Streams to the River, River to the Sea

  "You'll be safe here at Fort Mandan," he said. "And you can visit your Minnetaree friends anytime you wish. They're not far away."

  Charbonneau told me about the pact with Captain Clark the day he was hired and we moved into the fort. He showed me the paper the captain had written on.

  Even more wonderful was what Captain Clark said to Drewyer, who said to me, "The captain is hiring you just as much as your husband. He's learned that you are a Shoshone. He knows that the Shoshone live in the mountains, where he needs to travel, and that they own many fine horses, which he needs to buy. Is it true about the horses?"

  "Yes," I said. "The Shoshone have many fine horses. They will wish to sell some, I think."

  Captain Clark wanted to know if my father was a big man in the tribe. He also wished to know my name.

  I told Drewyer my name was Sacagawea and that my father was a chieftain.

  Captain Clark looked at me. "Sacagawea?" He spoke the name slowly and frowned.

  He kept looking at me. He spoke to George Drewyer, who said, "He does not like the sound of Sacagawea. He wishes to call you Janey. You look like a girl he knew someplace whose name was Janey. So Janey is what he wishes to call you from this day on."

  Captain Clark asked him to ask me if I liked the name.

  I said "Janey" to myself. I said the name out loud. It was hard to say. It had a strange sound in my mouth.

  Captain Clark was watching, waiting to see if I liked it, so I nodded my head and smiled. I did not tell him that I had another name besides Sacagawea, a secret name, which I seldom used because if you say your real name too much, it gets worn away and loses its magic.

  "Janey," Captain Clark said and went on speaking fast in his language. When he was done Drewyer told me what he had said.

  "The captain sees that you are going to have a baby soon. He wonders if you will be able to make the long journey. To places no white man has ever been. Over the high mountains and beyond to the big water. He wants you to go because you can help him with the horses when he comes to the land of the Shoshone. But he wonders about the baby."

  I told the captain not to worry. With the baby safe on my back I would go anywhere he went, over the mountains to the big water, anywhere. The captain smiled and went away and I did not see him again until the night my son was born.

  Winter came. The sun was a white ghost in the sky. It went down early and night came fast. There was no one around, except children playing, the day I fell down in pain and dragged myself to the fire and lay there and struggled for breath.

  Blue Sky came. She got me into bed. I remember she put a deerskin blanket over me and a bearskin over that. I do not remember anything else until she and George Drewyer were standing beside the bed, talking to Captain Clark.

  I asked where Charbonneau was. Blue Sky said he had gone to haul wood and he would be back in the morning sometime.

  They went on talking, but the words sounded far away. There was a long silence. Everyone was silent, even the children. The fire was making shadows on the roof. Strange faces with gaping mouths were looking at me. Then they began to scream and I screamed back at them with all the breath I had.

  I heard Blue Sky say to someone in Minnetaree, "What is to be done'? She is dying."

  Dying? The word soothed my pain somehow. I lay quiet. I waited for my Guardian Spirit to speak. I waited for the voices of those who were no longer living, my mother and my friends in the land of the Shoshone. I felt very calm.

  Captain Clark spoke to Drewyer, who spoke to Blue Sky: "The captain has something he would like to do. He has tried it before. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not work."

  "What is it?" Blue Sky said.

  "He has the rattle from a rattlesnake in his pocket and he wants to break up two of its rings. Make small pieces of them. Put them in a little water and make her swallow."

  "Why not," Blue Sky said. "She is dying."

  The stuff had no taste, only a scratchy feeling as it went down, but it sent me to sleep. When I woke up it was daylight and the baby was being born.

  Charbonneau came soon after. He had heard the news and strode in singing. He wanted to know whether he had a son or a daughter.

  "A son," I said. "We can name him Meeko."

  "Meeko? What does something like that mean?"

  "Little Brown Squirrel."

  Charbonneau tossed his head. "No Meeko. No brown squirrel. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau," he said.

  Captain Clark thought for a while. "Pompey is a fine name. Pompey Charbonneau."

