Sacajawea

“That Bap—he did something terrible to you?”

  Sacajawea could only raise her hands in the Comanche manner and look toward the heavens and give prayful thanks to the Great Spirit for keeping her tired and worn moccasins on the right path. Finally she whispered, “He is my firstborn. My own.”

  “You? You are Bap’s mother?” asked Owl Woman in amazement. “Once he told me his mother carried him to the Great Western Waters on her back. I think he joked with me.”

  “Ai, he told the truth. We were with white soldiers and one black one called York.”

  “York?” Owl Woman looked puzzled.

  “At, and Chief Red Hair. We have lived in Saint

  Louis, and my boys went to the school. They can use the talking leaves and make marks on paper.”

  “Read books? Your boys?”

  “Ai. Baptiste and Tess.”

  “Tess?”

  “Did one called Toussaint come with Baptiste?”

  “No,” said Owl Woman, shaking her head in confusion. “I know all who come here. And I know Baptiste. Handsome. Cheyenne girls make eyes with him. But he does not take a woman. He is strong. Good on a horse. Old Comanche woman, is this your son? True?”

  Out in the corral there was an argument going on. Bill Bent was trying to calm several dragoons. “None of the men who work for me make runs in your territory,” said Bent. “They are aware that you will confiscate their money and furs and jail them.”

  “Señor Bent,” said one dragoon, “we had mules stolen near Santa Fe. We overheard the men say they were coming this far north. We have tried to follow them.”

  “You know who they were?”

  “No, we do not know the names of these mule thieves.”

  “No doubt they are renegades and a long way from here by now.”

  The men seemed satisfied for the time being and moseyed back into the placita.3

  “See,” said Owl Woman. “Small White Man there? He is my man and will feed those soldiers and their muleteers and they will buy supplies and go on by tomorrow. There will be no trouble here.”

  “Baptiste? Will he come back?”

  “Perhaps. We will ask Small White Man when he is finished with the men. Come now.”

  Sacajawea followed Owl Woman, who still held Crying Basket, into a lower apartment off the placita. Without saying a word, Owl Woman took an old wash-tub from a large nail in the whitewashed wall. She handed the child to Sacajawea. “I could not fill this with water with my arms full,” she chuckled. She filled the tub from a pump and put her hand in the water. “It is not too cold. Come.” She pulled the child’s soiled tunic over her head and placed her in the tub of water. Gently, Owl Woman splashed the water on Crying Basket and cleansed the sores on her feet. She scrubbed the child’shead with broken bits of desert soapweed, making a thin, sudsy lather. The child kept her eyes on her own mother and did not say a word or cry out. Owl Woman gave Sacajawea a piece of white strouding, coarse trade cloth, to dry her child, then disappeared. In a moment she was back with a thin, gaunt man who carried a small black valise.

  “This mother and child need medicine,” said Owl Woman in broken English. “They have come a long way looking for the man we call Baptiste.”

  “Handsome Bap! Ho-ho! Is this his squaw?”

  “His mother.”

  “Oh, well”—the doctor cleared his throat—“I just never figured Bap had a mother at all. How do you do, ma’am.”

  He pulled the child on his lap and sat on a wooden bench. Cupping his two hands one on top of the other, he listened to the child’s breathing from her chest to her back. Sacajawea watched to see what great medicine this old man had for her child. She wondered about the way he tapped his fingers on her back and belly. Was that good?

  “Ahh, fine. Some salve and clean cloths on the feet and she’ll be running around in a few days. Ichthyous salve. Keep the baby clean, absolutely clean.”

  “Si,” said Owl Woman, wondering how she could keep the child clean with that black, tarlike grease on her feet. “And the señora?”

  “Umm, she must have a bath and dress her wounds with the black, greasy salve. Each must bathe twice a day. They need food. Can you get milk for the baby?”

  “Si. Pretty Feather has no child to nurse since hers died of fever.”

  Pretty Feather, a fat, comfortable Cheyenne squaw, was called to nurse Crying Basket. The child was four and had not nursed during the long journey with her mother, but she quickly snuggled down in the lap of Pretty Feather and suckled hungrily, then was fast asleep. A broad grin was on Pretty Feather’s face.

  Sacajawea quietly got up, going outside.

