Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  Jean Baptiste and Captain Hunter went prospecting for gold together in the Sacramento Valley. Jim Beckwourth and Tom Buckner found the two on the banksof the Middle Fork of the American River, a place known as Murderer’s Bar, panning for gold.20

  The 1860 U.S. Census of Placer County, California, listed: J. B. Charbonneau, male, age 57, born in Missouri, P.O., Secret Ravine. Secret Ravine was ten miles from the town of Auburn, California. In 1861 the Directory of Placer County listed a John B. Charbonneau as a clerk in the Orleans Hotel, at Auburn.

  Five years later on the editorial page of the Placer Herald, Auburn, California, for July 7, 1866 was the following article:

  J. B. Charbonneau—Death of a California Pioneer.—We are informed by Mr. Dana Perkins, that he has received a letter announcing the death of J. B. Charbonneau, who left this country some weeks ago, with two companions, for Montana Territory. The letter is from one of the party, who says Mr. C. was taken sick with mountain fever, on the Owyhee, and died after a short illness.

  Mr. Charbonneau was known to most of the pioneer citizens of this region of country, being himself one of the first adventurers (into the territory now known as Placer County) upon the discovery of gold; where he has remained with little intermission until his recent departure for the new gold field, Montana, which, strangely enough, was the land of his birth, whither he was returning in the evening of life, to spend the few remaining days that he felt was in store for him.

  Mr. Charbonneau was born in the western wilds, and grew up a hunter, trapper, and pioneer, among that class of men of which Bridger, Beckwourth, and other noted trappers of the woods were the representatives. He was born in the country of the Crow Indians—his father being a Canadian Frenchman, and his mother a half breed of the Crow tribe. He had, however, better opportunities than most of the rough spirits, who followed the calling of trapper, as when a young man he went to Europe and spent several years, where he learned to speak, as well as write several languages. At the breaking out of the

  Mexican War he was on the frontiers, and upon the organization of the Mormon Battalion he was engaged as a guide and came with them to California.

  Subsequently upon the discovery of gold, he, in company with Jim Beckwourth, came upon the North Fork of the American River, and for a time it is said were mining partners.

  Our acquaintance with Charbonneau dates back to ‘52, when we found him a resident of this county, where he has continued to reside almost continuously since—having given up frontier life. The reported discoveries of gold in Montana, and the rapid peopling of the Territory excited the imagination of the old trapper, and he determined to return to the scenes of his youth. Though strong of purpose, the weight of years was too much for the hardships of the trip undertaken, and he now sleeps alone by the bright waters of the Owyhee.

  Our information is very meager of the history of the deceased—a fact we much regret, as he was of a class that for years lived among stirring and eventful scenes.

  The old man, on departing for Montana, gave us a call, and said he was going to leave California, probably for good, as he was about returning to familiar scenes. We felt then as if we met him for the last time.

  Mr. Charbonneau was of pleasant manners, intelligent, well read in the topics of the day, and was generally esteemed in the community in which he lived, as a good meaning and inoffensive man.”

  A report of Jean Baptiste’s death also appeared in the Butte Record of Oroville, California, July 14,1866. The Owyhee Avalanche in Ruby City, Idaho, June 2,1866, stated:

  Died.—We have received a note (don’t know who from) dated May 16, ‘66, requesting the publication of the following:

  At Inskip’s Ranche, Cow Creek, in Jordan Valley, J. B. Charbonneau aged sixty-three years—of pneumonia. Was born at St. Louis, Mo.; one of theoldest trappers and pioneers; he piloted the Mormon Brigade through the Lower Mexico in ‘46; came to California in ‘49, and has resided since that time mostly in Placer County; was en route to Montana.”

  Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, with “Jean Baptiste Charbonneau,” by Ann W. Hafen, Vol. I, 1965, p. 205.

