Streams to the River, River to the Sea

  At the first turn, where the path in the cave branched off in three directions, I took the farthest one to the right. At the next branch I left a pebble to mark the way because of the many twists and turnings that lay beyond.

  After I had dropped nine pebbles I came to a small, three-cornered room. Crystals hung from the ceiling like spears and grew up from the floor like fat toadstools.

  The path led on but it was here that the Great Spirit dwelt. Here all the Shoshone had prayed since the day the first man and woman came up from the big cave below the cave, on the back of a mighty jewel-eyed serpent.

  The walls were hung with buffalo and bear hides and the horns of deer and antelope. Between them were pictures of the sun and moon and stars and winds of the four directions. All were made of tiny pieces of mica.

  I shone the torch on the walls. What a beautiful sight! It took my breath.

  Water dripped from the ceiling in the center of the room and formed a small, clear pool. I put down the torch and washed my eyes, my mouth, my nostrils, and my ears.

  Then I lay down on the stones and faced the north and stretched my arms wide. For a long time I thought of nothing. When a thought entered my mind I closed my eyes and pushed it away.

  The room was quiet. All I could hear was the faint noise the torch made and the water dropping, one drop at a time.

  When my heart was quiet, I said, "Great Creator, my name is Sacagawea. I hope you will remember that I was stolen by the Minnetarees and became a slave to these people. And that you heard my prayers and saved me from many dangers.

  "Perhaps you forgot my prayers about Red Hawk, son of Chief Black Moccasin, because you never answered them. I forget things too. And maybe you have forgotten about Toussaint Charbonneau and how he won me in the Hand Game and I had to marry him. And you must know that it is not a good marriage if you have to marry someone you do not love. I did not love him then and I do not love him now."

  Before, when I came here and prayed to the Great Spirit, I always made sure that he was listening before I told him why I had come. I made sure now that he was listening. I turned on my side and put my ear hard to the stone. I held my breath.

  From below the stone, far beneath the cave and mountain, from the earth's throbbing heart I heard sounds. I heard a stream, flowing gently through a meadow, making gay noises like children laughing.

  Then the sounds changed. Now I heard a swift river, running between high black walls, over logs and dams and boulders in a torrent of thunder and fury. It was the many voices of the Great Spirit that I heard beneath me.

  The sounds stopped, or seemed to. It was very quiet. The Great Spirit was listening.

  I got to my knees and said quietly, "Please, ruler of the sun, moon, and the stars, of all the winds and the four directions, please grant my wish. I have more wishes, but this is the only one I truly wish. Turn his thoughts upon me, his smile and his love, and keep him safe on the long journey that lies before us. Please remember Meeko, too."

  I listened for the sounds again, the furious river and the gentle stream in the meadow, the voice of the Great Spirit. I heard nothing. My torch died out and I had no way to light it. The place was suddenly dark. All I could hear was water dropping, one drop at a time.

  Quickly I got to my feet and groped my way along the dank walls, out of the room. Where the turning should be I stopped and searched for the last pebble I had left when I came in.

  I searched for a long time and at last found it. The next pebble I found much sooner. The third pebble, at a place where there were many turnings, I had trouble with.

  The mouth of the cave was close. I could hear the wind blowing. But of the three turnings, only one would lead me out. The other two would take me deep into the mountain.

  I got down on my knees once more. The pebble was not where I had left it. Something had come and brushed it aside. Or I had gone too far or not far enough. I crawled back and started over again. I searched in vain everywhere on the path and against each wall where the water was running.

  I tried the turning on my right hand. I crawled until I could hear the wind no longer. I crawled back and tried the left turning. This, too, led me away in the wrong direction. Then I found the rest of the pebbles. I stood up and put a hand out on each side of me and walked quickly into the daylight.

  The sun was overhead, shining through the aspen trees. Snakes were still gathering at the mouth of the cave. Some were crawling up from below. Some were basking in the sun. Others were crawling into the cave.

