Sacajawea

  “Your kinky hair will be scattered clear across the North American continent, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean,” chided Clark.

  Charbonneau never remembered how the dance ended because he and Collins were sitting out in the sand, back to back, snoring deep in their throats. McNeal, who was on guard, checked on them once in a while during the night to make sure they were still there.

  Sacajawea remembered the dance afterward. Her head was perfectly clear before it ended. She could hardly wait for morning so that she could ask Captain Clark about the sour bread in the canister and how the men had turned it into a powerful medicine that could cure shyness.

  When all but the guard were asleep in the camp, Sacajawea left Pomp wrapped in her blankets and walked through the grass to the water’s edge. The wind pulled at her loose hair, and she slipped from her tunic, carefully folding the blue-beaded belt. The wind was chilly. A quarter moon rode low over the river, the expedition’s camp, and the Nez Percé village. She threw her arms up toward it. She moved knee-deep into the clear, cold water and bent to fling it over her body.

  She prayed to the Great Spirit in the Shoshoni tongue, making all her thoughts known. But when she thought of her man she could not form a prayer—she did not know what she desired for herself with Charbonneau. Aï, she knew, but she could not bring it out in the open, even for the Great Spirit. She secretly wished Charbonneau were like Captain Clark, wise and kind.

  She stepped from the river shivering but refreshed. She stood naked long enough to let the cold night wind dry her before she slipped into her tunic and tied the beloved beaded belt carefully, then shook down her hair. Still she lingered, standing quietly in the pale light from the moon. She turned at the sound of a cough, thinking it to be McNeal, and said, “I was bathing.”

  “I know,” answered Captain Clark, still visualizing her creamy-brown shoulders and small, high, pink-tipped breasts, the curve of hips and thighs that melted into the perfect legs and tiny brown feet highlighted with moonlight.

  He could not explain his feeling of the moment. He was used to the nakedness of Indian girls and women and generally felt no desire. Yet tonight his face fevered and his hands were hot in the cold wind. He thought that it was well she was unaware of his feeling.

  She bowed her head, understanding instantly why Clark was staring at her.

  They went silently back to camp, nodding at McNeal, who thought the captain had gone to get Janey out of that cold river before she came down with pneumonia. Before leaving for his blankets, Clark said, “I was restless after all that excitement tonight. We all owe you much for keeping things peaceful. I am always grateful we have you with us. And now I can better understand the temptations of York.” To himself he thought, I did not mean to say that last to her. What is the matter with me? I seem to be addle-brained from Collins’s beer. “Goodnight, Janey.”

  “Goodnight. I am glad to be near you.” She hurried off through the grass to her blankets, passing Charbonneau leaning against Collins, snoring loudly, sucking in and out the ends of his mustache. I know one thing, she thought. Chief Red Hair thinks of me as I think of him when we are busy and not near one another. And he thinks of his men in the same way. He is the protector of us all. She fell asleep thinking of the next canoe ride on the cold blue water.

  The next morning, Charbonneau and Collins walked around holding their heads and groaning. Captain Lewis accused them of exaggerating. The other men told each other about how much of Collins’s beer they had drunk. Sacajawea knew that if they had consumed as much as they told about, there would have had to have been three canisters instead of one. Captain Clark thought this was as good a time as any to lay over for a day. He explained to the men that he wanted to explore the Columbia about ten miles upstream to see if there was any game in the vicinity.5

  Captain Lewis stayed in camp and reorganized the gear. He made sure that the packs with the trade goods were easy to get at. He counted out the number of medals they were carrying and decided that they could give them out a bit more freely than before.

  When he returned. Captain Clark told how astounded he was at the number of salmon in the island-dotted river. And noting that a large percentage were dead or dying, he asked the men to eat only the ones that were well dried or freshly killed. He said he would continue to buy dogs from the Nez Percés. Silently, Sacajawea wished he would buy horse meat. Each tribe they passed seemed to have an abundance of horses.

