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

by Kathryn Lasky

  December 15, 1804

  Feeling poorly this evening. I don’t want to tell Captain Lewis. I see his store of medical supplies and it sets fear on me. Lancets for bleeding. Dr. Rush’s Thunderclappers that blast everything but your soul out of your body. The last thing I want to do is get treated by Captain Lewis. Not that he’s a bad doctor, but the remedies scare the daylights out of me.

  December 30, 1804

  I been sick as a dog. So sick I didn’t even mind when Captain Lewis started his doctoring. I was half out of my head. They gave me seventeen drops of laudanum, then a dose of saltpeter, then pumped me full of sage tea. Finally they done made a poultice out of that bark they used for snakebite and mixed it up with something that smelled peppery hot. When they laid that on my chest it felt like my lungs were going to jump right out.

  December 31, 1804

  Sacajawea came to visit me today. I could hardly believe it. She has learned a few English words. She said, “River Eye Boy?” Then she sort of smiled shy and covered her mouth. I say “Who you talking to?” Then she points. And I say “Me?” And she nods. “Why River Eye Boy?” She tries to explain, mostly in sign language. She makes the sign for river, which is the sign for water. She put her right hand over her face and points her first finger straight. Next she makes the sign for small. So I know it wasn’t the Missouri. It takes about five minutes, but I finally get it. There’s a smaller river up a piece where the water runs a blue-green color. That is the color of my eyes. So I guess that’s why she calls me River Eye Boy. She tells me that the fishing is good in that river and when the ice melts she’ll take me there when she goes to catch fish. Then she gets up to leave and she draws out a real smooth stone from under her blanket. And says, “River stone for River Eyes.” I guess it’s a stone from the river. It’s black with swirls of white. It kind of looks like a starry night. Imagine that. A rock that reminds you of the sky. I think this is the first present anyone has ever given me aside from my mama.

  When Sacajawea got up I could see that the baby is growing really big. She had trouble hoisting herself up.

  January 1, 1805

  First day of the new year. Most of the company went over to the lower Mandan village. The Captains had told them it was a holiday for white men, so they were invited to sing and dance. Captain Lewis wouldn’t let me go. Said I was too weak.

  January 5, 1805

  I am well enough to go to the Buffalo Dance in the Mandan village that the Indians invited us to. There is music and dancing, and all the Indian men are all dressed up in their best feathers and paint. The hunters make a circle and their women are behind them. In the Buffalo Dance the wives of hunters go up practically stark naked and kiss and hug the old men. The Mandans believe that in some way the old men have a special power and they pass it to the women and this makes the buffalo come near.

  January 10, 1804

  Seems like every day some Mandan shows up to be doctored by Captain Lewis. A few days ago a woman brought in her young girl with a big boil on her back. She swapped him corn for the doctoring. He lanced the boil and put a poultice on it. That bark again. Today a Mandan boy showed with his feet froze. The Captain soaked the boy’s feet in cold water first. It usually works but I’m not sure if it’s going to work this time. That boy’s toes looked kind of gray when they come out of the water.

  January 16, 1805

  We keep hearing more and more about how the Shoshoni, or the Snake Indians — Sacajawea’s people — have big herds of horses. A chief of the people the French call Big Bellies, or Gros Ventres, came today full of talk about how he and his nation were going to make war on the Shoshoni because of all the horses. Somehow the Captains discouraged him. They gave the Big Speech again and promised that the Great White Father in Washington would protect them and that more was to be gained by chasing after peace than war.

  January 20, 1805

  Sacajawea came to camp today with that husband of hers. I don’t know how she stands him. Somehow she does. When he yells at her, her eyes just grow far away. But Captain Clark really blew up at Charbonneau when he yelled at her today. He told him to watch his mouth and that he’d just as soon take Sacajawea without him than with him when we leave in the spring and head for the sea. I saw Charbonneau grow pale under his whiskers. The Captains have given Charbonneau and his wives a hut in the fort where they can stay whenever they want. This is especially good, as Captain Lewis wants Sacajawea nearby as her time for birthing draws close.

