Streams to the River, River to the Sea

  That night Captain Lewis mounted a bigger guard than he usually did and all the men slept in their clothes. We mounted a guard for seven nights and during the day watched for signs. We watched for buffalo too.

  On the eighth day Ben York saw a small cloud off to the west. We were on a wide bend below a high cliff. Captain Clark ordered the boats to tie up on the riverbank.

  He chose four hunters and Charbonneau, York, and me. Me because he believed that the Blackfeet would not attack us if they saw a woman. Charbonneau because he was my husband and very jealous. Ben York because he had sharp eyes and ears and a keen nose. He could smell buffalo when they were a long distance away. Buffalo had a strong smell, but he could smell them before anyone else did.

  The high cliff above the river was where Captain Clark was taking us. "To look over the country," he said.

  Since he was worried about the Blackfeet, I thought it best to leave Meeko behind. I had never left him since the day he was born. He was always nearby in the cradleboard, whatever I was doing. So I asked the men who played with him the most, Sergeant Ordway and Private Cruzatte, to take care of him while I was gone.

  It was a hard climb through brush and prickly pear. We came out on a windy peak. Below us was a broad tableland. I could see nothing except the cloud of blue smoke, but Ben York threw his head back and sniffed the wind for a while. Then he pointed.

  "Look," he shouted. "There to the west, beyond the smoke. A speck. It's buffalo!"

  The speck grew larger. It became a river, a dark river of buffalo, driven along the tableland by a string of horsemen.

  "Who are they?" Captain Clark asked Charbonneau. "Blackfeet?"

  "No," Charbonneau said. "Arikara, maybe. Assiniboin, maybe."

  The captain asked me who the horsemen were. I knew, but I was silent. I did not want to go against my husband. Not until the captain asked me a second time did I answer.

  "It's important," he said. "We don't want to run into a nest of Blackfeet if we can help it. Who are they, Janey?"

  "Blackfeet, I think."

  "You think they are Blackfeet or you know?"

  "I know."

  Charbonneau grunted. "You wrong, you Shoshone. Maybe Arikara. Maybe Assiniboin."

  I spoke up now because it was important. "Blackfeet," I said.

  "How do you know?" Captain Clark said.

  "Because Blackfeet ride black horses that have white spots on their backs."

  The herd came closer. Not to be seen, we crouched in the bushes. A man on foot was running ahead of the herd. He was dressed in a buffalo robe and wore a buffalo head that came down over his shoulders. He looked like a buffalo.

  The man lured the herd on and on, into a draw, close to the edge of a cliff. He dodged behind a tree. The leaders could not turn back, for the rest of the great herd pressed hard behind them. The big part of the herd could not turn back because the horsemen were on their heels, shouting and firing their guns.

  Like a river the buffalo poured over the cliff, down like falling water to their deaths on the plain below.

  We waited three days for the Blackfeet to cut up the buffalo and leave. They took only a small part of what they had killed. Hundreds of carcasses were left. Of these we took only what we could store in the boats.

  The young hunter who lured the herd over the cliff had been swept out of his hiding place to his death. The Blackfeet had wrapped him in a buffalo hide and tied him high in a tree, as was their custom, to keep him safe from hungry beasts.

  "That's how I would like to be buried," Ben York said. "In a tree where the wind blows, the sun shines, and the birds sing."

  "Yes," I said, "but not soon."

  "Years from now would be best."

  Captain Clark was walking around gathering flowers from the bushes.

  "He has gathered things every day since we left Fort Mandan," I said. "Why?"

  "He gathers them for the Great Grand White Chief, Thomas Jefferson," York said. "But Captain Lewis gathers much more."

  "This White Chief is like Chief Black Moccasin?"

  "Like a buffalo is like a mosquito."

  "If he is so great, why does he want such things as skunk skins, small fish, goat horns, hummingbird feathers, antelope skins, deerskin, buffalo hides, beaver tails, and other things, too, like owls, snakes, frogs, and lizards?"

  "Thomas Jefferson has a big curiosity. That's why we are here, you and all of us."

  Captain Clark had quit gathering flowers. "How far have you been up the river?" he asked Charbonneau.

  Charbonneau pointed to the snow-covered mountains. "Far, to Blackfoot country."

  This was a lie. Just the day before he had told me that everything was new. He had never been in this country before.

  "River, she too thin," he said. "Need horses."

  Captain Clark was impatient. "Where do we find the horses?"

  "From Mandans."

  "We turn around and go back to Fort Mandan?"

  "Good," Charbonneau said. He did not see that Captain Clark was angry. "Hide canoes. Go back. Go talk to Mandans. Get horses."

  Captain Clark shook his head. "If we do, we'll never reach the mountains before winter comes. There's snow on them now and this is June. By November we'll be caught and can't move."

  He picked up his flowers and left with Sergeant Ordway. Charbonneau waited until they were out of hearing. "Tonight," he said. "We go down river. Fast!"

  He reached out and gave my arm a twist to remind me about what would happen if I did not hold my tongue.

