Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  Joe looked up from his marbles. “Oh, Granma, I gots to tell you something, but I cannot do woman’s work.” He put the plum pits in his pocket.

  “Does your father help your mother, sometimes?”

  “Ai.” He said the word like Sacajawea did.

  “Then, you can see it has not hurt him. Come in with me. I want to hear about this woman who tells you stories and has a school inside the fort each week.”

  “That is what I have to tell.” The boy forgot about the marble game and went in behind her, slamming the door again. He waited until there were several bowls, cups, and saucers before he dried them on a clean, threadbare, old, cotton shirt. “You tell your story first,” she urged the child.

  “Well, there was a girl that went on a long hike with some men toward the setting sun. This girl put her baby on a backboard and took him. She made moccasins for the men and picked berries for their food.”

  Sacajawea had stopped washing. She watched the child, and when he hesitated, helped him along with his storytelling.

  “Did they walk all the time?” she asked.

  “No, they went in a canoe and on horseback.”

  “Was there a dog with them?”

  “Granma! Don’t make fun. This is a real live story.”

  “Where did they find horses?”

  “The girl asked the chief for some. He was her brother. He was Shoshoni—like you.” Little Joe looked at her through squinted eyes and she was half-afraid to hear more.

  “The baby was named Pomp. The girl was named Sacajawea.” He paused. “Granma, you told me about the big, black man, whose color would not rub off. Remember?”

  “Ai, and did your teacher tell you what happened to the girl and her papoose?” She tried to express no emotion.

  Little Joe looked at the floor where a line of ants had come in to carry away crumbs from under the washstand. Now she was afraid he would lose interest and not go on with the story.

  “Captains Lewis and Clark were the leaders, the chiefs of that journey.” She said her words slow and steady.

  “I know that. The girl, she wandered away or went back to her people. The boy, Pomp, grew and went on other trips, even across the ocean and back. When he was older and in a place called Cally Forny he made a school for Indians. Did you know?”

  “No.” Her eyes were wide open.

  “Then one day he and a friend went north to the goldmines. Pomp really went to find news of his mother. He got a sick fever in the mountains. He never got to the Montana gold mines ‘cause he died.”

  Sacajawea felt the tears. She could not hold them back.

  “The ending is sad. He did not find his mother either,” whispered Little Joe. “You want to know what Captain Clark called the baby?”

  She nodded and wiped her face on the sleeve of the dish towel.

  “My Dancing Boy! Like you called me! It is your story, Granma! I told Miss Ginny it was. She said my tongue would turn black and fall out if I told lies. But it is not a lie! Is it?”

  “No.” Sacajawea shook her head as she dried her hands. She reached with both hands for the leather string around her neck and pulled it over her head. For a long time she looked at the silver peace medal swinging on the string. Little Joe stood close to her. She could hear him breathing through his mouth. She wiped the medal on the hem of her cotton skirt and held it up to the light coming through the open back door.

  The bucket of dirty dishwater cooled and congealed.

  “That is a likeness of the Great White Father years ago. And see the hands?” She held the medal so that Little Joe could look. ‘That is the friendship sign. See, I hold your hand in friendship.” She clasped his right hand in hers. “Look, there is a peace pipe and a war ax. They are crossed for peace between the red man and the white man.”

  Little Joe put his fingers on the medal. “Oh, Granma, this is something plenty strong. How valuable is it?”

  “Little Joe, here is proof your tongue is not forked and will not turn black and fall out. Wear this and people will know you are distinguished.” She fingered the small colored beads she had threaded on the buckskin thong. She tied a knot across a thin place. “Here is the medal Sacajawea carried on the journey to the Western Sea and back to her own people.” She lowered the string with the silver medal over Little Joe’s head until it rested on his chest. It looked good right there. “You must not lose it. If you give it away, you giveaway the story at the same time. They go together. Can you remember?”

  “Ai.” Little Joe’s eyes were wide. “I was right. You are Sacajawea.”

  “You are right; you are the next generation to bring peace between your race and mine.”

  She leaned against the wooden washstand and closed her eyes. She thought it fitting for her white foster grandchild to be the bond between herself and the Shoshonis. He could be a bridge for understanding and tolerance between the red and white men.

