Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “No.”

  “Your ancestors could. The People still can. After you are in school more time, you will enjoy it. It will be easier. There is much white blood in your heart. It has been planned that way. Your father was half-white. He understood the whites and the Indians, but he did not really care about either, only himself. You will never be a small man like that. The Great Spirit has put you in the stream of life with Chief Red Hair, so you must do what comes into your life and do it well. Do it in the manner of a chief. A chief must be strong, kind, honest, and wise like Chief Red Hair. Be polite without groveling. If you are ever afraid of anything, do not deny it, but behave as if you feared nothing.”

  The boy’s mouth was stopped. He could say nothing, only look at his mother, whom he had always loved. He knew as well as if she had come out and spoken the truth that his mother had loved Governor Clark when they had been together on the western trail so many years before. She respected him, but she had never respected, or really loved, his father. His mother wanted him to attend school because it was Governor Clark’s desire.

  Sacajawea’s life moved along in this settled and quiet routine. She often discussed the Indians’ problems with Governor Clark, who was worried about his charges. The Indians were adopting the white man’s evils, not his good qualities. The Indians’ spirit was being subdued; their lands were being taken away; their language, which ran untroubled as a spring brook, was decaying into hoglike grunts; their stalwart men were being corrupted by the firewater of the greedy trader; their women were being diseased by filthy white men.

  “Janey,” Clark said to her, “the Indians need a friend they will listen to and trust. Somehow your people have escaped all this corruption and disease because we have not been able to get a fort established for any length of time near them. Maybe your Great Spirit has seen a way to keep them from losing their souls by keeping them in their homes in the Shining Mountains, even though they suffer a bit from hunger. Isn’t that better than losing dignity?”

  The new thought startled her. It was certainly a strange way to consider the People’s misery. Then she realized that she, too, had found it a struggle to adjust her ways to those of the whites. She still would rather do her cooking outside over an open fire than in the fireplace. She could see that her boys were going through a time of adjustment, but for them the path was smoother through reading the talking books and living with white boys at school. She wondered if the People would ever need to adjust to these new ways, or if they would live forever in the way their fathers had.

  “There is a boat in the water that has no sails and no oars, but it moves,” bragged Tess. “I have seen it.”

  “No,” said Sacajawea, “you are telling me this for a joke. It cannot be!”

  “It’s true!” shouted the boys together.

  “You will see,” said Tess. “It is a steamboat. You have seen the steam rise when the water boils for soup? Mon dieu, that is the power.”

  Sacajawea shook her head; she did not understand.

  “It is strong when it is shut up; it makes a lid dance,” Baptiste tried to explain. “Sometimes the lid pops off, and the water foams out of the kettle. That is power, like a man working. Man has harnessed the steam like a horse and makes it work for him. It pulls the boat on the river.”

  “That takes much thinking,” said Sacajawea skeptically.

  Early the next morning, they followed the crowd to the levee. Others also wanted to see this new wonder, the steamboat. It was true—there were no sails, no oarsmen bending their backs, no cordeliers. It was a magic boat that sailed alone by an unseen hand. People danced and sang. They all could see it with their own eyes, yet it was unbelievable. Sacajawea shared with the white men something that was new to all. It seemed to her that she was pulled closer to them from this instant on. She looked at the ship. “White man’s magic,” she said softly, feeling that it affected her as much as any of those standing around her. She joined in the shouting: “Hurrah for the steamship!”

  Ten days later, Tess witnessed a duel between

  Thomas Benton and Charles Lucas. Lucas, who lived on Main Street, exchanged angry words with Benton in court. Benton was a large man of powerful build. He had the dignity of a great statesman and orator. Lucas did not like him because of that quality. Their dislike for one another smoldered and waited for any small thing to cause it to flare. It flared at the polls on election day, August 4, 1817, because Lucas contemptuously asked if Benton had paid his tax in time to entitle him to vote. This small comment was justification enough to these men for a duel.

