Sacajawea

by Joseph Bruchac

  ***

  He and I had agreed that if my own scout for the Shoshones should not have succeeded by the end of July, then Meri would be the one to try to find their trail. So I took his place among the boats and watched as he set out up the mountain slope. Your father, Charbonneau, Drouillard, and Sergeant Gass went with him. Though they were gone near a week, they found not even a single Indian. And your father had a devil of a time keeping up with Lewis and the others, complaining about his sore feet. In the meantime I had gone out to kill a deer and found a man's tracks along the river. From the look of them, they were the prints of an Indian. He had seen or heard us coming and made a quick retreat, past the remains of his camp of the night before and off into the mountains, where I lost his tracks.

  Thinking of lost ... that Shannon was lost again. I sent him out to hunt, but he did not return. This time, though, he was only gone for four days. He had gone up the wrong branch of the river to follow us and had to backtrack. He had killed three deer and lived plentifully on his trip, but he looked a good deal worried by the time he finally found us.

  On August 10 Captain Lewis set out again. This time he took McNeal and Shields to accompany him, and Drouillard, who had become Meri's favorite among all the men in our small band of brothers. And with good reason, for no man ever bettered George Drouillard on the trail. He left your father with me so that I could familiarize myself again with all his ailments and complaints.

  Your mother had told us that we were close now to the summer camping grounds of her people, and her words, as usual, turned out to be true. Only the next day, Captain Lewis caught his first sight of an Indian. The man was on horseback and about two miles from him. Meri raised his glass to his eye. By the look of his dress, that Indian was from a different nation than we had yet seen. He had to be a Shoshone. It was a level plain and there was nothing to do but to walk toward the man in plain sight. When Captain Lewis was a mile away, the man stopped his horse. He had no weapon other than a bow and a quiver of arrows, and hed surely seen Meri's gun by then. But the man sat his fine horse steadfast and waited.

  Pulling his blanket from his pack, Captain Lewis made what he hoped would be recognized as a sign of friendship. He held the blanket by two corners and flapped it up into the air, bringing it down as if spreading a robe for a guest to be seated on. But the man did not take the invitation. He just sat and watched from the edge of the plain, close to the thick brush of a creekbed.

  McNeal had come up behind Captain Lewis now. Meri handed him his gun and his pouch. Pulling out a handful of beads and a looking glass, he held those trinkets over his head and began to walk toward the Indian. When he was close enough to be heard, about two hundred paces away, Captain Lewis shouted out that word your mother had taught him.

  "Ta-ba-bone," he hollered, "Ta-ba-bone•!" The man narrowed his eyes and looked a bit confused as Meri pulled down his sleeve to show the whiteness of his skin.

  But the other two members of the party had also begun to approach the Indian from different directions. Though Captain Lewis signaled for them to stop, only Drouillard understood. Shields kept coming. And when Men was a hundred paces from the mounted man, the Indian suddenly turned his horse around, gave him the whip, leaped up the creek, disappeared into the willow brush, and was gone.

  ***

  The next day brought them no further Indians. But they did reach the place where the main branch of the Missouri, that great river we had traveled so many weary miles, narrowed at last to a rivulet. McNeal stood laughing with one foot on either side of that stream which had seemed so endless.

  "Dear Lord, I do thank you," McNeal said, "for allowing me to live long enough to bestride the mighty Missouri!"

  And over the next ridge Captain Lewis found another creek flowing to the west. Drinking its ice-cold waters, he deemed it the start of that stream which would take us to the Pacific, the great Columbia River. It was a day that brought a smile, however brief it might have been, to the face of my dear old friend.

  There were no smiles on the faces of those of us still struggling to bring our boats up the Missouri. The men were complaining, and rightly so, of the immense labor they were obliged to undergo. There was one rocky shoal after another to drag the heavy canoes across. It was all I could do to persuade them that we should not leave the river and strike out overland. I had promised Captain Lewis I would rendezvous with him farther along, at the forks of a river we had named for President Jefferson. Fortunate it was that I kept to my word, or all that we had done might have come to naught.

