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_THE FIRST DAKOTA CHRISTMAS_
On Christmas eve the stockade was finished and the gate was shut. Withforty-five men and a blunderbuss Fort Mandan stood impregnable to anyforce the northern savages could bring against it.
But there was no hostility,--far from it. From curiosity or for tradethe Indians came in throngs, until on Christmas eve Captain Lewis sentout the announcement: "Let no one visit us to-morrow. It is our greatmedicine day."
Before daylight the wondering redmen were aroused from their buffalocouches by three volleys fired from the fort. Awe-struck they sat upand whispered: "White men making medicine." At sunrise a flag wasfloating above the palisade, but no Indian ventured to approach themysterious newly closed walls of Fort Mandan.
For his Christmas stocking every man received an allowance of flour,dried apples, and pepper, which together with corn, beans, squash, andunlimited buffalo meat and marrow bones made out a Christmas feast.
At one o'clock the gun was fired for dinner. At two came the signalfor the dance.
"Play up ole fashion reel. Everybody he mus' dance," said Cruzatte,tuning his fiddle. "We'll do our possible."
Cruzatte and Gibson played, Gass and Shannon led, Clark called thechanges; and with crackling fires, and a stamping like horses, away upthere under the Northern stars the first American Christmas wascelebrated on the upper Missouri.
Three wide-eyed spectators sat ranged around the walls. These were thesquaws of the interpreters, Madame Rene Jussaume, and the two wives ofCharboneau, Madame the old dame, and Sacajawea, the beautiful Indiancaptive stolen beyond the Rockies.
The Indians, in their cheerless winter villages, found much to attractthem at the fort of the white men. Soon after Christmas, WilliamBratton and John Shields set up their forge as blacksmiths, gunsmiths,and armourers. Day after day, with the thermometer forty degrees belowzero, a constant procession of Indians came wending in on thewell-beaten snow-track, with axes to grind and kettles to mend. Itseemed as if all the broken old kettles that had ever drifted into thecountry, from Hudson's Bay or Fort William or up from St. Louis, werecarried to Fort Mandan filled with corn to pay for mending.
Especially the Indians wanted battle-axes, with long thin blades likethe halberds of ancient warfare. Some wanted pikes and spears fixed onthe pointed ends of their long dog-poles. A burnt-out old sheet-ironcooking stove became worth its weight in gold. For every scrap of it,four inches square, the Indians would give seven or eight gallons ofcorn, and were delighted with the exchange. These bits of square sheetiron were invaluable for scrapers for hides, and every shred ofcutting that fell to the ground was eagerly bought up to fashion intoarrow tips. Metal, metal, metal,--the _sine qua non_ of civilisationhad come at last to the Mandans.
While Bratton was busy over his forge, and Shields at the guns, someof the men were out hunting, some were cutting wood to keep the greatfires roaring, and some were making charcoal for the smithy.
So the days went on. New Year's, 1805, was ushered in with theblunderbuss. By way of recreation the captains permitted the men tovisit the Indian villages where crowds gathered to see the white mendance, "heeling it and toeing it" to the music of the fiddles. Thewhite men in turn were equally diverted by the grotesque figures ofthe Indians leaping in the buffalo dances.
Captain Clark noted an old man in one of the Mandan villages and gavehim a knife.
"How old are you?"
"More than one hundred winters," was the answer. "Give me somethingfor the pain in my back."
But a grandson rebuked the old man. "It isn't worth while. You havelived long enough. It is time for you to go to your relations who cantake better care of you than we can."
The old man settled back in his robes by the fire and said no more.
"What accident has happened to your hand?" inquired Lewis of a chief'sson.
"Grief for my relatives," answered the boy.
It was a Mandan custom to mutilate the body, as a mark of sorrow forthe dead, until some had lost not only all their fingers, but theirears and hair. Sacred ceremonies of flagellations, knife thrusts intothe flesh, piercing with thorns and barbaric crucifixions,--thirtyyears later George Catlin found these still among the Mandans, andascribed them to an effort to perpetuate some Christian ceremonial ofa remote ancestry.
Could it have been a corrupted tradition of the crucifixion of Christ?Who can tell? The Welsh of 1170 were Catholic Christians who believedin self-inflicted penance to save the soul. Degraded, misguided,interblent with Indian superstition through generations, it might havecome to this.
But everywhere, at feast or council, one walked as conqueror,--Clark'snegro servant, York. Of fine physical presence and remarkable stature,very black and very woolly, York was viewed as superhuman.
"Where you come from?" whispered the awe-struck savages.
Grinning until every ivory tooth glistened, and rolling up the whitesof his eyes, he would answer, "I was running wild in the wood, and wascaught and tamed by my mastah." Then assuming an air of ferocity, Yorkwould exhibit feats of strength that to the Indians seemed reallyterrible.
"If you kill white men we make you chief," the Arikaras whispered inhis ear. York withstood great temptation,--he fought more battles thanClark.
"Delay! delay! delay!" was the Indian plea at every village. "Let ourwives see you. Let our children see, especially the black man."
From Council Bluffs to Clatsop, children followed York constantly. Ifhe chanced to turn, with piercing shrieks they ran in terror.
"Mighty warrior. Born black. Great medicine!" sagely commented thewise old men, watching him narrowly and shaking their heads at theunheard-of phenomenon. Even his jerks, contortions, and grimacesseemed a natural part of such a monstrosity. York was a perpetualexhibit, a menagerie in himself.
