Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  A shadow passed over Shoogan’s face, and he did not smile, but he looked at the woman with curiosity. “He does not come this way. I do not know about this man.” His voice flashed with a thin stringer of iron. “Tell now why you want to know these things.”

  “Porivo! Porivo!” It was the Spanish accent of Louis Vasquez calling. He had to shout to be heard above the din of Shoshoni voices, as each family was celebrating and catching the news of the hunt. “I’m looking for the woman called Porivo,” stated Vasquez.

  “Who is this woman?” asked Shoogan.

  “The woman who can speak many tongues.”

  “You have need for a translator?” asked Shoogan with his hands.

  “Goddammit, no!” stated Vasquez. “Never had need of a translator myself, unless you count that time those Cayuses wandered across the mountains and I had to listen to their palaverin’ most of the night.”

  He took off his straw hat and scratched vigorously at his head, where the black hair lay dank with sweat. He stepped to the side of Shoogan and noticed Sacajawea sitting quietly with the sleeping children in her lap. He spoke to her. “I come on account of Bridger wants to meet the mother of Bap Charbonneau. Says he can hardly believe Bap ever had a mother at all.”

  Sacajawea looked at Vasquez keenly; then she looked at Shoogan, whose mouth hung open. Her black eyes were guarded and half-shut with the pleasure of anticipation. “I’m coming,” she said, stretching herself, “if one of these women will look after my sleeping papooses.”

  “Oh, I will,” said Shoogan’s first woman, Dancing Leaf. “I like girls. All I have is a boy.”

  Sacajawea ambled after Vasquez toward the fort, feeling a mixture of timidity and victory. They reached the edge of the Shoshoni camp, where the leather tepees stopped and the trail wound into the cotton woods, where grasshoppers whirred in the tall grass.

  “We sometimes call Bridger Old Gabe,” said Vasquez. “I suppose it is from the angel named likewise, but who knows. Anyway, he’ll likely have some stories to tell about your boy. He’s rested some and had some whiskey to make his insides alive. Now he wants to talk.”

  Sacajawea understood half his Spanish words, and smiled—a long, slow smile that held the warmth of friendship.

  “Hell, he’ll talk through the night,” Vasquez said.

  It was near sundown when they went inside the fort. “This here is Old Gabe,” said Vasquez, facing the big mountain man. “He wants to shake your hand.”

  She held her hand out. Bridger took it in his big callused one. “So—you are the mama of Bap?” He belched.

  “Ai,” said Sacajawea emphatically, noticing that thewoman stood behind him, her eyes glinting black jealousy. She was even more heavyset than Sacajawea had noticed earlier in the afternoon.

  “Oh, this is Emma,” said Bridger, nodding toward the big woman. “She is as good as any Christian wife. Reverend Sam Parker christened her Emma, and married us according to his Presbyterian service.”

  Sacajawea looked at Vasquez to see if he were making hand signs so she could better understand the words of this Bridger. Vasquez was standing very still, watching to see how much Sacajawea understood. He made no motion to help her. So then she remained inside the privacy of her closed eyes as Bridger talked and she drifted mentally to the mountain meadow where her mother and father had camped. She made a comparison. At that time her people were laughing and joyful. Somber were the Agaidükas now. What had driven them from the mountains to live here beside this white man’s fort?

  Sacajawea opened her eyes slowly and smiled toward Emma. Vasquez had left quietly. Bridger motioned her to sit on the split-log bench near the trading store. He sat beside her. She moved to the end of the log, so as not to sit too close to this handsome stranger. Emma nodded approval and blinked her eyes and sat herself at Bridger’s feet, glancing adoringly toward him every now and then. Bridger talked, scratching his bearded chin, telling stories about himself. He was muscular—without an ounce of superfluous flesh. His cheekbones were high, his nose hooked, the expression of his eyes mild and thoughtful, and his face grave, almost to solemnity. From an Indian viewpoint he was very handsome. Sacajawea found that his serious expression could be deceptive, for he was most expert in relating wildly fantastic stories without the slightest change of expression. Sacajawea liked him immediately.

