The clerk looked quizzically at her, then asked, “You belong to anyone? You got a husband? Someone who eats your stew?”
“Ai,” she smiled. “He is Charbonneau. He is also a friend of Chief Red Hair.”
The clerk turned and, looking up, called to Chouteau. “Boss! This here squaw speaks French and English and claims she knows General Clark. She says her husband is a man called Charbonneau. Know him?”
Chouteau looked over the balcony. He was taller than most Frenchmen, slender, with dark, flashing eyes, very carefully dressed, and with an easy manner, as if he had long ago decided not to be bothered by little things.
“Oui, I know him. He lived with Indians many years way up north. He’s the squawman that likes brandy and les jeunes filles. He was an interpreter for Lewis and Clark on their trip to the west. The men on that trip tell stories about him—not too flattering. That could be one of his squaws. Which one I wouldn’t know, but if she says she knows General Clark, I daresay she does. How do you do, Madame Charbonneau.”
Sacajawea saw him bow toward her. “Merci. I am fine. How do you do, Monsieur Chouteau,” she said.
The clerk said nothing. There was, he thought, nothing worth saying. After that, the clerk was kind to her and tried to help her understand about money and the many things in the trading post that she did not know.
One day he was astonished to find that she claimed to have gone along on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Glancing at her, he was unreasonably annoyed by the truth in her eyes. There was decency about her; she was not one to conceal facts or prevaricate. This squaw had nothing to hide and did not pretend with stories. After that, he could not do enough for her when she came to the trading post.
Sacajawea always told Otter Woman all she had seen in the post and begged her to come, but Otter Woman was shy because she could not speak or understand enough French or English. “I will teach you,” suggested Sacajawea.
“No, I cannot learn. It is too much for my head. I will listen to you and pretend it was me there in the town. You continue selling the moccasins I make and bring me the cloth so that I can make myself soft, brightly colored dresses.” She actually preferred taking care of the boys or sitting out of the way in the shade of a building and watching the passersby, drawing her shawl over her face if anyone seemed to look at her. She listened to the white ladies talking together and wished she could be so gay. She admired their dress and curly hair. But at the same time she missed the more familiar things in a Minnetaree village. “A cooking fire in a mud lodge is easier to keep hot than this one in a cage of stones.” She complained about the fireplace in the cabin. She complained about the wooden floor. “It has to be swept more often than a hard-packed dirt floor.”
“I will tell you something strange I have learned,” Sacajawea told her one evening as the days grew shorter. “White men, like Chief Red Hair, have only one woman, no more.” She clapped her hands to indicate the finality of “one.”
“Are they so poor? Can they not afford more?” asked Otter Woman.
“No, not poor; they could buy many. They do not want more. That is the way of the white men. But whenthey live with us, they take our ways, as our man has done.”
“It is the best way. I would not like to do all the work in a lodge,” said Otter Woman, clearing her throat. “I am glad to have you to help here.”
“And more,” said Sacajawea with her hand over her mouth as if she were about to divulge a secret. “The white man does not buy his woman. Women are not paid for with horses and other valuable goods. They are not won in games. A white squaw does not belong to a man unless she wishes it to be.”
It was unbelievable to Otter Woman. “It would cause great trouble, I think.”
“But then,” said Sacajawea, “is our way always best?” She was thinking how her father had sold her to Big Moose when she was only a papoose—too small to understand. “White men have black people to help with work. Like our friend Ben York. There are black squaws, too. The white men called them servants.”
“Our way is best. Squaws are the servants. I do not mind being a squaw.” After a moment, Otter Woman’s eyes went to the floor, and she shuffled her moccasins back and forth. “That is not true. I would like to be called lady.”
Sacajawea looked at Otter Woman, surprised.
“Ai. I like their dresses and the shell combs in their hair. They are prettier than we are in our drab skin tunics. But they could not gather wood, smoke jerky, or skin a deer in a dress.”
“And so—you would rather wear a dress and not be able to do your work?”
“I prefer the cool cloth of the white squaw’s dress. And the warmth of her long, fringed shawl.”
Sacajawea laughed at her. Otter Woman began to laugh at the absurdity of her desire until a coughing spasm began that left her weak.