  ***

  Two days after their first sighting of the mounted Shoshone, Captain Lewis and Drouillard and McNeal once again encountered your mothers people. Looking up from a small valley, they saw two women, a man, and some dogs on the hill above them. Instead of fleeing, the three Indians watched them with some attention as they came closer.

  "Halt," Meri said to his two companions. "Wait here." Then leaving off his rifle and pack, Meri broke out an American flag and strode toward the Indians.

  "Ta-ba-bone," he shouted as loudly as he could, waving the flag back and forth. "Ta-ba-bone!"

  Turning away from him, first the two women and then the man vanished over the hill. When he reached the top, only the dogs remained, and they had little to say to him.

  But Captain Lewis knew he was now on the right trail. He signaled the two men to join him, and they began to backtrack the Indians. It was an easy road to follow, dusty and much traveled by men and horses. The land was cut by steep ravines concealed from each other, and as they reached the head of one they suddenly came in sight of three Indian women, no more than thirty paces away. The young woman in the trio immediately fled into the brush and was lost from sight. The elderly woman and the young girl remained. They were much alarmed, but saw they could not escape.

  Imagining the worst, the old woman and the little girl seated themselves on the ground and lowered their heads. Meri came up to them slowly. He took the old woman by her hand and gently raised her to her feet.

  "Ta-ba-bone," he said in a soft, reassuring voice. Then he stripped up his shirt sleeve and showed his white skin—for his hands and face, so long exposed to the sun, were as dark as any Indian's.

  The little girl rose up to stand by the side of the old woman, their faces no longer fearful as Captain Lewis handed them beads, moccasin awls, and a little paint.

  "George," he said to Drouillard, "ask her to call back that young woman who fled."

  Using sign language, Drouillard did just that, and the old woman gladly obeyed. The fugitive soon returned, much out of breath but well pleased as Meri bestowed an equivalent portion of trinkets on her as well. Then, remembering what your mother had suggested, he took out the vermilion paint and painted the cheeks of all three of the Indian women as an emblem of peace.

  Take us to your camp to meet your chiefs and warriors— Drouillard signed. Then they set off down the road. They went no more than two miles before they were met by a party of about sixty warriors mounted on excellent horses, coming at near full speed. Clearly the first Indians Meri had seen had raised the alarm. Again Meri put down his gun and advanced with the flag. The chief and two others rode up and listened to the words the old woman spoke as she showed them her gifts.

  With that, the chief and the other two men leaped off their horses and advanced on Meri. One after another they embraced him, pressing their cheeks against his as they loudly said, Ah-hi-e, ah-hi-e." Soon Meri was being smothered in one such hug after another by every man in that band of warriors, each one eager to let him know the white men were welcome and the Indians much rejoiced to meet them. By the time the Shoshones were done with their greetings, Captain Lewis and Drouillard and McNeal were besmeared with their grease and paint.

  "Billy," Captain Lewis said to me later, "glad as I was to be so welcomed, I soon grew heartly tired of the national hug."

  When all were seated in a circle, Captain Lewis took out the pipe of peace that he carried with
him, filled it in the proper way with tobacco and offered it to them. As it was passed about the circle, each of the Shoshone men would take off his moccasins before smoking it. This was, we learned, their way of expressing the sincerity of their profession of friendship when accepting the pipe of a stranger. This gesture is to say, "May I go barefoot over the prairie if my words are false," a pretty heavy penalty if they are to march through the cactus plains of their country.