  Why he chose this name he did not say. It had a good sound, but not as good as Meeko, so I called my son Meeko. Not so loud that either of the men could hear it.

  Drewyer said, "Captain Clark wants to know when you will be strong enough to go."

  "Go now," Charbonneau said. "This girl strong Indian girl. Go now."

  "A week yet. When the ice melts on the river," Captain Clark said.

  He came back the next day and for five days to see how I felt. On the last day he brought Captain Lewis.

  Captain Lewis had an animal with him. At first I thought it was a young buffalo. Then it came up and rubbed against me and I saw that it was a dog. But it was a dog as big as a young buffalo. It was shaggy and brown and had big gray-brown eyes. Drewyer said that its name was Scannon and that it came from a place called Newfoundland, wherever that was.

  After he had rubbed against me for a while and pushed me from side to side, Scannon went over and sniffed at Meeko. The baby did not like the wet nose, but that made no difference to Scannon. He sniffed anyhow.

  That day Captain Clark decided that I should learn some of the words he spoke.

  That day he taught me to count from one to twenty in the white man's tongue. The next time he taught me the names of the days, and how many days made a week, and how many weeks made a month. "Night" was a new word for me. In Shoshone we always called the night a "sleep." For instance, "We traveled for six sleeps." Now I could say we traveled for six nights.

  Scarcely a day went by from this time to the end of the journey that I failed to learn ten words of the white man's language. Sometimes I learned twenty words and more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Meeko liked the cradleboard I made for him. He smiled the first time I put him in it. And when I took him out he screwed up his face.

  This was good. Some babies in the Mandan village disliked the cradleboards. This was a big burden, because their mothers had to carry them around whatever they were doing.

  With me, while I got things together for the long journey—I made an extra pair of moccasins, as well as leggings—all I had to do was to hang Meeko and his furlined cradleboard on a pole beside me. I never had to worry about him until it was feeding time.

  When the ice broke up I was ready. But just three days before we were to leave, three traders from Canada came to the village and asked to talk to Charbonneau.

  They talked for a long time. Afterward, he told me that the Canada men worked for the Northwest Company and were afraid that the Americans would ruin their trade with the Indians.

  That night he woke me to say that there were many things about the journey he did not like.

  "What?" I asked him. "What are they?"

  "Money," he said. "Money not enough. Other things. High mountains, very high. I hear from old trader Le Blanc, long time ago. Also, many Indians. Like Assiniboins and Blackfeet. Unfriendly people, these. Slit throat, take scalp quick."

  "But you gave a promise to the captains," I said.

  Otter Woman was awake now. For a long time she had been telling me that it was foolish to go on such a dangerous journey among bad people and for such poor pay.

  Sleepily, she said to him, "Do not listen. Go and say, 'Charbonneau wishes more money. Other things, too.'"

  "I tell them," he said. "Charbonneau comes back if Charbonneau wishes. Anytime, if Toussaint Charbonneau wishes, he comes back."

  "Tell them," Otter Woman said.

/>   From the day Charbonneau was hired, the thought of going into the mountains where my people lived and seeing them again warmed my heart. The thought of the journey itself, what it was about, what Captain Clark and Captain Lewis sought, and wherever the mysterious journey led, excited me.

  "You gave a promise," I said. "You cannot quit now."

  He went the next morning to talk to the captains. At nightfall he returned, angry and sullen, to say that he had a fight with them.

  "I tell them goodbye," he said. "No more journey. Goodbye, Captain Clark, goodbye, Captain Lewis. Goodbye."

  The next day the truth came out. The captains had told him to leave and not come back. Captain Clark even said that it was me he really wanted. Not as a guide, but as someone who could help him buy horses and find his way through the country of the Shoshone.

  Charbonneau brooded for a while. I begged him to go and talk to the captains again.

  "Why do they want someone who quits somewhere along the trail if he feels like it?" I asked him. "If you were Captain Clark, would you want someone like that? And if you quit, it will give you a bad name on the river."

