Sacajawea

by Anna Lee Waldo

  Sarah, red-faced from the last stinging snow of spring, came blustering inside the log house. Sacajawea was lifting a cottonwood chunk into the sheet-iron stove.

  “I have come to learn Shoshoni,” Sarah indicated by hand signs. “I will teach you my tongue in payment.” Behind spectacles the eyes of the white woman were soft blue and kind.

  Sarah sat down with Dancing Leaf on the floor and began using hand signs, then single English words. Dancing Leaf used hand signs and Shoshoni words. Sacajawea could not contain her tongue, and often she interpreted for one or the other. After almost an hour, Sarah got up and shook Sacajawea’s hand, then excused herself. She came back the next morning at the same time for another lesson.

  “Would you like to learn to read?” Sarah asked Sacajawea one morning.

  “How long to learn?”

  “A year, maybe more.”

  “No,” said Sacajawea. “It is better for my grandchildren to learn. It is late for me. My life is coming toa close. I can look back to times that you cannot remember.”

  “Would you tell me about those times?” asked Sarah, leaning toward Sacajawea.

  “Ai, but it takes time for telling my stories all on one string.”

  “How long?”

  “A year, maybe.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll start. I’ll bring paper and pen and ink. After the talking lesson, you will tell me something you can remember from long ago.” Sarah pushed her glasses back on her nose. She was eager. She wanted to get the whole life story of this old Shoshoni woman, who it was rumored had crossed the continent with Lewis and Clark nearly seventy years before.

  “Ai. Tomorrow I will tell a story that will make me young again a short time, and you will put it down on the paper as my tongue says the words. There are strange things to be remembered, strange ways, and strange faces. There is a man’s face that is black; there is a boy who cries out in the night for his mother.”

  Sacajawea lit her pipe, and her lean cheeks hollowed with a long draw upon the stem. Her brooding face went dim behind the cloud of smoke. When it emerged, it was shining, and a light was in her eyes. “Boinaiv! My grandmother is calling to me. It is what I see clearer than all the rest. And that is strange for it was the farthest away in my memory.” She thought awhile, a slow smile spreading until she fell to giggling like a small girl. Then her face went sober, and fixing her eyes upon Sarah, she said with great dignity and deliberation, “It is a long way back, and I am weary. You come tomorrow, and we start.”31

  The weather became warm, and she moved back to her own tepee. Each morning Sarah knew when Sacajawea was up and waiting for her by the thin stem of smoke from the tepee fire.

  One morning Chief Washakie was sitting outside the tepee. The summer sun was already hot on Sarah’s back as she walked alongside the stream to write more of Sacajawea’s story. She did not want to stay and interrupt the first guest, but Sacajawea waved her to sit on the ground outside.

  “You must sit quietly, my daughter,” Sacajawea said. “Washakie has seen much with the soldiers, and he is telling me. Do not write his words, for they are about your people.”

  Sarah pushed up her steel-rimmed glasses and opened her mouth to speak.

  “Shhh,” cautioned Sacajawea again. “Try to be more patient. It is polite to sit and wait a few minutes. You can enjoy the sun on your back.”

  “It is all a mistake,” Washakie began after they had sat silent for a while, listening to the warm wind and the whipping of the leather on the tepee poles. “I have known, forever, it seems, that we cannot drive all the white men from our country. We fought beside them on the Rosebud, and it was a great victory for the Sioux and Arapahos. They moved their whole camp into the valley of the Greasy Grass. The white men claimed the victory on their side because the Cheyennes pulled away from their chase of the mule soldiers of Three Stars. I was a scout for Three Stars, and I heard that Sitting Bull forbade any celebration for that fight. He was preparing Crazy Horse and himself for another. He had a vision of a hundred white soldiers dropping dead in neat rows around his feet.

