Sacajawea

by Joseph Bruchac

  I soon found myself nearly overwhelmed with patients. They seemed especially fond of me as a doctor, even though Captain Lewis knew far more of medicine than I. One of their most common complaints was sore eyes, brought about, I believe, by the smoke in their lodges and the poor diet of roots and dried fish they suffered through during the winter. On the morning of May 12, according to my journal, I treated no fewer than forty applicants with sore eyes. The eyewash I gave them was almost always effective, and such complaints as rheumatic disorders and soreness in their backs responded just as well to massages and poultices. I even managed, through the use of sweat baths, to ease the pain in the back of one of our men who had become unable to walk. My same use of sweat baths, along with a few drops of laudanum, even appeared to effect a cure on an old man who had been paralyzed and unable to move his limbs for some months. Poor as my medical skills were, I must admit that the Indians did seem to gain some benefit from them.

  It was a fortunate thing that my doctoring was in such demand, for we had almost nothing left that we could use to trade for food and horses. The food was mostly quamash roots, which we had now grown used to and could digest as well as the Nez Percé, and such meat as the Nez Percé themselves would not eat. Yes, Pomp, we were still eating dogs and horses. The spring run of salmon had not yet reached their rivers, and the buffalo herds were on the other side of the Bitterroot Mountains, which were still closed off by snows more than ten feet deep.

  ***

  Things did not all go smoothly. When we finally met with Twisted Hair, he told us that he had not taken care of our horse herd, as he had promised to do. We had told Twisted Hair we would reward him with a gun when we returned. But Cut Nose, another of the chiefs, had quarreled with Twisted Hair soon after our departure, saying that he, Cut Nose, should have been the one to care for the horses. As a result, our horse herd had become scattered. We called both of the old men together and let each of them speak.

  "Cut Nose spoke badly of the way I cared for your horses. I grew so tired of hearing his bad words that I stopped caring for the horses," said Twisted Hair.

  "Twisted Hair is a bad old man with two faces," Cut Nose said.

  We listened closely to both of the chiefs. After they had spoken, they no longer seemed angry at each other. Then, together, they helped us round up most of our horses, which were not in bad shape, and many of the saddles we had left behind. Then we gave Twisted Hair an old British musket that we had bought from a Chinook trader for two elk skins, and we promised another gun to Cut Nose when the rest of our horses and gear were brought in.

  ***

  It was soon after this that you became ill, Pomp. You were cutting your teeth and a fever came upon you. Your throat and neck swelled, and Captain Lewis and I were much worried. But your mother had such confidence in me that she did not fret or weep. Instead she placed you in my arms.

  "You will cure him," she said.

  Pomp, that may have been the most frightening time of that whole trip for me. I feared that my poor ability as a doctor would not help you. I gave you a dose of cream of tartar and flower of sulfur. I applied poultices of boiled onions. I held you in my arms and prayed for your health. Finally, after a few days, your health began to return. I cannot say for a certainty that it was my medicine that cured you. Ah, but your mother has assured you that it was, eh?

  ***

  Though I had no shortage of patients during the month we spent with the Nez Percé, my work as a healer did not bring in enough to provide us with all that we needed. We had expected to stay only a few days, but the snows of the previous winter had been heavier than usual. The Lolo Pass was not open, and we had to wait and wait, and wait even more. By now we were cutting the buttons from our coats to trade for food, and we had traded every blanket we could spare, so each of us had no more than a single blanket.

  Our horse herd, though, had been greatly increased through our trade, and we had more than sixty fine animals. Of all the nations of the west, the Nez Percé surely have the largest and finest herds of horses, and as riders no one can compare with them. What a sight it was to see the way they rode down those steep hills at full speed! During that long time we had to wait, we grew even more close in friendship with those fine, honorable people. We engaged in every manner of game with them, and hard it was to beat them at anything.

  It was only in shooting that they could not match us. Captain Lewis struck a mark 220 yards away with his rifle, causing them to much admire both his shooting—and his weapon. Like your mothers Shoshone people, the Nez Percé had been much troubled by the Blackfeet, who obtained guns from the British. Though no one could match the Nez Percé in the shooting of a bow from horseback, a man with a gun could easily defeat one who had only a bow. The great hope of the Nez Percé was that we would send many traders back to them with the guns and powder to defend themselves against the Pahkees.

  In foot racing we were surprised to find there was one young man who was able to match the running of Drouillard and Reubin Fields, who had always easily outdistanced every Indian who tried them. We also played their Indian games, such as prison bases, where each side would try to capture the men who ventured from their base area.

  Each day we would ask if the passes were yet open and receive the same answer: We must wait longer. Finally, on June 3, word came that an Indian youth had managed to cross the mountains. Certain that we could go where any Indian could, we decided to leave within a few days. We asked for In dians to guide us, but when none seemed ready to accompany us we determined to set out on our own. Surely Drouillard could guide us through. On June 8 we had a farewell party in our camp on the banks of the Clearwater River. Cruzatte played his fiddle and our Nez Percé friends danced with us late into the night. They were sad to see us go and we were frequently embraced by those good men and women who had grown so close to our own hearts.

