“A fine cooking basket,” he said, one side of his mouth turned up. “And so—I also see you have yourself gained much strength from that old father antelope.”
She was too ashamed to reply. She owed much to this man, and she was rude and unthinking. Tears of humiliation came to her eyes; she blinked them back and sat very quietly.
He ate with his back to her. Then he turned and said, “If we move quickly, we will be in the village by evening. Come. A warm tepee is better than sleeping in a bed of snow.”
She longed to ride the mare as he rode his pinto. Her legs began to ache, and her feet were numb. Her body became weary. She sneezed and coughed. Her throat ached. She knew she dare not say a word. Soon she could make out a small stream with big trees along it. Among the trees nestled the village, made up of some fifty or sixty lodges. Most of the hides that covered the tepees were decorated, but Sacajawea could not see this in the evening light. She saw only the warm, friendly yellow showing through the conical tepees. The snow stung like porcupine needles on her bare arms and legs now. Her hair was wet, and the top caked with snow.
The lodge of Jerk Meat was near the center of camp.
It was made up of a larger tepee, where Jerk Meat’s mother and father lived; a small tepee, where Sacajawea was given sleeping room with two others, a young woman and an old man; and the smaller tepee, where Jerk Meat slept.
The young woman was Spring, sister of Jerk Meat. Spring had recently lost her man on a raid across the Rio Grande. Sacajawea also learned that the old man was the grandfather, Big Badger. Jerk Meat’s mother was called Hides Well, and his father, Pronghorn, was a chief.
That first evening, she held back her sneezes. She lay down and her mind was clear, as a warm, clean buffalo robe was pulled over her by Spring. Sleep came almost instantly. She did not hear the drumming and singing as the village celebrated the coming of more hunters with good catches. It was a celebration for the food that would keep them through the cold winter. The early snow foretold a long, cold winter.
In the morning, Hides Well came to the tepee and motioned for Big Badger and Spring to leave. She motioned for five or six squaws to come inside. They crowded around the buffalo-hide couch staring at the sick Sacajawea.
“Wadzewipe,” they repeated among themselves. “Lost Woman.” “Avajemear,” said one short, fat squaw with a single thin silver loop dangling through one pierced ear. “She went a long way.”
All afternoon, women trooped in to gaze at the woman who had come from a long way, alone. They poked their fingers and elbows in each other’s ribs as they jabbered about the newcomer as if she had no ears to hear. Big Badger, outside against a cottonwood tree, watched from slitted eyes and grunted each time he shifted his weight for a more comfortable position. Finally, he pulled himself up to his full height and then bent double to enter the tepee, scattering the women to the outside with a wave of his big boney brown hands.
“Enough. The woman must rest to gain strength.”
For a week, Sacajawea lay most of the time on her robe inside this tepee. She fought off high fever and a sore throat. Once, in delirium, she spoke of the blackman who danced with her baby, and then of the white man who beat her upon the back.
The old grandfather, Big Badger asked, “Who is this young woman? Where did she come from?”
Jerk Meat replied simply, “She is Wadzewipe, Lost Woman.”
Big Badger had a drooping face with a few scattered white hairs that he did not bother to pluck since he did not care about his appearance. His hair was white and thin, drawn into slender braids.
“There, and so—we must end her sickness,” Big Badger said one morning. “Call Kicking Horse.”
Kicking Horse had red and yellow feathers tied to his wrists and ankles. Large silver loops hung from his ears. He carried a buffalo’s scrotum made into a rattle in his left hand; in his right he carried a quirt. He hit the ground around the sleeping couch furiously with the quirt, driving the hot devils out of the tepee. He turned to Spring and spoke so softly that Big Badger could not understand him. Soon Spring was back with a paunch full of water. He ordered Spring to remove the robe and tunic from the sick woman. Laying the quirt to one side, the Medicine Man sang in a monotone, his eyes rolling toward the top of the tepee. He turned without losing a beat in his song, and asked that the paunch be emptied over the woman. Sacajawea drew in a fast breath as the cold water hit her hot belly. At first it felt cooling and refreshing, then she shivered uncontrollably. Spring and Kicking Horse moved her to a dry couch and quickly covered her with a heavy skin. She was near the smoke hole in the center of the tepee. Her shivering stopped. She felt weak and did not like the shaking of the rattle that Kicking Horse insisted must be done through the night.
