Sacajawea

  Eagle was certain this was the dark night that had been predicted weeks ago when she watched the moonlight go out with an eclipse. If she had only known then what the omen meant, she could have warned Sacajawea. Tears were in her eyes. She heard a low sigh in the darkness.

  “Umbea.” It came from Baptiste as he let his breath out as if he’d been kicked.1 Sacajawea was gone!

  CHAPTER

  44

  Jerk Meat

  After Sacajawea left Charbonneau, she apparently wandered about for some time, finally making her home with a band of Comanches, called the Quohadas, or the Antelope Band.

  HUGH D. CORWIN, editor of Prairie Lore, the journal of the Southwestern Oklahoma Historical Society, personal letter, 1967.

  Sacajawea sat wrapped in her blanket behind a small hillock. The night wind did not touch her aching back. The mare was tethered close by. The pitch blackness of the night, the fireflies, the silence, the tragic, soundless rushing of the great earth through time—it caught at her breath, her heart.

  She held no resentment, no bitterness. Life was more than what she saw, heard, and sensed. It extended beyond the visible, the audible, the sensory limits. She was certain the moon in eclipse had foretold this parting from her family. It was a path in her life and could not be avoided. It was her weakness that had held her from sensing, weeks ago, this predetermined change in her life.

  Then daylight came. The sun’s rays filtered through high clouds. The mare, staked Shoshoni-fashion, browsed on the dried grasses.

  She lay very still, listening, so still that not even the yellowed grass under her rustled. There was no other sound than that of the mare getting her first meal of the day. There was no neighing, no creaking of leather. The only other audible sound was the loud beating of her own heart.

  She wondered if Eagle would take a beating for having helped her get the mare. Her scowl changed to a smile as she thought that this mare was one of the best horses belonging to Charbonneau. Charbonneau would not dare punish Eagle severely, for she might leave and go to her own people.

  Sacajawea said aloud to the mare, “Charbonneau, you would then have no one to mend your leggings or sew moccasins or boil your tea. The Ute child will not stay long if she has to do squaw’s work. She will run to some other white trapper who has foofaraw that takes her fancy.”

  Her monologue was accompanied by small, scandalized clucks and tooth clickings, glottal explosives, and offended, swallowed gutturals. The mare said nothing.

  “You always did like young squaws. I have heard men tease about your ‘daughters.’ Below your face hairsyou turn red and angry as though it were some unnatural thing to hide. I feared that violent temper more than thunderstorms.”

  Tongue clicking and head shaking, she smiled at the cloudless sky and rolling hills. She decided to move south with the warmth for the winter. She wadded a strip of jerky against the inside of her cheek.

  Facing the sun she said, “Thank you, Great Spirit, for giving me the courage to leave my man at the time he was no longer safe to live with. Thank you for directing the path of my boys. Thank you for guiding me down the trail south where the sun warms the earth.”

  Sacajawea was thirsty. Her mouth was dry. Her legs were stiff. Her back ached. Her eyes searched the ravine. She saw only the scrub timber, brown-leaved oaks. She pulled at the buckskin tether of the mare and rode easily through the center of a dry creek bed.

  She did not build a fire that night for fear it might be a signal to Charbonneau. She rested awhile, then when she discovered the full moon, she decided to travel. The land began to fall slowly underfoot. Twice the mare slipped into natural dips in the land, jarring her enough to rattle her teeth. The mare stumbled into wet, sloggy mud. There were tall bulrushes. She pushed through to the other side of the rushes. A fringe of trees loomed over her, a darker patch of black in the night. She stopped to listen, head bent, loose and flowing hair hanging to one side. Somewhere ahead, water was running over gravelly shallows. She moved through the trees. The horse walked on grass, then gravel.

  At the edge of the stream Sacajawea dismounted, pulling the horse along until she touched the edge of the running water. She drank from cupped hands. The mare drank. She bathed her face and arms, then her neck under her flowing hair, and let water run over her tensed, aching back. She dug out a comb from the leather bag. It was made from dried buffalo tongue, a prickly slab. She wondered why she had brought this along when she also had the bone comb from Chief Red Hair. She shrugged her shoulders, cringing from the pain in her back. She combed her hair from her forehead back and then down to the hair ends hanging about herhips. She braided it and used small strands from the bulrushes to tie the ends.

