Blazing West, the Journal of Augustus Pelletier, the Lewis and Clark Expedition

by Kathryn Lasky

  October 10, 1804

  Reed came looking for me today. He offered to help me chop firewood. So I said fine, and as we’re splitting the wood he starts saying ugly things about the Captains. I just closed my ears. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. But as I have said before, he ain’t no stand-up fellow. So it pays to be watchful.

  October 11, 1804

  Time for the Big Speech again. The medals, the beads, thread, tobacco, but no whiskey. These Indians didn’t seem to care for it or for things at all. The thing they liked most was York. Especially the women!! His complexion is a mystery to them. York was real nice to everyone. He played games with the children. Chased them about, laughing. Everyone came up to touch him. They thought he was “big medicine,” as they say, meaning he has a powerful spirit. I guess they need big medicine, as they told us through sign language that the smallpox had swept through these parts about two or three years ago.

  Their houses look like the same shape as their boats — round like upside-down bowls. They are made of earth — earth lodges, the Captains call them.

  October 13, 1804

  Moses Reed is in trouble again. I figured something was going on, with him being so nice to me. He was trying to start what they call a mutiny, a war against the Captains. That’s why he had been saying those nasty things about them to me. I guess Private John Newman listened to him and maybe felt the same way. Newman started shouting down Captain Clark at the noonday meal. Before you know it both Reed and Newman were arrested and court-martialed. They both got a sentence of seventy-five lashes. Reed was already stripped of his rank, but now they busted Newman and took him off the permanent party. I feel bad that Newman was so dumb to wind up with a bleeding back and kicked off the permanent party, but maybe they’ll need a replacement.

  October 16, 1804

  Every day we see flocks of geese heading south. Last night there was a good frost. Captain Clark is having trouble with his rheumatism. Captain Lewis treats this by heating up a large stone and wrapping it in flannel. Clark is supposed to sleep with it at night.

  October 23, 1804

  Captain Lewis has stopped writing again. I think he is feeling very poorly in spirits. My guess is that he realizes that we are not going to reach the headwaters of the Missouri by winter as he had hoped. We’re getting to Mandan country now. We’ll have to camp around here soon for winter. They say there are some mountains about the size of the ones in Virginia. They expect the head­waters to be at the eastern base of these mountains. They talk about a day or two trip over these mountains and then another river that spills down into the western sea. This river is longer than anyone ever thought. I don’t know what to say to Captain Lewis but he’s in really bad shape over this. But what can you say about a river that seems to go on forever? I try to imagine its end but I can’t.

  October 24, 1804

  Mandan country

  Saw our first Mandans today. The French trader Joseph Gravelines, who helped us some with interpreting with the Arikara, is still with us, and he introduced Captain Lewis to Chief Big White. Captain Lewis went off to their village, and when he came back he reported that they were very friendly. One thing the Captains want to do is help make peace between the Mandans and the Arikara, who have been enemies. He thinks this is possible. So Captain Lewis seems a lot better tonight. Part of Jefferson’s instructions, in addition to finding the all-water route, is for all the tribes of the land to live in peace. Captain Lewis is always happy when he can do something for the President, whether it’s sending back fat little Antoine or making peace with the Indians.

  October 25, 1804

  Saw a weasel early this morning. Its fur had turned nearly all white. Sure sign winter is coming.

  November 1, 1804

  There are two big Mandan villages. The one on the west bank is led by Chief Big White and one farther up on the east bank is led by Black Cat. Then not far away there are three Hidatsa villages led by a chief called Black Moccasin and another by a chief that everyone says is a nasty son of a gun the interpreter calls One Eyed Man, because that’s all he’s got. The Hidatsa are part of a larger tribe called the Minnetaree people. The Captains had a meeting with us this morning and told us how they plan to build a fort here for us to winter over in. It will be about seven miles below the river the Mandans call the Knife and just across from the lower Mandan village.

  November 4, 1804

  Work began today on the fort. Everyone works hard. Patrick Gass is the main carpenter. He’s dang good. He can make a tight joint. I’d like him to teach me how to make a dovetail joint. We are building two rows of huts, then a big high fence of stakes, a gate and a sentry post, and a big block for mounting the swivel cannon. I don’t mind the work even though it’s cold and the snow flurries have been swirling down on us all day. The Mandans seem real friendly and come over from their village to watch. Mostly they watch York, but a little boy not more than eight or nine started helping me carry split logs for the huts. He was a nice little fellow so I took him over and introduced him to Antoine, which made him very happy. Pretty soon I had every kid in the village coming up wanting to meet Antoine. I should have charged admission. I’d be a rich man.

  November 5, 1804

  A French trapper by the name of Toussaint Charbonneau has been around. I heard him speaking French with Pierre and Francis. He’s a braggart. In any case, he must have impressed the Captains ’cause he’s coming along with us when we break camp in the spring to help with translating.

  November 6, 1804

  I was standing guard last night. It was freezing cold and I was stomping around, slapping my arms against my sides to keep the blood moving, when I noticed this odd change of light in the darkness. I looked up and it was as if curtains of green and gold and blue were moving across the sky. I’d never seen such a thing. The colors waved as if they were blown by the breath of God, and the stars shined through these curtains. I ran to rouse the rest of the camp and they all came and watched. Captain Lewis calls these the northern lights.