CHAPTER
37
Lewis’s Death
During the summer and early autumn of 1809, Meriwether Lewis found his problems as Governor of Louisiana Territory growing and his personal popularity decreasing. He was at odds with Frederick Bates, Secretary of Louisiana, who privately did everything he could to undermine Lewis’s position. Lewis feared his health was failing, and dosed himself continually with pills and medicines, in addition to drinking heavily.
On July 15 the Secretary of War wrote refusing to honor a draft of $500, which Lewis had drawn to provide Pierre Chouteau with tobacco and powder for Indian presents, to be used by the expedition that was taking Sheheke, the Mandan subchief, home. Lewis had to go to Washington to straighten out this mess.
In September, before he left Lewis appointed William Clark and two other friends as his attorney with full power to dispose of his property. On the eleventh of September he made a will. Then he wrote to his friend, Amos Stoddard, to forward his mail to Washington, D.C., until the last of December, after which, he expected to be back in St. Louis.
On October 11, 1809, at Grinders Stand in the last cabin on the border of the Chickasaw country, Governor Lewis died at the age of thirty-five. No one is sure if it were suicide or murder. Thomas Jefferson believed he was murdered. The evidence for murder is not strong, and the stories that came from Fort Pickering, the armypost at Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis) where Lewis had once commanded, strongly suggest suicide. None of the evidence is really conclusive.
ERNEST KIRSCHTEN, Catfish and Crystal. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1965, pp. 771–72.
Charbonneau came back in early fall in a dither because he had not trapped enough furs to see him through the winter, with two squaws and two children. When an offer to trap for a fur company on the branches of the Arkansas River came, he accepted. He would be in Comanche country. He had heard that the Comanche language was similar to Shoshoni. “Comanches, they are relatives of the Shoshonis, first cousins, like.” He had lied a little to get the job. “I have two Shoshoni women,” he’d said. “And if a man cannot learn to talk to his squaws, he must surely starve and have no moccasins made for him. I learn to talk Shoshoni plenty fast. So—I speak Comanche also, if they are the same.”
“You are our interpreter, then,” said the patron. “We leave day after tomorrow. Get yourself extra clothing and traps, and be here at dawn.”
Charbonneau took the paper notes from the man and rode his horse to Chouteau’s trading post. While Charbonneau was gone, Clark came to his cabin to tell the family good-bye for a time and to leave a hindquarter of young deer.
Clark sat on a packing crate warming himself before the fire. “I am going to talk with some important men. Charbonneau’s heard of them—Governor Harrison, General Johnathan, and my own brother, George Rogers Clark, also called general. I am going to talk about keeping on good terms with the Indian nations. It is my job to keep peace between tribes and nations. And my job to prevent or punish murder, drive squatters off the Indian lands, keep the Indians off land they have sold to whites, recover stolen horses and kidnapped children, punish robbery, and keep whiskey from the th
irsty Indians. I am going to get these men to help me. And York is coming with me to Kentucky. He’s found a girl, says he’s in love with Kentucky—but I believe it is Cindy Lou.”
“York?” Otter Woman giggled. She liked the big black man. “So—he is moving toward the sunrise as he said he would.”
“We’ll go east, all right,” said Clark. “To Louisville, then on to the cotton plantation where Cindy Lou lives.”
“Is she all black?” asked Otter Woman, her eyes wide with curiosity.
“Oh, I’m sure of it. According to York, she’s a tiny black girl who laughs and sings all day. I have it in the back of my mind to set York free, to let him be his own master. I would like to set him up in business with a wagon and team of four to six horses, hauling freight between Richmond and Nashville. He can have a job and a wife and be a free man.”
“Will he like that?” asked Sacajawea, puzzled. “Will he like it after looking after you for so long? Do you think he can change his thoughts and habits?”
“Certainly he can. That is the burning desire of all manservants these days—to be freedmen and run their own lives. York deserves this. He’s worked hard for me.”
“I have something for him,” said Sacajawea, looking for a piece of leather to wrap around the shirt she’d made for York.
“Let me see that,” said Clark, holding up the shirt. “Oh, York will be mighty pleased. I can see him showing off with a jig or two when he puts this on. Can’t you?”