  “What is your story, Granma?” The child’s voice brought her back from her visionary notion. She had actually forgotten she had a story to tell. She threw the cold dishwater on the scraggly bed of field daisies Suzanne had transplanted by the back steps, giving herself a moment to think.

  “My own grandmother was a girl and camped in Dinwoody canyon one winter. The buffalo and antelope were gone because the snow was three squaws deep. The People were starving and wanted others to know they had lived and suffered. So, they carved a great picture story on the steep side of a rock wall. The work gave them something to look forward to each day. They wanted their story to live after them. All those people are now gone, but today you and I can read the story of that bad winter in the canyon.” She helped Little Joe dry the pewter knives and forks and the work brought a vivid memory of the little girl, Lizette—another story.

  By midmorning Sacajawea was riding the packhorse, with a bundle of well-tanned bear hides behind her. “I’m glad I came to Fort Hall when I did,” she said to Crying Basket, “but the gait of this old packhorse is even worse than the shaking and joggling of the stage. I’ll be bound-up four days after this trip.”

  Toussaint did not mention the Jefferson peace medal again. He must have noticed she no longer wore it. Maybe he thought she’d lost it. Maybe he looked through her things on the sly and found nothing. Once he called her a muddle-headed old squaw when she could not remember where she left her little beaded bag with a few silver dollars inside.

  CHAPTER

  56

  I Could Cry All Night

  Ann W. Hafen, Clyde H. Porter, and Irving W. Anderson have done remarkable, historical searches to trace the life of Sacajawea’s son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. They found that for fifteen years, after returning to America from Germany in 1829, Jean Baptiste spent most of his time as a trapper and fur trader with people who were prominent in the early, western history of this country.

  Jean Baptiste worked first for the American Fur Company, and was with the Robidoux Fur Brigade in Idaho and Utah in the fall of 1830. In 1831 he was traveling with Joe Meek, and also in 1831 he was with Jim Bridger, reading Shakespeare and Chaucer to him on long winter nights. He attended the great fur trade rendezvous on the bank of the Green River in 1833 and was a guide for Captain Nathaniel James Wyeth in 1834.1 Thomas Jefferson Farnham wrote of meeting Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the infant of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, in 1839 at Fort El Pueblo, five miles from Bent’s Fort.2 By the end of that year Jean Baptiste was trapping furs with a party that included Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette. During the winter the party was holed up in a camp near Fort Vasquez and Fort Davy Crockett, close to present-day Platteville, Colorado. Baptiste took a great deal of pride in telling stories he’d either heard from his famous mother, Sacajawea, or his notorious father, Charbonneau, about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the spring the party brought out sevenhundred buffalo robes and four hundred smoked buffalo tongues in a thirty-six-foot long, eight-foot wide boat, traveling down the shallow Platte River and eventually into St. Louis.3
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br />   In 1842 Jean Baptiste was in charge of another party boating fur down the South Platte. This particular spring the river was too low for canoe travel, so the party had to send out several men for packhorses and mule-drawn carts. The remaining men stayed in camp on an island not far from the present Fort Morgan, Colorado. John C. Fremont visited the island camp and wrote about the good wild mint julep Jean Baptiste made and the tasty boiled buffalo tongue and coffee with the luxury of sugar that was served him. He noted that Jean Baptiste was the baby of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and had been educated in St. Louis with funds from General Clark. He wrote that Jean Baptiste called the island “St. Helena.”4

  A month later Rufus B. Sage stopped at the island camp and made a note in his journal about Jean Baptiste’s extraordinary education, from St. Louis to Europe, and the ease with which he spoke German, Spanish, French, English, and several Indian languages. Not long after that the packhorses and carts arrived, and the party took the overland trek into St. Louis to sell several hundred bales of furs.5

