Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  DAVID LAVENDER. Bent’s Fort. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1954, pp. 130–31.

  The spring weather was fine; gum trees showed red branches, and sweet acorns, known by the Spanish name of bellotas, grew in small fat clusters. Sacajawea worked with Spring to remove the bitter tannin from the bellotas saved from last fall by boiling the kernels several hours before grinding. Then the women soaked the bellota meal in hot water with occasional changes until the bitter flavor was lost. When the meal was dried and parched in an earthen oven, it tasted much like cornmeal.

  During the time when the warm spring winds blew through the short, greening buffalo grass, Spring’s baby was born. It was a fast, uneventful birth. For days afterward, Spring cuddled and cooed over the round brown papoose.

  “He is like a ripe, fat plum,” said Big Badger. “I will teach him to tie a taut bowstring.”

  “Lost Woman will teach him the healing art,” said Jerk Meat practically, “and then he will be a man of great worth to the Quohadas.”

  When the camp traveled, it carried everything it owned by horse. The very old and very young were carried by travois. They broke their winter camp and traveled only twelve days to a new temporary camp on the Red River. Then in the middle of spring the lodges were struck and the entire Quohada camp moved again to a place called Hungry Horse.

  Before reaching Hungry Horse they traveled north through hot, dry countryside. They ate little, forded rivers, and when the woman found an area of fertile land containing beds of yap—the tuberous roots of Indian potato—they stopped. The women boiled the roots and sweetened them with crushed mesquite beans. The Quohadas consumed all the yap they could find, not attempting to preserve any. Their attitude when food was plentiful was that it might spoil unless eaten.

  The Quohadas moved along with cool showers to a valley. The river became a broad, muddy torrent. Some of the boys tested the current on horseback. Some found it necessary to slip from their horse’s back and swimholding on to their horse’s tail. This crossing was too hard for the old and very young. They made a temporary camp to wait for the river to slow and to construct rafts from the cottonwoods. Sacajawea was among the women helping to bring in the huge cottonwood poles. Suddenly her mind began to work and she took to the river’s edge to chop off thick willow branches. She made a crude frame and stretched a piece of old rawhide over it, in the manner of making a bull boat. The other women scarcely paid any attention to her as she set her boat in the water and loaded it with goods from Prong-horn’s lodge. She pulled off her tunic and got into the water beside the spinning boat. Paddling and kicking, she pushed across the wide water and dumped the supplies on high, dry ground; then she was in the water pulling the boat back across for more goods. The supplies and equipment of Pronghorn’s lodge were across the river in one day, and many of the rafts were not yet constructed by other women.

  “Ah, look, such a thing is truly knowledge from a great totem,” one woman pointed and whispered. Gray Bone spotted Sacajawea by the water’s edge showing Jerk Meat and several other braves how to construct a bull boat. The men made two that were larger than the one she had used. They were very pleased with them.

  “She is a constant lover, always looking for a man,” snapped Gray Bone to some women. “Her true name is Nyahsuqite, the Flirt.”

  Big Badger came toward the women, and Gray Bone closed her mouth and worked hard tying her raft together, her face scarlet.

  “The Lost Woman is one of our people,” he said softly, stopping to inspect the raft. “She is more valuable to us than three sharp-tongued squaws,” he snapped and walked away.

  The next morning, Sacajawea walked close to Gray Bone, saying evenly, “We have only to get the small one, Wild Plum, across in the round boat. I can see you have several days’ work left on your raft. I will give my round boat to you when I am finished so you can start moving your household goods right away.”

  “Well, so—ah,” sputtered Gray Bone, “it is small, but I suppose I can make several trips and get my thingsover.” She left her partially finished raft and sat on the bank to watch Sacajawea swim out into the water, twirling the bull boat that carried the sleeping infant safely across the river.

  At the end of three days, all the Quohadas had crossed. The tribe went on across the prairie to a sheltered canyon where a small creek ran. One evening Sacajawea asked Big Badger, “Do your people ever go to the Kaw River where it meets the Big Muddy?”