  Pretty Feather followed. “Why do you look for the gate? Are you leaving?” she asked.

  “I am dirty,” answered Sacajawea with fast hand signs.

  “Pah, Comanche always more dirty than Cheyenne. You take bath in same tub as baby.” Pretty Feather grinned, and gently prodded Sacajawea back into the lower apartment. Then she sat and crooned to the sleeping child still in her arms. Owl Woman brought out a red dress made from strouding. Sacajawea put it on after the bath, which she thought hilarious, because never since the Fort Clatsop days had she seen a warm pool of water carried in and out of a lodge. That was certainly something only a white man could have thought of doing! She felt sleepy and her head nodded as she ate the hard bread and buffalo meat Owl Woman brought in. Owl Woman laid a buffalo robe at the side of the room. Sacajawea slept there with Crying Basket curled next to her the rest of the day and part of the next.

  The following afternoon, Bill Bent, who was actually called Small White Man by his Cheyenne woman, found Sacajawea in the placita. He sat on the log bench, cleared his throat, and said, “Two years ago your son brought the first bateau load of furs down the tricky Platte. Late this spring he went down the Platte again with an even larger load of furs for Saint Louis.”

  “I will wait for him to return,” said Sacajawea.

  “Well, I have been thinking you’d say that. So while you wait, you can work with Pretty Feather, cooking for the men here. She will show you what you need to know. Cleanliness is first. The Cheyenne women are clean. You Comanches can learn something from them.”

  Sacajawea did not like his implication; she had heard the same words before, and had liked them no better earlier. “Comanche women are clean when in camp, but traveling even the white man does not stay clean. In the mud, rain, and wind, he can stink.” She was standing with her back held rigid, her hand over her nose, before Bill Bent.

  Bent was surprised at the squaw’s quick defense. He looked more closely at Sacajawea. “You speak quickly. You are not the regular subjugated squaw.”

  She looked at him, a man of light complexion and stocky build. “I am Shoshoni,” she said. “My father wasa Shoshoni chief many moons back. My brother is chief of the Agaidükas, Salmon Eaters. They are north in the Shining Mountains.”

  “But you came from Comanche Territory?” he questioned.

  Sacajawea looked into the man’s pink face and saw his eyes intent upon her. She heard Owl Woman playing with Crying Basket and laughing. She knew she must tell this man her story so that he could be certain she was the mother of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Her English came slowly, and was mixed with Spanish-Comanche and a smattering of French phrases with hand signs. By late afternoon Bill Bent had heard the incredible story of this wandering Shoshoni woman. He was so impressed that he not only found a place for Sacajawea to work in his kitchen, cooking for the thirty or more regular workers at the fort, but he let her stay with Owl Woman in her lodge at the Cheyenne camp. During the day Owl Woman cared for Crying Basket.

  Sacajawea noted immediately that Bill Bent commanded great respect among the trappers and Cheyennes, in the same kind of manner that her friend Chief Red Hair had once done. He opposed the sale of the crazy-water to the Cheyenne.

  Winter came, and with it came much snow. Then one day the snow began to thin and the air felt warmer. Early one evening Sacajawea passe
d outside the fort and walked down through the Cheyenne camp to the river. The sky was milky with light. The air was brisk with frost, and the edges of the river, when she reached it, were ribbed with thin, webby ice. She cracked the ice and sucked on a thin piece. The back of winter was broken now. The ice was thinner and thinner each day. The iron-hardness of the ground was slowly thawing. The willows along the river were reddening down their trailing streamers, and soon the small yellow threads of leaves would appear. She sniffed the smells that came to her nostrils—the acrid smell of wild sage, the tonic smell of sweet gum, the muddy, spongy smell of thawing ground, and from the lodges, the smell of pine smoke. They were good smells. It was April, the moon when geese lay eggs, and spring was on its way.

  She returned to the lodge of Owl Woman and tookher place before the fire. She took the horn ladle handed her by Owl Woman and ate from the wooden bowl of boiled pounded corn. There was no meat in the Cheyenne lodges as there was in the white man’s fort. There would be no meat until the spring hunt. Sacajawea still could smell the dripping meat juices in the fort’s kitchen. But she had not eaten there. The pounded corn had cooked to a mush, and it was good. She ate hungrily; then she moved to her sleeping robe with Crying Basket beside her.

