Sacajawea

  “That old weasel liked women young. That is why he let the Snake go. He wanted a fresh child to keep him warm. I could understand a man like that,” she croaked. “I like young girls with slim, firm bodies. They make my blood run and my head swim. My man beat me for looking at my own child when she was ripening.” She wiped her mouth again and gasped for air.

  Sacajawea realized that Gray Bone never swallowed—that she could not.

  Gray Bone pointed a clawlike finger at Sacajawea. “You were that Snake woman! I know it!” Then she swayed and it seemed she could not speak more, but after several moments she seemed to have a second wind.

  “This Charbonneau died near a white man’s fort up north. It was a frightened young Sioux woman who buried him under layers of damp earth, where he will no longer see blue sky. You wonder where I learned this? It was from the mouth of a white man, Charles Larpenteur. He said that old man never carried a gun, only a hunting knife, and wore a red trading shirt, and offered his young women to any man in camp. It was some custom with him.”

  Gray Bone’s hand twitched. She leered into the darkening air with contempt.

  Sacajawea bent forward, rubbed her back, and felt a large stone bruise. She knew the disease of the coyote had nearly taken possession of Gray Bone’s body, but her mind was working. She had heard many times that lucky ones bitten by crazed animals took only a few days to die—but the unfortunate ones took weeks. Gray Bone was fortunate.

  “There was a chola—part Shoshoni, part white—who came to a fort, far north—Bill Bent’s—with furs on a donkey charrette. He could scratch on paper. Once I hid in the fort at the side of a building, a lodge of logs, and watched.” Gray Bone’s head nodded, and her hands went to her throat. Sacajawea feared the words would become incoherent. She wanted to ask questions, but was afraid Gray Bone would say no more. “I put things together. The one with the furs was called Charbonneau. Sometimes Bap. So—he is the son you asked the Mexican trader about?”

  Sacajawea could not answer. She could not speak. And now Gray Bone seemed unable to stop. She exulted when Sacajawea sat motionless. She looked about herself until she had established the continuity of her existence and identified Sacajawea’s form sitting passively across the dune from her.

  “Now I was not so bashful. I found an opportunity when this Bap was walking alone and went up to him. I asked in good Comanche if he had a pia, Wadzewipe, or Lost Woman. He looked and asked for a repeat of my words; then he said no, his pia ran away and was never found. She is dead—maybe eaten by a coyote.” Gray Bone laughed raucously. “I said his mother lived with the Quohada Comanches. He said no, she liked to live like the white people.” Gray Bone tried to lick her parched lips. Her voice was hoarse. She choked, then quieted, and her voice was no more than a loud whisper. “I told him I know his pia. He laughed and gave me chewing tobacco. Nice man.”

  Sacajawea shivered as a breeze stirred the dead gray dawn air. Gray Bone’s mood varied. “The wind,” she groaned. “It will skin me alive.” She ran her left hand lightly across her bosom and down her thigh. The touchseemed painful. As the breeze grew, she groaned, “Can’t you stop it? See what it is doing to me?” She wiped her mouth and seemed to forget Sacajawea was there. She began to explore her body with her fingertips, muttering something about heavy clothing.

  “Where is this place—Bent’s? The chola—where is he?”

  “What?” Gray Bone rasped, straightening up abruptly, an expression of wonderment and awe overspreading her face as she peered at Sacajawea. Her mouth twitched. “The white men are north.”

  “How far?”

  “Six, eight suns by horse, maybe farther; it is hard to say.” Her face moved as if in a spasm, and she hesitated a few moments. She again pushed a hand against her throat, then wiped her mouth.

  “Can I get you water?” offered Sacajawea.

  “I cannot drink it. Do not bring it near.” Her voice was hardly audible.

  “I will go for help.”

  “No, I cannot use help. Do not leave.” She pierced the stillness with a shrill laugh. She moved closer to Sacajawea, then with one swift motion struck out with arms and legs.