In these holiday visits to the Mandan towns a glimpse was caught ofdomestic life. Wasteful profusion when the buffalo came, when thebuffalo left, days of famine. Then they opened their cellar-holes ofcorn and vegetables, hidden away as a last resource in protractedsiege when the Sioux drove off the game and shut them up in theirpicketed villages.
So often were the horses of the Mandans stolen, that it had become ahabitual custom every night to take them into the family lodge wherethey were fed on boughs and bark of the cottonwood. All day long inthe iciest weather, the wrinkled, prematurely aged squaws were busy inthe hollows, cutting the horse-feed with their dull and almost uselessknives. On New Year's day Black Cat came down with a load of meat onhis wife's back. A happy woman was she to receive a sharp new knife tocut her meat and cottonwood.
It was easy to buy a Mandan wife. A horse, a gun, powder and ball fora year, five or six pounds of beads, a handful of awls, the trade wasmade, and the new spouse was set to digging laboriously with theshoulder-blade of an elk or buffalo, preparing to plant her corn.
The Indian woman followed up the hunt, skinned and dressed thebuffalo, and carried home the meat. Indian women built the lodges andtook them down again, dragging the poles whenever there were nothorses enough for a summer ramble.
When not at the hunt or the council, the warrior sat cross-legged athis door, carving a bow, pointing an arrow, or smoking, waited upon byhis squaw, who never ate until the braves were done, and then came inat the last with the children and the dogs. Wrinkled and old atthirty, such was the fate of the Indian girl.
Sunday, January 13, Charboneau came back from a visit to theMinnetarees at Turtle Mountain with his face frozen. It was fortunatehe returned with his life. Many a Frenchman was slain on that road,many an imprecation went up against the Assiniboine Sioux,--"_Les Gensdes Grands Diables du Nord_," said Charboneau.
Touissant Charboneau, one of the old Canadian French Charboneaus, withhis brothers had tramped with Alexander Henry far to the north undersub-arctic forests, wintered on the Assiniboine, and paddled toWinnipeg. Seven years now he had lived among the Minnetarees, anindependent trader like McCracken and Jussaume, and interpreter forother traders.
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Moreover, Charboneau was a polygamist with several wives to cook hisfood and carry his wood and water. But he had been kind to the captiveIndian girl, and her heart clung to the easy-going Frenchman as herbest friend. The worst white man was better than an Indian husband.
Captured in battle as a child five years before, Sacajawea had beenbrought to the land of the Dakotas and sold to Charboneau. Now barelysixteen, in that February at the Mandan fort she became a mother. Mostof the men were away on a great hunting trip; when they came back alusty little red-faced pappoose was screaming beside the kitchen fire.
The men had walked thirty miles that day on the ice and in snow totheir knees, but utterly fatigued as they were, the sight of thatlittle Indian baby cuddled in a deerskin robe brought back memories ofhome.
Clark came in with frosty beard, and moccasins all worn out.
"Sacajawea has a fine boy," said Lewis.
No wonder the Captains watched her recovery with interest. All winterthey had sought an interpreter for those far-away tongues beyond themountains, and no one could be found but Sacajawea, the wife ofCharboneau. Clark directed York to wait on her, stew her fruit, andserve her tea, to the great jealousy of Jussaume's wife, who packed upher pappooses in high dudgeon and left the fort. Sacajawea was only aslave. She, Madame Jussaume, was the daughter of a chief!
Poor little Sacajawea! She was really very ill. If she died who wouldunlock the Gates of the Mountains?
Charboneau was a cook. He set himself to preparing the daintiest soupsand steaks, and soon the "Bird Woman" was herself again, packing andplanning for the journey.
Busy every day now were Lewis and Clark making up their reports anddrawing a map of the country. Shahaka, Big White, came and helpedthem. Kagohami of the Minnetarees came, and with a coal on a robe madea sketch of the Missouri that Clark re-drew.
But in the midst of the map-making all the Indian talk was of "war,war, war."
"I am going to war against the Snakes in the Spring," said Kagohami.
"No," said Lewis, "that will displease the President. He wants you tolive at peace."
"Suffer me to go to war against the Sioux," begged another chief.
"No," answered Lewis. "These wars are the cause of all your troubles.If you do not stop it the Great Father will withdraw his protectionfrom you. He will come over here and make you stop it."
"Look on the many nations whom war has destroyed," continued Lewis."Think of your poverty and misfortunes. If you wish to be happy,cultivate peace and friendship. Then you will have horses. Then youwill grow strong."
"Have you spoken thus to all the tribes?" inquired Kagohami.
"We have."
"And did they open their ears?"
"They did."
"I have horses enough," reflected Kagohami, "I will not go to war. Iwill advise my nation to remain at home until we see whether the SnakeIndians desire peace."
One night the hunters came in with the report, "A troop of whoopingSioux have captured our horses and taken our knives."
It was midnight, but Lewis immediately routed up the men and set outwith twenty volunteers on the track of the marauding Sioux. In vain.The boasting freebooters had escaped with the horses beyond recovery.
"We are sorry we did not kill the white men," was the word sent backby an Arikara. "They are bad medicine. We shall scalp the whole campin the Spring."