  She walked, leading the mare. She went over hills, sometimes through thick underbrush. Several times the horse could not walk through the deep, wet muck of a slough. It took time to circle the sloughs. She had time.

  For many days Sacajawea slept part of the morning, then traveled by horseback until nightfall, when she tethered the mare and wrapped herself in the blanket to sleep. Each morning the pain in her back was less noticeable.

  One morning the supply of dried meat ended, and from then on she subsisted on the meager fare of the land. Game was scarce, and it was a rare day when she could bring down a rabbit or a quail with a stick or stone to cook over a small fire of dry wood, started by her steel firesticks.

  She counted ten suns before reaching a west-flowing river. The river was shallow when she first found it. By the intaglio of many hooves, which her mind recreated as the dancing movement of horses waiting to cross, she saw that people, possible friendly, had forded the river. She followed. She crossed, made night camp, and listened to the purling against boulders and sycamore trunks. The morning was cloudy.

  Along with high humidity and a feeling of uncomfortable mugginess, the low-lying clouds brought swarms of no-see-’ems—small, biting gnats that made her arms and legs itch. The back of her neck was crawling with them and it felt like each had a tiny, jabbing lance. The mare shook her head, switched her tail, and whinnied. She might have bolted if the rawhide tether had not been held tightly. Sacajawea wondered if this were a warning to turn back.

  Sacajawea led the mare through a natural redoubt of wind-torn scrub pines and boulders. Suddenly a fierce rain squall came up out of nowhere. The horse whinnied, and Sacajawea had to hold the lead rope firm.

  The wind died quickly and the rain grew gentle. Soon the sun shone faintly through the clouds. A blue jay sitting on a windfall scolded.

  She climbed a rise to thick yellowed grass and saw not a moving thing except the river, which had risenand was flooding muddily through the little canyon. She checked the tether of the mare and spread the blanket out on the thick grass to dry in the last rays of sunlight. She emptied the pack sack, piled her loose belongings on a huge flat-surfaced boulder, then sorted them and placed them where they caught the breeze and would dry. She took off her wet tunic and spread it on the boulder. She put on the old blue coat, smelling the dampness of it the second it came out of the pack sack. She lay down. She was asleep in an instant.

  When she woke she was as tired and achy as when she lay down the night before. The gray woolen blanket was nearly dry, holding only the dampness that was in the humid air. She folded it and began to repack her things when she heard a loud scraping. She glanced around, wondering if she were alone with the mare. Nothing seemed out of place. The crows were still perched in the trees overhead. She put the old blue coat into the leather bag, which was stiff from yesterday’s rain. She rubbed her tunic between her hands to soften it before pulling it over her head. The sound of scraping came again and this time it made her jump. The mare calmly munched the red clover and prairie acacia. Sacajawea looked on either side, then her eyes moved upward. Two post oaks were rubbing branches in the wind, making a scratchy, creaking noise. She laughed out loud. She was not only tired, she was hungry and thirsty. She looked at the muddy river and wondered if she coul
d find clear spring water. Tossing the blanket on the mare’s back and tying the leather bag on top, she swung one leg over and pulled herself up on the horse. The waist-high grass seemed greener after the rain. But signs of game, large or small, were washed from the red soil.

  At midday when the sun was hot Sacajawea saw a lake whose wavy shoreline seemed less than a mile away. However, it continued to move just out of reach. The hills that rose out of the flat plain looked like islands in the lake. Once she stopped and made the horse go backward several yards. The shoreline moved forward toward the horse.

  By sunset she was walking, leading the mare through grass and dried mud. The air was drier and cooler andshe trudged on, enjoying it. Her gait was pigeon-toed, the usual squaw-walk, the toes kept inward to keep one’s balance while carrying heavy loads.