  January 21, 1805

  Sacajawea and Charbonneau spent the night in camp in their hut. This morning Charbonneau went off with the Captains to check on the big keelboat that is pretty much frozen in the ice. They’re trying to figure out how to free it up. I was in the storeroom going over our specimens when Sacajawea came in. She is very interested in all the scientific equipment. We can talk pretty good between our French and the sign language, and now I have learned some more Hidatsa words. Suddenly she got this faraway, sad look in her eye when she was looking at the stuffed badger we’re sending back to President Jefferson. I thought it couldn’t be a dead badger making her look this sad, even though we’d done a pretty good job of making this fellow look awfully like life itself. I didn’t know what to say. So finally I blurted out in French and sign language, “You sad about that badger?” and she said, “Pas exactement,” which means “not exactly.” Then she said, and I’ll do the best to explain it, that this badger seemed to her not quite dead and not quite alive but caught between what she calls the living world, this earth, and the Camps of the Dead, meaning heaven. Then she said very quietly, “Comme moi, exactement!” — “Like me, exactly.” And I knew in that instant what she meant. You see, Sacajawea was kidnapped by the Minnetaree from her people, the Shoshoni, when she was about eight years old. Then she was sold to the Hidatsas in this region. Then she was bought by Charbonneau. She has lived in so many worlds that there is not one that feels like home. She is caught somewhere between nations and camps. She is like the badger, forever stuck between worlds, and like the badger she feels she is not quite alive and not quite dead. But then she patted her huge belly and said, “This is my life.” I felt so sad that night for Sacajawea. I prayed to God that she find her home. Then I prayed something really bad that if I were back in St. Charles I would have to go to confession for, but there ain’t no confessional out here in Mandan country by this frozen river. I prayed that Charbonneau would die.

  January 26, 1805

  Lots of doctoring going on today. The boy with the frozen toes came back. They had turned black, so Captain Lewis sawed them off. The boy didn’t hardly whimper. Another man came in with pleurisy real bad. The Captain bled him and greased his chest and slapped a bark poultice on it.

  February 4, 1805

  We’ve just about run out of meat. I keep looking for that bent little old squaw to come up the path with the hundred pounds of meat she brought before but she ain’t coming. Captain Clark set out with a hunting party today and Captain Lewis had a real good idea. He’s putting John Shields to work with the bellows and a forge. Private Shields was a blacksmith back where he came from. He’s going to start making axes, battle-axes, the kind the Indians like for war. And he’s mending stuff for them too, in trade for meat. I think it’s kind of funny that here the Captains are always giving the Big Speech about how the Great White Father wants peace, but when we want meat we make battle-axes for these folks. I said something to York about this and he just shook his head and laughed, saying, “Why you surprised, boy? Half the time white folks don’t make no sense at all.”

  February 6, 1805

  We didn’t get meat for the battle-axes. We got corn. Guess it will have to do.

  February 11, 1805

  Sacajawea went into labor last night, but Captain Lewis says the baby is moving slow and painful. She is having a really tough time, I guess. She is down there at Charbonneau’s hut. I wandered down there around midday, and I didn’t
hear her screaming then, just groaning and panting. Later Jessaume came to Captain Lewis and said we got to get some rattles from some rattlesnakes. Captain Lewis said I could take the rattles off a specimen we had killed. So Jessaume and I went back to where we kept the specimens, and I chopped off rattles from this big old rattler we killed last fall. He ground them up into a near powder and took the powder back to the hut. He put it in some water or tea or something. Well, it wasn’t more than ten minutes before I heard a baby’s cry, and it weren’t no whimper. It was a loud holler. You would have thought that baby had been bitten by the rattler. Anyhow Sacajawea has got herself a fine fat little baby boy. They named him Jean Baptiste Charbonneau and that old reprobate Charbonneau went all over the fort crowing like he’d given birth himself. It’s funny. When that little baby yowled, I noticed that every man around the fort got a soft look in his eye as if each one was remembering some little kid brother or sister they had left behind. We’ve seen a lot of babies along this endless river and heard a lot, too, but a baby’s cry right in our own camp, well, that is something special.

