Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  Suzanne, nearly fourteen, and Crying Basket, thirteen summers, enjoyed having a baby in their tepee to care for. The spring continued into summer and fall. As unalterable days went on into weeks, and Indian summer still lingered, something smiled over the fort. In the Shoshoni encampment the Shoshonis were distinctly aware of it. The weather seemed to pause. Perhaps it was only a feeling—that internal necessity that events should be brought to a climax and resolved by action.

  One day Bridger patiently explained to Toward Morning that she must be stricter with his child. “Discipline is a state of tension, and it must either be used or relaxed. If not used, it relaxes itself and the child will be nothing but a brat.”

  Toward Morning watched him intently and nodded her head as if understanding perfectly. She was exalted into a blithe happiness with Jim Bridger near.

  Bridger turned to Sacajawea, who sat beside the fire stirring in a tin can containing water and coffee. “This here man, Captain Howard Stansbury, is looking for a new route between the Green River and Salt Lake. You and I know where that is, but not him. I took him to the high ridge and pointed out the route through the mountains and valleys. He was most amazed when he tried that trail and found that it was what he had looked for. This man brought word that the government, the damn Great White Father, wants to make my fort a garrison with soldiers coming here, and an Indian agency here, and of course Stansbury would be the agent. Then this Stansbury had the guts to ask me to guide an expedition from here to the South Platte. I drew him a pitcher with the end of my pipe in the dirt and told him to copy it before rain washed it out. He did that, and of a sartin it was right.”2

  Sacajawea passed the coffee around, and Bridger continued, “I’m going to check on Louis Vasquez in Salt Lake City real fast because I don’t fancy them Saints much; then I’m going out trappin’, and after the busy season at this fort, I’ve decided to go to Independence to exchange pelts for supplies, then to Saint Louis and check on the well-bein’ of my Josephine, and Felix, and Jake.” Bridger looked grim. He was not thinking aboutthe past. He was trying to rearrange the future, and in certain ways he could see it clearly enough. He was alone now, and realized that life lay in himself and not elsewhere. Something heroic was set free. Time was still going on, and he went with it.

  “Ginny?” asked Sacajawea. “What about her? She will need a father if she is to be as disciplined as you wish. A mother and a father.”

  Bridger looked at Toward Morning holding the child. Toward Morning’s heart leaped at the look. “I cain’t take a babe with me, and she ain’t old enough to go to school.”

  “You could take the squaw that loves your daughter,” said Sacajawea, looking directly at Toward Morning, who was blushing scarlet.

  “Chief Woman,” spat Bridger, “do you know what you say?”

  “Ai,” chuckled Sacajawea with her hand covering her mouth.

  “Would you marry an old codger like me?” asked Bridger.

  “No,” said Sacajawea, bursting into deep laughter, “but Toward Morning loves even the trees you walk under.”

  Bridger looked questioningly at Toward Morning. “I’ve been in this goldurn rut and couldn’t see outside it.”

  “Ai,” answered Toward Morning softly. “It is my wish to take care of the papoose and you.”

  “Bring your gear, then,” said Bridger brusquely. He put out one of his great hands, and Toward Morning pumped it to seal the bargain. “I’ll just call you Rutta from now on.” He smiled so his eyes crinkled and looked like pinpoints of light.

  In 1853, Brigham Young, governor of the Utah Territory—despite the fact that Congress denied statehood to the Utah Territory—ordered the arrest of Bridger and seizure of all his properties because he sold powder and lead to the Indians. He also sold powder and lead to the Mormons from the supply station in Salt Lake City.

  Sacajawea heard of these underhanded goings-onthrough the Indian grapevine. “This Young is lining up warriors,” she warned Bridger.

  While she was talking with Bridger, a Ute runner puffed into the fort and talked with Rutta. “I bring my message from Vasquez that your man’s life is in danger if he stays here.” He filled his heaving lungs with air and was gone before Rutta could call Bridger.

  “I will see that he finds a way to get out,” said Rutta to herself.

  Darkness moved under the cloud coming southward fast. Its frontlet stretched across the fort like the forehead of night. And before the advancing cloud wall, flashing up in great swooping circles was a flock of darting hawks, torn between their fear of the oncoming storm and darkness and the temptations of the drying meat and plums in the Shoshoni camp below.