  ***

  The man who headed that party of Shoshones was their great chief. Cameahwait was his name. He led Meri and the others to their main camp, where they smoked the chief's pipe while sitting on green boughs and the skins of antelopes. The chief explained that they had feared Meri and his men to be scouts for a band of Pahkees, as they call the Minnetarees from Fort de Prairie. Just that spring those Pahkees had attacked them, and twenty of Cameahwait's people had been killed or taken prisoner. Many of their horses had been taken and all of their buffalo-skin lodges had been destroyed. All they had to live in now were the lodges that Captain Lewis saw around him, cones made of woven willow brush. Because of their enemies, they were unable to do much hunting. There were no buffalo here, only a few elk and deer. There were many antelope, but they were swift and difficult to kill. With only bows and arrows to use, they could not succeed most times when they hunted here in the mountains. They had little food to eat. And indeed everyone in the camp, from the smallest child to the oldest woman, looked thin and hungry.

  All that we have—Cameahwait signed—are berries to eat. Then he gave Meri and Drouillard and McNeal cakes made of serviceberries and chokecherries that had been dried in the sun.

  What he told them of the land ahead of them was discouraging. The rivers that flowed toward the sunset—where he had been informed that white men like us lived near the great lake—were too rocky and swift to travel with canoes. The mountains were many and impossible to cross. Below the river junction there were no trees big enough to make canoes, only small cottonwoods and willows and berry bushes.

  Their stay with the Shoshones was pleasant, though there was little to eat. They were much impressed with the fineness of the horse herd, which Drouillard estimated at four hundred animals, including several horses and mules with Spanish brands on them. They watched a group of twenty mounted men try to hunt a herd of ten antelope, but though they wore out their horses chasing them all morning, the antelope flew over the prairie like birds, and not a one was killed. Poor and hungry as they were, they shared whatever they had with Captain Lewis and his men, and the Indians danced and sang for the mens amusement till midnight.

  The next day, though, things were not so good. Cameahwait and his warriors had promised to accompany Meri to meet us at the forks of Jefferson's River. But now the Indians were reluctant.

  Foolish people among us say you are allies of the Pahkees— Cameahwait signed. They think you lead us to be attacked and killed

  "Tell the chief," Meri instructed Drouillard, "that we are sorry they do not trust us. Tell him they do not know white men and so we forgive them. Tell him that among white men it is disgraceful to he or entrap an enemy by falsehood. Tell him that we hope there are some warriors among his people who are not afraid to die."

  Yes, Pomp, I know. Even as a child you have lived among white men long enough to know that we do tell lies. But how else was Meri to convince the Shoshones to come with him? Without the Shoshones and their horses, we would surely have failed to reach our goal. And by suggesting that the warriors were afraid of death, he put them on their mettle. No man among them wanted to be thought a coward. Every one of those Indians declared he would go with Captain Lewis.

  But now Meri had to find the rest of us. And that turned out to be not so easy a task as he had expected. When he arrived at the river where he expected us to be waiting, we were not there. Our progress up the Beaverhead had been so slow and painful that we were yet many miles away. The chief and all the other Indians in their party were now hanging back and looking ready to give up the quest. Then Meri remembered. He had written a note to me, asking me to bide in that place until he arrived back there. If we had not yet made it this far along the river, that note should still be there.

  My brother chief may have found it difficult to reach this place so quickly with our canoes—he had Drouillard sign to Cameahwait. He agreed to send a message ahead for me and leave it on one of our talking leaves.

  Then Captain Lewis had Drouillard and one of the chief's warriors go to that spot so the Indian could see him take the note from the forked stick When Drouillard brought the note back, Meri made a great show of unfolding it and reading it. Even thought it was the same note Captain Lewis himself had written, he pretended it was from me and that it said I had been delayed by the difficulty of the water.

  Yes, Pomp, it was a falsehood. He was deceiving those trusting Indians. But it was all that Meri could think of, and he confessed to me that it did sit a little awkward with him to be so deceitful. So he spent another night camped out with them—many of the Shoshones avoiding the fire but sleeping hidden in the willow brush for fear that an ambush, indeed, was all that the future held in store for them. If we did not come into sight the next day, Captain Lewis knew, things would not go well.