  “The white soldiers laughed at this dream. They sat in their camp on Goose Creek and licked their wounds and lied to themselves about the strength of Sitting Bull’s dream and his warriors. I tried to make them understand there would be ten thousand hostiles gathered along the banks of the Greasy Grass.” Washakie clutched at his brown, wrinkled face, remembering how the white pony soldiers had prepared for the coming battle.

  His husky voice began slowly. “While the white warriors drilled with Straight Tongue, Tom Cosgrove, each morning our warriors hunted and fished. Once I held the peace-waver of the Shoshonis, a standard of eagle feathers attached to a lance staff twelve feet long. My warriors wore a small piece of white cloth in their headdress as a distinguishing mark so that the soldiers would know we were their Shoshoni friends. But the Sioux heard of this and also placed white strips in their hair.

  “Then one day a message was brought into our Goose

  Creek camp telling about what happened to Son of the Morning Star, Custer, and his soldiers on the Greasy Grass. I believe the white men might have done a better job in their fights with our enemies if they had been more careful and had kept together better. Son of the Morning Star was killed because he did not wait for his friends to help him do a big job. Three Stars was waiting and drilling his pony soldiers, but no word came to him to help on the Greasy Grass, so he just stayed in camp, not knowing about that fight. Son of the Morning Star with two mortal wounds was destroyed, and so were all his white pony soldiers.

  “I believe that the Other One, Terry, told Son of the Morning Star to look a little for Three Stars, and that when Son of the Morning Star saw the enemy’s trail he forgot, because he wished to fight. The Other One must have known the country between him and Three Stars was full of hostiles—any soldier would have known it. Each morning on Goose Creek I looked over the hillside with the bring-close glasses of Three Stars, and each morning I saw the Arapahos skulking behind every bush and tree.32 And so—I believe Son of the Morning Star disobeyed his orders and did not wait for more reinforcements, and so all was lost that day.33

  “I talked one evening to Three Stars and plainly told him that my warriors would not remain any longer with him because his transportation of supplies was too terrible. With those mules nothing could be done. It slowed us all the way. So—then I brought my men back here because they were ready to come home.

  “I have finished my story, and I am tired.” Washakie folded his arms over his leather shirt and closed his eyes. “I do not believe in fighting any more battles than we are forced into. Sitting Bull has run into Canada.” He seemed to forget the two women sitting in front of him.

  “Chief Washakie,” Sarah said at length, “this is the first I have heard of this fight and the great loss by the whites. Is it truth?”

  The old man regarded her for a while with a crinkled look about his mouth. “Granddaughter, you know I do not speak with a forked tongue. If you listen now, you can hear the mourning of the women for the Shoshonisand Crows who did not come home with us. My power is gone. I could cry all night.”

  Indeed, there was the sound of the piercing wails of women carried into the treetops by the warm winds. Sacajawea sat quite still, her eyes toward the other tepees farther down the stream sympathetic and understanding.

  The land in that direction was nearly flat. It was rich, sandy brown, with grass thick and yellow. The broomweeds held tiny flowers and a resinous oil in their leaves that lent a faintly spicy scent to the summer air. Locusts sang in the grass.

  CHAPTER

  57

  Nothing Is Lost

  James I. Patten, who in 1871 became teacher and lay missionary to the Indians on the Wind River Reservation, wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, April 18, 1878:

  Dear Sir:

  I do not believe that much difficulty will be experienced in settling this tribe, Arapahos, on this r
eservation. It is known to be the desire of the government to have this accomplished. The Shoshones, although they are opposed to it, and look upon it as an encroachment of their rights, yet will make no great objections to the settlement of the former tribe upon their land, knowing that it is the wish of the Great Father to bring several small tribes of Indians together upon the same reservation. Washakie and the head men, though they dislike utterly to divide their property with other bands, have too great hearts to say no.

  But my sense of right and justice is that if other tribes are brought upon the Shoshone land, that it should be with the full consent of the tribe owning the land by right of their treaty, and that such Indians should receive reasonable compensation for diminishment of their reservation.