  Gertrude Inskeep Ropp of Yakima, Washington, pointed out in 1980 that the Inskeep (Inskip) Stage Station, the old Ruby Ranch and home, is located at the mouth of Cow Creek and Jordan Creek, near Danner, Oregon. Mrs. Ropp’s grandfather, Oliver Wilton Inskeep, owned the Stage Station, ranch, and home in Jordan Valley. Even today there are wagon wheel marks where the original toll road ran from Ruby City, Idaho, to Winnemucca, Nevada. Danner, which used to be called Ruby City, is three miles north of U.S. 95 and fifteen miles west of Jordan Valley, Malheur County, Oregon.21 In 1966 Chris Moore wrote:

  Local legends tell of a half breed, presumably Charbonneau, and two soldiers and two children being buried there, all before the turn of the century…. Probably Charbonneau’s grave is the earliest of the five as the station was established in 1865…. It was rescued from complete oblivion several years ago by S. K. Skinner, a Jordan Valley rancher, who stopped a county roadgrader as it was plowing into the west end of the graves. He and his wife have done considerable research locating Charbonneau’s grave and hope to see it suitably marked and protected before it is completely obliterated.22

  The Danner burial ground lies next to the Inskip Station fortification, stagecoach stables, rock corrals, and a rock-enclosed well.23

  There was a wooden marker, put in place by local schoolchildren, indicating the grave believed to be Jean Baptiste Charbonneau’s. It was carved with the words: “Charbonneau—RIP—Baptiste, Son of Sacajawea 1805–66.” Nearby was another large sign erected by the Jordan Valley, Oregon, Commercial Club. This wooden marker read:

  Grave of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, February 11, 1805

  Born to Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau Interpreters for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Guide, Trapper, Miner, World Traveler, Scholar, and Politician. In the Spring of 1866 he set out for the mines of Montana, contracted pneumonia and died here, Inskip’s Ranch, May 16, 1866.

  J. V. Commercial Club24

  On August 17, 1971, a large wooden board became the Jean Baptiste Charbonneau Monument and Marker. William Clark Adreon of St. Louis, the great, great grandson of William Clark, was the dedication speaker on this Inskip site. The legend on the marker is:

  Oregon History

  Jean Baptiste Charbonneau

  1805–1866

  This site marks the final resting place of the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Born to Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau at Fort Mandan (North Dakota) on February 11, 1805. Baptiste and his mother symbolized the peaceful nature of the “Corps of Discovery.” Educated by Captain William Clark at St. Louis, Baptiste at age 18, traveled to Europe where he spent six years, becoming fluent in English, German, French and Spanish. Returning to America in 1829. He ranged the far west for nearly four decades, as mountain man, guide, interpreter, magistrate and forty-niner. In 1866, he left the California gold fields for a new strike in Montana, contracted pneumonia enroute, reached “Inskip’s Ranche,” here, and died on May 16, 1866.25

  Sacajawea was more than seventy-five winters. Her skin was dark, dry, and wrinkled. She seemed shapeless beneath her smoke-stained leather tunic. She was like the shale behind her tepee, the thinly stratified structure eroded by weather and pushed earthward with slumping. The many snows weighed heavily on her back, and when she walked, she was like a three-legged horse, pushing along first with her burled cedar stick to steady her thin legs, all bone and hide.

  She visited from one tepee to another, from one village to another, and inside Fort Bridger. She gossiped with Shoshoni women, Bannock women, once in a while with an Arapaho woman who did not recognize her as an enemy. The women exchanged wit and wisdom. She was known by all. Many a frantic mother came to her tepee flap in the dark of the night begging for some healing herb or ointment for
a sick child. Chief Washakie came to smoke silently with her and consult on important matters, such as the white men building roads into the Shoshoni land or what to do with the Shoshoni men who hunted the white men’s cattle as if they were buffalo in the valley.

  Often she sat in silence on a grassy spot in the red shale behind the village. She mulled over the words spoken by her gray-eyed foster grandchild in Fort Hall. “Pomp really went to find news of his mother. He got a sick fever in the mountains He died.” In the fading evening light she looked at the sixty-some lodges of her people. They were beautiful white cones, some with colorful paintings on the outside, others plain so that the fine stitching could be admired. She tried to recall what her firstborn had looked like. Sometimes tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks. I could cry all night, but it does not help brighten my faded memory of my Dancing Boy, Pomp, Jean Baptiste, my first son.

