Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  She shook her head no. She had nothing more with which to pay for the candy.

  “No, no, keep it. It is a present for Kloochman, the Little Woman,” said Chouteau.

  “Thank you,” said Sacajawea. Her heart became large toward him, and she felt it important that she pay for the gift of candy somehow. She bent her head, pulled off her beaded leather headband, and held it out to him.

  “Why, thank you.” His eyes flashed. “But this beadwork does not look Shoshoni to me.”

  She was startled by his remark. “You know that I come from the Land of the Shining Mountains?”

  “Oh, yes, Bill Clark told me how you found your family there and helped him get a good supply of horses to ride overland. It’s remarkable. Even Clark said to me, ‘She’s quite a woman.’”

  “Merci,” said Sacajawea, a little flustered by the thought that Chief Red Hair would discuss her with this carefully dressed, easy-mannered Frenchman.

  “Please tell me where you learned to make designs like this?” He held up her headband.

  “My people do not have beads to sew with, only quills and teeth and shells. I get beads here. I make the designs. No tribe’s designs—mine. It is a mixture of what I learned from the People, the Minnetarees, and Miss Judy.” She collected her package of bacon and sugar and coffee and shuffled toward the door. She could hear Chouteau chuckling to himself. Then she heard the clerk speak in a soft voice to Chouteau.

  “Imagine what General Clark would say if he knew that his wife’s influence on the bead design of that squaw was rated with the influence of several Indian tribes. It is rich, isn’t it?”

  Then during the Month of Picking Blackberries, Lizette slept fitfully and began to cough. Sacajawea rocked gently with the baby night after night, trying to soothe her restlessness. The baby now cried too easily and clung to Sacajawea for security.

  “She is so frail,” said Miss Judy one morning; she had brought several of little Looie’s outgrown dresses for Lizette. “Oh, this poor brown baby. She will not see another summer sun if she does not stop that coughing.”

  “Will you take her to Dr. Saugrain? Please?” asked Sacajawea.

  “I will see if he will come here. I will ride to him this afternoon,” promised Miss Judy.

  The doctor was not home. He was off on a trip visiting with his friend John Audubon in Kentucky. He never came to see Lizette when she needed him.

  Sacajawea did all she knew to do. She boiled sassafras tea and spooned it through the baby’s fevered lips. She bathed the thin little face with tepid water. “Little Woman, Little Woman, your eyes make you look like an owl, they grow so large and your face stays so small,” she crooned.

  In December there was a week of days when every morning Sacajawea had to carry baskets of dried grasses from a pile behind the cabin to the horses. The snow was too deep for them to forage on their own. They stood patiently waiting in their crude stable of oak boards.

  The winter air was dry and crisp, and Lizette seemed better able to breathe. Sacajawea made cornmeal mush and watered it down for the child. In the evenings she held a stone on her knees and with a smaller one cracked hickory nuts for Lizette. The child followed Sacajawea everywhere like a shadow. Sacajawea fixed one of the old packing crates so that Lizette could stand upon it and watch the dishes being washed. Sometimes Lizette helped dry them on the muslin toweling Miss Judy had brought. “Good Little Woman,” crooned Sacajawea happily.

  One morning she bundled Lizette into warm clothing and tied her on the back of the gentlest horse so that she could watch Sacajawea chip stove wood and stack it in the rick by the door. By noon Lizette was tiredand coughing. She refused to eat more watery mush. While she slept, Sacajawea dug a bushel of potatoes she had buried below the frost line in October, and brought them into the house. A light snow was falling, and she tucked the red-wool blanket more tightly around the wan little body. “Little Woman needs Father Sun,” Sacajawea said aloud. She took three arrows, the bow, and a knife and went about a mile along the creek, following deer tracks. She sighted the animal, shot it in the neck, and saw it fall, jump up, and run. About ten minutes later, she got her second shot at the weakening animal and killed it. It was big, and she skinned it late that afternoon.

  The next day, she gently placed a wet poultice of boiled onions and raw venison liver on Lizette’s chest and bound it with a warmed flannel cloth. The child coughed hard, then slept fitfully, sweating under the red-wool blanket. The sweating pleased Sacajawea. It meant the fever was broken and the child was getting better. She went back to the deer carcass and carried several of the better cuts home, tied to the back of a horse.