  That same night, though, we were warned by one of the Nez Percé that we were leaving too soon. He had looked at the trails. Once we were well up into the mountains we would go at least three days without grass for our horses. The way was still too dangerous for us to cross, he said, and we must wait until July. Only then would it be possible.

  But our minds were made up. Our leaving could not be postponed again. On June 10, with no Nez Percé to guide us, we rode up the Lolo Trad into the savage Bitterroot Mountains.

  It was a mistake.

  31. SACAJAWEA

  Deep Snow

  This is a story the Nez Percé tell. One day, they say, strange creatures came to their villages. Everyone wanted to run away from them. They could make the sound of thunder with their medicine sticks. One of them looked like be had been burned black in a fire. Others of them had eyes like cooked fish and their skins were as pale as snow.

  Ah, I do not have to tell any more of that story. You know that they were talking of York and the captains. But it is a good story, my son. It shows that everyone sees the world in a different way.

  YOUR UNCLES ALWAYS were so certain that they would succeed, Firstborn Son. Even when they seemed to make mistakes, their spirit helpers always showed them the way to go. But there were times when I almost doubted their judgment. That day when we set out onto the Lolo Trad was one of those times. I knew how much snow could be in the mountains, and without the help of a native guide, we would easily become lost. The Nez Percé had said that they would guide us, but that we still had to wait. Captain Lewis was impatient.

  "Let them catch up to us," he said, and then we were off.

  Our first day went well, even though it rained hard on us. There was no sign of snow and there were many birds for Captain Lewis to watch and make marks about on his talking leaves. The second day went well, too, at first. We came into a meadow where there was good grass for our horses to eat. That meadow was filled with flowers of all kinds and colors. Captain Lewis got down from his horse to pick flowers, to draw their shapes, and to make many marks about them. Captain Clark explained to me, as he had before w
hen Captain Lewis gathered leaves and flowers and pulled plants up by the roots to take them with him, that some of these flowers were new. No one had ever seen them before, he said. No one had ever named them before.

  But they were all flowers I had seen often when I was a small child. I knew their names.

  Although the day started well, it did not continue that way. As we climbed higher, we went around a ridge and found nothing but snow ahead of us. Soon the snows grew so deep that they would bury anyone who fell through the crust. For a while we could see where the trail led because the Nez Percé had peeled the bark from the pine trees. That inner bark is good to eat, Firstborn Son, and can help you survive when you are far from other food. But then the snow became so deep that even the trunks of the trees were buried. The trail vanished like a mouse digging into the snow to escape a hawk. In every direction, everything looked the same. Drouillard, who always could find his way before, admitted that he was confused. Captain Lewis, though, did not want to stop. He pushed on.

  Each of us, myself included, rode one horse and held the reins of another. As always, your father was the first to get into trouble. His horse stumbled in the snow and threw him into a deep drift, where he sank out of sight. Had he gone over the edge of the trad, he would have rolled off the mountain. All the time that Captain Lewis was digging him out, Charbonneau was calling for help from the bon Dieu. But the only help we really needed was to turn around and leave that lost trail.

  It did not take your good uncle long to reach that same decision. He spoke to Captain Lewis. We could not go on without a guide. We needed to return while our horses were still strong enough. Captain Lewis was not happy, but he agreed. We made a cache by the trailside and marked it well. In it the captains placed much of their baggage, to pick it up when we came back. Then our party turned and went down the mountain.

  ***

  We made camp below the line of snow, where there was good grass for the horses. Then Drouillard and Shannon were sent to get guides from the Nez Percé.

  "Tell them," Captain Lewis said, "we will give a good rifle to any man who guides us to the other side of the mountains."

  Once again, though, the spirit helpers were smiling on our two captains. Even before Drouillard and Shannon returned to our camp two days later, who should come along but two young Nez Percé boys. Though neither of them had more than sixteen winters, they were on their way to visit friends on the other side of the mountain.

  We know this trail well—one of the boys signed—we can guide you.

  When Drouillard and Shannon returned, they brought three more young Nez Percé men with them to show us the way.

  "We will bring good weather for our journey," the oldest of the young men said. Then he and the other Nez Percé boys set fire to four tall, dry fir trees. The flames and sparks rose high and the smoke carried their prayer for a safe journey up into the sky.

  ***

  By the time we reached the place where we had made our cache, we found that the snow was only half as high as it had been when we were there before. Our guides led us across the snows to grassy pastures for our horses and good camping spots. They took us to where Wolf had made a special place when he was shaping the world as the Creator told him to do. The pools of water that come out of the mountain and flow into the river there are always hot, even in the winter. We all warmed ourselves and bathed and played in that water. Our guides truly knew the way well. With them leading us, we crossed the mountains on the Lolo Trail in only half as many days as it had taken us when Old Toby led us toward the sunset.

