his own after Toussaint and Lizette Charbonneau. In this way he kept his promise to care for and educate Charbonneau’s children. But he did not make application at the Saint Louis Orphans’ Court for appointment as guardian of Jean Baptiste. Thus, some believe that he knew Sacajawea to be alive and living in Saint Louis at this time.

  The baby, Lizette, was not heard of again — until perhaps April 23. 1843, in Westport, Missouri. Then a child, Victoire Verifluille, daughter of Joseph Verifluille and Elizabeth Charbonneau, was baptized. Elizabeth Charbonneau may have been the baby girl, Lizette.3 However, some historians believe that the baby died shortly after coming to Saint Louis, as no further word is heard about her through General Clark.

  In the South Dakota Historical Society publication Wi-Yohi for February 1957 there is a reference to a cash accounts book that William Clark kept from May 25, 1825, to June 14, 1826.4 There are records on one hundred and thirty-two pages, plus both inner endpapers. Of prime importance is the record Clark inscribed on the front cover, telling what happened to the members of the expedition. Clark wrote:

  Men on Lewis and Clarks Trip

  Capt. Lewis Dead

  Odoway Dead

  N. Pryor at Fort Smith

  Rd Windser on Sangamah Ills.

  G. Shannon Lexington Ky.

  R. Fields near Louisville

  Wm Bratten near Greenville Ohio

  F. Labieche St. Louis

  R. Frazier on Gasconade

  Ch. Floyd Dead Al Willard Mo.

  P. Gass Dead Geo. Drulard Killed

  J. Collins do. ToustChartono Mandans

  J. Colter do.

  P. Cruzate Killed Se car ja we au Dead

  J. Fields do. Tousant Charbon in

  S. Goodrich deadead Werten

  G. Gibson Deadead burgh, Gy.

  T. P. Howard

  H. Hall

  H. McNeal dead

  J. Shields do.

  J. Potts Killed

  J. B. Le Page dead

  J. Tomson Killed Wm Warmer Vir.

  P. Wiser Killed

  Whitehouse

  Warpenton

  Newman

  Clark was wrong about listing Pat
Gass as dead. He was in Virginia from 1825 to 1828. His listing of “Tonst Chartono” as being with the Mandans is correct, for old Toussaint Charbonneau was not killed during the attack on Fort Manuel as Luttig believed, but went to the Mandan villages. Also, it was not Toussaint Charbonneau who went to Germany. It was Jean Baptise who visited Wiirttemberg. Therefore, Clark’s last entry is wrong.

  Although Clark’s notations here are not conclusive, they cannot be dismissed lightly. It does not seem justifiable to say, “If Clark is wrong about Gass, and the misnaming of Jean Baptise, then perhaps he is also wrong about Sacajawea.” The cases are different. Gass had gone back to Virginia and severed his contacts with the west, but Sacajawea, Charbonneau, and their children were Clark’s concern for many years after the expedition. He cared about them and felt a responsibility for them. It is difficult to believe that he would have been wrong about Sacajawea’s death.

  However, he was in error in his last entry, for it was Jean Baptiste who visited Germany. It is a mystery why he did not write out the name Pompy or Jean Baptiste here.

  Dale Morgan, of the Bancroft Library, one of the most competent authorities on Western American history, suggests that Charbonneau only had two children, Jean Baptiste and Lizette, and that Jean Baptiste was sometimes referred to as Toussaint, his father’s name. Does this account for the use of both names in General Clark’s expenditures as superintendent of Indian affairs for school expenses?5 Dale Morgan said to me in a discussion of the cash accounts book:

  On the basis of this evidence, I submit that the

  earlier date of 1812, is the correct date for the death of Sacajawea.

  Dr. Merle W. Wells, well-known historian and archivist for the Idaho Historical Society, wrote to me in October 1967:

  A list of the members of the expedition prepared by William Clark around 1825 indicates that the original Sacajawea had died before that time. Clark, of course, could have made a mistake, but that is terribly unlikely.