  The following morning Lizette slept late, and Sacajawea went for more venison before other animals found an easy meal. When she returned, she called to Lizette, “Little Woman, Little Woman, see what I have brought you—the tender tongue.” The child did not stir. Sacajawea went to the corner opposite her bed, where Clark had built another bed, barely two feet wide, but nearer the fireplace. The child’s feet, a grayish brown color, hung over the edge. Sacajawea lifted them gently back under the blanket. She cried out in surprise. The child’s feet were cold, dead cold. There was no life in the little body. “Poor Little Woman. Poor Little Woman,” she crooned.

  Sacajawea did the best thing she knew to do. She bathed the cold body in warm water and dressed it in Looie’s white dress. She slipped small beaded moccasins on the little feet. She painted the part in Lizette’s neatly combed hair red. She painted the sunken cheeks with vermilion. Sacajawea looked through her folded robes and blankets until she found a small quilled fawnskin robe. She felt the designs around the edge, which wereintricate, intimate circles, suns, and triangular birds. She had used this robe her mother had made only on special occasions to wrap Pomp. As she wrapped Lizette’s body, she thought of the day she was given this robe by the kind Shoshoni woman. She turned over the packing crate Lizette had stood upon and eased the bundle into the crate.

  Sacajawea dug in the ground at the back of the cabin under a tall, scraggly red cedar. It took her two days. The ground was hard on the surface and wet clay below. Snow blew into the hole. When the hole was the right size, she wrapped a blanket around herself, got a horse ready, and went to tell Chief Red Hair. She was going to bury Otter Woman’s girl-child in the way of the white mothers Otter Woman had so admired.

  Sacajawea found that Dr. Saugrain was having supper with the Clarks. He decided to follow his host and hostess to the pitiful squaw’s cabin. He was a little man, wrinkled, dried up, and soured, and even on his horse he looked old and frail. But when he spoke there was something overpowering in his manner, something knowledgeable in his eyes. Sacajawea felt intimidated by his belated examination of the dead child. He shook his head. “Filthy stuff,” he muttered, dabbing at the bright red cheeks with his immaculate handkerchief. “Nothing could have been done for this infant. She must have contracted consumption from her mother—or some close relative—before she was even sent downriver. Her short life was in a decline before it began.” He rewrapped the body, sniffing distastefully at the soft skin robe, and he pushed the bundle back into the box. He turned to Sacajawea, who, standing apart from Chief Red Hair and Miss Judy, felt like an outsider in her own lodge. “Best clean out this place thoroughly. Burn the baby’s clothes and bedding. Sprinkle wet tea leaves on the floor before sweeping. Then burn them at once.”

  Governor Clark buried the baby under the red cedar, swearing once as the short needles prickled his face. He bowed his head and said the Lord’s Prayer. Miss Judy put a flat gray shale stone at the head of the mounded grave. Her tears spilled on the shale, making dark circles.

  Dr. Saugrain would not drink the hot tea Sacajaweaprepared, but he sat haughtily on his horse until Governor Clark and Miss Judy came out of the cabin. “My only hope is that you did not breathe that overly contaminated air too long or too deeply,” he said, riding off down the trail without looking back to see Sacajawea standing alone in the doo
rframe, tears streaming down her face.

  CHAPTER

  41

  School

  Jan. 22, 1820. No. of vou.— 118. Payments, to whom made—J. E. Welch. Nature of disbursements—for two quarters’ tuition of J. B. Charboneau, a half Indian boy, and firewood and ink. Amount—$16.37½.

  March 31. L. T. Honoré. For boarding, lodging, and washing of J. B. Charboneau, a half Indian, from 1st January to 31st March, 1820. Amount—$45.00

  April 1. J. and G. H. Kennerly. For one Roman History for Charboneau, a half Indian, $1.50; one pair of shoes for ditto, $2.25; two pair of socks for ditto, $1.50 (one Scott’s lessons for ditto, $1.50; one dictionary for ditto, $1.50; one hat for ditto, $4.00; four yards of cloth for ditto, $10.00;)—one ciphering book, $1.00; one slate and pencils, 62 cents for Charboneau.