Usually Big Badger seemed sad and hardly alive, of little account. But a smile drew all the sag out of his face as he watched Jerk Meat reverently roll himself on the ground in the four cardinal directions, invoking powers that governed the great mountains of the north. Jerk Meat made signs of power and safety in the air with a twig from a lightning-struck tree and placed the dried wing of a dead turkey over Sacajawea’s heart to give her life. He did this while Kicking Horse rattledand danced the fire dances he performed for curative purposes. At dawn, Kicking Horse went to his own lodge.
By morning, Spring was crouching near Sacajawea with a horn filled with a thick, hot soup.
Sacajawea took only a few mouthfuls before lying back and sleeping again.
“She wandered many months,” said Jerk Meat to Big Badger outside the tepee. “She must have been lost when her people moved to a winter camp. She must have stopped to look at the flowers or talk with birds. She is that kind of woman. I saw her talk with a buck antelope just before I shot him.”
“Aha,” said Big Badger, hopping about on his spindly legs, which seemed hardly able to carry his stooped body. “She babbles about a baby, a white man that is a scoundrel, and a white man that is black. I never heard of black white men. She is perhaps a Medicine Woman, with special knowledge?”
“She is Wadzewipe,” answered Jerk Meat.
“Aha,” answered Big Badger. “You are right. She is a woman, not a girl. Perhaps she has seen thirty summers. She already has much knowledge of life. You can see that plainly. Someone has made lash marks upon her back. She was sent to us, maybe. The Great Spirit has reasons unknown to us for what he does.” Big Badger went inside the tepee to look at Sacajawea and shake his head at her thin cheeks, but when he looked the cheeks were not burning with fever, and he smiled and called the others.
Spring brought water in a skin paunch, and they watched Sacajawea gulp it down. Big Badger showed Spring how to chew yucca roots, warm the residue by the fire, and apply it to the lacerations on Sacajawea’s feet, which were too slow in healing.
In a few days, Sacajawea’s strength began to return. A warm stirring of thankfulness ran through her. These were humans showing kindness to a stranger. She marveled at the warm feeling such action could bring.
For the first time, Sacajawea moved her eyes around the tepee. She saw that the floor was swept and the poles at the sides held cooking utensils and clothing, neatly hooked. She counted the skins around the tepee—ten—this was a small tepee. The skins were doubled at the botton so that at night when light from the fire showed through, the figures inside would not cast shadows for the outside world to see what was going on inside. The tepee was well made. She could see that the tanned buffalo hides were well sewn and stretched tight, flesh side out, over twenty, maybe twenty-two, straight, slender poles of cedar that had been peeled, seasoned, and shaved smooth to the same diameter. Each lodgepole was about twenty feet long, with pointed ends so that they would stay fixed in the ground. The Comanches used the four-pole foundation, as did the Shoshonis, which gave a grouping of two poles on each side, unlike the three-pole foundation—forming a kind of spiral, that was used by Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Arapahos.
Sacajawea remembered the times she had helpe
d her mother, grandmother, and sister tie the four lodgepoles together. The remembrance brought a constriction to her throat. The women had pulled, pushed and steadied the pine poles to get them upright, then tied them securely near the top. Sacajawea sighed. She swallowed and set her mouth in a firm line after wiping the water from her eyes. She and her sister, Rain Girl, would pull the bottom ends of the poles out into an egg-shaped circle, then the rest of the poles were laid against the top crotch and pulled out to form the complete ellipse. The long leather rope that was left dangling from the top was then pulled tight and used to tie these other poles in place. Rain Girl stood on their mother’s shoulders to do this. Old Grandmother would always say, “Tighter, tighter, pull tighter. What weaklings girls are nowadays. This lodge will fall with the first hint of a breeze.” It never did as far as Sacajawea could remember. From on top of her mother’s shoulders Rain Girl used a rock to pound the poles solidly into the soft earth, keeping them three feet apart from one another.