  Sacajawea’s legs felt a jerking grip that overthrew her. Swiftly as the grip had flashed about her legs, just as swiftly Gray Bone brought a stone down, grazing Sacajawea’s left hip. And like the crack of a beaver’s tail on water, Sacajawea hit Gray Bone with the flat of her hand on the good side of her face, and with a quick thrust of her other hand, struck Gray Bone’s hand. The stone was thrown out and thudded into the sand. The next instant Gray Bone felt Sacajawea’s hand grip her wrist. The struggle was for the butcher knife Gray Bone had grabbed from Sacajawea’s waistband, each woman striving to hold it. Gray Bone could see only dimly; then she was blinded by a handful of sand deliberately flung into her eyes. In that moment she slashed the knife across Sacajawea’s shoulder and her grip slackened. In the next moment Gray Bone felt a smashing darkness descend upon her skull, and in her brain the darkness filled with nothing.

  Sacajawea had grabbed the stone. She hit again andagain, until she was sure Gray Bone was not breathing, except for the dying of the pulsing heart. Sacajawea tossed the stone over the white dune; she was breathing heavily. She sat beside the body of Gray Bone. Sacajawea sobbed and panted for breath. “That old woman wanted me on the trail to the Unknown with her!” Sacajawea was half crying from anger and exhaustion. “Why would I want to go with her?” She peered at Gray Bone’s bloody face, with the eyes staring at the sky, the head twisted to one side and sprinkled with fine particles of sand. It was difficult to distinguish the features.

  Sacajawea scrubbed her hands and arms with abrasive sand, instinctively knowing she had touched the unclean body of someone diseased. With her hands she covered Gray Bone’s body with clean white sand from the dune. She carried half a dozen large boulders to place on top. “That is the best I can do,” she said aloud, cleaning her butcher knife with sand.

  She thought she heard the wild, half-human scream of a chimbica. She moved toward her horse in the mesquite thicket. She had never heard a cougar cat scream in the afternoon before.

  She mounted and left the body of Gray Bone as she would leave a scrub oak leaf fallen in the winter’s wind. Leaving the past, she rode down the dry canyon, across the bits of potsherd poking out of the sand. The cry of the cougar cat became a whisper as she passed under the niche in the wall where once life had lived in balance with nature, simply and happily, until something had abused and abased those Ancients and they no longer walked on the sand or watched the flight of birds, but passed on to the trail of the Unknown.

  Book Six

  ON THE FINAL TRAIL

  While he was in charge of Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas, August 30, 1842, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was described by a traveller there as one “who proved to be a gentleman of superior information. He had acquired a classic education and could converse quite fluently in German, Spanish, French, and English, as well as several Indian languages. His mind, also, was well stored with choice reading, and enriched by extensive travel and observation. Having visited most of the important places, both in England, France, and Germany, he knew how to turn his experience to good advantage.

  “There was a quaint humor and shrewdness in his conversation, so garbed with intelligence and perspicuity, that he at once insinuated himself into the good graces of listeners, and commanded their admiration and respect.”

  RUFUS B. SAGE, Scenes in the Rocky Mountains by a New Englander. Vol V. Philadelphia: 1846.

  LEROY R. HAFEN andANN W. HAFEN, eds., Scenes in the Rocky Mountains, 1820–1875, “Rufus B. Sage, His Letters and Papers,” Vol. II. Glendale: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1956, pp. 52–4.

  CHAPTER

  50

  Bent’s Fort to Lupton’s Fort

  There is a Mexican girl who was captured by her son, Ticannaf. This girl lived with her until the old lady disappeared and her son’s family would not live with her, so they gave he
r to a man for his wife, although she was only 14 or 15 years old. This girl knew a great deal about her but even she never knew her past history.

  CHARLES A. EASTMAN, Report to Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, March 2, 1925, pp. 45–6. “Statement given to Dr. Charles A. Eastman, Feb. 15, 1925, in Lawton, Okla., by Wesuepoie, mother-in-law of Tahcutine, youngest daughter of Ticannaf, concerning the traditions of Porivo, or supposed to be Sacajawea, or ‘Bird Woman.’”