  I went down to the camp singing. I was certain that the Great Spirit had heard my prayer and I was hopeful that it would be granted to me. Meeko gurgled as I took him in my arms—he had never been left for so long a time before.

  "You found the cave," Running Deer said. "And your face shows that you talked to the Great Spirit and that he listened."

  "Ai!"

  "What did you pray?"

  Always I had told her what I prayed but this time I was careful. "About many things," I said.

  "A safe journey to the big water that you cannot drink?"

  "Oh, yes, about that lake."

  "Whatever the Great Spirit decides, you and the baby should stay with me. I hear bad things about the country between us and the big lake. It is not good for babies."

  Charbonneau had helped her take care of Meeko. He was standing off by himself, not listening to our chatter. But when he heard this last about his son he came and stood over us.

  "Jean Baptiste Charbonneau stay here," he said. "Me stay. Sacagawea stay. All stay."

  "You speak sense," Running Deer said.

  Charbonneau nodded. "Shoshone girl's brother, he big chief. Ho. Big medicine, huh?"

  I said nothing because it would do no good to argue. And I could not very well say that I loved Captain Clark, that I would follow him wherever he went.

  Only Captain Clark could change Charbonneau's mind. I went in search of him and found him trying hard to talk to my brother. My brother told me that he wished to say something to Captain Clark. I said it with words and signs.

  "Chief Cameahwait thinks you are a good man," I told Captain Clark. "Therefore he wishes to give you the name Chief Red Hair. He also wishes to give you his own name. But he will keep his war name, which is Black Gun. The names Chief Red Hair and Chief Cameahwait are yours. People of my own blanket will honor you forever."

  My brother placed a tippet of ermine fur around Captain Clark's shoulders. The captain thanked him. When all this was done I told Captain Clark what Charbonneau had said.

  "Do you want to go?" he asked me.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  "I have asked you this before, twice before," Captain Clark said. "It's not too late. You're home now, among your own people. Think before you answer."

  "I have thought."

  "You will go?"

  "Yes."

  Everything had gone so well that Captain Clark decided to call our camp Camp Fortunate, and he put the name down in his journal.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  After Captain Clark talked to him, Charbonneau changed his mind. He decided that we would finish the journey, since there would be no pay for him unless we did.

  Also, the captain told him to buy me a horse, a good horse, so I would not have to walk all the time. Charbonneau had a good one, but like all the men he thought that women and children should walk.

  The canoes buried and the supplies packed on the saddles, we left my brother, Chief Black Gun. He had told us little about the country beyond, the big river and the Great Lake That Smelled, because he knew little. He had piled up pebbles on the ground and drawn things in the dust, but these were of little help to the captains.

  On the second day of our journey, Captain Clark came upon an old man who belonged to the Shoshone tribe. His name was Petalashoroogalahat, Spotted Horse, and I translated what he had to say about the country to the west.

  That night the captain wrote for a long time in his jour
nal. Then he read me part of what he had written, I guess to make sure that I really understood what was before us in the many days to come.

  "The old man told me," he said, "that for the first seven days we climb over steep and rocky mountains where we'll find no game to kill nor anything but roots to eat. The Indians are called Broken Moccasins. They live like bears among the rocks and feed on roots and berries and the flesh of horses they can steal from those passing by."

  Captain Clark watched me as he read from the journal. We were sitting in the firelight, so I was very careful to see that my face did not change.

  He read on. "The next part of the journey is through sandy desert, where the feet of our horses will give out. The pools of water, which exist here in the spring, will be dried up and we will perish of thirst."

  He paused to let me say something. I was silent. My face did not change.

  "The old man said that if we do live, we will still be far from the sea, the sea you call a lake, where there's a lot of water which no one can drink. His advice was for us to go no farther. To wait until spring, when he would be glad to be our guide to the big sea."