  The records show that Jean Baptiste was next on his way to the Rockies in the spring of 1843 with the Scotsman, Sir William Drummond Stewart, and his party of eighty men, all of whom were well equipped for sport hunting. William Clark Kennerly, a nephew, and Jefferson Clark, a son of William Clark, were with this expedition to the Yellowstone country. Jean Baptiste told stories he’d heard as a child about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Jefferson Clark told stories he’d heard from his celebrated father. The two boys formed a close friendship, bound partially by the fact that they shared the same nickname, Pomp or Pompey. Jean Baptist was hired as a cart driver and hunter for the Stewart outfit. The carts were two-wheeled, the wheels made from one block of wood. They had red covers and were drawn by two mules traveling side by side. This sporting expeditiontook no more than four or five months and in August Jean Baptiste was back in St. Louis.6

  A Mr. Francis Pensoneau wrote a promissory note to Jean Baptiste: “I promise to pay to J. B. Charbonno the sum of three hundred and twenty dollars as soon as I dispose of land claimed by him said Charbonno from the estate of his deceased father, St. Louis, August 14, 1843.” On the back of this note Jean Baptiste wrote that the money was to be paid to Mr. A. Sublette. This last statement was dated August 17, 1843 and signed by J. B. Charbonneau. The note is among the Sublette Papers in the archives of the Missouri Historical Society.

  By the next year he was at Bent’s Fort in the employment of William Bent and Céran St. Vrain. William M. Boggs, son of Governor Lillburn W. Boggs of Missouri, met him at Bent’s Fort and wrote in his journal that Jean Baptiste was the Indian papoose of the “elder Charbenau” that was hired by the Lewis and Clark Expedition when the party went from the Missouri River on to the Pacific Ocean. He described Jean Baptiste as an educated half-breed with long hair who was said to be “the best man on foot in the plains or in the Rocky Mountains.”7

  During the spring of 1844 Jean Baptiste was with Solomon Sublette and Céran St. Vrain capturing antelope and bighorn sheep alive to take to St. Louis and ship to Sir William Drummond Stewart in Scotland.8

  During 1845 Jean Baptiste and Tom Fitzpatrick were on a War Department exploration with Lieutenant J. W. Abert of the Topographical Engineers, traveling south from Bent’s Fort down the Canadian River.9 An English writer and sportsman hunter from Her Majesty’s 89th Regiment, Lieutenant George F. Ruxton, camped with Abert’s party a few nights. Ruxton was most impressed with the story that Jean Baptiste had been carried halfway across the continent on his mother’s back. He wrote that he was also impressed that Jean Baptiste “sat with Bill Gary in camp for twenty hours at a deck of Euker.”10

  In 1846 Jean Baptiste enlisted as a guide for the Mormon Battalion under the command of Colonel Philip St. George Cook. The Battalion traveled from Santa Fe to San Diego, breaking new roads for their wagons across seven hundred miles of mountains and plateaus.

  During the last week of November 1846, Colonel Cook moved the battalion of five hundred men through a mountain pass. Jean Baptiste was the one who rode ahead to look for water and game and point out the navigable passes. On November 29, Cooke wrote: “I discovered Charbonneaux near the summit in pursuit of bears. I saw three of them up among the rocks, whilst the bold hunter was gradually nearing them. Soon he fired, and in ten seconds again; then there was confused action, one bear falling down, the others rushing about with loud fierce cries, amid which the hunter’s too could be distinguished; the mountain fairly echoed. I much feared he was lost, but soon, in his red shirt, he appeared on a rock; he had cried out, in Spanish, for more balls. The bear was rolled down, and butchered before the wagons passed.”11

  Colonel Cooke, more than a year later, wrote in his journal, on January 11,1847: “I found here on the high bank above the well, stuck on a pole, a note, ‘No water, January 2—Charbonneaux.’”12

  The Mormon Battalion arrived in San Diego in January, 1847. A few days later General Stephen Watts Kearny, who had Kit Carson as his civilian guide, bivouacked his “Army of the West” beside Colonel Cooke’s Battalion. These camps were near the Indian community of the San Luis Rey Mission, north of San Diego.13