  Shortly past sundown she sat on a rock and bent with the mare to drink great handfuls of water from a spring that oozed from the black leaf mold at her feet. She was warm, almost feverish. The autumn air seemed hot and dry. She put water on her face and wrists. She felt refreshed and took off her moccasins and bathed her feet in the small well of cool water, muddying it. She noticed signs of deer in her path. Hunger gnawed her insides. The hills rose like great loaves of brown bread taken fresh from Rose York’s oven. Sacajawea dug roots and chewed their juices dry.

  In the morning, she stood to look from a great height on a green river that found its way in the open along a great distance. This sight gave her much relief. She thought if she moved downward toward the river she might find a village. In the evening, she worked on a crude bow and a couple of arrows, using the hard maple and strips of leather from the bottom of a tunic and her butcher knife.

  Each day seemed like the one before, but the land changed slowly, subtly. The hills were not rolling, but rose right out of the flatland. The land across the winding river seemed boundless. A loneliness engulfed her. She shot a squirrel one evening. She ate berries and roots and padded her frayed moccasins with the squirrel hide. The land seemed limitless. The horizons did not express the limits of a valley; they told her there was more beyond, that this bare, treeless land stretched away and away. She felt small and dry. She chipped the local stone crudely to make more points for the arrows.

  The plains seemed to have less game, water, and vegetation. Heat waves lay over the bare grass. The mare carried her along. She did not direct her, but let the Great Spirit guide her path from one bit of brittle grass the mare munched to the next. Her hunger was not sharp, not demanding as it had been during days gone by when she had been with Lewis and Clark but it was there, a part of her.

  A horned toad scrabbled away toward the west. Shepursued him, thinking he might make a sort of meal and give her strength to find a spring before sundown. She took quick, jerking looks around to all sides, furtively, like a savage in the wilds. She was looking for something to drink, something to eat. She was a hunter. And then, far down a slope against a wall of yellow rock, she saw buffalo with little birds sitting on their backs riding across the prairie. Surely there was a hunting party out for such a fine herd.

  She looked at her small bow and short arrows. She longed for a taste of good, roasted buffalo hump. She began to eye the mare as she tethered her for the evening. Then, hurriedly, she caught half a dozen locusts and pulled their legs off so they could not jump away. She let them dry on a flat stone, then chewed them, swallowing cautiously. She did not think of what they had been; she thought only of food to sustain herself. I believe I could eat dog meat today, she thought. Chief Red Hair would find it unbelievable that I could be so hard put for something to eat.

  It was a day to remember, with the sound of wolves howling far along the prairie, trailing the great herd of buffalo, and no hunters following or even aware of all the good meat and robes walking away. In the twilight she tried out her bow and arrows on the bull bats. She hit one and spent the whole evening skinning and roasting it, but the meat on its skeleton was so scarce she was left even more hungry.

  The wild, hard land of the southwest rolled on forever. Day after day, Sacajawea clung to the back of the mare feeling light-headed. At night she slept under mesquite brush, inert, palsied with weakness.

  One evening she stopped in an arroyo where wild cedars grew dark green. The sun sank in a sickly yellow cloud bank casting a blood red streak through it. On one of her quick, furtive looks she saw a pronghorn buck. It was directly behind her on a rise, not more than a hundred yards away. The thought came to her mind that this was some kind of a foretoken. She could not think what it meant. Cold sweat was on her hands. She moved slowly away from the cedar in order to see the pronghorn better. He had not moved a muscle, but stood with his head high and his nose in the air, a sentinel.

  His black horns rose straight above his eyes. His face was very white, and the three white bars on his throat stood out shiny in the fading light of day. A bubble of white spittle dripped down from the left side of his mouth as he finished chewing the last bit of cud, then fell to the rocks at his feet. His little tufted tail twitched slightly. Sacajawea could hear his breathing distinctly. She could smell his warm, heavy, animal scent. The long white hair on his buttocks rose and expanded into bunches, yet he did not move. Then, slowly, his head turned, and she looked straight into his yellow-brown eyes. She blinked her eyes. He was gone. His movement was so fast she could hardly remember his leaving at all.