  We made camp in the same place where we had camped during the Moon when Leaves Change Colors. Then the two captains made plans for the last part of our journey. Soon we would be on the rivers that would carry us home. It would be easy for all of us to go together. From this place I knew the trail. I could show them a short way to get to the Great Muddy River.

  But once again Captain Lewis had another idea. We had not met the Blackfeet Indians. This, I thought, was a very good thing. The Blackfeet are a dangerous people. They have been given guns by the British. They are afraid of no one and raid our villages and those of the Nez Percé. That is why we call them our worst enemies. I believe it was because their spirit powers were helping them that the two captains had not yet met any Blackfeet—even though we saw many empty Blackfeet camps, the tracks of their horses, and even their distant fires when we traveled toward the sunset.

  It was decided that our party would divide into five smaller parties. That way more of the land could be seen. Some of the men would go down the river, to the place where we had left our boats. At the Three Forks, your father and I would separate along with Captain Clark and York and five other men. I would guide them through the mountains along a pass that I knew, until we reached the Yellowstone River. There we would make new canoes and go down the Yellowstone River to the Missouri, coming out close to the Mandan villages.

  Our way would not be a hard one to travel. It did not worry me. But the way Captain Lewis planned to travel worried me very much. His plan was to go far to the north of the Great Falls with only nine men. His hope was that he would meet the Blackfeet. He asked our Nez Percé guides to accompany him so that he could make peace between their nations.

  "We will not go there," they told him. "The Pahkees do not want peace. If you go, they will cut you off."

  In my heart I agreed with them. If Captain Lewis did meet the Blackfeet, I thought, someone would die.

  32. WILLIAM CLARK

  Five Fingers Parted

  Thursday 12th. August 1806

  Capt Lewis hove in Sight with the party which went by way of the Missouri as well as that which accompanied him from Travellers rest on Clarks river; I was alarmed on the land of the Canoes to be informed that Capt. Lewis was wounded....

  JOURNAL OF WILLIAM CLARK

  LITTLE MISSOURI RIVER, NORTH DAKOTA

  YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU HOW we divided into parties on our way back, Pomp? And you wonder why we did so? And you want to know what happened to Captain Lewis with the Blackfeet? Your mother has a way of cracking the shell when she tells a story and then leaving it to me to pry out the meat of the nut.

  Yes, the plan was a risky one. We would split off like five fingers parted on a single hand. We would be divided in strength. But every inch of our way was a risk. We were traveling where white men had never dared to go before—though we were followed soon enough by others. In fact, on the last leg of our journey, after our parties had reunited, we met two white men coming upriver. Dickson and Hancock, they were, out of Boone's settlement, heading up the Missouri to trap beaver on the Yellowstone.

  Captain Lewis and I talked it over once we were out of the Bitterroots.

  "Billy," he said, "it troubles me still about the Blackfeet and the Sioux."

  His concern was that those two were the most warlike of all the nations. Everyone else feared them. If our plans for peace among the tribes were to work, making the territory safe for trappers and traders, then something would have to be done about the Blackfeet and the Sioux. Meri and I both had a good opinion of Hugh Heney, the British agent with the Northwest Company, who had a good relation with the Sioux. Of all the white men in the West, Heney seemed liked and trusted the best by the Sioux. When we met him he'd showed some interest in throwing his lot in with the United States. So Meri wrote up a strong letter, asking him to work for us and convince the Sioux to accept peace. Sergeant Pryor and two men set off with that letter and most of our horses. They would go overland to the Mandan villages, give the Indians those horses as a gift, and then deliver the letter to Heney. Traveling free of baggage and with plenty of horses, they'd get there far ahead of everyone else. With luck, by the time we reached the lands of the Sioux, Heney would have spoken with them and brought them into the peace agreement.

  That left the Blackfeet to worry about. Captain Lewis proposed to seek them out, taking a party of nine men and seventeen horses along the Great Falls. He would lea
ve three men there to retrieve the things cached at the end of summer and explore the Marias River to the north with the other six.

  As for me, one of my concerns was finding a faster and better way from the Missouri to the West. I wanted to avoid that long portage at Great Falls. Your mother had assured me that it was easier to take the Yellowstone River. I would take my part of men as far as the head of the Jefferson River. There we'd stored our canoes before crossing the Lemhi Pass with the Shoshones. There I would strike out toward the Yellowstone with ten men, guided by your good mother. Sergeant Ordway and the other men would take the canoes down Jefferson's River to meet up with Captain Lewis and the others on the Missouri at Great Falls. Then, at the junction of the Yellowstone and the Missouri, the tips of our five fingers would finally meet. If our luck held, we would have in our grasp all that we hoped to accomplish—peace with the hostile tribes and the best knowledge of the ways our nation could travel through the Louisiana Territory.

  On July 3 I shook my worthy friend and companion's hand.

  "I pray that our separation will be but momentary, Billy," said Captain Lewis. His brave voice was firm and his gaze hopefid, but we clasped each other's hands a bit longer than usual before we each turned to our separate journeys.