  “Small White Man has sent for me tonight,” said Owl Woman bending over Sacajawea. “He has a guest who comes in from the north, Fort Lupton. Sit up, you will be interested. The man’s name is Rufus B. Sage. This man knows the man Baptiste Charbonneau.”

  Sacajawea was suddenly sitting up. “Perhaps I could go in your place and talk with this man,” suggested Sacajawea, poking Owl Woman in the side and laughing.

  Pretending shock, Owl Woman rounded her eyes at Sacajawea and lapsed into an affronted silence; then she suddenly slapped her side and laughed, saying, “My man would not allow it. He want one woman. Me.”

  During the conversation that night, Bent mentioned Sacajawea to Sage, and asked him for any news of Baptiste.

  “Well, you know Bap was with Louis Vasquez and Bill Sublette in thirty-nine, and that son of a coyote has been to Europe. He can spin a yarn half the night and play euchre the other half. Now tell me about this old woman.”

  Rufus Sage was fascinated with the story of the old squaw with the young child who claimed to be Bap’s own mother. “Look,” he said now, “what if I take the squaw back to Fort Lupton with me? Bap’s coming back to Fort St. Vrain before summer to take those furs from Céran down to Saint Louis. She’d have a better chance of seeing her son if she were closer to St. Vrain’s.”

  “I don’t know,” Bent said. “My Cheyenne woman here has grown fond of Crying Basket, and that Shoshoni squaw is a good worker in my kitchen. She’scleaner’n any Comanche I’ve ever seen and minds her own business.”

  “I was thinking how other things go, too.” Sage lowered his voice and bit his pipe. His nostrils stood wide as he inhaled. His black hair was pulled to the back and tied with a small piece of buckskin. “I was thinking of Fontaine up there at Lupton’s. You know that man has a half-breed kid to care for and no one to leave her with. His woman’s people wouldn’t take the baby after they found out she had the pox and did not die with her mother.”

  Bent rubbed his hands together, beginning to see what Sage had in his mind; he sat waiting patiently for Sage to say it outright.

  “They will have nothing to do with Fontaine or the child, even though both are as healthy now as you or me. This here squaw, the one who is supposed to be Bap’s mother, could take care of the kid and cook for Fontaine. Maybe he’d feel like raising vegetables or herding sheep again.”

  So that was it, thought Bent. Sage was well respected for his concern about the welfare of his fellow white men in this territory, and his mind traveled straight to solutions. “I’d rather miss her,” said Bent, relighting his pipe and motioning for Owl Woman to replace the dried meat platter with a fresh one. “But, all right—we’ll ask her.”

  While Owl Woman went to fetch Sacajawea, Rufus Sage traded with Bent for several canisters of sugar and other supplies. He was happy to be going back to his base fort with a surprise for Fontaine.

  Jacques Fontaine had been a free trapper. He had come from French-Canadian stock and worked his way down to Lancaster Lupton’s from Canada’s Fort McLeod. He had found himself a pretty Ute woman and stayed at Lupton’s. He became a fur trader for Lupton and a hard worker. One year he raised a few sheep; another he grew a fine garden that fed the fort. When his woman died of the pox he was lost and did not seem to care if he stayed in the fort or if he sat outside against the wall with the Indians in the sun.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, Sacajawea gathered her belongings, packed her horses, and prepared to go with Rufus Sage to Fort Lupton.

  “I will ride north with my man in the late spring to visit you,” Owl Woman promised. “Maybe your great son will be there so that I can again pass my eyes over him.” Owl Woman’s face was impassive, and her eyes narrowed as she watched Sacajawea. She would miss her.

  A flash of quick delight in her black eyes indicated Sacajawea’s pleasure in the words. Then both women covered their mouths with the back of their hands to hide their amusement as Sage mounted his horse from what was to them the wrong side. Then Sacajawea arranged herself and Crying Basket, and the small party left Bent’s Fort.