  He turned toward her and said slowly, “That is hard to say. There are many rivers, and some have more than one name.”

  Big Badger was not much help. She had been thinking more and more of Baptiste. Perhaps, she thought, if he were back from across the Great Eastern Waters he would go where those rivers met because the trapping was good.

  Sacajawea stood alone early one morning, on the little hill above the camp. She could look in all directions and see the skyline. She could see the young boys already at their play. In reality they were practicing a skill that would only be perfected when they reached manhood—trick riding. The small boys picked up sticks, moccasins, anything from the ground, while their ponies galloped as fast as they could. The oldest boys were grabbing at blanket rolls, cooking pots filled with stones. On a long sandbar three young men rode their ponies at full speed and swooped down, almost underneath the running animals, to grab a companion from the ground and swing him across a pony. Already the young men knew the importance of rescuing a companion who fell in battle, or on a hunt.1

  She turned to see a group of little girls playing beside the creek. Most of them wore breechclouts similar to those worn by the adolescent boys. The small boys wore nothing. The girls carried sand in baskets, pretending it was mesquite flour. They tied a harness with short sticks to the backs of pet dogs to make a kind of old-fashioned travois, using it to carry their play robes and toy household material.

  Sacajawea moved so that she could sit comfortably in the warm morning sun on a flat-topped boulder. Sheknew that Charbonneau had never been able to ride a horse the way even these boys did. Certainly, she had heard him boast about sticking to his horse, never letting light show between himself and the horse’s back, but he couldn’t know what sticking tight meant until he’d seen these boys.

  She watched several of the older boys tie a looped rope around a gelding’s neck. A young man slipped the loop over his head and under his arm. He jabbed his bare heels into the horse’s sides and with both hands nocked an arrow in his taut bowstring and let it fly, lodging it in the trunk of an old, dead cottonwood tree. Nothing showed but the leg of the rider hooked over the scrawny back of the horse. No wonder these people were sometimes called Lords of the Plains, she thought. Oh, if only Baptiste could see this! Where was he now? Would she ever have news of him?

  She figured that by now Baptiste must be someone of importance among the whites, because he had been to the land far beyond the big waters with the one called Duke Paul. He must be back by now. What wonderful tales he would have to tell! She wondered how she might send word to him that she was fine. She looked beyond the creek, across the Quohada village. She saw what looked like a wagon train kicking up clouds of red dust across the plains. That’s it! She sat up straight and shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand to see better. She’d ask the white people in that wagon train. A tingle of excitement ran up her spine. Then she sighed and let her shoulders droop. Would the whites understand what she wanted to know? What would they do if they saw her in Comanche clothes? Maybe they would shoot! She felt stymied for a moment. Then she figured they wouldn’t shoot if she came to them speaking in their tongue. It had been nearly two years since she had said anything, except in Comanche, but she was confident she could speak the white man’s tongue as well as before.

  She stood up again and cupped her hands, staring hard at the continuous puffs of red dust. “What is new from St. Louis? How is Mister Jean Baptiste Charbonneau? Have you heard? Kiyi! Listen to me! He is myson! We are friends of Captain Red Hair! And—
Duke Paul! What is the latest news?”

  She wanted to run ahead to see if it was truly a white man’s wagon train. But logic told her it was more than five, six miles away, and by the time she could find their trail they would be far gone.

  She drew in her breath and felt her stomach tighten. She opened her mouth to exhale slowly. What had suddenly come over her? If she had attracted the attention of the whites, would they come straight for the Quohadas? Would they shoot into the tepees? Would they care about a man she called “son”? She couldn’t be sure. The dust plumes were farther away now. Would she risk these people’s lives for news of her firstborn? If she started, she could reach them. The train would stop for the night. She spoke out loud. “I’m a lousy squaw. Those whites do not know me. They will laugh, make fun, and send me away. If I can believe what the Quohadas say, they will shoot me in the back.” Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face. She could not hold them back. Finally she brought herself under control. She looked around and saw that the play areas of both boys and girls were empty. The sun was already past its midpoint. When she got back to the lodge everyone looked at her, then resumed work, as if she had not been gone all morning.