  Captain Clark closed his journal. He put wood on the fire and stood looking down at me. He waited for a sign that I was frightened by what he had read.

  "It sounds no worse than what we have been through," I told him. "It is different country but we have had bears, snakes, cactus, floods, storms, hunger, a mad beaver, a crazy buffalo, and more."

  At the sound of my voice, Charbonneau, who had been asleep, stirred himself.

  Captain Clark waited, looking down at me. He seemed unsure of how I felt. I grew suspicious. I had helped him reach the Shoshone camp, helped him make friends with my brother, helped him buy the horses he needed badly.

  But after all this, was I no longer wanted? Were Meeko and I a burden now? An extra mouth to feed. A baby to worry about. Were we to be only a big trouble?

  "You are telling all this just to frighten me," I said, raising my voice. "The old man made it up. He told you lies."

  Captain Clark shook his head, as though he faced a rebellious child. "That's not the half of what the old man told me, as you well know. Do you wish to hear it again?"

  I did not answer. I jumped to my feet and ran into the tent. I gathered up my blankets and all of my things. It was not a long walk back to the Shoshone camp, to my brother and Running Deer.

  Captain Clark was standing at the door of the tent, barring my way. I pushed past him. As I did so the cradle-board struck him a blow on the chest, to which he replied with a loud groan. Suddenly, the next moment, he had me in his arms. He was kissing me. I could scarcely breathe.

  He took the blankets and the things I had packed and went into the tent with them. Over his shoulder, he called back, "We go together, Janey, the three of us."

  The descriptions of the land beyond the mountain that the old man, Spotted Horse, gave us were not half right. Not even close to what we found.

  We never came to the land where there were pools of water, and these only in the spring. We found water everywhere—springs bubbling into rivulets, rivulets into brooks, brooks into streams, streams into rivers, and all this great flood of water rushing, rushing, down the mountains to the enormous water that Captain Clark called the sea and that the Shoshone called the Big Lake That Stinks.

  One day we came to a Flathead village. We were given a haunch of deermeat, and Charbonneau wooed the chieftain's daughter. She was my age and had a pretty name, Alone in the Clouds. For a wedding gift he gave her father one of our horses. Fortunately for me, I did not have to put up with her on our way to the sea. She refused to go with him. Instead, she decided to wait until he came back.

  From the Flathead village we rode into the worst country we had ever seen, so bad that it took us ten long days and long nights to get through it.

  The ravines were narrow and strewn with fallen trees and slides of sharp rock that cut the horses' feet. One of the horses rolled down a bank and smashed the small desk that Captain Lewis used to write upon.

  The weather was bad. Every day it snowed or rained. Our clothes never dried out. We were close to freezing though we built fires.

  Worse yet, we found no game. No antelope or deer. The buffalo herds were far behind us. We starved and the horses starved. We had to eat twenty fat candles that Captain Lewis had stored away.

  Before we got through the mountains, Captain Lewis put his desk together. He had counted eight kinds of pine trees as we went along. He sat down with the desk in his lap and put all their names down in his book.

  We came out into open country. A river of white, churning water, the same river we had followed in the mountains, wound through it. It was called the Lochsa, which means "rough water."

  Captain Clark and six hunters went on ahead. They happened upon a stray horse, which they killed. Half the meat they left for us. I had to eat it or see the baby starve.

  A day later we came upon a large village of the Nez Percé, the ones whose noses were pierced by shells.

  When I was a child I heard that they were friendly people, and this they proved to be. They gave us dried salmon, and their chieftain, Twisted Hair, smoked a peace pipe with Captain Lewis and Captain Clark.

  I was no help with the talk that went on between them. I had never heard Nez Percé before, so Drewyer made his signs and they became good friends without words. Charbonneau was friendly, too, not with Chief Twisted Hair, but with the women. They were the prettiest women I had ever seen, with their glossy black hair and big eyes.

  Most of our men were sick with the cramps, but Captain Lewis put them to work anyway.