  “Injuns ain’t never so mean as when they’ve took a beatin’. They’re half-froze to make up for it, don’t matter on who,” Bridger continued. “And they put an arrow in my back. Buried it deep. Stayed there three years, that Blackfoot iron point. Doc Marcus Whitman came through and stayed to visit a couple days. Said he could take the goldarned arrow point out in a minute.” Bridgerwrenched himself around and pointed to a place below his right shoulder. “I’ve never laid on such a foofaraw bed in all my days. That Whitman concocted a bed under this same cottonwood here in the middle of my fort with liquor kegs and lodgepoles piled with beaver skins. Then he took the largest scalpel from a leather loop under the purple-velvet flaps of his instrument roll. That grapplin’ iron looked to be poor doin’s.” Bridger glanced at Sacajawea, as if waiting for her to speak.2

  She could not understand what he was talking so fast about, and she wanted desperately for him to tell about Bap. “Was Baptiste in this story?” she asked slowly.

  “Darn tootin’! My good friend Baptiste come up from the crowd and gave me somethin’ from a jug for my dry, and he hunted in his possibles for a piece of rawhide for me to bite in. The Doc was pleased with his help. Then a Medicine Man came from nowhere and writhed and danced his way to the head of my bed, smeared with red vermilion on his bronze face. Then the Doc said, Outen my way, Medicine Man, it’s gettin’ dark.’ Then the Doc felt over my back explorin’ with his fingertips until he felt iron in that there flesh. Then he said, ‘Bite, man — here goes,’ and he cut deep and clean until he came to where the shaft had pulled off that iron arrow point. Blood—wagh—he mopped it out with a shirt-tail cut in strips. Things went black. Then I came back as the Doc sliced in deeper still and with his thumb and finger gave that arrow tip a turn. I could feel the muscles in my back cordin’. The Medicine Man leaped into the air with a shriek.

  “Bap, he held on to my heels as the Doc cut a little deeper around the sides of the arrow. The air was still, and the Doc worked in a greenish darkness; then a spatter of rain settled on the cottonwood leaves.

  “The Medicine Man groveled in the dirt and increased the volume of his incantations as the Doc pulled hard. His hand skidded on the slippery blood, and he tried again. Then there in his hand was the iron tip. For a minute I must have passed out; then I came up on my knees and slid off the bed onto my feet. I reeled some, but my voice came steady. Bap came up to moveme to the Doc’s tepee. ‘By gar!’ I said. ‘No old coon’s goin’ to fotch this beaver nowhere.’

  “Bap took me under the legs and boosted me to his shoulder and forced me to the Doc’s tepee. I protested all the way that he had no call to haul me around, since I warn’t no bellerin’ squaw. I settled myself on a beerrobe pallet. Some Injun gal spread her white antelope cape over me. The Doc said, ‘Gabe, you’re more of a man than I knew!’ The arrowhead covered his palm. ‘Quite a hunk of iron you been carryin’ ‘round. You ought to of died of gangrene years ago.’

  “I tole him meat don’t spoil in these mountains, and grabbed for that souvenir arrow and held up the trophy for that Injun gal to admire. She touched that arrow, and there was a warm light in her eyes.

  “Bap said, ‘I’ll stay with you tonight, Gabe. Just to see that everythin’s all right.’

  “I raised up on one elbow and give it to him straight. ‘By gar, Bap, if ye don’t git outen here, I’ll know sartin sure ye are layin’ for my gal.’

  “Not more’n a week later, I got my day’s tradin’ done early and I rode acrosst the river and talked that Flathead chief ‘round to tossin’ the blanket over that gal and me.”

  Emma tittered. It was getting cold, with the su
n gone. A little breeze ran along the ground, making Sacajawea draw into herself.

  Bridger got out tobacco and stuffed in it his cheek and let it soak. “You know Joe Meek?” he asked.

  “Huh?” asked Sacajawea. “I know no Joe.”

  “Well, sartin sure, ever’ white man and Injun and Spaniard and Frenchman and half-breed in the mountains knows old Joe Meek. And old Joe knows Baptiste Charbonneau. Once he tole about beatin’ the daylight out of Bap in a two-day game of euchre at the rendevous of thirty-seven, on the Green River. Joe could tell us where Bap’s figurin’ on hidin’ hisself when he’s finished with that Stewart adventure.” Bridger lit up his pipe, indicating the talking was over.

  For the next several days, Emma came to the stream that ran close by the fort to wash her clothing beside Sacajawea. Her jealousy was gone. She told how impressed her man was with Sacajawea’s intelligence andattentiveness. “Not once did you fall asleep while he told stories about himself. That is something. You are really a Chief Woman, Porivo.”