  Otter Woman kept at him, too. But she did everything she could to keep him from going. She liked her easy life traveling from one village to another, visiting places and people. But I talked, too, and at last he went back to Captain Clark and said that he was not mad anymore. He would like to go with them now.

  As soon as this was over, I put everything I had made during the long winter for myself and Meeko into a deerskin bag. I put the baby and his cradleboard on my back. I said goodbye to Otter Woman, who was very pleased to be left behind.

  Every day Captain Clark made black marks in a thing he called a journal. He made the marks with a stick he dipped in black paint. He said the marks were words that told everything he had seen or heard or thought that day.

  When I went down to the river, he was there, sitting in one of the big boats. The journal was in his lap. He motioned me to put down the bag and the cradleboard and to sit beside him. He opened the journal, wet the stick, and put it in my hand. He put his arm around my shoulder and took my hand and guided it over the paper.

  These are the things that we put in the journal together:

  Fort Mandan April the 7th 1805

  Sunday, at 4 o'Clock PM, the boat, in which were 6 soldiers, 2 Frenchmen and an Indian, all under the command of a corporal who had the charge of dispatches, &c.—and a canoe with 2 Frenchmen, set out down the river for St. Louis. At the same time we set out on our voyage up the river in 2 perogues and 6 canoes.

  That was all I wrote while Captain Clark guided my hand. I looked at the marks as they ran back and forth on the page. I felt very proud of myself. Not until much later, when I began to learn more about the white man's language, did I know what all the marks meant.

  Captain Clark wrote some more in his journal.

  I saw the word "Janey," the name he had given to me. He quickly sprinkled the words with sand to dry them off. I suppose they had something to do with me.

  The big silver boat that looked like a gull went down the river. Captain Lewis fired his swivel guns to say goodbye to the Mandans and we went fast up the river.

  Near nightfall everyone waded to shore and I was sent out to dig roots for supper. Both of the big boats, the pirogues, were stored with food, but Captain Clark planned to use it only if nothing could be found on land. I was sent out because Charbonneau had said when the captain hired him that he should have more money because I, his wife, knew how to gather berries and all kinds of roots.

  Finding roots was easy. I had done it since I was a child.

  The first thing to know is where to look. The best place is around piles of driftwood. You take a sharp stick and poke until you come upon a mouse hole. Always in the hole, except at the end of winter, you will find a nest of roots from the camas bush that the mice have stored up.

  The roots are as big as your thumb, white and round. They are good tasting if they are cooked with deermeat or buffalo hump.

  It was the end of winter and the mice had eaten most of their store, so I had to dig long after dark. I dug enough roots for more than three dozen men.

  It is best when cooking camas roots to dig a pit and put hot stones on the bottom and cover them with willow branches and lay the roots on top. You put more branches on and heap them with earth. You build a fire and let it burn until you can tell by the good smells that the roots are done.

  It takes almost two days to do this. Since the men were hungry, I just boiled the roots. I dug them and cooked them because I wanted to please Captain Clark.

  Charbonneau was angry. He said to Captain Clark at supper, "Me and wife, Bird Girl, get no pay for cook. For talk. For guide. No cook."

  "Janey wanted to dig the roots and cook them," Captain Clark said. "The men usually cook for themselves."

  "Good," Charbonneau said. Afterward he said to me, "You no cook. Find roots, no cook. See?"

  I was not displeased. To cook for three dozen hungry men was more than I could do.

  We passed a Minnetaree village early the next morning the one Le Borgne ruled over. The river runs narrow here past a low cliff and he was watching for us as we came out of the mist. He raised his hand and pointed at a huge pile of meat on the bank beside him.

  "Buffalo," he shouted. "Welcome to good eating. Welcome, friends."

  Captain Clark shouted back, but when Charbonneau, who was steering, turned toward shore, Captain Clark grabbed the rudder and kept us headed straight. It was well that he did. For when we floated by and left Le Borgne standing on the bank, a shower of arrows from the cliff fell upon us.