  Since the Nez Percé men were going up and down the river in canoes, he decided that we should go that way from now on. He sent the men into the forest and they came back with five big logs of yellow pine. These they shaped with hatchets and hollowed out with fire.

  When the canoes were finished, he made a bargain with the Nez Percé to take care of our horses until the day we came back. Our saddles were buried in a deep hole, secretly at night, along with a keg of powder and a sack of rifle balls. Chief Twisted Hair gave us some baskets of camas-root flour and dried salmon.

  With him as a guide, we started off from Camp Canoe in a misty dawn.

  A crowd on foot and on horses moved along the banks, watching us float down the river. The women who were dressed in their finest clothes—antelope shirts decorated with small bits of brass cut into various shapes, their nostrils stuck through with pieces of shell as long as my finger—kept waving at Ben York, who had grown tired of all the attention.

  "The women have made far too much over you," I said. The back of his hands had been rubbed raw by Shoshone and Nez Percé women trying to get the black off. "You are spoiled, Ben York."

  "Not enough," he said, "not close to enough. But when I get back to St. Louis there'll be no rubbing to see if I am a white man painted black. I'll be black as a crow at midnight."

  It was still raining. York had a deerskin flung over his head. He pulled it back and gave me a look.

  "You're not black like I am," he said. "You're not white, either. Sort of in between, I'd say. In St. Louis they'll not be rubbing your hands to see if the black comes off. But they'll be curious. They see only a few Indian men and no Indian girls—at least, not pretty ones like you. They'll be admiring, saying nice things. But don't let this fool you. You're an Indian and I am a black man. I am a slave and so are you, in a way. If a white man marries you, he's called a squaw-man and people look down on him. The same as they'd look down on a white girl who married me."

  York was watching from under his deerskin cape. He knew—now everyone must have known—that I loved Captain Clark. He was warning me. It was a clear warning, though it was given with a smile. It struck my heart like a stone-tipped arrow.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Some Nez Percé men followed us down the Snake River as far as the rapids. They helped us greatly on the way, furnishing us wit
h firewood for our cooking and some forty dogs for food.

  The river swam with fish, so many you could almost walk from bank to bank and never touch the water. But they were dying, not good to eat. Chief Twisted Hair told us that the fish were salmon and that they came up the river from the sea to lay their eggs and then to perish.

  The Nez Percé did not offer to guide us after we came to the rapids. They wanted us very much to spend the winter with them.

  Captain Clark thought we should make a portage around the fast water. But Captain Lewis was against him, saying that there was no time to lose if we wanted to get to the big lake before winter set in. Indians ran the rapids and so could we.

  Captain Lewis was right. Four of our dugouts passed through. The fifth got caught on a rock, but with the help of some fishermen, it was pried free.

  Farther on we came to very bad waters. Here the canoes were unloaded and carried, past three wooded isles, along a bank covered with aspen trees. Their leaves seem to turn round and round when the wind blows. I showed Meeko how they fluttered but he was too young to notice how beautiful they were.

  We came to an island of fishing lodges. Thousands of salmon had been split and were drying on racks.

  These people had a big vault about thirty strides long, made of dugout canoes leaning on a ridgepole. In the center of this high cave stood a great pile of human bones and at one end was a circle of grinning skulls.

  All around the vault, things that had belonged to the dead hung from the ceiling—baskets, fishing nets, deerskins, and various kinds of trinkets. I saw the skeletons of many horses that had belonged to the dead and were sacrificed when their owners died.

  Soon afterward we passed a chain of rapids strewn with huge black rocks.

  We came to a village where men with pierced noses were fishing with gigs and the women were pounding dried salmon between stones. They put the powder in fishskin bags to sell at the mouth of the big river to the whites, we were told.

  These people did not receive us kindly. I was lying down in the canoe, ill from the cold. Not until Captain Clark made me stand up, so they could see that I was a woman, did they offer him some of the powder they were making.