  They met on the morning of August 12, 1817, on Bloody Island. Tess was there with some schoolmates to witness the fun. Each man fired one shot; Lucas was wounded in the neck, while Benton received a slight contusion below the knee. Benton would not let the matter rest. He said he expected Lucas to meet him again as soon as his neck wound healed.

  Tess followed Benton to his boat and taunted, “Zut, you fight like a squaw. I bet you couldn’t hit poor old Lucas again if you stood only ten feet apart! Does that scratch on your leg pain much?”

  Benton pulled up one of the boat’s oars and threw it at Tess, which only made Tess laugh more.

  Tess and his friends huddled together several times after classes in the next few weeks. Then, their scheme well in hand, they sent a messenger to Lucas’s home on the morning of September 27, asking for a second duel.

  Most of Father Neil’s students waited several hours for the big scene, which they viewed with all the frivolity of children at a circus. Never once did it cross these young boys’ minds that this duel would be considered one of the most regrettable ever fought in Saint Louis. The two men met once again on Bloody Island and took their positions, ten feet apart.

  The men fired at the same time, and Benton’s ball penetrated Lucas’s heart. Lucas lived a half hour longer—not long enough to get him off the island, across the Mississippi, to Saint Louis.1

  Tess took great delight in telling Baptiste the gory details of Lucas’s fatal wound the following weekend.

  “Scare Bleu! Blood all over. I did not know a body held so much.”

  As he spoke, he saw Baptiste’s and Sacajawea’s shining brown eyes intent upon him. His heart seemed to swell, and he felt important. So he added more to the story, with expressions of horror on his face, aiding his words with the movements of his hands. He said that it had rained on the island and Lucas’s powder became wet, but that Benton had protected his powder by keeping it in his armpit until it was time to be tamped down the barrel. That was why he had won. That was why he had been able to shoot right into the heart of Lucas.

  The mood of the story was shattered as the door of the cabin was thrown open. In stalked a short, heavyset man whose face was framed in a matted, graying beard. His hair was uncombed, and his face was lined and drawn. The old man was followed by a young, plain-looking Indian girl. Her skin was smooth, her forehead broad, her nose fine, her mouth straight, and when she walked she did not bounce overly much. Her flesh was as rigid and solid as stone. She was perhaps fifteen summers old.

  Startled, Sacajawea jumped to her feet and started toward them. But she drew back, quivering. “Charbonneau! My man!” she blurted out, frightened by the appearance of a man believed dead.

  “Horreurs,” laughed Charbonneau, “you look like you have seen a ghost. You ain’t happy to see me?” He had a devilish grin as he approached her. “Come, give me nice big kiss for welcome home.”

  Sacajawea could not speak. She just stood staring at the apparition. Her shoulders dropped and her mouth pursed as though she were trying to hold herself together.

  Charbonneau looked from one boy to the other as their faces flushed under his scrutiny. “Sacrée Marie,” he muttered. Time had slipped by him, he could see that easily enough now. He faced the older boy.

  “I am your papa, Little Tess.” He stretched his greasy hand out to shake. “I come back.”

  Tess shook hands with his father. H
e had no hard feelings toward him and remembered the fun of the old days, trapping for beaver.

  Baptiste, too, timidly extended his hand.

  Finding himself welcome, Charbonneau nodded to the woman in the doorway. “This is my new squaw. She’s called Eagle. She’s Minnetaree, niece of Kakoakis. Remember him? Ha, same damned, filthy buzzard.”

  Sacajawea’s heart had fallen to the floor. She saw the peace of her little family dashed apart. Her whole being cried out against these two intruders. With nausea in the pit of her stomach, she watched Charbonneau, uninvited, take off his leather coat and toss it into a corner. Very much at home, he sat down expectantly at the supper table, while the woman, Eagle, stood stolidly in the doorway.

  “How is—what’s his name now—Générale Clark?”

  “He is away.”

  “When will he be back?”

  Sacajawea’s mood was not improved by this conversation. She felt perspiration standing out in beads on her forehead and upper lip, which felt as cold as ice. What to do? This man was the father of her boys. Sacajawea bit her lip, sucked in her breath once, stepped over to the young woman, and said gently, “What’s wrong with young people these days that they don’t show more respect to their elders? Come inside and close the door. It is cold out there. Inside we have hot tea.”