  For the next two days, the canoes had no navigational problems and the river Indians remained friendly. On the third day, the expedition was again met by the Nez Percés in the vicinity as they made night camp. About two hundred men formed a half circle around the entire expedition and sang to the beating of four drums for some time. The principal chief was given a Jefferson peace medal, and the second chief a medal of smaller size. Lewis thought it necessary to lay in some meat, so he purchased forty dogs in trade for bells, thimbles, a few red beads, and a roll of brass wire.

  In the morning, a young-looking chief called Yellept, from a Walla Walla village downriver, came for a visit along with some of his important men. These people lived in peace with the Nez Percés, and like them shared characteristics of both mountain and prairie Indians. Part of the year they fished the rivers, dug for the camass root, kouse, and other edible tubers. In the early spring they mounted their horses and rode to the mountains to hunt deer and elk. Sometimes they made the long trek over the Bitterroots into Blackfeet country for buffalo, the hides of which were used for moccasins and robes.

  Yellept wanted the white men to stay a few days so that his villagers might come to meet them. Lewis gave him a Jefferson medal and several twists of tobacco. Chief Twisted Hair and Tetoharsky understood his language, although it seemed to Drouillard to contain more clacking sounds than the Nez Percé tongue. The captains promised Chief Yellept they would stay a few days at his village on their return trip. Before leaving, the chief drew a map in the sand indicating that the Columbia contained a great falls several days from this place. Noting this, Chief Twisted Hair jumped around saying, “So—it is as I have told you. Now you know for certain you will come to a place in the water where you cannot use the canoes. I told you so!”

  Chief Yellept named a few of the tribes the expedition would encounter as they went on. The Nez Percés would be left behind. First they would meet the Yakimas, then the Chopunnish, and when they were close to the Stinking Waters they would find the Chinooks, “a shabby group.” Around the mouth of the Columbia the white men would find the Clatsops and Tillamooks. Captain Lewis asked through Drouillard if there were deer or elk in the country of the Yakimas. Chief Yellept shook his head. “Only salmon and water birds this time of year. The land is a sandy plain, with few trees and little firewood.”

  By evening the expedition had met the Yakimas. Sacajawea watched women take dead fish from along the banks, split them open, and put them on their drying scaffolds. There was no tree in sight from which the scaffold could have been made. Curiosity got the best of her. She stood close to a group of women for minutes, then with hand signs asked how the wood was brought to this place. “Oh,” said a short, pregnant squaw with many small white shells around her neck, “our boys mount their ponies, slip into the water, position themselves at the four corners of rafts made of willow pokes and buffalo skins. They ride downriver where the trees grow. That is easy. Coming back, everything must be lashed to the rafts. The horses shuttle back and forth from one bank to another coming upstream. That is very hard. Sometimes a horse or a boy is lost.”

  “Where do you find the shells?” Sacajawea asked, indicating she thought they made nice decoration.

  “Sometimes we trade buffalo hides to those who live near the Stinking Waters. Shells are nothing to them. But look.” The squaw pulled up her tunic and revealed a pair of black woolen trousers she was wearing.

  Sacajawea was astounded. “It is the clothing of white men. How could you have that?”

  The squaw
smiled, pulled down her tunic, and patted her abdomen. “White men come to the Stinking Waters. They trade for skins and furs. Their canoes are so much larger than the ones your white men brought here, so that I do not believe you are of much importance.” The squaw turned and started splitting salmon down the back, ignoring Sacajawea.

  Sacajawea did not notice. She was hurrying to find Captain Clark. He was talking with some of the Yakima men. She rushed into the circle and spoke as best she could, then used hand signs. Twisted Hair gave her a reproving look. She sat beside Drouillard and tried to speak more slowly.

  “Janey, it must be important, but can’t you see how you distract these Yakimas? They do not approve of a woman coming into their meeting. Can’t this wait?” said Captain Clark.

  “Ai, but I know there are white men at the Stinking Water.”

  “You know this for sure?” asked Drouillard, dumbfounded.