  In the next dawning, Sacajawea saw the thin streams of smoke rising into the quiet air. She was on high ground, riding toward the Quohadas’ camp.

  In the village a feast was going on in honor of the new chief, Wounded Buck.

  Sacajawea looked at these people who called themselves Quohadas. Their faces were happy once again and full of confidence. They had ridden through the time of having no chief and were now whole and alive.

  Hides Well pushed through some women and came to meet Sacajawea. Hides Well’s lips were drawn tight. “Get off that horse and show some respect for the new chief. What about old Gray Bone? Did you find her? Where is she?”

  “Shh—do not say the name. She cannot return to this camp.”

  “She has gone away?” Hides Well’s mouth began to turn up into a smile.

  “Ai, she has gone with los muertos.”

  “Dead? You saw her die?”

  “Ai, I helped her, my mother. She was crazed by the mad coyote’s bite. We fought.”

  “You are bringing her remains in for proper burial?”

  “No, pia, she is under sand and stone in the little canyon. The body was not fit to carry.”

  Hides Well looked out of the corner of her eye at Sacajawea. “Lost Woman, she was a Quohada and deserved that much. The people will turn from you, remembering who invited her to be a member of this band again.”

  “Even while living she was putrefying.”

  Hides Well did not argue with Sacajawea; yet she did not agree, either. She walked off to her lodge.

  Choway, who was now close to fifteen summers, and Crying Basket, who was nearly four summers old, ran out from the crowd to welcome Sacajawea home.

  “I do not know whether to laugh or cry,” said Sacajawea softly as she nuzzled her child and wet her neck with tears.

  At times such an aching loneliness came through

  Sacajawea that she could not stay in the tepee with Choway. She moved out under the open skies and sought some nameless comfort in the sage and mesquite. At night the aching became a weight against her very breathing. The people pointed to her and whispered behind their hands. Hides Well no longer visited with her, and Spring became so busy with her own family that she seldom went out of her way to see Sacajawea.

  Sacajawea began to wonder more and more about her firstborn. Her wonderment grew and fed on itself with the memory of old Gray Bone’s last words. Was it true she had seen Baptiste? Had he reached Saint Louis? Was he working for Chief Red Hair? Was it possible she could travel north and find him? She felt isolated and alone on the barren plains, with no one to turn to. Sometimes she pulled Crying Basket into bed with her so that she could hear the child’s breathing and faint cries, which seemed a comfort.

  At sunrise one morning, her mind was made up. She brought her horse to the tepee door and tied a large package of dried meat to its side. She filled a water bag and fastened it to the animal’s other side. She kicked at the old lodgepoles behind the tepee, which had been discarded at the beginning of spring. She tied them travois-fashion to the horse. She went inside and brought out a bundle of old tepee skins and tied them on the travois. Then she brought out her clothing and the clothing of Crying Basket.

  By this time, Choway was up. “What are you doing?”

  “I am leaving.”

  “But where?”

  “I am not sure,” she said. “I cannot stay here and be at peace with myself any longer. Everyone looks crosswise at me, even my own family, since I did not bring the crazy woman’s rotting bones back to the camp for a Comanche burial. They looked the same way when I let her into the camp. I want to go away.”

  “I do not understand,” said Choway.

  “I will try to pick up the threads from my other life. It will not catch up with me, so I will try to find it.”

  “I still cannot understand.”

  “Tell my son, Ticannaf, I have gone a long way, avajemear, and do not seek me.”

  “But you know he will.”

  “Ai, but he will not find me. I will be many miles from here.”

  “You can’t go. You will be back before nightfall — within two suns. The Wichitas will tell us where you travel. You are my mother now.”

  “You may have this tepee as your own,” said Sacajawea. “Ticannaf will bring meat and hides to you. You have been a good helper for me. I have not been a good mother for you. But just the same, you have become a good Quohada, and that is something to be proud of.”

  She was ready. She took up Crying Basket and tied her to the travois. Sacajawea took another horse from the herd and put a robe on its back. “Ticannaf may have the rest of his father’s horses. Tell him and he will know for sure I have gone.”