  Only Jerk Meat said, “Lost Woman! Why did you go out by yourself?”

  “I watched the children at play and marveled at the boys’ horsemanship,” she said.

  “You called out in a strange tongue?”

  “Ai—once I learned some white man’s words. It was nothing.”

  “They made you sad?”

  “Well, they make me mad,” Pronghorn said. “More white men are coming into our country this year and taking out more buffalo meat.”

  “Our scouts saw a long string of them today,” said Big Badger. “And they had guns that glinted in the sunlight.”

  Pronghorn’s mind ran ahead to the next season. “In summer, maybe we’ll find two or three trains coming through. They already are thinking too well of themselves. We’ll teach them who is the stronger. We will dance under their scalps.”

  “No, we ought to get some presents from the whites.”

  “You think they’ll give us presents because they fear us?”

  “And so—well, I know that the Quohadas take what they want. You got some fine things from the Mexicans. I think we’ll never be friends with the whites. If you act friendly, they ask you to move your camp to a certain place, and they want to hunt on your land.”

  Sacajawea began telling stories on the long, lazy summer evenings. She told of the Beaver Head and the clear running water in the streams of the north and how the mountains shone with glistening brightness when the sun was upon them. On these occasions Jerk Meat moved close to the smoldering fire and closer still to Sacajawea and seemed entranced by her stories.

  “Well, she makes them up,” he said one evening to Hides Well before he moved out to his own sleeping tepee. “No woman could have come from that country to this, alone.”

  “My son,” said Hides Well, “she has given us no reason to doubt.”

  Spring laughed and made a face as her brother moved to his tepee.

  Time seemed to move fast, and before long the prairie was again covered with snow, an unbroken sheet of white. The herd of horses was allowed to roam in order to browse and find grass. The men came in with rabbits, and one time with a lean elk that was hard to divide among fifty-two lodges. Some were so hungry they ate things they would not think of as food at any other time, such as boiled rawhide, toads dug out of holes in the mud banks, turtles from the frozen backwater of the river.

  When they were in the Season When Babies Cry from Hunger Pains the Quohadas were nearly desperate for any kind of food. One man waded through the snow to the largest trash heap and snared a dozen rats. The rats were made into a thin soup and anyone in the tribe was welcome to eat it as long as it lasted.

  Kicking Horse, the Quohadas’ Medicine Man, pulledan old buffalo hide from under his bed and painted a picture of a buffalo on the flesh side. He twirled that hide around four times, then threw it out the door of his medicine tepee. He went to see the direction the painted buffalo’s head pointed. The hide had landed in a heap and the painted head looked up at the sun.2

  A rumor spread that Kicking Horse was having a spell of difficulty with his magic that he used to find grazing buffalo. The difficulty was caused by someone walking behind him while he was eating. Everyone knew that caused a medicine man to lose his power.

  When the snow was nearly gone, the son of Twisted Horn found the buffalo grazing on short, green grass in a valley lined with pecan trees. He came racing on horseback into camp, screaming and hollering that he had seen buffalo. The Quohadas eagerly went out on their first spring hunt.

  Sacajawea and Spring stood in front of the trees, whose leafless branches were covered with yellowish clumps of evergreen mistletoe. They walked to a place where they could hide.

  “I can taste a good hump roast already,” said Spring.

  “Just the sound of it makes my mouth water. I’ll wager Jerk Meat gets the first kill,” said Sacajawea. Her self-assurance was outward. Inside she felt fearful and confused. She was secure in Jerk Meat’s presence; without him she felt alone and moody. It was something she could not explain. She did not intend for any one person in the Quohada band to become too important to her.