  21. SACAJAWEA

  Reunion

  Long ago, Gray Wolf and Coyote were out walking around. It was before anyone had died. But they knew that one day death would enter the world. They came to the Salmon River.

  "How shall we decide about the way death will be?" Gray Wolf said.

  "Let's do it this way," said Coyote. "You speak first about death, and I will speak last."

  Gray Wolf picked up a piece of wood.

  "I think it should be this way when people die," Gray Wolf said. "I will throw this wood into the water. If the wood floats, then people will die, but after four days have passed they will come back to life again."

  Then Gray Wolf threw the piece of wood into the water and it floated. "Ah-hi-e!" Gray Wolf said. He was pleased. But Coyote had not yet spoken, and it was now Coyote's turn.

  Coyote picked up a stone. "I think it should be this way," Coyote said. "I will throw this into the water. If it floats, then it will be as you said. But if it sinks, then people will die and not come back to this world again."

  Then Coyote threw the stone into the water. It sank, and so, because Coyote spoke last, that was the way death came into this world. People died and they did not come back to life.

  "This is how it should be," Coyote said. "If everyone just kept on living, the world would be too crowded."

  THE CLOSER WE CAME to seeing my people, the more I felt as Coyote's wife must have felt. Each time we came close, they fled from us. Would I ever reach those with whom I had once lived, those who knew me as a little girl? Would I ever see my family and my friends? Or had they gone to a world even more distant than the villages of the Minnetarees? I dreamed at night about talking and laughing with my people, but each morning when I woke, my dreams had still not become real. I wondered if those dreams would ever come true.

  ***

  By now Captain Lewis had been gone many days. Our trip up the river past the Beaverhead Hill had been a very hard one. The men had suffered so much. Sometimes as they waded in the cold water, the canoes would swing around in the current and knock them down, bruising them and almost drowning them. Many of the men had wounds and great sores on their bodies. Your good uncle was still unable to walk far because of how badly his feet had been hurt by so much walking and by the thorns of the cactus.

  Your good uncle was very worried about his brother captain. That morning he decided your father and I should walk out with him. We would walk ahead of the boats to the place where the rivers forked.

  It was a good morning. The serviceberries were ripe and I picked them as I went along. Because his feet were so bad, Captain Clark could not go quickly, and so there was no hurry.

  Suddenly I saw a little group of people coming down the valley ahead of m
e, through the high grass that still sparkled with the morning dew. Several Indians were coming toward us on horseback. I rubbed my eyes. Could it be true? They were wearing clothing that looked so familiar.

  "Look," I said to Charbonneau, "look." I jumped up and down. Your father, catching my excitement, began to jump up and down with me. As Captain Clark came up to us, I spoke with my hands.

  My people—I signed to him, pointing with my lips at them and then sucking my fingers. They are my people!

  Soon they had reached us and jumped off their horses to embrace us. One of them was not a Shoshone at all. It was George Drouillard, wearing an ermine robe. My people must have given him that robe to honor him. It meant that he and Captain Lewis had been welcomed by them. It meant all would be well between our party and the Shoshones.

  "I am Numi," I said to the Indian men.

  "We are also the People," they said back to me in the men's language of our people. Their words were more beautiful to me than any song. I did not recognize among them any friends or family, yet I knew that I had finally come home. What I did not know was how much sadder and sweeter my reunion soon would become.

  As we went along to reunite with Captain Lewis at their village, those young warriors could not resist asking me questions.

  "When were you taken by the Minnetarees?" one of them said. He was carrying Drouillard's gun. Drouillard had given it to him to carry, to prove that he was not leading them into an ambush.

  "Is it true that you have a man among you who is as black as the charcoal from a fire?" said another.

  They were so excited they could hardly wait for my answers. One of them held up a trade mirror given him by Captain Lewis.