  "You think Captain Clark great mans," he said. "You crazy Shoshone. Shoshone they all crazy. Gone now. Blackfeet came and kill them. Your family gone now—dead."

  This was a lie also. He was making up the story because he knew that I had never forgotten my people. I never talked about them, but he knew that one reason I wanted to go on the long journey was to see them again, the ones who were still alive.

  "Blackfeet kill Jean Baptiste. My son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Kill him, sure."

  Were the Blackfeet just an excuse? Or was he sure that Clark would fail? Sure that we would never reach the mountains before the heavy snows came?

  That night in the tent, when Sergeant Ordway and Captain Clark were asleep, Charbonneau took the baby and went down to the river. He knew that I would follow him. I put on my moccasins quietly, but as I left the tent I stepped hard on Sergeant Ordway's outstretched hand. He got up, rubbed his eyes, and uttered a loud oath.

  "Come!" I whispered.

  Charbonneau knelt in the canoe. The cradleboard was beside him. I put Meeko and the cradleboard on my back. A fire burned in front of the tent. Suddenly from the dark, a rifle spurted flame.

  Crouched, holding a paddle in his hands, Charbonneau shouted at me. Sergeant Ordway was standing on the bank. He fired his rifle again. As the bullet struck the water in front of the canoe, Charbonneau dropped the paddle.

  "Go to sleep," Sergeant Ordway said. "More prickly pears tomorrow, more mud, more slippery stones, more everything. Go to sleep, we'll need you."

  Charbonneau grunted. "Much everything."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Before we started the next morning, Captain Clark came to the tent where Charbonneau was stretched out in front of the fire, eating his breakfast.

  Captain Clark was wrapped in a buffalo robe against the cold. His eyes looked angry. "What happened last night?" he asked. "Sergeant Ordway tells me that he found you in one of the canoes, about to bid us farewell. Is that true?"

  Charbonneau had a quick answer. "Shoshone here, she wake Charbonneau. She cry many tears. She beg take her back to Minnetaree. She fraid of Blackfeet. Fraid for baby, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau."

  Captain Clark waited for me to say something. I put Meeko in his cradleboard and said nothing. I had learned, I had been warned to hold my tongue.

  "My wife, she Shoshone. Afraid everything," Charbonneau said. "We leave now. Sorry, too bad."

  "You can leave if you want to. I'll pay
you the money we owe," Captain Clark said. "But you can't take a canoe. We need every one we have."

  Charbonneau grumbled. "Me walk, huh?"

  "You walk," Captain Clark said.

  "Long way.

  "Yes, a very long way."

  Captain Clark turned his back on us and went down to the river.

  Charbonneau ate the last piece of his boiled buffalo. He picked it up, held it in his jaws, and cut it in two with his knife. Then he wiped his mouth on his beard and went to fold our tent. As soon as he was gone I followed Captain Clark. He was putting the things he had gathered the day before in his canoe.

  "I don't want to see you go," he said. "The men will miss you. You've kept up their spirits. They tell themselves, 'If a girl with a baby on her back can do this day after day, then we can too.' They keep going when they would like to quit."

  "Charbonneau did not speak for me," I said. "He lied when he told you that I woke him in the night and wept and begged him to take me back to Fort Mandan. It was a lie, Captain Clark. I did not weep and I did not beg."

  "Do you want to go with us?" he said.

  "Yes."

  "But you're afraid of what Charbonneau will say?"

  "No, of what he will do. He has a bad temper."

  "We need you," he said. "The journey has been hard so far, but from here on into the high mountains it will be worse. Dangerous. Do you understand what I am telling you?

  "I understand."

  "Still you want to go?"

  "I do."

  "I'll not hold it against you if you turn back. You'll be safe. The baby will be safe. You're sure you want to go?"

  There was nothing, nothing that would make me turn back. Wherever he led, I would go.

  "Yes," I said. "I am sure."

  Dawn was breaking. The sun shone through the trees. It turned his hair to bright copper. He looked like the God of the Gods Above.

  Charbonneau sidled up to the pirogue and tossed his blankets over the rail. He got into a canoe and took up a paddle. Cruzatte, Drewyer, and Captain Lewis were in the canoe. He spoke to them in a friendly voice as though nothing had happened. He even smiled at me. He asked me when I was going to feed Jean Baptiste Charbonneau again.

  "Now in buffalo country," he said. "Soon Charbonneau kill buffalo. Good food, this buffalo. Buffalo hump best. Cook big hump for Jean Baptiste."

  1 told him that the baby had no teeth to chew with.

  "When does teeth come?" he asked.

  "Not tomorrow."

  "Jean Baptiste, he different. Son of Charbonneau many teeth soon. Chew buffalo like Charbonneau hisself."

  We saw thousands of buffalo the next day. They grazed in herds, on and on, to the horizon. Packs of gray wolves trotted beside them, circling the herds like trusty watchmen. They were waiting for an animal to get injured or a calf to stray, so they could pounce on it.