  What was he during his lifetime? She knew he had traveled and worked for the white men. She knew that the white men respected him as a leader. She was satisfied he had withstood the ebb and flow of the seasons, the sullen hostility of man, the anesthesia of the whiteman’s religion and wealth—all the passions that warp the mind, flesh, and spirit of man. She had given him a good beginning. She no longer sought him with every passing white-top wagon, and she forgot to ask travelers if they had heard his name.

  She seemed to withdraw inside herself a little, and so to make herself immune from all but the ultimate destruction of her nonessential outer shell.

  Late one afternoon during the annual midwinter thaw as Sacajawea built up her cook fire, she noticed Toussaint sitting outside her doorway on the damp ground. When she went out to speak to him she saw that he had been drinking. He wore government-issue clothing and appeared half-comical, half-tragic in black, shoddy pants made for someone weighing at least two hundred pounds. The seat was cut out, revealing the back flap of his breechclout and the tail of his red flannel shirt. The sleeves were cut off his large black coat, converting it into a vest.

  “I came to tell you that Washakie is getting senile,” said Toussaint. “He wants to move the whole camp back to the Carter Station and let the white men show us how to run water in a ditch to irrigate the wheat.” He lurched a couple of steps sideways, then sat down cross-legged in front of the lodge.

  “I have heard some talk about this,” she said. “Is that what you came to say?” She was surprised he would bring her this old news. She thought everyone was ready to go.

  “Well—you know what happens when water goes into a ditch and fills up the gopher holes. The gopher comes out, looks at us, and we die.”26

  “Are you asking me to talk with Washakie about this?”

  “Yes, do it right away. I do not want to plow up land to grow grain.” He hiccoughed. “That is hard work. So, then I do not want to die.”

  “You are a disgrace,” she said, watching him carefully. “You fortify yourself with the white man’s firewater before you have nerve to talk with your mother. Is that being a man?”

  He laughed at her. “It is true I traded a buffalo hide for a little whiskey. The bottom of the bottle was filledwith hard buffalo tallow and I suspect that white trader diluted the whiskey with water and colored it with tobacco juice. So you see I did not have so much that you could accuse me of being drunk. Ha! Tee-hee! That was no buffalo hide the white son of a bitch got off me. That was a damn cowhide and he didn’t know the difference!” He had to hold his sides he laughed so hard.

  Some children chasing dogs around heard him and came to see what the joke was. They hung back in the drifted snowbank beside the leafless cottonwood trees.

  “If you will not talk to the chief, maybe you will see Jakie Moore at the post store,” said Toussaint. “He’s white, but he’s a friend of mine. You get him to persuade that confused old man that the braves of his band do not want to be farmers. You tell Jakie to tell Chief Weasel Guts Washakie his warriors can race horses or go on a buffalo hunt and do a better job than farming.”

  “Everyone knows you do not approve of Washakie. Why do you ask me to speak for you? I know there is no buffalo left to hunt. Some in the band are hungry because of that.”

  “Oh, I am hungry. The white man’s firewater makes me hungry. My good mother, do you have something delicious in your kettle?”

  “Not for you!” she cried. “I have told you that there is no welcome here for you. Go, or I will break your brittle bones.”

  Toussaint laughed, “Tee-hee!” He threw his arms around his head and looked foolish. The children by the cottonwood laughed out loud at his antics.

  Sacajawea went inside her lodge and built up the fire again. She opened the tepee flap, but did not invite Toussaint inside. She sat close to the fire, her eyes half-closed. After a few moments she called to Toussaint. “Hey! Ai! You who calls yourself my son! Listen, I know Jean Baptiste is not living. My true son is dead.” She fumbled for her tobacco pouch at her waist, filled and lit her pipe from a stick in the fire, and drew a few deep puffs.

  Toussaint roused himself out of his drunkenness. “That is not a certainty. You should not repeat that.” He got up and began to stumble around the outside of the lodge, slashing at it with his hunting knife.27

  She called to him, “Stop that! If you sit I will give you coffee with plenty of sugar.” She added another fistful of crushed coffee beans to a blackened lard bucket of day-old coffee already warming beside the fire.