Sacajawea remembered how it felt to grab the end of that rope and pull it outside the framework. She walked with the sun, went clockwise four times—the medicine number—pulled the rope upward as tight as her arms would permit. She could still hear the snapping of the rope as it whipped up into place. She left the rope hanging near the center of the floor inside, sothat Old Grandmother could fasten it to the anchor stake as tight as she wished. The anchor stake was about a yard long, two inches thick, and driven into the ground toward the back wall a few feet beyond the center fire.
This had been a happy time, Sacajawea thought. My mother sang and munched on dried fruit. Sometimes for more security Old Grandmother would set short stakes at an angle across the lodgepole, pounding them in the ground with a stone so that the lodge would be safer in harsh gusty winds.
The buffalo hide covering was pushed upward from the inside by a long pole. Rain Girl stood on her mother’s shoulders to fasten the covering at the top. Then it was stretched around the outside of the poles and fastened at the front with finger-sized wooden pegs on either side of the door flap. Those lodge cover hides were usually replaced every two years, because of wear and weathering.
The widest part of the floor was from the entrance directly to the back wall. The place of honor was next to this rounded, back wall, where the man of the lodge slept. Beds of the other occupants were on both sides of the egg-shaped floor space. The beds were elevated above the ground about six inches with poles and rawhide slats. Buffalo robes were spread on top for bedding. Pillows were made of rabbit skins and stuffed with sweet-smelling grass. Sometimes a buffalo hide was hung between beds for privacy.6
Sadly, Sacajawea wondered if she would ever see those Shoshoni tepees again. From her resting place she looked through the open front flap of the tepee. The snow had melted. Jerk Meat was at work wrapping arrows in front of a fire.
Big Badger was slouched down beside the cottonwood tree facing the tepee, his eyes closed against the bright winter sunshine. Big Badger was thinking, Our horses have never been more numerous, and our donkeys are fat. We have nearly one hundred warriors, and our tepees are mended. We are like a mighty bow drawn taut, ready to shoot arrows in any direction with force. The Great Spirit has brought us to this superb condition.
Approving what he saw of the equipment of his village, the old man next studied his tribe. It was well organized, faithful to the one unifying Great Spirit, disciplined, vigorous. It was as cohesive a unit as could then have been found in the desert regions—less educated, perhaps, since no member was able to pound silver or polish turquoise—but unified as no other tribe of the Comanches could be, for it had been Big Badger’s stern command in the warriors’ secret society, of which he was headman, that no strangers be allowed to enter the Quohada tribe without a period of indoctrination so rigorous as to repel most applicants.
Sometimes a Mexican lived in the Quohada village. Often the Mexican was captured as a small boy and held as a slave by a blood covenant with one of the warriors. Blood was taken from a vein in the captive’s arm to signify he was a slave and had a right to life, food, and protection. No one dared molest him as he was chattel property. Of course, the owner could sell him at any time, and then the blood ceremony was repeated.
When the Mexican captives were grown, they could become members of the tribe. Some of the Mexican Quohadas made excellent warriors. After a successful raid they were usually given a Comanche name and even allowed to take a Comanche wife.
With women, the problems were different. In their constant raids with other tribes, the Quohadas often took prisoners, and generally the women, if enticing creatures, were kept and never traded back to their rightful owners. In those early years, not even Big Badger’s son, Pronghorn, stayed away from the women prisoners. Big Badger was smart enough to realize his impotence in this matter. Rape of women captives was not looked down upon, as it was with the true Quohada women. Jerk Meat had taken a Kiowa woman as his wife nearly ten years ago in order to protect her from Kicking Horse, the Medicine Man, and some of the other more brutal Quohadas. The woman was loyal and a strong worker. Big Badger respected her as a true Quohada. She died from injuries received when the horse she was riding put its foot in a gopher hole and fell on top of her. Her child was born dead and she died twodays later. Big Badger’s grief was great and it was many weeks before he could smile again. Jerk Meat also grieved long and deeply. He could not eat for days and he found it hard to carry on a conversation. He suffered constant pain in his belly, and found no joy in a successful raid or hunt. At the end of that year Big Badger advised that he find another woman.