  So sinister, brooding, and threatening was the slow advance of the great storm with the hawks before it, that something primevally fearful was appealed to in the recess of Rutta’s simple soul.

  “Go off on the winter buffalo hunt with Washakie and Shoogan,” suggested Rutta. “Or make that trip back to Saint Louis.”

  Far down the river, patches of white appeared here and there, touched by the last long rays of the sunset, and from where the cloud billowed lowest descended streaks of shining sleet.

  “Winter comes at last!” explained Bridger, stifling a nervous laugh. He did not wait to see what the storm would do. “Saint Louis is out.”

  The powers of nature were not the only things loose that evening. The Morman sheriff with a posse of one hundred and fifty armed men was also manifesting its sovereignty in physical and visible form. When they rode in to arrest Bridger, he was safe in the mountains with Chief Washakie and his hunting party.

  The men questioned Rutta. She said her man was on a peaceful buffalo hunt with his Shoshoni friends. The men wondered about a buffalo hunt in this weather, with the coming of the winter.3

  “The fur is much thicker,” Rutta assured them in her soft, calm voice.

  Apparently convinced that Bridger’s woman knewnothing of her man’s whereabouts, the sheriff and posse started back to Salt Lake. The dark water of Black’s Fork turned to cream under the feet of the posse. Behind it were black masses of men moving swiftly up the river road, pouring themselves out unceasingly from under the darkness of the cloud. The cloud and the hawks followed the posse. The sheriff started back to retrace steps and station his men at points overlooking Fort Bridger. Answering the men’s calls across the valley of the insane darkness came the long, babbled monosyllables of owls and whippoorwill. Then the snow began to drift past their faces. Young had told them not to return without Bridger. They camped in the snow and cold for several weeks watching for Bridger. One morning the sheriff said, “I’m damn glad the wind ain’t whistlin’ down from the mountings,” as he heaved part of an old stump on the fire. “It’s cold and gettin’ colder. Tomorrow you’ll see it’ll come on to snow in earnest. We’ll wait until spring if need be in order to get that elusive Blanket Chief.”

  The log, full of resin, unexpectedly blazed up into a sudden glare. “Lord!” said the sheriff, “what did it do that fer? We’ll have all the Injuns for miles around comin’ down on us now. We go back if that happens. If not, we stay here until we find Bridger. And don’t throw no more wood on that there fire!” he shouted to the nearest man.

  Sacajawea and her two girls stayed inside the fort that winter with Rutta and Ginny, who was getting as wild as Mary Ann had been.

  “We will teach this child to be Shoshoni, quiet, respectful, and knowledgeable in sewing,” suggested Sacajawea. The child did not care for sewing. The women tried to teach Ginny cooking. She liked to eat, but not to prepare the food. Finally, in desperation, Sacajawea taught Ginny to make an acceptable bow and neat feathered arrows.

  In the spring, the emigrants began to straggle in again. The sheriff could delay no longer. He was afraid Bridger would move into the fort under the guise of an emigrant. He seized Fort Bridger and stripped it of all movable property. The inhabitants had fled to Fort Laramie and Fort Hall two days before, after being warned by Vasquez throu
gh the Ute runner once again.

  “That man has his ear in the Mormon camp. We must get out of here in a hurry,” said Sacajawea.

  Ginny had wanted to stay so that she could try her skill with her bow and arrows on a moving target, mainly the pants of the sheriff and some of his Saints. Rutta hurried the unruly child off to Fort Laramie under the supervision of Shoogan and his two women and the rest of the Shoshonis who had been camped around the fort.

  The Mormons hurried to the Green River to kill several mountain men, frighten the others, and take over the ferries, then the several hundred horses, oxen, and other Bridger properties.