  For the first time I wondered about Charbonneau. He had heard the horrible tales about Le Borgne. He knew that the one-eyed chieftain could not be trusted, that he hated the white men. Knowing this, why had Charbonneau tried to steer the boat ashore into the hands of an enemy?

  Only a few days later, less than a week, I wondered even more about him. He was at the rudder of our pirogue when a gust of wind struck us and wrested the rudder from his grip. Instead of taking hold of the rudder again, he raised his hands and began to pray.

  The other boats were farther up the river.

  Cruzatte, the bowsman, shouted at Charbonneau, "Turn her, you fool!" Charbonneau was still praying. Cruzatte shouted again, "Turn her!"

  Charbonneau was on his knees, clinging to the pirogue with one hand.

  "Turn!" Cruzatte shouted again. "Turn her or I'll shoot you!

  He pointed a gun at Charbonneau's head. Charbonneau pulled hard at the rudder, but the boat stayed sideways.

  The sails flapped and we tilted. Water rushed in. It swept around my knees. The baby started to cry. I saw that the shore was not far away and that I could reach it. Then I saw that our stores had begun to drift out of the boat. Charbonneau watched them drift but did not move.

  Cruzatte seized the rudder.

  We were floating with the current now and around us in a wide circle the water was covered with the stores that had drifted out of the boat. I saw Captain Clark's journal and a wooden box that held something he valued. He took it out of the box every day, looked at it, and carefully put it back.

  Someone shouted from the shore. Waves were beating so loud against the boat I could not make out what was said, but it had a warning sound. The cradleboard had loosened. I tightened the cord that bound it to my shoulders and let myself into the water. It came up higher than my waist.

  The first thing I gathered in was the wooden box. Then I grasped the journal that I had written in once and Captain Clark wrote in almost every day. A wave broke over our heads and the baby began to cry, so I gave up and climbed back in the boat.

  I got safely to land but we lost most of our medicine, gunpowder, flour, melon seeds that Captain Clark was going to plant somewhere, and many other things, besides some of our beads and presents for people along the way. But I saved his journal and the wooden box. He was pleased to see them wh
en he came back that night.

  "Good as new," he said, opening the box. "I have a small one, but this is by far the best."

  "What is it?" I asked him.

  "A compass. You can tell whether you are traveling north or south or east or west. Otherwise you get lost."

  He was so pleased that he kissed me on the cheek and gave me a beautiful gift. It was an antelope belt sewn with rows of tiny blue beads. It was so beautiful my throat choked up and I couldn't thank him.

  After supper I asked Charbonneau why he had not obeyed Cruzatte.

  "Hear nothing," he said. "Hear wind, hear water. No hear Cruzatte."

  A tight look around his mouth made me think he was telling a lie. He had heard Cruzatte.

  "You think something?" he asked me, clenching his hands. "You think Charbonneau hear, huh?"

  I shook my head.

  I began to wonder. I remembered the day the traders had talked to him. How that night he had told me that they were afraid the Americans would ruin their business. How the next day he had told Captain Clark he would not go with him. And how, the very next day, he had changed his mind and decided to go.

  Was it possible that he had some secret with the Canada traders? Had they hired him to make trouble?

  "You think things?" he asked, still clenching his hands.

  "Nothing," I said.

  "You jump in river. Near drown. Jean Baptiste near drown. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau worth more than captains. More than Bird Girl. Anybody. See?"

  "Yes," I said.

  If his son meant that much to him, why had he tried to destroy the boat and take the chance that Meeko might drown? Why had he sat with his hands in the air and prayed, deaf to Cruzatte's commands? I did not dare to ask him.

  "What you think?" he said. "You think Charbonneau hear Cruzatte, huh?"

  "No."

  "Good," he said and unclenched his fists. "Good."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Besides the other things, we lost all of our flour and most of the pemmican. It was a bad loss. Captain Clark said that now we had to live on the roots we gathered and the animals our hunters shot.