  One morning, Emma did not come to wash. Beside Sacajawea was a woman who shyly said she lived with a redheaded white man. Sacajawea held herself calm. “What is he called?” The only red-haired men she’d seen were William Clark and old Bill Williams.

  “He is called Joseph Walker. I call him Mountain Man.” The woman’s eyes looked big and fluid in her thin face. Over her shoulders was drawn a tatter of blanket, and her legs came from under the white man’s calico and ended in a small pair of worn moccasins. She had a papoose, nearly four seasons of life behind him, sitting on the sandy bank. “I hear you look for a son,” said the woman slowly, her eyes liquid, as if dark water ran in them. “Mountain Man talks about Baptiste. He says he is the best man on foot in plains and mountains.”

  Sacajawea forgot to worry about Emma’s absence and moved closer to the woman. “Could I speak with your man?”

  “Maybe, when he is back. He is catching animals to keep alive in woven baskets for white men to look at,” she giggled. Then Sacajawea giggled. It was a very funny concept that white men would want to keep animals alive just to look at. What could cause such a fear in them of being without something in their villages that would drive them to such precautions of saving the animals in a pen so they could look at them? Then Sacajawea remembered that Chief Red Hair had spent considerable time building a container in which a prairie dog could live as it traveled down the Missouri River in a keelboat so that the Great White Father, called Jefferson, could have a look at him. The strangest thing, she thought, was that white men still wanted the forest animals sent to their villages so men could look at them. She wondered if anyone ever built a box for the grizzly bear. She would like to see that box.

  “My man went as far as the Salty Lake. I will tell you when he is back.”

  In her lodge, Sacajawea built up the fire and called Toward Morning in to talk.

  “I am going to see a man called Joseph Walker. He is now at the Salty Lake. Do you know anything about him?”

  “No,” said Toward Morning. “I could go to the fort and ask Bridger, the Blanket Chief, when this man will return. He knows everything.”

  Sacajawea closed her eyes and considered that suggestion, weighing it with what she already knew of Toward Morning. She was pretty, not beautiful; probably she had seen at least twenty-five summers already, late for a Shoshoni woman not to have a man. She seemed to seek out Bridger at every opportunity. She talked about him, what he said, how he looked, and she even knew he liked buffalo hump broiled slowly over hickory wood with twigs of sassafras added for the smoke flavor.

  Toward Morning watched Sacajawea, wondering what her strange friend could be thinking. Now she saw Sacajawea in a different light, and it somehow seemed bold for a woman to make a deliberate effort to hunt down a son who had gone from his mother’s care long ago.

  Sacajawea was not thinking about boldness. She opened her eyes slowly. “We’ll go talk with Bridger,” she said.

  Toward Morning nodded happily.

  “I don’t want you making eyes at a man that has a woman like Emma. White men take only one woman. And I think you have a special feeling for that man with the heavy eyebrows.”

  Toward Morning colored and looked at her moccasins. “I will tell you,” she said, twisting the fringes at one side of her tunic. “There is only one man in my heart. But he cannot see me. Ai, it is the Blanket Chief and his eyebrows.”

  “Huh!” snorted Sacajawea. “You make things hard for yourself and the Shoshoni braves who look from the corner of their eyes at you. You know it is time you found a man.”

  “We’ll eat, then go to the fort,” said Toward Morning. “I will hold the hand of Crying Basket. You will hold the hand of Suzanne.”

  In silence the women ate together in Sacajawea’stepee and waited as the children chattered and ate little. “We are gone,” Sacajawea said.

  Inside the fort, Jake Connor waved to Sacajawea. “We look for Bridger,” she said.

  “He’s out. I’m here as chief factor. And Vasquez is at his own fort now. But I heard Bridger’s lookin’ for another woman. Some say he just couldn’t stand it around here no longer and went off in the mountains to be by hisself.”

  “Why would he want another woman?” asked Sacajawea, bewildered by these actions from a white man.

  “Wal, didn’t you hear yet? He keened and carried on like a squaw when his Emma died birthin’ that scrawny papoose a day or so ago.”

  Sacajawea felt her throat constrict, her knees grow weak, and her head swim with Jake’s words. She tried to tell Toward Morning, and her voice became a croak. “Emma never saw her son,” went on Jake. “Gabe gave the young’un the name Jake and is doin’ his best to care for him. A squaw is here now tryin’ to mother them kids of his. That Mary Ann is a cussed ‘un, though. Wet-nursin’ ain’t in Gabe’s line. He’d better find another woman fast, I says.”3

  Toward Morning tugged at Sacajawea to explain what Jake was saying. Sacajawea sat on the split-log bench and did her best. Then she waited for Toward Morning to speak.