  The sheriff reported to Governor Young that the Mormons were now in the Green River Valley to stay. He was boastful too soon. Jim Bridger had been at Fort Laramie trapping, never out of touch with the Shoshoni and Ute grapevine. Hoofprints in the wet spring snow left by the homebound Mormon posse had not yet melted away when he was back at Fort Bridger with his woman and child. With him came John Hockaday, a U.S. surveyor. That spring, Bridger and Hockaday surveyed every acre Fort Bridger occupied. Bridger put that survey in his pocket and went trapping beaver again. When he returned in the fall, he took Rutta and Ginny to his old farm in Westport, Missouri, and filed with the government in Washington his claim for those acres on Black’s Fork.4

  Six days after Bridger left with his family, Sacajawea left with Shoogan’s family under the guidance of the Shoshoni chief, Washakie. He moved his tribe to better hunting grounds near the vicinity of Fort Hall on the Snake River. The Agaidüka tribe was prepared for a hundred-and-eighty-mile trek on the well-marked Oregon Trail and planned seven to eight days for the trip if they did not hurry. Traveling with them were several dozen mountain men from the Bridger ferries, which were now forsaken.

  Shortly after leaving, Washakie stopped the band on a hill and looked back toward Fort Bridger. To his amazement he saw some ninety well-armed Mormons, with wagons, cattle, horses, mules, and plows movinginto the deserted fort. “Someone must have told them we were moving out,” grunted Washakie. Suddenly Shoogan shouted and pointed in the direction of the Mormons. They were readying an attack on the Shoshoni tribe. Then, just as suddenly, they laid down their arms. The Mormons had spotted the mountain men, who looked like desperadoes. They left the vicinity of Fort Bridger and retreated a few miles north until the weather became bad. Then the Mormons stopped. They had not made much headway and were still close to Bridger’s Fort. There they built themselves a temporary shelter from their own wagons and supplies and gave the place a name, Fort Supply.

  The Shoshonis learned that the Mormons grew vegetables in the spring for the emigrants that passed by in wagon-train loads. Then the Mormons took over the ferries and Fort Bridger. They added new buildings and replaced the rickety log stockade with a concrete wall.

  Sacajawea was delighted to see her old friend Tom Fitzpatrick again that spring at Fort Hall. He shook her hand and sat to smoke while he told her he’d heard some vague rumors about Baptiste. “While I was packing beaver pelts, some miners came into Fort Laramie last fall. Those men had run acrost Lieutenant Colonel Cooke, and sure ‘nuf it was Baptiste driving a mule cart and helping read maps for the lieutenant. These boys had known Baptiste in Saint Louis and asked him how come it was he had wandered so far from home. ? come to California following the gold rush and ended up at Sutter’s Fort. Cooke hired me from there.’ Those miners said he looked fit and was good-natured. And then last winter in Saint Louis I heard this. That German, Duke Paul, has come back and is pushing on to Sutter’s Fort to find Baptiste.”

  “Come summer, I will travel to this fort and see him myself,” said Sacajawea with enthusiasm, shaking Fitzpatrick’s good hand. “How many days away?”

  “Maybe four, five weeks—might be more. I’ve not been to Sutter’s Fort yet myself.”

  But that summer Sacajawea did not leave for California. Suzanne was pregnant. The father was one of the mountain men, Joe Coiner. He was happy enoughto have Suzanne remain with him at Fort Hall to keep his lodge fire going and the stew hot. Sacajawea forever won Suzanne’s abiding trust and lasting affection by simply accepting the fact and talking it over with the girl as a bright hope and comfort for the future. Suzanne had no innate sense of bodily guilt. Now there was hope for her, something to comfort her, an event and a future to look forward to—and, best of all, affection.

  Crying Basket had known long before, and the fact that she had known something before her mother was something that made her smile. The three of them drew hope and comfort out of the well of nature in the thought of Suzanne’s coming baby. To them it was the pledge and hope that the world was going on, that not even the winter’s cold could stop it.

  Seated by the fire, smoking his pipe and watching the women conferring eagerly about some little problem of sewing an infant’s garment, Joe, a trapper, mountain man, and river-ferry operator, smiled and marveled at the similarity between these squaws and his own mother and two sisters, one of whom married young.

  Suzanne’s son was named Joe, and she was content to live in the trapper’s cabin near Fort Hall. Her man shot bear, antelope, and elk. If he did not sell the hides, he papered the walls of his cabin with them. This was something new and quite lovely to Suzanne.