  He poked his head in the doorway. “That does smell good, old mother. I’ll stay. But if you say or breathe one word about my half-breed stepbrother, I will bury an arrowhead in your back.”

  She looked at him with sad, soft eyes, turned her back to him and got an empty tin cup. She rummaged around under her bed to find a small bottle of laudanum that had been given to her by Jakie Moore to ease the old, dull ache in her arthritic knees. She upended the bottle in the cup, covered the bottom with sugar from a hard leather box, and poured in coffee. The mixture was stirred with an old, bent spoon.

  Toussaint found the cup handle too hot, and he pulled out his red shirt tail to wrap around it. He blew on the coffee to cool it, then tasted carefully and smacked his lips. “You know how to make coffee, with lots of sugar.”

  She grunted and made herself sit quietly. When she felt it was time, she looked. He was lying on the wet ground, snoring. Sacajawea yelled to the children. “Go home and tell your fathers to come here. You can see this man needs to be taken to his lodge. He is very tired. Go!”

  They scampered away. She closed her tepee flap and quietly prepared her supper of thin vegetable stew. In the middle of the meal she heard the men come. At first they tried to waken Toussaint. Someone said, “He will be a red-eye by morning. I smell the bay rum, you know—like in hair tonic.” Someone else said, “That lousy stuff makes me cough up my insides. I drink it for the kick it has and get the Devil inside my belly.” Another said, “We can drag him to his lodge. It’s a pity the son of Chief Woman lets firewater rule him.” The first voice agreed, “Ai, and the dog drinks anything. He ought to share something good with us for lugging him home so he will not freeze in the night.” Finally they were too far away for her to hear them talking.

  Sacajawea packed her belongings and struck her tepee. She was ready when the band moved to anothercamp. Some were afraid to cross the iron road of the Union Pacific Railroad. They thought the horses were also afraid, but one by one they crossed it on the run. They hid when the great iron horse went by, snorting smoke and pulling many big wagons.

  She watched her people during this year of scant meat and heard them go out on frosty mornings hunting for game; anything, even a white man’s stray cow, would taste good. It all went on outside her as it went on in memory inside, changing but changeless, and so a kind of illusion. What stood out was the common core. It was this reality she pondered.

  Wind and snow matted her straggly hair. Sun and frost made leather of her cheeks and hands. Her eyes took on a remoteness. At times her steady gaz
e seemed turned inward—as if it had gone around the earth and returned.

  Sometimes her meditations were interrupted. She had gone long to her people and neighbors; now they came to her.

  “Chief Woman,” a mother would say, respectfully standing before her. “Forgive this interruption, but many are sick with the fever and there is talk about the spotted sickness. It has come to some of the northern camps.”

  “Did you see the white medicine man at Augur’s camp?”

  “Oh, no! Old Puffbelly, our Shaman, came and put dried buffalo dung around the eyes of my children who were ill.”

  “They are better?”

  “Ai, but I fear they will get the spotted sickness, for they are weak.”

  Sacajawea grunted. “And he carried a buffalo skull and danced from left to right, which is the sacred manner, stopping to face the place where the sun comes up?”

  “Ai.”

  “Go to the Blanket Chief. He has a new way to keep your children well. If he has no time for talk, see his woman, Rutta. Tell her I sent you.”

  “Porivo is strange and wise,” her own people said ofher. “Even Chief Washakie consults with her on matters his mind is forked on.”

  She gave advice on all matters whenever consulted.

  Jim Bridger came to the village. He rode in a rattletrap wagon pulled by two piebalds across the white, trackless road. The snow was deep and heaped along the creeks. He came with flour and dried beef. He told the Shoshonis and Bannocks to drink much water with the beef and soon the fever would be washed away.

  He was the guest of Chief Washakie, who confided in Bridger that he was now anxious for his people to remain on a reservation and farm. The children should learn at the school. He realized game was scarce and his people would have to find another way to have full bellies, and the only way left was to join with the white men. Change was coming. It was better not to fight something that could not be stopped. For he was wise and knew that there were ten or twelve white men for every native, and never could these strangers be wiped out. It was far better to try to live with them and understand their thoughts.