Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  “The etiquette of them Sioux would not allow a single scrap to be left in the wooden bowl each guest had. After that there feast, the pipe was smoked and the oldest chief, Red Bull, made a speech, through an interpreter, who was your boy Bap. The speech was mostly about that Chief Red Hair, who was Bill Clark.”

  Sacajawea could not speak.

  Jake spat between his feet again and went on. “That man Stewart would have made your eyes bug. He dressed like a fop, in a white shooting jacket, colorful shepherd’splaids, and a broad-brimmed white hat. The trappers at the fort laughed at such an outlandish outfit. But even more surprising, he had wagons piled with tins of meats, jars of pickles, and wines, and tea and coffee in packages straight from England, plenty of sugar, and barrels of flour. When the trappers were not guffawing, they gaped in wonder. How could such a dude get along in the woods? Their ridicule turned to respect and liking. That man was a rider and as good a shot as the most expert trappers—near as good as Bap hisself.” Jake winked at Sacajawea. She was still thinking about meat in tins and could not make a mental picture of such a thing. “And when it came to skirmishing with the Crows or Blackfeet, he was just as brave and cool as the most experienced mountain men. Best of all, he was hospitable and shared his supplies with all. And they came to accept him on equal terms. Now, I think in the same way you’ll get along with Bap. You have the patience to trap him down, and he’ll be on equal terms with his ma once he gets to know her again.”

  Sacajawea’s eyes were on a distant place. “You are right,” she said. “Things change. But the mountains are still here, and the green spring hole where trout hang and look as big as a man’s arm.” She looked up at Jake, and her eyes softened. “There are things he won’t forget, and we can start there.”

  Jake chewed on the end of his cold pipe and mulled this over.

  A door slammed, and Jake jerked guiltily.

  “Why, where’s Louis?” demanded Juanita Vasquez. She was short and plump. Her apron was freshly starched. “What are you doing? How dare you hide back here with this—this squaw.”

  Sacajawea felt confused.

  “Miz Vasquez,” said Jake. “I was just showing Miss Charbonneau the iron suit. She’s the ma of Bap Charbonneau. You know, the cart driver with that fancy Stewart party?”

  “Jake, you fetch Louis right now and tell him to come for supper. Then you close the blacksmith shop. You know it’s off limits to Indians.”

  Jake was discomforted. “I meant no harm, ma’am. She’s a friend of Louis’s, too.”

  Sacajawea seemed unsure of what to do next. She moved out of the doorway and toward the gate in the wall of the fort.

  “Good night,” she said in clear Spanish. She moved slowly away from the fort.

  “Well, she speaks Spanish. She can’t be all Indian. What did you say her name was?” asked Juanita Vasquez.

  “I called her Miz Charbonneau. She speaks fair English and a smatterin’ of French, too. She lives with them Shoshonis outside the fort.”

  The days were hot. The midafternoon sun stabbed through the opening in the dense leaf canopy of the cottonwoods. Flies buzzed sleepily in the muggy air under the trees, and locusts sawed endlessly in the summer heat. The camp dogs panted and Sacajawea felt her tunic wet across her back as she carried water from the spring, wishing she’d done this earlier in the day. There had been news in the camp that Bridger was coming in any day, accompanied by Shoshoni hunters. These hunters were led by a man called Nowroyawn.

  Sacajawea was like a child, so great was her anticipation. Nothing moved in the camp but the insects as she trudged in with her water jug. Toward Morning had been sewing, but she now was sleeping. Crying Basket and Suzanne were asleep near the tepee flap where a breeze could touch them if one came. Sacajawea gazed across the blue haze of distant hills. She could smell the ancient odor of the far, undisturbed, virgin forest duff, never burned, planted, or grazed. The land of the People existed for only an instant, suspended in a void of long-expired emotions. She was in her father’s camp, looking at the sun-spotted trees, hearing the sounds of horses and of women chattering as they worked after a summer hunt. The feeling was so strong that for a moment she could taste the air, rank with blood and fur where the venison hung in the sun drying under a pall of writhing cedar smoke. Sacajawea shook her head. These were memories she thought were long forgotten. And it had been happening more and more lately—the recalling of the old times when she lived with the People. It was curious that these memoriesshould come now, when she was looking forward to the new time when she would talk with her son, who was more white than Shoshoni and whose thoughts might be foreign to her own.