  “He needs a woman that understands,” said Toward Morning softly, “how to prepare his meat, clean his papoose, and sing to his little girl.” She began to hum a Shoshoni lullaby and smile to herself.

  The next day, Joe Walker’s woman ran to Sacajawea at the washing place. “My man is home. He has many animals in cages. He tells strange things about the Salty Lake. But he has not seen your son, called Baptiste, for, he says, nearly five summers. It is sad. Maybe your son is dead, his bones white powder.”

  Sacajawea eyed the woman, then turned away, gathered her soiled clothing, and trudged back to her lodge. She could not wash this day. Her heart was not in it.

  CHAPTER

  53

  The Mormons

  Trouble started in 1853 when the Utah Territorial Legislature had granted a charter to a firm to operate the emigrant ferries at Green River, held to be in a part of the Mormon area called Deseret. The mountaineers who had monopolized the business did not recognize the legal claim, and at gunpoint they carried on business as usual. Consequently, the Mormons sued for the amount collected during the summer.

  Bridger seems to have no direct connection with the suit, but the Mormons, thwarted at the ferries, turned their attention to him. Had he not boasted at Fort Laramie that he had furnished guns to the Shoshonis? Had he not been connected by marriage with the Utes, who under Walkara, had dealt the Mormon settlers much grief? If the Mormons could not settle their problems with the mountain men at the ferries, they would have the satisfaction of putting a stop to Bridger’s interference. Therefore, they decided to clean out Fort Bridger, “lock, stock, and barrel.”

  Beginning with an affidavit charging him with furnishing the Indians guns to shoot Mormons, the sheriff and his posse of 150 select men went to the fort to arrest him. Finding the place deserted except for Rutta, Bridger’s Shoshoni wife, they pitched camp near by. When they finally became tired of waiting for Blanket C
hief’sreturn, they made a drive upon his stronghold only to find that Rutta, too, had vanished.

  JAMES S.BROWN. Life of a Pioneer. Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1900, p. 324.

  During the next couple of summers it was not an unusual sight to see large trains of white-top wagons come down the trail to Fort Bridger. The trains were led by men called Lansford Hastings, James Clyman, Donner, and Bonneville, who came to get supplies and mend their trains at Fort Bridger. The Mormons, under the direction of Brigham Young, moved across the country in search of a new land in which to farm and build their community. “If there is a place on this earth that nobody wants,” said the Prophet, Young, “that’s the place we are hunting for.”

  “In that case, I know the exact spot,” said Bridger, chuckling deep inside his belly. “The flat, barren plain of the Great Salt Lake Basin that bakes under the white glare of them vast salt beds is a no-man’s-land. There are not many freshwater streams, and that land is enclosed by mountains on all sides. It looks like the bottom of a spent coffee cup with some of the sugar still sittin’ in the bottom.”

  Sacajawea did not hear the men talk, but she heard the rumors well enough. Brigham Young asked Jim Bridger about the exact nature of that country in the Great Salt Lake Basin. “Well, you are imprudent if you bring your people to live in that place until you know for sartin what can be grown in that salty soil. In fact, I’ll give you one thousand dollars on the barrel head for the first bushel of corn raised in that basin.”

  Bridger went on, oblivious to the fact that he had offended Young, and generously told him about the Great Salt Lake, the climate, the minerals, the timber, and the Indians. “Be on guard against them treacherous Utes—they are bad people around Utah Lake, and they are mostly armed. But they won’t attack large parties. On t’other hand, they might, however, rob, abuse, or even kill anyone caught alone.” While Bridger felt that the soil was fertile, he felt the nights were too cold for growing corn. “You ought to take your people and hightail it to the land at the north end of the California mountains where there’s good timber and it’s known grain and fruit can be grown easy. There’s an Indiantribe that is entirely unknown to most men, especially to travelers and geographers, who raise crops of every kind and harvest the cedar berries. Those there berries are something like juniper berries, yellow-colored, about the size of a plum. You can easily gather a hundred bushel off one tree. The Indians grind the fruit and make the best kind of meal. You ought to go there as fast as possible.”