  The hunters had discarded all clothing except their breechclouts for the dangerous but exciting work of the hunt. They rode their ponies against the wind in a semicircle and stayed out of sight of the buffalo. The men on ponies slowly spread out until the herd was surrounded everywhere but on the windward side. Pronghorn sounded the signal. Immediately, the whole circle was closed. The men ran their ponies around and around the buffalo, yelling and driving them into a tight bunch. The bulls, protecting the cows and calves massed in the center, milled around the outside, making targets of themselves for the hunters.

  The women knew that the meat could spoil quicklyif the animals were run too long and were overheated when they were killed. They each hoped the men could move in fast and get plenty of meat for the curing racks. The heavy work of skinning and butchering was done by the men.3

  The killing done, the hunters pushed the bulls over so the bellies were on the ground and the legs stuck out in four directions. They left the cows where they had fallen so that the women could get to the full udders. With each animal they made a low cut on the neck and pulled the hide back. The front quarters were cut at the joint and pulled out. The hide was separated along the spine. Each man was adept at keeping the sinews uncut during this operation. Jerk Meat strung all the sinews he stripped out on the short prairie grass. He knew the women would want most for sewing, but he wanted some for wrapping around spear points that he fitted against a straight shaft. Sinew smeared with blood for glue held the stone points tighter than anything he knew.

  Most of the hunters were now pulling the hide farther back, cutting the hind quarters at the joint and pulling them out. The flank and breast were rolled into one large hunk. Ribs were separated from the breast bone and the entrails removed. The young children who had been allowed to come with the women gobbled the raw entrails, pulling the greasy guts through their clenched teeth in order to strip out the contents.

  For a moment Sacajawea saw her own Agaidüka Shoshoni of years ago, for they behaved similarily after a successful hunt. She brought herself back to the present, and watched Jerk Meat cut between the ribs of a large bull, pull up and out—groaning with the hard work—then break some nice rib steaks from the spine.

  Most of the women were now down the hill and crowding around their menfolk. Some, like Spring, went down on their haunches to carve out the hot livers and immediately savor the rich liver seasoned with exploded gall bladder salts. Hides Well had her blood pot next to a cow with its udder slashed, catching the milk mixed with blood—a nutritious drink to be fed to children and nursing mothers.

  Sacajawea found a calf suffocated under the weightof the large cow Hides Well was
working on, and she and Spring pulled it out. They stabbed their butcher knives in the calf’s belly and pulled back to make a slit. Inside was curdled milk. Pronghorn and Jerk Meat left their butchering a few moments and dipped their hands into the slit. With great relish they scooped this delicacy into their mouths. With their appetite somewhat dulled they went back to their butchering.

  The women took whole stomachs of buffalo up the hillside to the cooking fires. The entire sac was slowly cooked over hot coals. By now women, children, and men alike were blood-smeared from faces to feet.

  Finally the men were nearly finished. They took the horns and hoofs because those would be useful later on, but the heart was left intact with the skeleton so that the buffalo spirit might live on and continue to replenish the plains. All the meat was packed in the hides, loaded on horses, and brought up the hill to the women for further processing.

  Triumphantly, Hides Well chatted with some of the women. She waved her arms to show all the empty skeletons cradling hearts, with rump and head left for vultures, coyotes, and wolves. The Quohadas now had plenty of food for many days. And with the help of the sun the blood on the meat would glaze and the flies would leave it alone.4

  Back at camp, they scraped the skins and let them soak while preparing the meat. After three days they would peg the skins to the ground and stretch them in the sun. The brains of the buffalo were saved. These were worked in very hot water until they were malleable, and the sun-dried skins would be put into a solution of the brains and worked until soft. Then they would again be stretched out on stakes on the ground to dry and be pulled and stretched. Sacajawea kept her eyes lowered while she worked, but always she watched the form of Jerk Meat; the blood in her veins warmed. However, she did not think that he noticed her any more than any other member of his family, maybe less. She remembered how, when she had lain near starvation, Jerk Meat had nursed her and built a soft couch near his campfire and broken her fever. And he was agood hunter, always sharing his catch with friends and needy members of the tribe.