  Charbonneau looked sharply at Sacajawea. She had developed into the full bloom of womanhood while he’d been away. He admired and at the same time resented this. He knew she was different. She knew when to speak and how to put words together.

  That summer, Governor Clark and Miss Judy moved to a new home that they had built especially for their growing family of three boys and one little girl. It was a two-story brick house set on the southeast corner of Vine, running half a block south on Main toward the river. Miss Judy could hardly wait to show the wing attached to the south end to Sacajawea. It was called the Council Chamber and was a great room, a hundred feet long and thirty-five feet wide. At night it was lighted by massive chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling.

  General Clark displayed all his Indian trophies there. Sacajawea saw feather headdresses, brightly colored ornaments, canoes, shields, bows, arrows, projectile points, clothes, cooking utensils, pipes, knives, dishes, agricultural and musical instruments, war bonnets, snowshoes, moccasins, cradles, robes and hides, and even a rare Roman coin found by a Fox chief on the bank of the River Des Peres.2

  During the summer, Miss Judy’s health failed, and even though it was a crucial time when the Missouri Territory was fighting for admission to the union as a state, Clark took his wife to the sulfur springs in Virginia. She did not rally, but became worse and died. Clark was heartbroken. It seemed as though the sun had fallen from the sky. His enemies took advantage of his time away from Saint Louis and his deep grief.

  “He favors the Indians at the expense of the whites,” some said. “He is too good to the thieving Indians,” others whispered behind his back. “We want a new man for governor!” And the sounds spread like a brushfire in dry leaves.

  When he returned, Clark found that Missouri had become a state and Alexander McNair was governor. And to add more sorrow to his grief-stricken heart, his little daughter, Mary, had taken ill and died at the home of her mother’s cousin.

  Charbonneau said, “It has nothing to do with us. Stop your wailing, woman, and make me a pair of breeches. If I find you wandering off to somewhere, like to the Clark mansion, I will beat you with my bare hands.”

  Sacajawea looked at Charbonneau and grieved in silence for her dear friend.

  Late in the summer, Charbonneau announced he was going to Sante Fe with De Mun and Chouteau. Before he could even suggest that the boys go along, Sacajawea pointed out that they would be going to school in several weeks. Charbonneau said nothing, but studied Sacajawea, then laughed, showing his stubby yellow teeth.

  She flung her arms fiercely around both boys. She heard the woman called Eagle gasp. She felt Charbonneau pull her back and heard him draw a deep breath.

  “Little Bird, take your hands off the boys! They aregrowed now. Let them decide if they want to go to school. Don’t decide for them.”

  Sacajawea winced. To her the boys were not yet grown, yet by Indian standards they would both have been on their own even a year ago. She looked at Charbonneau’s face with its graying beard. She looked at his hair—long, wavy, gray, shaggy at the neck, curling at the ears—and imagined it suspended high on a stick in a dance around some Blackfoot fire.

  “I’m going back to Dr. Welch’s,” said Baptiste softly. “I—I really want to. I’d like to go trapping during the next summer vacation, though.”

  “He wants to be an educated white man!” cried Tess. “He’s sickening.”

  Sacajawea did not move or look up, but her fingers stirred restlessly over her mouth.

  “Can’t sit around waiting for summer. Gotta earn a livelihood. Gotta get the good pelts now—this fall.” Charbonneau’s lips were pressed firmly together.

  “I can get some gear and grub together and be ready to pull out whenever you say,” Tess said, looking expectantly at this father.

  Charbonneau stared. “Little Tess, you growed a lot.”

  “Everybody calls me Tess now.”

  Sacajawea stared at Tess with her soft eyes wide and questioning. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. In her mind Charbonneau had closed a door and put his hand upon another. He was taking away one of her sons.

  Baptiste saw her eyes and the remote sorrow that had suddenly come into them so swiftly, and his warm heart reacted at once. He said, “Mother—something hurts you. What is it?”