  Then I remembered that I had heard tell of them from Mama. She had seen them when she was a little girl out on the plains. She said that they were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen on earth but she knew they were from the heavens. That these colors were like the songs of the ancients’ spirits. I remembered all this while I was standing out there in the cold, but I had forgotten the cold, and as I looked at these waves of blue and gold and even purple, I felt the touch of Mama someplace deep in my spirit. I could even hear her voice clearly, as if it spilled from those curtains of color right down to me. This is the first time I have thought of my mother without sadness, without sharp pain. I am glad that I was born to her, that I was on earth for twelve years with her.

  Captain Lewis explained to me that the stars do not move separately but together, and he explained how the earth turns around the sun so it is as if the earth is another star in the sliding land above we call the heavens. I look up at this sky beating with strange light that wraps me up in its cloth of colors and I think we are all parts of this single piece — white men, half-breeds, Arikara, Mandan, Teton Sioux, mud trout, barking squirrel, Charley Floyd, Silverwing Woman. We are all part of this slow starry dance. Oh, Silverwing Woman, you are here!

  November 7, 1804

  That Charbonneau is a real noisome, loud man. But I figured out why the Captains want him: He’s got two Indian wives. The one called Sacajawea is Shoshoni. She was captured by the Hidatsa, a nearby tribe. Then Charbonneau bought her from them as a wife. So she knows French as well as Shoshoni. She is the wife who will be traveling with us. We shall be heading into Shoshoni country in the spring. And after the trouble with the Teton Sioux, the Captains want a good translator. I think she’s just a year older than me. I saw her yesterday for the first time. She’s got a baby coming on. So I guess this means we’ll be traveling next spring with a papoose!

  November 9, 1804

 
Ice in the river today.

  November 10, 1804

  There are a lot of French traders from Canada around here. Charbonneau is not the only Frenchman. There are trappers and traders, some with Indian wives also, like Jessaume. There is another named Larocque. So I hear a lot of French. They don’t speak the fine kind like Father Dumaine. It sounds rough and as if it’s coming out their nose rather than their mouth, but I can understand it.

  November 12, 1805

  Woke up this morning and the whole world was frosted. Every pine needle bristled in its little icy jacket, and then fog swirled through the camp. The squaw of one of the chiefs, Big White, from the lower Mandan village came up the path. Thought it was a frosted boulder on legs until I realized that she was bent over with a pack. I ran up and helped take it off her back. It was close to a hundred pounds of meat sent by the chief. When this old squaw looked up at me, she had picks of ice hanging from her hair and her eyebrows were stiff with frost. I noticed that she had some red paint in her ears. Lots of the women have it when they come into the fort. I think this red paint is a kind of special decoration they sometimes put on. Maybe they just wear it when they come to see us, because when we saw the families in the bull boats, none of the women had red paint in their ears.

  Later: Well, we thought the red paint in the squaws’ ears was strange. However, when the one-eyed Hidatsa chief came, he thought York had done painted himself. He licked his fingers and tried to wipe York’s color off. He was really surprised when York stayed black.

  November 13, 1804

  I spent the whole day moving provisions from the storage cabin of the keelboat into the storehouse. About midday Charbonneau’s wives came along. I was mistaken. He’s got three. One is called Otter Woman, the other Corn Woman, and then there is Sacajawea, which means Bird Woman. She’s the one who’s going to be having a baby. You can tell. They all had their ears painted red on the inside and a stripe of red where they parted their hair. They stood around and watched and giggled and explained their names to us through French and sign language. Sacajawea didn’t giggle much. She just watched. Then Charbonneau came up and started yelling at them in a mixture of French and Hidatsa. Corn Woman and Otter Woman looked scared, but not Sacajawea. For the first time I even saw a trace of a smile from her. She kind of ambled along real slow behind them. Charbonneau turned around and yelled, “ Dépêche-toi, dépêche-toi, tu idiote.” I understood what he said. “Hurry up, idiot.” But she didn’t hurry at all. She was too busy looking at how we were refitting a joist beam on the floor of one of the huts.

  Later: Shannon came and got me to come to the meeting with the Captains and Charbonneau and his wives. Pierre and Francis are out hunting and they want someone who understands French. Here’s how it works: the Captains speak to Charbonneau in English and he talks to his wife in Hidatsa, but they are worried that Charbonneau might not understand the English, so I am supposed to be there, handy with the French. When I get there Otter Woman and Corn Woman are looking at their faces in a mirror the Captains gave them, laughing and pointing, but Sacajawea, she’s not looking at the mirror. Her eyes are roving around and I can tell she is really studying the Captains. Captain Clark said, “Have your wife tell us of her people.” Then Charbonneau translates and Sacajawea says something and Charbonneau explodes at her in a mixture of French and Hidatsa. I can understand the French. “Not the Minnetaree, idiote femme, the people you were born to, the Shoshoni,” he yells at her. Then she looks at him and begins to speak. She slips in a few French words so I understood, too. She is talking about a land of shining mountains and where the people go in the summer and then in the winter. The most important word she says is chevaux. Horses. They have horses. Many horses.