  She began to tell her story, but before she was finished, the Yakima men had left in disgust. Captain Clark did not know whether to scold or praise her. “Next time you have anything so important to tell me, go to Captain Lewis or to Charbonneau and tell them; they will come and tell me and not make my guests leave so abruptly. Damn, I would have liked to have asked those men about the ships and the people on them at the Pacific. Oh, hell, I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. Don’t forget, unless I ask you to interpret, don’t barge in on a meeting or powwow. Still, the men didn’t say anything half as exciting as you learned from that woman.”

  By the next afternoon, everyone had noticed that the bunch grass grew much thicker and there was no more sagebrush to be seen. The expedition made their night camp near a small river that flowed into the Columbia. There was an encampment of about thirty grass lodges arranged in the form of an irregular V, with the apex downriver, to the north. There seemed to be nearly a thousand ponies here, munching the grass contentedly. When Captain Clark saw a white crane gliding over several grass huts, he took careful aim and fired, thinking of the roast bird for his evening meal. For a moment the people of the village, who had witnessed the bird drop from the air, were transfixed with wonder. Suddenly their minds grasped the horror of it, and they fled for their huts, hiding.

  Captain Clark took Drouillard and Chief Twisted Hair with him to the village beside the small river and called to the people. No one came out of the huts. They opened several doors and called. Drouillard tried explaining how the bird had fallen. Slowly some of the people came out with bowed heads, wringing their hands, waiting for the blow of death to hit them. In one hut Clark raised the chin of a little boy and smiled at him. He offered the child a tin spoon. Then he offered gifts of tobacco and white beads to the older members of the family. No one reached out for the gifts. In another hut he lifted the chin of a little girl and smiled at her, giving her yellow beads. Finally, in the center of the V made by the huts, he stood with those bowing their heads and calmly took out his pipestone calumet from the leather sheath fastened to his belt.

  “All tribes know the meaning of the peace pipe,” he said loudly so that Drouillard and Twisted Hair could hear as he sat crossed-legged in the center of this village. Slowly the people raised their heads, and others peeped from their doors, not yet daring to go out. Clark took off his tricornered hat and laid it beside the pipe on the ground in front of him. Still nothing happened. He picked up his hat and began slowly and carefully to improve the crease in it with his big, rawboned fingers. Several children came out and stood close to their doorways. Clark took that for his cue and strolled over to one particularly large hut where several men huddled together. He lit his pipe from a stick in their fire, then knocked out the fire and refilled his pipe, relighting it with his magnifying glass from the sun’s rays that came through the smoke hole. The men shrieked. Clark tried to pacify them. Not one would touch the pipe lit by the sun.

  Captain Clark sat on a rock outside the large hut and smoked by himself. Using hand signs, Drouillard tried gently to persuade a couple of children to go to Captain Clark. A man came out and watched Drouillaid; finally he said, using signs, “The one with flame for hair is not a man. We saw him cause a bird to fall with great thunder from a stick. Now I saw him bring fire from the sky to light his pipe. No man can do that.”

  Twisted Hair sat with Clark, telling him these people were called the Chopunnish and they had never seen white men before. “What about the Walla Wallas who have traded with them?” asked Clark uneasily.

  Twisted Hair shook his head, saying, “These people do not travel on the river much. There is enough fish here to keep them in food, and they can buy skins from their neighbors or use horse hide for their moccasins.” Twisted Hair then tried to reassure the Chopunnish man with soft cluckings they both seemed to understand. “It will be dark soon,” said Twisted Hair, “and you will see he lights his pipe from the coals of the fire, same as any man.”

  Still that was not enough to show that Captain Clark was harmless, so they would touch his pipe. Finally Clark asked Drouillard to bring Sacajawea and Pomp to him. “Tell her she is needed to get this meeting started,” he chuckled. “I hope she is not stubborn after I told her yesterday she broke my meeting apart. Tell her it’s important and I want her here.”