  Toward fall, the Shoshoni horses were raided. Some said it was the Crows. The scouts said they had seen a large band of Arapahos heading toward an opening in the hills.

  Washakie called a quick powwow. The men decided that they would track the Arapahos. They followed the Snake River north until the going became too rough and they were forced to make camp. At dawn they forded the river and found Arapaho tracks. They moved cautiously toward the Lost River. The terrain was rugged and they made little mileage. About noon, bullets spattered around Nowroyawn and Shoogan. The Shoshonis fired back. They were spread along a steep, broken slope. Minutes later they charged, using mostly bows and war axes—bullets were precious. The Arapahos were unhorsed and soon running, leaving three warriors dead. Then the Shoshonis dug in.

  At nightfall, the firing ceased. Two Shoshonis had been wounded. The others collected the dead Arapahos’ rifles and rounded up half a dozen horses. All night the Shoshonis kept watch with a chorus of whooping and drum-pounding, hoping to discourage their foe from further attack. The next morning, Washakie was sure the Arapahos had been chased off. They returned to Fort Hall, admitting that they had not seen a sign of their own stolen horses. “And so—the Arapahos are our natural enemies, anyway,” said Nannaggai, Washakie’s oldest son. “It serves them right to be sent running like the white man’s chickens.”

  In the fall, it was decided to move the whole Shoshoni band, under the guidance of Washakie, closer to the Salmon River country. The land was full of hills and valleys and rocks and deer. It was the latter the Shoshonis wanted for their winter’s supply of food. Nowroyawn assured the people the Arapahos had left the country weeks before. Sacajawea and Crying Basket packed their goods and folded the tepee coverings. When all was packed and ready to go, they said their goodbyes to Suzanne and the baby, Joe. Sacajawea promised to come back for a visit as soon as she could, perhaps by the next summer.

  The band followed the Snake River to the ford. It took an entire day to get the whole band with all the supplies across the river safely. The air was cool and crisp and bracing as they made the night camp. Getting herself up to make the small morning fire, Sacajawea knew that the first gray of dawn must have come into the sky behind the mountains, though she could see no glint of it yet. She could hear the running hoofbeats of a scout’s horse as he rode into camp. Then she thought she saw some stirring around the fire of Washakie, and at the same instant came the insistent whisper, “Get ready! We move out! Over the next two hills is a camp of Arapahos.” The whisper went all through the camp, and when it quieted, the fires were black and the people were packing, soothing children with bits of jerky stuffed into their mouths, and then they were moving out to the northwest.

  The next few days
were uneventful. The men found the deer plentiful. Some wanted to find a suitable place here for a winter camp. Washakie said it was too close to the Arapahos. They should put more days and nights between their two camps. He did not want the Arapahos to recognize the horses he’d raided earlier, so he ordered several young warriors to paint all the horses with patches of brown mud.

  On the fifth day out from Fort Hall, the Shoshonis stopped to smoke the meat they had so far. Sacajawea set up drying racks alongside the other women. The country began to seem familiar to her in a remote way. “This must be the same country my feet traveled when I was a small child,” she said to Crying Basket. “This is what I remember—rocks and cedars, and white water in the streams. This is the Agaidüka country.” When the meat was smoked and dried, it was packed in leather bags and loaded with the other supplies on the travois. The Shoshonis moved on. Grass and water became more plentiful as they neared the Salmon River. Just after sunrise one morning occurred an incident that embittered them against the Arapahos.

  Scouts had located a small Arapaho hunting party, and one of the men appeared to be badly cut up, as though mauled by a bear. The party seemed undecided what to do next, because they were one horse short.

  “How many of them?” asked Washakie.

  “Four, counting the one cut,” said a scout.

  “We could send them a horse—just let it wander into their camp,” suggested Nowroyawn. “One of their own horses. What could it matter?”

  “No,” said Nannaggai. “Would they do that for us?”

  Sacajawea could not hold herself in. “Ai,” she said, coming around the circle of men. ‘They would if we did it for them and they knew we wished to help the wounded one back to his camp.”

  “How would they know if we let the horse loose and hid ourselves?” asked Nowroyawn’s son, Pina Quanah, or Smell of Sugar.