  I would, therefore, earnestly ask that the Shoshones be allowed a just sum for the relinquishment of a certain tract of land within the limits of their reservation to the Northern Arapahos.

  Respectfully yours,

  JAMES I. PATTEN

  GRACE RAYMOND HEBARD, Washakie. Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1930, p. 210. Letter from James I. Patten to E. A. Hayt, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C., April 8, 1878.

  Because Sacajawea had asked several times for one of her great-grandchildren to come help with her chores, Shoogan’s family finally persuaded the son of Nancy Bazil to go to her lodge. Speedy Jim had been baptized and named James McAdams by the Mormons at Salt Lake City.

  “This boy,” Shoogan said, “is good, but a little wild because he has not been taught the old ways properly. He needs counseling. We wish you to take him, Porivo.”

  “I will take him for the winter, to instruct him,” Sacajawea said, smiling, anticipating the companionship of a young person.

  He was small, quick as a chipmunk, and more inquisitive. He was impulsive. He was sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. Sacajawea liked him.

  Thin, wispy, gray hair hung against Sacajawea’s shoulders. Her forehead, cheeks, and chin were crisscrossed with fine, lined indentations. Dark, pigmented blotches spotted her face and beaklike nose, the backs of her bony hands, and her thin arms. Her bright eyes were large for her shrunken face, and her mouth looked pinched together when closed. She wore a government-issue, black woolen skirt and over that a soiled, blue calico dress that fit her like a sack. On her shoulders she held a tattered red blanket. She had cut the feet from her government-issue black stockings and wore them for leggings. When she walked she thrust ahead with her polished cedar stick. She did not walk frequently now, but received visitors when seated in front of her door on warm, pleasant days, or in front of her fire on cool, blustery days. The Lemhis had an interminable respect for this old woman. Everyone knew her and if they gossiped or laughed as they approached her tepee, they suddenly stopped, and resumed only after passing a courteous distance.

  During the day Speedy Jim cut wood with a rusty ax and carried water. On allotment days, he carried the flour and bacon to her tepee and helped her store it in old leather boxes.

  One day she was at the agency warehouse drawing her weekly rations herself. Toussaint was there, but he ignored the old woman, who was lying on her back, her shoulders resting on the fifty-pound sack of meat, around which was looped a strap, the ends of which were brought over her shoulders and held in her hands in front. She was just ready to rise with her burden when Shoogan came to her rescue and assisted her to her feet. Shoogan called to Toussaint, “The load is too heavy for our mother to carry. She is staggering. You can see she is quite old and weak.”

  Toussaint said curtly, “Ai, pretty old. I should know; she’s my mother. But you have sent your grandson to help her, so she is not my concern.” He walked to where the Shoshonis were gathering up their rations, spitting on the ground as though defiling the path his mother took.

  From then on, Speedy Jim was seen at the warehouse carrying the beef issue, tin of lard, sacks of salt, sugar, and coffee beans, and the heavy sack of meal loaded on a tired old horse.

  At times he helped her strip out the meat and dry it over a slow fire.

  At night they crouched together before the fire. Once Speedy Jim asked her age. She answered that she had probably outlived most of her girlhood friends. “I suspect I am older than my good friend Washakie. Some days I believe he is approaching his second childhood, but no need to tell him that.”

  “But the new ways do not frighten you as they do some of the old ones.”

  “Grandson,” said Sacajawea, “to children, age is something they cannot understand. To ignorance, knowledge is frightening. So that the new ways represent a learning which the old ones let pass by them. This is wrong. But even some of the young people have it. They have book learning and knowledge, and fear the wisdom which they have not yet. So then you learn to be unafraid of anything new or different. Then you will have reached true maturity, which is eternal youth.”

  The fire faded. Speedy Jim threw on another stick. Sacajawea filled and lighted her pipe, sucking noisily.

  “Ho-ho!” exclaimed Speedy Jim, keenly aware of what Sacajawea was about to suggest to him.