“Ai,” said Sacajawea, glad she had finished the shirt in time.
But given his freedom, Ben York was not happy, and he had little success as an independent businessman. He did not take good care of the six horses Clark gave to him. He let two of them die and drove a bad bargain selling the remaining four. He sold them because the freight run was too long. York was away from Cindy Lou from early spring until midsummer, then from fall until winter.
“Damn this here freedom,” he told Cindy Lou. “I have never had a peaceful day since I got it.” He felt certain his business had been poor because the whites preferred dealing with other whites; they seemed to feel a black, even a freed one, was not to be trusted with valuable freight.
Eventually York left Cindy Lou to come back to General Clark. He told her that he would send for her assoon as he was settled in Saint Louis once again. But she did not hear a word from him. Once an itinerant black preacher told of a freedman who had died of cholera in Tennessee and was buried there as an unknown. “That man was free, but he was sick and poor and had no folks to care for him. Sometimes so much freedom does not suit a man,” said the preacher. Cindy Lou questioned him, and it seemed to her that the description fit her husband. She sent word back to General Clark by way of the preacher that York was dead.
“I just can’t believe it,” said Clark. “It does not seem like York to go off to die alone. Mark my words. That unknown buried in Tennessee is not my Ben York.”1
In the fall of 1809, there were many days of freezing rain around Saint Louis that glazed the foot trails with a sheath of ice that was like hobnail glass. Then a warm wind from the south came in, and the ground became soft as mush, overlaid with widening pools in low spots. The sunsets were orange under the low, scudding clouds.
One evening, Otter Woman was mending moccasins and coughing in the funny choked way she had developed that fall. She coughed deeply, but she tried to cut the cough off before it came from her throat so that it would not be so noticeable. “I think it is the smoke from the old prairie fires,” she’d say when she was outdoors; or, ‘Too much smoke blows back from this smoke hole,” she’d say if she were in the cabin sitting next to the fireplace.
“Maybe it is caused by the warm winds,” said Sacajawea, who went out back to find dried grasses and seed pods to put in the granite bowl on the windowsill, as she had seen Miss Judy do. The boys, who had suffered from cabin fever during the freezing rains, were outside pretending they saw black bear or wolves coming through the maple thicket. Suddenly Tess stopped.
“Someone’s coming!” he shouted. “I heard feet splashing through water, and a wet moccasin spat on the oozy trail.”
Sacajawea looked past the cabin. A black-caped figure was running up the path. The moist air was warm, too warm this evening for a thick cape. Who was it? She stepped quickly around the side of the cabin to the front. Miss Judy was knocking frantically on the door.
Otter Woman let her in as Sacajawea and the boys quickly followed. Miss Judy’s eyes were red, and she looked frightful. She stood in the middle of the floor and looked from one woman to the other, shaking her head.
“What is it?” Sacajawea asked.
“Oh, Janey,” Miss Judy whispered. “I had to come as soon as I heard. I had to tell you.”
“What?” repeated Sacajawea.
“It’s Meri. Lewis. He’s dead.”
Sacajawea’s hand went to her mouth. It was not true. Not the sandy-haired co-leader of the expedition, dead. Not after all he’d been through and survived as healthy as anyone. A cry escaped her lips, a soft moaning, a high-pitched keening, not loud but intense; then she stopped, sensing that Otter Woman was perplexed.
“Get coffee warmed for our guest,” said Sacajawea softly to Otter Woman. “Take her robe. It is warm. Open the door.”
Otter Woman muttered something about being treated like a servant. She looked at Miss Judy, who wept quietly, then she closed her mouth and ran to do as she was told.
Miss Judy sat on the edge of the bed, composed herself, and slowly told as much of Governor Lewis’s Tennessee tragedy as she knew. “Pierre Chouteau came to tell me so that I would know when Will comes back. Even Rose York, Ben’s mother, felt the sorrow and kept saying she wished Ben were here to sing prayers.”
Still stunned, Sacajawea could find no words to explain to Otter Woman how she felt. Her sorrow made her lash out with commands to hurry Otter Woman in making their guest feel welcome. “Get the chair for Miss Judy.”