  February 12, 1805

  Last night the mercury dropped to nearly fifty below. Seaman has taken to crawling in the sack with me on cold nights. Can’t say I mind. I hope little Jean Baptiste don’t feel the cold. He is a cute little fellow. I went and visited him today. He’s a real coppery red color and got a lick of black hair that won’t lie flat, right on top of his head. I think he’s going to be just like his mother. He watches every thing the same way she does with his dark eyes. He almost seems like he is all eyes to me.

  February 17, 1805

  Captain Lewis can be so dang stubborn. Sometimes I just hate it when he gets an idea fixed in his head, but that’s exactly what he’s done. He decided that those Sioux and Arikara who attacked the Mandans a few weeks before had to be taught a lesson. So he set out with twenty-four of us. The weather was awful — deep snow, ice, howling winds. By the end of the first day we all had torn-up, bleeding feet. The trail of those Sioux and the Arikara went dead cold, but would Lewis stop? No, sir. He pushed on. We covered thirty miles, only to find a few old abandoned Sioux tipis. Finally he gave up today and we went hunting. We’re having good luck so far. Three elk and a deer.

  February 18, 1805

  Take it back what I said about Captain Lewis. Because he pushed on we’ve done got ourselves almost a ton of meat. This is real good because we are all sick to death of corn.

  February 25, 1805

  I go every chance I get to play with little Jean Baptiste. Captain Clark loves him, too. Sacajawea nicknamed him Pomp. Pomp means “leader of men” in Shoshoni. He’s a smart little feller. You can just tell. I made up a rattle stick for him with colorful beads. If I swing it slowly over his face from one side to another, he can follow it ever so well with his eyes. Sacajawea and I think up a lot of little games to play with him. Charbonneau hardly pays any attention to the baby now that it’s here. That’s fine by my sights. This baby ain’t going to learn nothing but bragging from that fool father of his.

  March 3, 1805

  Even though it is only the third day of the new month something is stirring in the air. There’s a different slant to the sun and new warmth in its light. I feel it. Sacajawea says she’s going to make me a new pair of moccasins. Mine are just about worn out.

  March 4, 1805

  I am busy every day packing things to send when the keelboat heads back down the river to St. Louis. We shall send back at least a hundred or more different specimens — animals, soil, rocks. I spent all afternoon labeling Captain Lewis’s mineral samples — everything from pebbles common to the Missouri to pumice stone, lava chips, quartz, Glauber’s salts, and alum. Never knew what any of these were until he started me looking for them. Then there’s skins of mice, all sorts of birds, and skeletons of pronghorn goats. I don’t know where they’re going to put all this stuff back in Washington. It’ll probably bring in a whole swarm of fleas to the White House. I can just see the next big fancy dinner and everyone itching and scratching themselves to death.

  I still don’t know whether I am part of the permanent party or not. I was able to forget about it through most of the winter, but now as I pack these things, I think about it all the time. I look at Antoine and I think, “Are you and I going to be river brothers or not? I sure hope not.” You’d think I’d get up my nerve to ask. But I just don’t know how.