  November 18, 1804

  Captain Lewis’s thermometer says it is 12 degrees below zero, but it is not too cold for him to get out his sextant and quadrant and the rest of his observing gear. It is so cold we had to oil the sextant to get the arms to slide. In any case we worked a good hour or two, including the mathematics calculations, and we figure that the latitude of our fort is 44.08 degrees north and the longitude is 99.39 degrees west. So we have traveled sixteen hundred miles from the mouth of the Missouri.

  November 21, 1804

  The Captains are worried that all these plans for peace ’mongst the Indian tribes might not work out like President Jefferson hopes. Seems the Indians don’t care about some Great White Father back in a place called Washington. Warriors from Black Cat’s village, the second Mandan village farther up the river, came today to say that the Sioux had practically killed two Arikara who had come to talk peace. Then there was a rumor that we, the Corps, had joined in with the Sioux. Captain Clark thinks that one was started by the Mandans themselves to keep the Hidatsa away. They got worried when they saw Charbonneau and his wives up here. You see, the Captains have been telling all these Indians that they’re going to set up a big trading post here, maybe as soon as next year, at the fort. The Mandans want to take the hog’s share of any trading that might go on. That’s why they want to spook the Hidatsa away. It’s not good. They’ll end up stirring up trouble between everyone.

  Started snowing heavily tonight.

  November 27, 1804

  Still snowing. River running with ice.

  I talked with Sacajawea this morning. She understands a fair amount of French. Between French and sign language we did pretty well. She had heard about Antoine, and she asked me if she could bring Otter Woman’s little boy Tess over to see him. I said sure.

  Later: Sacajawea and little Tess, he’s about three, came by. They were much impressed with Antoine. I let Tess feed him some grain pellets. That gal Sacajawea, her eyes never rest. She took in everything about that little critter. Then she started looking around the hut where we have all the specimens and the scientific equipment. Pretty soon she wanted to know about everything. It’s not easy explaining these things in English or French, let alone sign language and the couple of words I know of Hidatsa. I try the best I can.

  November 30, 1804

  We are on full alert at the fort. News came last evening of a Sioux and Arikara raid on five Mandan hunters. The Captains are in an upset. Here they are selling themselves as peacemakers and I guess no one is listening. Captain Lewis organizes our guards here at the fort. Captain Clark set out to help the Mandans. But the snow is deep.

  December 7, 1804

  A Mandan chief showed up today to report large numbers of buffalo about two miles away. We were invited to go on a chase. Lewis chose fifteen men, including, of course, his best shots. The chief offered up horses. I wasn’t chosen. Just as they were about to leave I ran up to Captain Lewis and just plain asked. He turned around and raised his eyebrows as if in surprise. I wasn’t sure whether it was surprise because I had dared to ask or what. He said, “Why, sure, Gus.” It was more like he was surprised he hadn’t thought to ask me. So sometimes it pays to just plain ask. Then he told me to run back and get his sextant and the cro-no-meter and a few other instruments. I had never seen the likes of this in my life. I couldn’t believe how those Mandans can ride — and through five feet of snow. They ride bareback and guide the horses simply by shifting their weight and pressing with their knees. Their hands are free for shooting arrows. And can they shoot! Eleven buffalo were brought down, eight by the Mandan hunters. They got such a whack out of those bows that the arrows often went straight through the buffalo.

  My hands are so cold I can hardly write. But Captain Lewis is fiddling with the dang quadrant. It done froze up. So I’m waiting for him. In the meantime the snow has turned red with the blood of the buffalo. The squaws who followed us on foot have set about butchering. I want to tell you that there are no tougher labors than those of a Mandan squaw. The little old one who came with the hundred pounds of meat the other day, by gum, she’s out there hopping over these huge humps of buffalo like a grasshopper. Cold doesn’t seem to bother them that much. When one of
them noticed I was shivering, she took me over to the buffalo she was butchering and told me to stick my hands into the steaming guts. When I backed off, the other squaws giggled, shoved me forward, and yanked on my arms until I was buried up to my elbows in guts. I wiped them off so I wouldn’t get my writing messed up, but now they’re cold again!

  December 9, 1804

  Captain Lewis loved the buffalo hunt so much we stayed out all night. I thought I’d die when I heard he wanted to stay out but I couldn’t complain, as I had asked to come. We slept wrapped up in buffalo robes. We survived, that’s all I can say. Captain Lewis took the temperature at daybreak. Forty-five degrees below zero. When he said that my eyeballs froze on the spot.

  December 10, 1804

  Warming up. Forty-three below zero! York says spring is just around the corner. Then he laughs. York looks right peculiar in all this snow, him being so big and black. He doesn’t like to wear a hat. So sometimes if the snow flurries are coming down gentle, they sort of frost his short, kinky hair along with his eyebrows and his eyelashes and he looks fantastic. The Indian children love him. And the squaws, too. They think he’s magic. I think he’s magic, too, when he comes so black, into the tent all sprinkled with snow.