  “They are coming! They are nearly here!” called a camp crier. Women were moving about, already putting on their best clothes and paint. Sacajawea laid out the pink calicos for Crying Basket and Suzanne as soon as Toward Morning sleepily explained that it must be Bridger’s party that was coming in.

  Sacajawea carefully put on her yellow dress with two petticoats, and on impulse opened the leather pouch at her waist and took out the now-tarnished peace medal. Long ago she had planned to give this to Baptiste. It was her gift from Sun Woman. She examined the likeness of the man called Jefferson on one side and the hands clasped in friendship on the obverse. The gold outer edge shone in the sun. She fingered her sky blue stone, then left it in the pouch and hunted among her clothes for a piece of thong to slip through the suspension loop on the medal. She hung the medal around her neck, satisfied that it was the thing to wear, even though long ago Charbonneau had said no woman had a right to wear this.

  As the riders came on their horses across the valley, she was certain of the man they called Bridger. He was big—more than six feet tall—with a dark beard and eyebrows. He rode his horse with the ease of his Shoshoni companions, legs dangling straight down, back half-bent, shoulders hunched forward.

  Toward Morning, with fresh vermilion on her cheeks, tugged at Sacajawea’s arm. “Look, he is the most handsome. And look, there among the women, the one with arms waving. She is his, a Flathead. And there is the child, called by his name for her, Mary Ann.”

  The Flathead woman was large, mainly because she was expecting another child very soon. Her hips were broad, her legs large, matching her puffy hands and arms. She was dark-skinned, almost swarthy, and her hair black as a moonless night. She was a handsome woman, without being pretty.

  Mary Ann was about the age of Suzanne. She had no clothing, but there was a bear-claw necklace abouther throat. Her hair was ragged and unkempt. She jumped up and down at the sight of her father. The Shoshoni riders coming in whooped and hollered so that the camp dogs began barking. In front of the Shoshonis rode another big man with an eagle-feather headdress. He looked from side to side and around at the crowd gathered to welcome them. He waved his arms and hollered. He stood up on the back of his gray horse and waved again. The crowd cheered. He drew up to them, making the palms-out sign of peace.

  “That one is our great civil chief, Washakie,” said Toward Morning, close to Sacajawea’s ear, “and behind him comes his subchief, Nowroyawn. And look! There is Nowroyawn’s cousin, Shoogan! And here comes Bitter Water and Rock Rabbit! They have all come back!”

  It was strange, so nearly miraculous, that Sacajawea was held motionless for a moment. There in front of her was Shoogan, one leg shorter than the other, the smaller foot twisted a little against the flank of his cream bay. Sacajawea thought she’d prepared for every eventuality, every surprise, every strain on her emotions. She knew that what could be dreamed about was capable of happening. She had not dreamed of this. To see the man here before her was such an astounding piece of fortune that it took a moment for her to come to herself.

  “Kiii-yiii!” called Crying Basket with the crowd. Suzanne was dancing up and down to see the riders better.

  The usual feasting and games began immediately after the meat from the hunt had been divided. Sacajawea noticed that Bridger generously gave Toward Morning a
hindquarter of a mule doe for her lodge. Toward Morning said something to him about her new neighbor and friend and pointed in the direction of Sacajawea. Bridger then pushed the other hindquarter toward her, smiled broadly, and left quickly for the fort’s gate.

  Toward Morning tugged at the meat to get it to her lodge, but Sacajawea had not thought of helping. She took a hand of each little girl and moved through the crowd. She had decided to watch carefully to see which lodge Shoogan went into. As if caught in time—a slow-moving dream that etched itself against the brown earthand skin tepees—the brown hulk of the man with the long, sad face moved in and out of the lodges. The man limped exactly as he had when a child, with an easy confidence, sure of his footing and where he was going. Sacajawea knew this was the son of her dead sister. She clearly recalled the day she had first seen Shoogan in the Shoshoni camp when she had been the interpreter for Chief Red Hair. He was a naked child, with a pushed-out stubborn lower lip. His left foot was turned in slightly and smaller than the right, a cursed clubfoot, but he moved without aid, stepping high to clear the stiff, dry grass around the camp. Even then his face resembled that of Sacajawea’s brother. Spotted Bear.