  Choway nodded, knowing she would miss this squaw who had been kind to her. But Choway had sensed there was conflict between the Quohada band and this woman they called Wadzewipe.

  Sacajawea mounted, pulled on the rawhide of the packhorse, then, relenting, she touched Choway and said in Spanish, “I love you and these people. Only there is something beyond this that I must go to. I do not know where it is myself.”

  Once, Sacajawea looked back, and it seemed tears were streaming down Choway’s face. Sacajawea could not be sure. Her own tears were a continuous stream down her face. She had spent more than twenty-five summers with the Quohada band, and now she was going into some unknown kind of life.

  She headed straight north across the country. She traveled fast at first through the arid, unproductive country, where a broad, shallow river, some six hundred yards wide and only a few inches deep, seemed to struggle for its life among yellowish white quicksands. The first few days Sacajawea sang, and the words floated back to Crying Basket. She tried to think of English words she’d learned, then of French words. Many were lost to her. She could remember better a little Spanish. She sat astride her horse as if it were part of her. She watched the sun set, then stopped and made camp for the night.

  They wound around hills and dry creeks. Crying Basket sat up front on the horse with her mother for company. Occasionally they could see the timbered course of streams out to the right or left.

  Sacajawea wondered what the white man’s fort was like. She was certain it would be made in the same way as Fort Clatsop or Fort Mandan, with logs. She thought of bluebonnets that bloomed in damp areas, the purple violets, and white buttercups. She could see her firstborn picking spring flowers. She tried harder to visualize more detail. Actually it was hard for her to remember exactly what Baptiste had looked like—round face, black eyes and hair, like any papoose.

  They came to a little valley where there was nothing but dry, strawlike grass for the horses. The dried meat was gone and they found little water. They were exposed to the burning sun and the only water they found in two days was in a stagnant pool in which several stray buffalo wallowed. With her horses she drove off the buffalo, then the horses put their noses down and sucked up the alkaline water. She deliberately pulled them away before they had their fill, knowing that too much would kill them, and no water at all would also kill them. She washed Crying Basket’s face and then her own with the warm bitter-tasting liquid. She permitted the child to suck her fingers, only to avoid distressing cramps. They rode around overhanging limestone cliffs and through rough sandstone gullies. The soft skin on Crying Basket’s arms and legs became dry and parched. Her face was scaly and her lips cracked. Sacajawea tried to keep the child covered, but it was hot and the child pulled the clothing off. Sacajawea longed for animal fat
to soothe the child’s dry skin and relieve her own itching.

  One night they stopped in the bottom of a little dip where water ran down a rocky channel into a tiny bed of grass. The water was sweet, but could not be dipped up without mixing it with mud. Sacajawea showed her child how to lie on her belly and draw the water up through her lips. They chewed on the grass stems, pretending they were the wild potato. She let the horses drink several times and before morning the little patch of grass had been cleaned off the red earth. She filledthe water paunch with the muddy spring water and they moved on in the morning.

  They rode over sharp stones and through thorny brush to the base of a high bluff. They followed the bottom of the red sandstone bluff until they met a gap in the wall. The gap was a pass that sloped upward and she turned the horses in, clambering through the scree until they reached a ledge nearly a third of the way to the top. There was no way to continue the upward climb so they stopped there before the sun was halfway across the sky. There was grass and some other plants growing in the sheltered places close to the high-cut bank.

  It was hot and muggy. Clouds hung low in the east. Crying Basket ran naked on the red earth. Finding a little shade among the chaparral, she sat there and dug in the dirt with a small stick. Sacajawea found a few wild onions and several small sego lilies in the bunch grass. She cleaned them on the bottom of her tunic and pushed them close to the hot coals of her small cooking fire. She turned the bulbs frequently and let the coals cool. She watched her child and noticed the small body was thinner than when they had left the Quohada camp. Crying Basket did not say she was hungry until the afternoon wore on and the clouds grew. Sacajawea peeled the outer skins from the onion and lily bulbs, which were still warm and very soft.