  March 6, 1805

  Sacajawea was talking about how happy she is about heading off in a few weeks toward the land of her people. Well, I just came straight out and told her what’s on my mind and how I don’t know whether or not I’ll be going and how much I want to see the ocean. Talking isn’t hard at all for us anymore. She looked kind of surprised when I told her all this. She said, “River Eyes, I am sure you will be going. Who will help the Captain with his marks on paper?” That’s what she calls writing, marks on paper. “And who will help him with his star-making pictures?” That’s what she calls taking sights for longitude and latitude. I just shrugged. She asked why I don’t ask. And I shrugged again and said I didn’t know how to ask. Then her eyes grew fierce. “River Eyes, you’re being a foolish one. You have words in your tongue and on your fingers. You can speak and you can make signs in air and word marks on paper. You are like a fat man eating buffalo hump while complaining about being hungry and skinny. You go ask, silly boy.” I told her I would think on it. She said, “Don’t think on it. Go ask.”

  March 7, 1805

  Haven’t got my nerve up to ask yet, and now I can’t go see Sacajawea because she’ll ask if I asked.

  March 8, 1805

  Met Sacajawea coming up the trail to the fort. She glared at me, then shook her head because she knew I hadn’t asked yet.

  March 9, 1805

  Truly, that Sacajawea can glare. I think she’s teaching little Pomp to glare, too, because he gave me a right mean dirty look for a baby.

  March 10, 1805

  I asked — I’m going!!! I am part of the permanent party of the Corps of Discovery. I can’t believe I thought it would be so hard. And the funny part is that Captain Lewis looked so surprised when I asked. He said, “You actually thought you wouldn’t be going the whole way? You’re the only person who writes a decent hand in the entire outfit. It’s probably one of the best and most practical things those fool Jesuits ever did — teach you to read and write.”

  I am glad Father Dumaine didn’t hear him. Captain Lewis don’t set much store by religion, particularly the Catholic Church. Just like him to think that the whole reason for a religion is to teach this half-breed to write so he could help Captain Meriwether Lewis discover a continent. Nothing about God or Jesus suffering on the cross or serving Jesus — just about serving Captain Lewis. But the Captain is a good man no matter what he thinks about religion. It’s really how he acts that counts. And he acts like a good, decent man.

  March 11, 1805

  Just when I think everything is going to be perfect that dang Charbonneau messes everything up. The Captain done kicked him and Sacajawea out of the fort because Charbonneau tried to be so high and mighty with the Captain when they sat down to work out the contract for him and Sacajawea. Charbonneau wanted so much money. Then he said he wouldn’t stand guard. He wouldn’t cook. He wouldn’t hunt. The Captain told him to take his wives and kids back to their dang hut down the river.

  March 15, 1805

  Message from Charbonneau today in which he asked the Captains to “excuse his simplicity and to take him into service.” I see Sacajawea behind this. There was no way she was going to miss seeing her people.

  March 17, 1805

  Charbonneau showed up today with just Sacajawea. He was as tame as a pussycat, and if I thought Sacajawea glared at me, you should have seen her eyes on Charbonneau. They bore through him like lead slugs from a Kentucky rifle.

  March 25, 1805

  Ice in the river has been breaking up fo
r the past two days. Every day great hunks of it come floating down along with uprooted trees and today a buffalo carcass. The Indians jump from one cake to another. It looks like a dance to see them hopping up, down, and across the river on these chunks of ice.

  March 27, 1805

  We’re all working hard repairing the keelboat and building new canoes. The keelboat and the two old canoes will head downriver again in about a week. Then we’ll start off into territory where they say no white men have gone, not even the French traders. After a piece we’ll come to the headwaters of the Missouri and then finally to the western ocean, the Shining Sea.

  Captain Lewis talked to me today about starting a dictionary of all the Indian words. This will become really important, he says, when we get into Shoshoni country. He wants the Hidatsa words written down and then the Shoshoni words for those same Hidatsa words and then the English. He says President Jefferson has this idea about Indian languages and being able to trace the origins of their nations and tribes through their language. Captain Lewis knows that Sacajawea and I get on well and that I have learned a lot of Hidatsa this winter. He is hoping that she will explain the Shoshoni words to me. He flat out said that he would like to keep Charbonneau out of it as much as possible because he doesn’t trust him, even though the man does speak fair Hidatsa.