  Sacajawea knew what she was doing. Shoogan would go into his lodge, speak to his women and relatives, and come out again, waiting to be fed; then he would relax and sit idly, smoking and telling about the hunt.

  The greatest problem was the little girls. Whatever she did, she would have to keep them perfectly quiet. If they coughed, giggled, or cried, the man would take his family inside the lodge. Sacajawea made up her mind. She waited until the man had gone inside. She sat the two girls down and told them they must not speak unless she told them, and they must not move. She sat herself down at the side of the tepee with the girls and picked up the bare foot of Crying Basket, pretending the child had a thorn in it that must be pulled out.

  And then Shoogan appeared. He sat in front of the tepee with several women and children. He ate soundlessly, smiling once in a while toward his waiting children and women so that his white teeth showed. He lit his cherry-wood pipe and puffed blue-drifting clouds of smoke. The sun made yellow patterns around them, and a small breeze rustled in the cottonwood branches. Shoogan sat, soaking in the calmness of the late afternoon, and Sacajawea sat, squinting into the light and shadow of the trees.

  “Tell us now,” prompted one of his small boys in Shoshoni. “I want to remember how you came upon that herd of deer.” The boy’s eyes sparkled as he stretched out on the brown grass. He wore a breechclout andmoccasins too small for him. He turned and grunted something else in Shoshoni to his small sister.

  “Why, we got into some antelope,” said Shoogan, “before we ever found those mule deer all together.” His eyes kindled as he remembered. “I was in the lead, and we topped a rise and looked into a meadow when the morning mists were just rising out. They were just waiting for us to come. We took half a dozen bucks and a couple of doe and left the rest to breed next spring. We’ll have meat until fall.”

  As he told it, Sacajawea imagined the place, the summer sun plumbing the water and sparkling in the spring. She pictured the ancient leaves in patches on the sand of the bottom, the dense woods rising still and sultry in the heat, and the jewellike coolness of the meadow in early morning. She remembered how she had lain in the cover of brush with her mother and sister while her father had hunted meadows for deer in the morning mist.

  Then he said, “Nowroyawn and Washakie think we ought to move to a more sheltered spot in the valley before the fall rains come.”

  “Where would we go?” asked a woman, her eyes crinkling. She picked a long piece of stringy meat from the cooking pot and held it above her mouth, then let it drop in.

  “Could the People go over to the Beaver Head?” asked Sacajawea impulsively.

  Shoogan nodded, sucking reflectively at the pipe-stem. Then he looked up and seemed to realize that the voice did not come from his women, but from the one sitting at the side of his tepee with two sleeping children on her lap.

  “Old woman, do not interrupt,” he said, curling his smaller left foot under the right leg and shifting his weight backward so that he could see the intruder better. “I am talking with only my family.”

  He was a dry, spare man, not tall, but clean and quick and furtive in movement. His wide shoulders were bent forward in that permanent hunch peculiar to those who have spent their lives perpetually half-crouched, ready to spring for cover and weapon at the first crack of a twig or hiss of a war arrow.

  “And so—I am talking with my family,” said Sacajawea, closing her eyes in a long, reflective blink.

  The coffee-skinned hunter looked at her a long three seconds before deliberately and slowly saying, “Old woman, I am warning you, do not bother us. Go away, now! Vamoose!” He was irritated, more because Sacajawea had interrupted his talk than because she had claimed to be some relative of his.

  Sacajawea looked at him, unable to match his low, clear Shoshoni speech.

  “Well, what do you want then?” asked Shoogan with no particular politeness.

  “I imagine you are the son of Rain Woman, and then later Spotted Bear and his woman, Cries Alone, raised you.”

  Shoogan was on his feet.

  Sacajawea spoke fast. “One day many white men visited your camp in the mountains when you were a small boy and Black Gun was chief. Can you remember?”