  She did not answer him, did not even seem to know him. Baptiste had never seen her like this before, and yet the urgency of her hands moving over her mouth struck a chord of understanding within him. Whatever it was that bothered her, he knew she needed help.

  Silently, he went to face his older half brother, and with his eyes he beckoned his father.

  “I want you to tell Tess to finish this last year with Father Neil. Governor Clark has made provisions for us both to be in school again this fall. Clark says goodwords about your cooking on that trail west. He tells many people of your worth. He is paying you back for those good services by giving us a chance to learn of the white man’s world at a time when many half-breeds have to stay in the saddle just to keep alive.” There was no anger or outrage in his face as he continued. “By next summer we can both go out trapping with you. Zut! That is something to look forward to.”

  “Hell,” said Charbonneau, “you’re telling the truth. I am also interpreter for the expedition. I saved some of the Army men from drowning and from falling off the mountainside. That’s straight. The world’s ahead by me.” He got out his tobacco and took a serious bite.

  Eagle brushed her hair back from her eyes.

  “I can load a smooth-bore flintlock fast as the next Army man. Ever hear about the grizzly I shot so my friend, Drouillard, wasn’t mauled? It was near the River That Scolds All the Others, and the day was calm, after a night of hard wind and rain. I had just—”

  “A man,” interrupted Baptiste good-naturedly, a flicker of a smile touching his face, “naturally does a heap more shooting with his mouth than with his gun. And for two reasons. One, he’s a surer, quicker shot with his mouth; and two, it costs less ammunition. A man can load and fire his mouth off twenty times with a big swallow of whiskey.”

  Charbonneau grinned knowingly at his younger son and began to rummage around in a large bag for a bottle of brandy. He tipped it up, jammed the cork back tightly, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “To be sure,” he said, still grinning. “I wouldn’t want you to call my bluff—but I never invited no ragtail half-soft son to come to Santa Fe. That is a man’s trail. Tess, you just stay put another winter and get toughed up. You’re growed all right, but still soft.” He kept looking Tess up and down.

  Tess said, “You’re just a part-white man that is also pa
rt dog. I may just bury you in that there bag.”

  “I’d turn you in for murder.” Charbonneau’s smile was slow to come, but it was broad when it got there.

  It was as though a great light grew in Sacajawea. She had not dreamed that her own son, Baptiste, could use words in such a way. His words were like the thinedge of a knife, persuading and whittling away at the thoughts of a man so that he was turned on another path. She was no longer afraid to look at him, to see his youth, and to smell the freshness of him. She laughed aloud and squinted her eyes as if something stung them.

  Looking at his mother, Baptiste saw that her eyes were swimming with tears, and they made him wonder. He guessed that maybe women always cried at a moment when they knew they had what they wanted, and his own sensitivity told him that Sacajawea seldom had what she wished, but accepted what came as her lot.

  Taking a step toward his half brother, Tess said, “A white man’s liver with his own gall squeezed on it might be too bitter to eat. I am going to try yours with goat gall if I ever decide to kill you.”

  “You shut your gab,” said Charbonneau.

  Eagle said, “You are the talkingest tribe I ever seen. Did you know that?”

  “Let every man skin his own eel,” answered Charbonneau, tipping up the brandy bottle again. Then his voice went high. “Why do I have to keep reminding the whole mess of you that I’m heading southwest? Somebody get the leather around my horse and bring up the packhorse. I want to get going.” He looked at Tess. “I never reckoned you could be so wool-brained.”

  Clark kept himself as busy as possible and soon found good reasons to do so. The Indians were buying more and more trader’s liquor.

  He proposed a lesson for the Indians. His idea was a long row of kettles placed on the grass in his front yard, all filled with whiskey. When many Indians were assembled, he struck at the kettles, spilling the whiskey to show that strong drink was an enemy to the Indians. But as Sacajawea had warned him, this method was much too sophisticated. The Indians’ main feeling was deep regret for the lost whiskey.