  Sacajawea’s presence was their reassurance. At the sight of her placing her papoose close to the feet of Captain Clark, the brave called to others, as he pointed toward Sacajawea and her child. They peered at Pomp, who smiled back with baby chatter and patted the old, worn hat Clark had left on the ground. Then Pomp picked the hat up and popped it onto his own head. His eyes were covered, and he bent his head back in a comical way so that he could see. The Chopunnish laughed at the baby. Finally someone said, “No squaw goes with a war party—still less a baby.”

  Soon they were smoking with Captain Clark, Chief Twisted Hair, and Drouillard, but with their own pipes. Never would they touch the magic pipe of Captain Clark. Sacajawea let Pomp wander among the Chopunnish, hanging on to each one for support as he half crawled and half walked from one to another, smiling and jabbering.

  In the morning before leaving camp, Captain Clark climbed to the top of a bluff about two hundred feet above the small river and spied a mountain peak, a perfect cone. Some days later the whole expedition saw snowcapped Mount Hood far to the south. Beyond the Umatilla River and the Chopunnish village, the expedition saw the signs they were eagerly looking for—there were Indians wearing scarlet-and-blue blankets, and one wore a sailor’s pea jacket. Now they knew they were coming closer to the coast, where ships had stopped to trade with the natives.

  During the next few days they saw a rusty flintlock, a sword, brass kettles, brass armbands, large beads, overalls, shirts, pistols, jammed beyond working order, and tin powder flasks. Some of these river people wore white and pink seashells in their noses, and some startled the men with their use of four-letter English words. However, the captains, with the help of Twisted Hair, Tetoharsky, and Drouillard, could get almost no information about white men, white traders, or large seagoing vessels. These river people were getting the white men’s goods secondhand by trading with other natives farther down the Columbia.

  Sea otter began to appear in the river, which was now much of the time too dangerous for the canoes, and long, tedious portages had to be made. Charbonneau continually crabbed about carrying all his gear, including the bedding. “I’m not a packhorse,” he snorted. “There’s no great rush,” he told Sacajawea sharply. She hurried ahead of him with bedding and clothing under her arms and her baby slung across her back.

  “We have all day,” he said, but not so loud. “Jésus, I work my tail off getting the gear around one bad spot in the river, only to find another one waiting down below. That’s sense now, ain’t it?” He waved his old black felt hat around in the air. “I suppose if there was forty-eight hours in a day you’d just keep packing for les capitaines.” He trotted after her, cackling.

  She did not look around, but she could still hear him. “Allez! Jésus, why
hurry?”

  She felt hot and angry, but she knew she would do nothing, not even say much. She plodded along in her toed-in way, and at a clump of sword fern stopped to suck in a couple of mouthfuls of air and get hold of herself. One thing she could see: if her man could make her so angry when there was nothing she could do about it, then a lot of the men must get stirred up with him, too.

  “Do we have to be punished like this only because we cannot swim?” asked Charbonneau at another point where the river had so many whirlpools and rapids that Captain Clark sent all the men who could not swim ashore, loaded with the firearms and precious papers, to haul them overland. Actually, Charbonneau was against almost any kind of work that made him perspire and breathe heavily.

  “This is the most fatiguing business I’ve been engaged in this week,” admitted Pat Gass. “But I guess this shows those old buck Indians on the shores watching that we are men. Real men.”

  These were the Chinook Indians they were passing by, and each village seemed dirtier than the last. They were crawling with lice and did not seem to notice

  A handful of Chinook braves offered assistance with their horses on an especially long portage around the Celilo Falls. Then they took their own pay by pilfering the stores for hatchets and a canister of black powder. Below the falls were stacks of salmon, dried, pounded, packed in grass baskets, heaped into bales, stored in mat huts, and cached in deep holes in the sand.

  “I’d take a basket of pounded salmon just to get even,” said Shannon, “but I hate to add more of that to my belly. I don’t think it’ll ever wash out of my hair or ears, and I’ll always smell this way.”