  April 11. J. E. Welch. For one quarter’s tuition of J. B. Charboneau, a half Indian boy, including fuel and ink. Amount, $8.37½.

  May 17. F. Neil. For one quarter’s tuition of Toussant Charbonneau, a half Indian boy. Amount—$12.00.

  June 30. L. T. Honoré. For board and lodging and washing of J. B. Charboneau, a half Indian boy, from 1st April to 30th June. Amount—$45.00.

  October 1. L. T. Honoré. Nature of the disbursements—For boarding, lodging and washing of J. B. Charboneau, from 1st July to 30th September, 1820, at $15.00 per month. Amount—$45.00.

  December 31. (Voucher) 233 (Paid to) L. T. Honoré, for boarding, washing, and lodging from 1st October, to 31st December. For J. B. Charboneau, a half Indian, $25.00.

  GENERAL WILLIAM CLARK, Abstract of Expenditures as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822. Washington, D. C.: American State Papers, Class II, vol. II, no. 5, 1834, p. 289.

  During the Christmas holidays, the boys, home for a week from their school, grieved with Sacajawea over the loss of their small sister. Baptiste, particularly, stood silently in the back of the cabin staring at the small brown mound of earth covered only with a skiff of snow.

  Both boys spoke in French, the language then taught in the schools of Saint Louis.

  “Pauvre petite fille,” sighed Baptiste.

  “You get my goat,” scolded Tess. “You’re weak, mourning with the squaw who is our mother. You’ll bog down on the trail. A man has to have guts,” he grumbled. “A papoose is not worth all that sadness. Jesus!” He spat on the floor.

  During January the boys watched the flatboats dodge floating cakes of ice on the Mississippi. They went duck-hunting where the palatial Planters’ House was to be built later. Nothing could have prevented them from hunting, fishing, trapping, and generally learning about the land when they had days off from school. Tess became possessed when he saw other boys with a singleshot rifle. By the time he was ten years old he had sold enough snowshoe rabbit hides at Chouteau’s to own a rifle himself. He and his friends would pick off cottontail and snowshoe rabbits, an occasional duck, and sometimes a grouse, which they sold at Chouteau’s, or to the Union Hotel for those who liked to eat wild game in the city.

  Other times the boys brought home their small game to broil on sticks over the fire Sacajawea built at the side of her cabin. When the larger game failed, they netted bullfrogs, or caught them on a fish hook baited with a scrap of red flannel. They hacked off the bullfrogs’ legs and roasted them. The boys took an old frying pan from Sacajawea’s cupboard, and on Friday afternoons they would go to their hideout, where they had supplies cached. They would fry up a panful of chubs or a big, intricately boned catfish. They spent one whole Saturday wading in the shallow yellow water, hunting clams in the sandy bottom. They boiled a saltless, emetic chowder and bravely ate it. Baptiste found a distortedlittle knob of a pearl in a clam that he smashed open on a rock, and had a dream of instant fortune.

  Once in a while, a minor bonanza did come their way. During the war of 1812 the peaceful citizens of Saint Louis were stirred to nervous tension. A battalion of soldiers was organized and quartered at Fort Bellefontaine, where the old stone towers and fortresses were refitted. Most of the voyageurs and engagés stayed in Saint Louis, afraid to go out into the wilderness with the Indians skulking for whites. “Always the savages lie thick as copper snakes in the woods around us,” they said. “The whites are outnumbered two to one, maybe more.” They all believed this statement.

  With the trappers staying in town, the boys found that the price of furs rose until a good slough muskrat brought three dollars from engagés at Chouteau’s. The river rats were smaller and less valuable, but more within their reach, and the traps that in summer were used for gophers, they used for muskrats quite as well. From the time Baptiste was nine until he was nearly twelve, he and his brother trapped the river with a good deal of persistence. And when they bundled up their take one spring they had fifteen muskrats, nine ermine, and a beaver that they had skinned closed; they had not opened it up by cutting through the belly, which would have rendered it worth next to nothing.