  “Shhh!” Sacajawea raised an admonishing forefinger and continued slowly, speaking scarcely above a whisper. “I want you to go to the Carlisle School. I want my people to have the best they can of the white man’s knowledge and the Shoshoni wisdom.”

  “But I hear at the Carlisle School one must learn about what has happened many years in the past in countries across the seas. I want to know of the future, not the dead past. I want to go on to the new. I am not afraid.” His black eyes glistened, and he brushed the coarse dark hair from his face with a dirty brown hand.

  “You are like the coyote on the trail of a rabbit. He has no sense of the past, only a hunger to devour the future. But to follow the rabbit he soon stops and raises his head and sniffs the air. He sees signs and listens to the world around him. He sees the trail behind as well as the one ahead. But still the future is ahead, up toward the red cliff top covered with mist. He angles up and up. Wagh! That dreaded and hungered-for future is no more than the present which resembles the past. They are all one. But you must learn this for yourself. Each man must travel his own trail.”

  And Sacajawea, with shining eyes that saw more, nearsighted with age, than when they had been perfect, reached for her little sack of tobacco. “When I am alone I can hear steps. I look up and see a man in my doorway. He might be the one called Jerk Meat, or a certain white man called Chief Red Hair—both dead these many years. No! It does not surprise me if he is any of these. There are shapes of men less alive than shadows of men. So then even I confuse what has been and will be with what is.”

  In her wisdom she taught that winter the lessons that must be learned by each alone, and she saw the comprehension in the boy’s bright eyes and dreamed of his reading and writing at the Carlisle School.

  She thought of the changes. The Indians always hunted twice a year, the white men hunted the year around. The Indians enjoyed the old raiding back and forth, but the whites preached tranquillity. Indian women took pride in a well-tanned hide, sewing, painting, and cooking, but white women had someone else do these things for them. How will a person distinguish himself from every other individual? she thought.1

  She said to Speedy Jim, “The Story Writer Woman makes believe she understands what is in my heart through my words. But writing will only show my life cold and pale as the paper she marks on, for she can not feel my feelings as if she has been with me all those long-gone years.”

  “Oh, Grandmother,” said Speedy Jim, “certainly there will be those who read your story and will know you are somebody grand in the memories of both the Indians and the whites.”

  “No, I say what I now feel”—she sat bent over the fire, her thin hand holding the red blanket together—“I shall never see this story on paper all together, and neither will you, nor any other person.”

  Sometimes she told Speedy Jim stories about herself just before the reservation time. “Once I traded
moccasins with Mr. Bocker at the sutler store at Bridger’s Fort. I traded them for a dollar and fifty cents and some blue and red beads. Another time I gave him a fine buffalo robe for three dollars, some hard candy, and a small looking glass. The next time I brought him a fine buffalo robe he paid me in ‘shin-plasters,’ or paper money. ‘I do not want this white man’s paper,’ I told him. ‘I want hard money.’ You see, I did not know the value of this kind of paper money. But I would know now. The Story Writer Woman and Jakie Moore have taught me how to count carefully, so that I get full value for what I trade.”

  In the spring, Sacajawea said to the family of Shoogan, ‘This grandson of mine is not wild and no longer so ignorant of the old ways. He learns quickly. Let him go to Carlisle now and learn the new ways.”

  To Speedy Jim alone, she said, “You have helped me well, Grandson. You can help your people now by going away. So leave this place. Go to the school.”

  Speedy Jim was shocked. ‘To the white man’s school? Who will pay? I never thought you really meant I would have to go.”

  “And so, then, you know.” Sacajawea went on quietly, “I have traded much at the stores and have saved. The money does me no good. It is yours.” And Sacajawea drew back into the loneliness of her tepee.

  In the spring, Sacajawea could see the fields of corn and wheat that the reservation Shoshonis had planted. Small green shoots coming up from the yellow and reddish brown soil contrasted with the tall alder and aspen and slender, graceful birch on the upper hills.