One morning before Sacajawea was barely awake, Hides Well came into the tepee and began cutting off the remainder of Sacajawea’s hair. All but her most tattered tunic had been taken away, and now she was warned not to use much water, nor to rub grease on her head or skin. By now she was well enough to perform the menial tasks required of the women of the Quohadas—cutting and fetching wood, pounding corn, dragging away dung, carrying water, and helping the other women scrape flesh from pegged-out hides.
Although some of her strength had returned, she felt depressed. This was a new life. But she was a slave, something she abhorred. She had grown accustomed to living in the manner of the white people, and it had been much easier than this hard existence in this harsh land. She was determined to make the best of her situation and complain to no one. The Quohadas had willingly taken her in, and they were kind to her—she would comply with their rules of living. She rested frequently between tasks and each time discovered that she was an object of great curiosity in the village. She saw eyes watching her from the tepee doors or from underneath tepee flaps. Wherever she went, she felt curious stares. Children were fascinated by her. They constantly followed her, saying, “Tell us stories. Are traders white-skinned? We have seen the Mexicans, and they are brown.”
Jerk Meat went hunting and in two days came back with an elk, which he took to Kicking Horse for healing the fever of Wadzewipe.
Soon Sacajawea lost herself in the satisfaction of the work, and the depression lifted. Sometimes she hummed one of the Quohada songs with the women while she worked or was in the process of making a good thing, and she felt satisfaction at this accomplishment.
But after these times of forgetfulness, she would suddenly see clearly and feel guilty. How could she, a mother, have forgotten? She would feel as if she had been unfaithful to her son who loved her. She believed that one day she would find her son, Baptiste, when he had returned from the land across the Great Eastern Waters. She felt that the boy Tess would follow in the tracks of his father and become a trapper and trader, working more easily with the white men because he had gone to the school.
Early one morning she was up helping roast the antelope and elk that would be part of a feast day with games and contests celebrating the winter sun before it was lost from sight behind snow clouds.
Spring, who was pleasing to look at, with a broad face and kind black eyes, stir
red the outside fire under a roast. There were no regular eating hours in Comanche families. Food of one kind or another was always kept in readiness for whenever any member of the family became hungry. As Spring turned the meat, Sacajawea noted the thickening around her middle. Hides Well came up with bark plates and said, “And so—she is going to have the child by early spring. Big Badger will be delighted to have a boy to train and teach the ways of a warrior.”
It was the custom in most tribes, when there was no father left in the family, for an aged relative to take over the training of the child. If it were a boy, Big Badger would teach him to be an expert with a child’s bow and teach him to harden himself by the time he was twelve summers, so he could run seventy-five miles a day through the cactus and mesquite-laden country, up and down mountains and canyons, with a tirelessness that would be the despair of the white men who tired to follow him.7
Sacajawea caught her breath as she thought, And so—the child might be a girl. Oh, joy, I will help in the small one’s training. I will show her how to sew beautiful designs on fine white doeskins with dyed quills and antelope teeth and small, polished bones. I will teach her the Shoshoni way of weaving baskets of strong, tough grass.
“I am thankful my brother found you and had sense enough to bring you home,” Spring said to Sacajawea.
“I am thankful to have friends,” said Sacajawea. “Have you been eating finely ground uncooked bone? You must so your papoose will have strong bones and your own teeth will be preserved.”
Spring looked up, startled. “Wadzewipe, you talk like my older sister.”
“And so—I feel I am.” Sacajawea smiled. “You must be strong to raise a child with no father. I will help you teach her.”
“I was thinking—thinking about finding myself a man.” Spring giggled behind her left hand.