  The boys made small change by picking wild cherries, blackberries, gooseberries, wild raspberries, currants, or persimmons for home-canning housewives. Picking gooseberries at ten cents a quart, even when the berries hang on the underside of the prickly stems in heavy rows, is not a way to get rich. The meagerness of their total earning power was an analogue of the way their mother worked and the rewards she got. There were afternoons when the boys would crawl under the plank sidewalk in front of the hotel and search among the dirt and papers and old tobacco cuds for coins that had fallen through the cracks.

  The discipline at school was not very rigid for either boy. At Father Neil’s the boys were allowed to smoke at any and all times, and the smoke from the black cigars the students bought just outside the grounds was often so thick that one could hardly see across the room.

  On weekends the boys liked to see who had learned to inhale deepest. Tobacco for Tess was a step in the progress of education, as was the hard liquor served with meals to the students at William and Mary College in the days when General Clark attended that institution.

  The good Catholic brothers at Father Neil’s school taught a kindly companionship combined with a certain manliness that would stand the boys in good stead when battling with the rough frontier life they faced. The congenial brothers made frequent trips with their students to all places of note in the vicinity. Tess was much interested in visiting a wonderful cave with subterranean vaults and chasms where they heard the roaring of water. No one ever found the source of the water. But they found the cave infested with thousands of bats. Tess often went with other boys to catch the bats, carrying them in a bag and turning them loose in the school dormitory. This always gave any new boy a little excitement and caused him to forget his homesickness for a time.

  Baptiste explained to his mother during one Easter holiday, “I cannot always tell if I am Indian or white. I was taught to endure pain. I can put a hot stone on my flesh and not cry out. I can sit in the icy river and not jump out right away. But it is hard for me to study. This makes me Indian. The white boys are not made to endure pain, and they seem to study easier. But I can make my bed, wash my clothes, and keep my room neat. This makes me white. I can catch more frogs, snare more rabbits than the white boys, but I can sleep as easily in a soft bed as between two buffalo robes. I can eat with a fork and a spoon and keep my fingers dry, or I can use my fingers and wipe them dry in my hair.”

  “To be strong against hardships is good, my son. You will know the ways of the whites and be liked by them. You will know the ways of the Indians and be liked by them. In this way you can help the understanding between two nations, whites and Indians.”

  Baptiste thought about the time when he was a small boy in the woods. He looked back and saw his life stretching like a cord behind him. And the brightest piece was when he ran free in the woods. It had a glorythat school did not. He dug into his leather bag and found his knife, its blade well protected by the tallow he had rubbed on it. He tested the blade with his thumb.

  “You can use my oilstone,” s
aid Sacajawea.

  He sat before the fireplace whetting his knife on his mother’s stone. “Then sometimes I believe the Indian in me is dying,” he said. “I think I have poor eyesight and a limited sense of smell, just like the whites.”

  Quietly Sacajawea talked to her son. “I taught you to speak with a straight tongue. I showed you right and wrong. I bound you to my heart with strong new vines. Now these vines have rotted and they tear apart to let you stay at the white man’s school so that you can become a man. This is a new way of living where there are whites coming to live on the land that once belonged to Indians.

  “Your father taught you game signs and animal habits and where to find them. He taught you to hunt and shoot a straight arrow. You give me no shame as a hunter or trapper. I have told myself on winter days that when I am old, when my bones creak, my son will keep me in bear’s oil and venison. When the ashes of life cool, you will kindle the fire to warm my old age.”

  Baptiste heard his mother and was deeply moved.

  “My mother,” he said in French, “I would rather follow my father into the woods and be a trapper or an interpreter. I can learn the languages of the different tribes easily. Their language is much easier than those the white teachers put in books for me to write and speak. The French of my father is easier than the French of a textbook.”

  Sacajawea looked at him with sternness and pity for many minutes. “Pomp,” she said, purposely using his baby name, “you were born under unusual circumstances. The very first clothes upon your back were the soft blanket clothes of the white man. You were not dried with soft doeskin, but with white cloth. You were not wrapped in rabbit fur, but in a woolen robe. You did not have the power of animals rubbed into you, so you will never develop the instincts necessary for survival. That is why the Indian in you has died. Can you smell a deer upwind? Or count the tailfeathers of an eagle in flight?