“Ai,” said Otter Woman, scraping the chair across the floor to where Miss Judy could easily move from the bed to the chair with only one step.
“Meri sent us his favorite pair of ivory-handled dueling pistols as a wedding present,” Judy said, as if to herself. “Will was so pleased that he promised to name our first boy after him. And you know we did. Will begged him to come live with us when we first came to Saint Louis. But in that charming way of his he said,
Thank you, but no, I’m going to move in with Auguste Chouteau. It is better for two wayward bachelors to live together.’” Miss Judy pressed her face with a small white handkerchief.
Sacajawea sat on the floor close to Miss Judy’s chair. She could not hide her sorrow; tears ran down her cheeks.
Otter Woman sat the boys against the wall and gave them each a granite cup filled with a mixture that was half sugar and half bitter coffee.
“The guest is fed first,” Sacajawea said, sniffing and glaring at Otter Woman, who hurried to fill a cup with coffee for Miss Judy.
Otter Woman was careful not to spill anything on Miss Judy’s black wool skirt and ruffled, white-lace blouse. She kept her eyes downcast, then asked Sacajawea why they wept over a white man who had died far from Saint Louis and never came to see them as Chief Red Hair had done. She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a cough, then said, “I do not understand this deep feeling for this man.”
Miss Judy straightened, wiped her nose, and reached deep into her black-velvet handbag. “Here, I nearly forgot this. I brought you a throat balm. Dr. Saugrain made it up. It’s pine pitch and honey.” She handed Otter Woman the bottle and a pewter spoon. “Meriwether Lewis was a friend—more like a relative. A brother.”
“Ai, a brother.” Sacajawea nodded, her eyes still wet.
Otter Woman licked her lips and tried a spoonful of the cough syrup. She bent to let Tess have a taste from her spoon. Then Pomp hitched forward and took a taste.
Sacajawea made clucking noises, and the boys moved against the wall, th
eir backs straight. Their brown eyes watched Miss Judy.
“I call our baby Meri, but Will calls him Lew, or sometimes Looie.”
Otter Woman spoke up. “I know about that. I wanted to call mine Kakanostoke, but my man say non, he is Little Tess.”
“What is that name?” snapped Sacajawea.
“It is Blackfoot for Owl; it means Ears Far Apart.”
“I like it,” said Miss Judy, settling further back in the chair as she sipped the coffee.
The little cabin darkened in the deepening twilight. Sacajawea got up, her face now calm, closed the door, lighted two candles she took from the wooden shelf, and put them on the kitchen table. She put bowls on the table and poured stew from the pot beside the fire. She took a bowl and a large spoon to Miss Judy. Otter Woman sat beside the boys and ate her stew, letting them dip their spoons into her bowl. Sacajawea did not eat, but when she thought the boys had had enough, she pushed them outside, saying, “Stay on the step.” Soon they came in quietly, and she pushed them up on the hand-hewn bed; she took off their moccasins, shirts, and trousers, and placed them neatly on the shelf. “Too warm for a blanket,” she said.
Otter Woman sat on her couch of furs in the opposite corner and complained it was too dark to sew. Soon she was snoring.
Miss Judy pulled one of the gray-white blanket sheets from the shelf and spread it over Otter Woman, who coughed in her sleep. Then she blew out the candles and sat on the floor beside Sacajawea. Both stared into the flames of the fireplace; neither spoke of the grief that drew them together. When the fire was only coals, Miss Judy curled up on the floor, using her arms to rest her head, and said, “He was always kind and fair. He took in that old Creole, Piernia, and made him decent again. He liked to hold our baby son. He told how he was afraid at first to hold your little son. Said he’d never seen such a small human before. Oh, Janey, tell me what he was like to you.”
“He made dumplings for the men, and they teased him, but they ate and asked for more. He saw a bent fern and knew what size animal had been by. He found flowers and seeds no one else saw. He loved that big dog, Scannon. He traveled past plains barren of trees, beyond the mountains that shone night and day. He followed the river that flowed westward into the Stinking Waters, and he went right on until now he journeys to the Land of Everfeasting. We cannot speak his name,” Sacajawea whispered.