  Shaking with excitement, she ran across the cap rock to where he had been. She fell to her knees, her hands searching frantically. Ai—iii! There it was! A small, dark, wet spot, a drop of spittle where he had stood. She was certain of it. It was still wet to her touch. She sat, and her mind began churning. Had he been waiting for her? Was this a vision? Was it an omen? And so—what was the meaning of the pronghorn that seemed to look her over the way a father might look over a daughter in a new tunic? Slowly she made her way back to the mare who was patiently waiting. The horse was drinking. Sacajawea had not noticed the spring at the foot of the cap rock. She lay beside it, searching her mind. Why had she not seen the spring? The water poured into her parched body like a river of ice. It stabbed at her insides. Her stomach cramped in pain. Her head swam. She lay very still until the dizzy spell subsided, looking upward at the sky in twilight. She saw silhouetted against the blackening sky four twisted cedars on the cap rock near where the pronghorn had stood. She closed her eyes against their burning. Four—the medicine number of the People!

  Her stomach hurt terribly, but that was nothing. Her wonderment was too big for pain. She would rest until she was stronger and could think on it more clearly. There was no need to hurry. She had a lifetime of years ahead. Maybe the Great Spirit would speak to her in dreams and tell her what she was to do. She lay quitestill, waiting for the cramping to stop and thinking about the pronghorn.

  In her night dream she saw four yellow, glacial lilies trembling in the wind against snow patches at her feet. The magnificent pronghorn came to sniff at the lilies, then walked across them, not once looking at her.

  “No, no,” she called, “do not trample such beauty.”

  The pronghorn turned and seemed to smile at her. His mouth opened, and he spoke in a deep, resonant voice, “More will come in their time and be as beautiful; do not be troubled, my daughter.”

  The morning dawn was gray. The wind stirred through the rocks. The air was filled with tiny cold teeth. Sacajawea’s mind cleared. Desperately she longed for another human, someone to tell about the dream, someone to talk with. She began to wonder about the unseen people who had crossed the river with many horses days before.

  She was tired of living on snakes, horny toads, and dry grass roots. Her tunic was filthy with dust and dirt; her moccasins were but patches from various hides of small animals. Her hair hung in greasy strands. Her hands were dark brown from the sun and callused from leading the mare through rocks and small canyons, along dry creek beds. Now she rode and held loosely to the reins as the mare put one foot ahead of the other on
and on in the cold day’s grayness. She was certain that the pronghorn was a talisman, a protector for her. Had he not called her daughter and told her not to be troubled?

  She came to leafless willows at the edge of a shallow river. She sat in a slight dip in the land as protection from the cold wind. Her legs wobbled. She felt weak. She lay back between several stones. The earth was cold. She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them abruptly to check again what she thought her mind had told her was in the willow. A small, straight branch did not seem to belong. She stood up and worked it loose. It was a broken arrow shaft, about a foot long. It was bound with thin rawhide, and on the end that had been embedded in the tree was black obsidian. The head was cut in a manner that caused Sacajawea to turn it over and examine it more carefully.

  “My people!” she exclaimed out loud. “Great Spirit, you must not play tricks with me.”

  She knew well enough that this was too far south to be Shoshoni country. The dizziness came back, so she sat for a moment. Without much thought she began pulling her fingers through the tufts of ripened grass, collecting the tiny dropseeds in her skirt. She pinched some between thumb and forefinger and put them in her mouth. The little seeds were hard, but when chewed made a nutty-tasting, gummy paste that was quite good. She spent most of the day by the shallow river collecting seeds and putting them in the leather bag. She walked past several charred mounds that looked as though fires had been built there recently; beside the mounds were small piles of chipped black obsidian. She saw these things, but her mind did not connect them with any human occupation, for she was preoccupied with keeping the dizziness to a minimum.

  She looked to see where the mare was and was startled to see dark gray-black clouds piling up in the distance. She could see small puffs of dust being blown up by the wind under the clouds. It grew darker and the wind began to blow, flattening the prairie grass. She noticed a sick, yellow-green color at the leading edge of the clouds as they swooped lower toward the earth. Dust devils whirled along the ground, closer now, carrying sticks of dry mesquite and stalks of dead plants along with sand and dirt.