  “Old woman, you utter blasphemy when you speak of the dead!” But Shoogan saw it in his mind as Sacajawea told it: a younger, slimmer woman, with coal-black braids and large warm fawn eyes. She had lifted him into her arms and nuzzled his neck. He could smell the sage scent of her clothing and hear her low voice speaking with his father, Spotted Bear. Shoogan thought, This old woman could be that one. Her voice has the same quality. But that is foolish. It is impossible.

  Sacajawea gave Shoogan a sidelong glance, as if she had forgotten those she spoke about were now dead. She smiled as if she had forgotten she had other listeners and was acknowledging the presence of strangers.

  “And so—what happened then?” asked Shoogan.

  Sacajawea did not answer immediately. It was as if, in telling, she had put her mind into another time and then found she could not live in both worlds at once. “I found my brother was chief of the Agaidükas, my sister, Rain Woman, dead, and I made a young girl’s promise to come back and raise you as my son. I never returned until now,” she said finally.

  “Old woman, I have told you to go. You are a nuisance. I do not know who you are.” His answer was drawled, but it hit Sacajawea across the face like the haft of a war ax.

  Sacajawea hitched her blanket closer about her yellow dress. “Where is Willow Bud?” she said. “She will remember the day the Minnetarees dragged us from our families and the chief was killed.”

  “Many of the People are dead, but the Minnetaree raid is tribal tradition,” said Shoogan, as if that made any other answer unnecessary.

  The women were beginning to chatter among themselves, and the children had run to the back of the tepee to chase a brown dog. Sacajawea sat quietly, and the two girls slept on her lap.

  “Where is the one called Tooettecone, Chief Black Gun?” she asked.

  Now Shoogan’s eyes appeared to slit as they fastened on the vexatious woman. “That name cannot be spoken! That chief was much loved and is gone on the trail to the Land of Everfeasting. He was shot down on a raid by the Crows.” Shoogan slowly walked around Sacajawea, looking her over.

  “That chief was my brother, and the one called Spotted Bear was my brother. My sister was Rain Woman, your first mother.” Now she waited while the birds sang and the locust chanted in the heat, like insane crones who talk to themselves all day and never weary.

  The softness of her tone caused Shoogan to step closer. She held out the Jefferson medal for him to examine.

  He turned it over and over, breathing hard. Finally he let it drop back to her breast. “The chief you call brother had a medicine piece such as
that. It is still on his breast giving him courage for his last long journey to the Unknown. And it is true that many times he told of recognizing his sister who came with many whites and was a chief woman to them. He said she helped them understand what the white men had to say. She had a child. She also had a man that did much complaining and told foolish stories. For many years our women have had a saying if a child complains or twists his tongue, ‘Beware, you will grow face hair and be left to do the cooking.’” Shoogan’s black eyes sparkled like chipped obsidian. He was reed-thin, with grease-blackened

  buckskins. The leggings were heavily fringed, and his moccasins quilled and beaded. His lank hair hung shoulder-long and straight against his broad, bare shoulders. His face was angular and flint-keen as a lance blade.

  “The man’s name was Charbonneau,” said Sacajawea. “I was his woman.”

  Shoogan knew now that the old woman could not be lying. He fingered the gold-rimmed medal again, sucking in his cheeks. Finally he called to his three women, who jumped, startled, “Fix a meal for this old woman and her children. She is one of my mothers.” He looked at Sacajawea and decided that her story was not thin as April grass. He liked her and wondered what other events flickered behind her shining black eyes.

  In her turn, Sacajawea was sizing up the grown Shoogan. She could see that he had been well brought up to live on the land. He was decent and honest, slow, with caution in both manner and mind. She could see that he read the nature of man or animal quickly and unerringly. She dared ask the one question close to her heart. ‘Tell me of the man the people call Bap?”

  “We have heard of him. We do not see him much. He is a white man and stays at the fort. I think he is mostly white, like Jake Connor in the post store. Once I heard this Bap yell at mules pulling a cart full of supplies. He is like the white men, having little patience. Why do you ask about him?”

  Sacajawea was amused, but she did not show it. “First tell me about another, called Tess or Toussaint. About the same age as Bap. They could be brothers.”