  When Sage reached the timber that began a few miles north of Bent’s Fort, he pulled his horse up in a stand of jack pines and rested a little while. The air began to thin and cool. Sacajawea was grateful for the moccasins and Navaho blankets Owl Woman had given her in trade for the huaraches, capita, and yellow woolen shawl. She wrapped one blanket around herself and the other around Crying Basket. Sage pulled a buffalo robe around himself. When they were nearly four thousand feet above sea level, Sacajawea caught a glimpse of a mountain peak. Then others came into view. The peaks were covered with gleaming snow. She told Sage and Crying Basket that they were like the beautiful Shining Mountains in the far west. Sage smiled at her delight in the scenery.

  During the sixth night out, they were awakened by a miserable, cold spring rain flowing in from the north, and by the afternoon of the next day, the temperature had dropped low. They huddled in blankets and robes and rode down off the last of the foothills that rolled away from the snow-covered mountains, the pack mules of Sage strung out in a little line and Sacajawea’s packhorse behind.

  Before them unfolded a majestic panorama. In the foreground facing west was Fort Lupton, situated on the east side of a small river. Three miles northeast was Fort Jackson, and beyond that was Fort Vasquez.

  Beyond Vasquez to the north, hardly visible, was Fort St. Vrain. Except that St. Vrain was larger, the rival trading posts were similar, with adobe bastions at two corners, and smaller wooden blockhouses protruding over the entrances where American flags fluttered from tall masts. The whitewashed walls rose imposingly against the background of hills covered with coarse grass and scattered with pines and cedars. Crowding the plain between the forts were several hundred Indian tepees. The course of the small river was dotted with willow, box elder, ash, and cottonwood. Behind Fort Lupton, Sacajawea could see about an acre patch of cultivated ground. It seemed incongruous, yet she was not surprised by it; white men can do these things, she thought. She wondered if this were the farm of Monsieur Fontaine.

  “The first monument on the prairie is Lupton’s,” said Sage, pointing. “Old Fontaine will probably take you visiting all them forts if he ever comes out of his shell. He used to take his Ute Woman visiting and show her off at all of them. Céran St. Vrain was especially fond of his little girl, and old Lupton was like a granddaddy to her.”

  Sacajawea learned that in the years since the four forts had been built there’d been no trouble between them. But if anyone wanted to start a trade war, things could get awkward.

  They rode down a small round plateau circling toward Fort Lupton and the Indian tepees. Sage stopped and looked again, first at Fort Lupton on one side then
at Fort Jackson on the other. Sacajawea looked at the white-skin tepees, the streamers of smoke against the sky, the dogs and children running helter-skelter among the tepees.

  Finally Sage said, “I’m half-starved.” He kicked his horse into a run and fired his rifle.

  They rode in through the arched passageway beneath the blockhouse. The squaws and near-naked children by the wall clustered around them in the small courtyard. Coming from the blacksmith on the opposite side of the courtyard was a man with white whiskers and heavy white hair.

  “Hey, Lane, this old Comanche woman is here to takecharge of Fontaine’s baby. Can you guess who she claims to be?”

  “Is this what you got at Bent’s, you fool?”

  “Aw, I got the sugar and salt pork, but who do you suppose this squaw is?”

  “Pocahontas?”

  The old man’s eyes twinkled bright blue as Sage dismounted and helped Sacajawea and her child down. Someone came up and took the packs off the horses and led them to a small corral and water.

  “Rub the horses good, Charley!” yelled Sage, then he said, “This here is Bap Charbonneau’s mammy. She was the woman with those captains—Lewis and Clark. Can you ever imagine?”

  “Hell’s fire! Never would have dreamt a thing like this. Is it true or are you pulling my leg?”

  “True, true,” replied Sage. “She knows too much about that there expedition for it to be anyone else. Been living with bloodthirsty Comanches in Mexican Territory for a time, looking for her son. Left her old man in Saint Louis. Incredible, eh?”

  “Madame Charbonneau,” Lupton addressed Sacajawea with a bow. “Madame Charbonneau, are you certain Baptiste is your son?”

  “Ai,” she said, wondering why the white men needed the story over and over again.

  Lupton shook his white head. “I’ll get Mrs. Ducate, the washwoman, to show you around.”

  “Take her to Fontaine,” interrupted Sage.

  “She’ll take you to Monsieur Fontaine,” said Lupton; then he turned again to Sage. “Rufus, I have some traps for beaver I want you to set out. Come get them before we all have supper.”