  The U.S. soldiers become acquainted with the Luisena and Digger Indians that had lived at or near the mission since the Spanish occupation in 1795. These Indians were coerced into serving as slaves for the Spanish and built the first adobe buildings of the mission. By 1822 the Franciscans were in charge of the mission. The Padres encouraged the Indian men to continue raising grain, grapes, figs, olives, and oranges, tending thousands of head of cattle, sheep, along with goats, pigs, horses, and mules. All the food and livestock raised belonged to the Franciscans. The Indian women were encouraged to weave the wool, use dyes, and sew for the mission personnel. They were so adept at pottery making that most of their products were used in the kitchens of the mission. The Indians were not abused by the Franciscans as they were under the Spanish, but they still often went hungry and died young of pneumonia andtuberculosis. In exchange for their hard labor, they were closely disciplined into a submissive mode of behavior. The Padres baptized them, married them, and buried them.14

  Suddenly in 1826 the Indians were proclaimed Mexican citizens. As such, they had no obligations to the Franciscans. They were given title to small plots of land, but they floundered and were not able to live as a group without an authority figure. There were no leaders among the Indians because such assertiveness had been drilled out during all the years of being slaves to the Spanish and subservient to the Padres. The Indians had become lazy and fought among themselves, using their meager Spanish reals to buy whiskey.

  The Indians were even more perplexed when the U.S. military took over the mission in 1846. At first the soldiers looked down on these sickly, destitute people. However, they were given medical treatment whenever they asked for it. Gradually the Indian men began working around the army camp—feeding, watering, and caring for the horses and livestock. Then some worked in the fields and orchards. The women worked as housekeepers, cooks, laundresses, and seamstresses. All the Indian workers were paid for their labors in cash or in livestock or other foodstuffs. This was dignified treatment they had never experienced before. The old people appreciated this unusual freedom and security and began to practice traditional customs and hold religious festivities. The young people mixed the old ways with the Christianity they had learned from the Franciscans.

  Jean Baptiste understood these people. The poor Digger Indians were related in language and cultural practices with the Shoshoni, so that he could talk with them, and through the Diggers he was able to communicate with the Luisena people. He understood their need for tribal cohesiveness and a sense of identity. He began a school for the children. In November of 1847 Jean Baptiste was given a release from his civilian guide obligation to the military so that he could take an appointment as Alcalde at the San Luis Rey Mission. This meant that he acted as a kind of mayor, justice of the peace, and magistrate for the Indian communi
ty. At the same time, a friend of Jean Baptiste’s, Captain Hunter, was ap-pointed by Kearny to be the Sub-Indian Agent for this Southern District. Jean Baptiste and Captain Hunter worked well together on behalf of the Indians.

  Another year went by, and Jean Baptiste was more than content with the work he was doing in his school and with the Indian people. He was certain he was bringing about a healthy understanding between the Indians and the soldiers. Thus, he was taken completely by surprise when he learned that he was implicated with an Indian rebellion. It was a false accusation. He had no previous knowledge of unrest at the Mission of San Luis Rey. Nonetheless, he was forced to resign.15

  Porter wrote that Baptiste resigned as Alcalde “because of white dissatisfaction arising from his policy of treating the Indians too kindly.”16

  As the Alcalde, Jean Baptiste wrote an order on April 24th, 1848, which stated that “a fair settlement” for an account of $51.37½, owed by an Indian to the general store and dram shop owner, Don Jose Aut. Pico, could be worked off at the rate of 12½ cents a day.17

  Anderson pointed out that this also may have been a reason for Jean Baptiste’s resignation. Jean Baptiste was obligated to sentence these people to slavery if they worked for only 12½ cents a day to pay a debt, since the debt became greater all the time if there was a wife and children to support. A man like Jean Baptiste, with integrity, high principles, and moral convictions, would resign.18 On July 24, 1848, the Civil Governor of California, Richard B. Mason, received a report from Colonel J. D. Stevenson, who was Commander of the South Military District. The report stated that Jean Baptiste Charbonneau had nothing to do with the planned uprising, but being “a half-breed Indian of the U.S. is regarded by the people as favoring the Indians more than he should do, and hence there is much complaint against him.” Stevenson went on to suggest that the expenses of Jean Baptiste’s office be paid from the Civil Fund because “Alcaldes are not paid.” Jean Baptiste’s friend, Captain Hunter, put in his resignation at this time. He was given a six months’ leave of absence.19