  Charbonneau and the hunters went out and came back with meat from seven buffalo, enough to last us for a week. As he promised, Charbonneau brought a hump for Meeko and also three lengths of treepies, which are milky-white intestines. He had me stuff them with the chopped hump meat. Then he tried to feed a piece to Meeko, who did not like treepies any more than I did. So Charbonneau had to settle for feeding him spoonfuls of broth.

  We saw buffalo every day for another week and the hunters brought back all the meat they could carry, which I smoked and made pemmican of. We saw two Blackfoot camps. In one of them I found a woman's tracks. They had a strange look to me until I remembered that Blackfeet cut off the toes of all their women who are loose with themselves.

  That night Captain Lewis ordered us to sleep in our moccasins and we kept a big fire going. The Blackfeet were good at crawling up to a tent without being seen.

  They were brutal, these Blackfeet. There were three tribes of them—the Bloods and the Piegans and the Blackfeet themselves, who gave their name to the other two. They were the first to feel insulted about something. The first to break their word. The first to steal and burn and murder.

  We watched for them the next day as we went up the river toward the snowy peaks far away against the sky. We saw no signs, but there was still another problem for Captain Lewis and Captain Clark. It was even more important than the hostile Blackfeet.

  At noon that day we came to a wide river, not as wide as the river we were following, but swift and troubled. The river we were on the Minnetarees called Amahte Arzzha. The captains called it the Missouri. The Minnetarees had made a map for us showing the troubled river, which they called the River That Scolds at All the Others. Captain Lewis thought of a girl he had known for some time and named it Maria's River.

  Before we left, a deep hole was dug in the middle of an island and everything heavy that we could do without was buried, also some provisions, tools, and powder and lead. The red pirogue was hauled out, tied to a tree, and covered with brush so the Blackfeet would not find it.

  It rained all night, hard. But in the morning, the land stretched away like a great silver lake. The far mountains glittered. The magpies flashed their black and white feathers. I picked a flower for Meeko to smell. Instead, he opened his rosebud mouth and tried to eat it.

  We were at the branching of two large rivers. Which one would lead us to the mountains before the fierce winter storms shut them away? The captains talked for a day but could not decide. Charbonneau said that Maria's River was the best to take, which made Captain Clark believe that the Missouri was the best.

  The captains talked for another day. Then they went off in different directions, climbed hills, and looked through spyglasses. When they came back, they decided to take the south fork, Amahte Arzzha, the Missouri.

  Charbonneau and I were in our canoe, getting ready to leave the River That Scolds at All the Others. Both the captains were walking along the shore, still not sure that we should follow the Missouri. York was in the canoe just in front of us. A breeze had come up and he was raising a sail to catch it.

  "What do you think?" he called back to Charbonneau. "The Missouri winds like a snake. Seems to me it winds too much."

  "Both wind too much," Charbonneau called to York. "Make head dizzy, huh, black man?"

  Our sail caught the breeze, but York's canoe was moving away from us. Charbonneau dug his paddle deep, his huge shoulders heaved, and we came up close to York.

  For three days now, since the day the current grew strong, York was sent ashore to pull on one of the ropes. Most days he was in Captain Lewis's canoe, helping the captain as a servant, handing him a spyglass or whatever he asked for. The banks where he had to walk were thick with thorns. His feet were so swollen he could barely move around.

  "You sick man," Charbonneau called to him. "Maybe you die quick. Better go home."

  York did not answer.

  "Crazy black man," Charbonneau grumbled. "He slave man. All time do what captain say. Like big slave, like Shoshone."

  Quietly I said, "Before you married me, then I was a slave. Now I am not a slave."

  "Not now, not now. But soon you slave. Soon, like crazy black man. Like Indians, too. Indians everyplace slaves soon."

  "We gave our word to go with the captains, remember? To help them."

  "Charbonneau, he say no. Shoshone say yes. Shoshone say go. Not Toussaint Charbonneau, remember, huh?"

  The cradleboard was turned toward him. He must have reached out and touched Meeko, for my son gave his shy little laugh.

  "Jean Baptiste, he no slave," Charbonneau said. "Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, he no slave, see?"

  A shadow, Charbonneau's broad paddle, hung above my head. "Yes, I see."

  We went for a day through heavy rain, but the land was beautiful and covered with buffalo. Captain Clark said there must be more than ten thousand of them feeding on the deep grass.

  Our men were suffering again from the prickly pears they had to walk through. Their moccasins were so pierced with thorns that they were nearly barefoot. Captain Clark sent hunters out to gather hides to make new
ones.

  Some of the buffalo were grazing along the riverbank. They stopped to look at the canoes but did not flee. Hunters in the first canoe fired and killed one of them. A third and fourth shot struck an enormous bull. He started to run away, but after a fifth shot broke one of his back legs, he turned to face us.

  The bull hobbled as far as the riverbank and stopped. He braced himself and rolled his head from side to side, searching for the enemy. Blood streamed from his mouth. Beneath the matted forelock, his eyes were closing with death, but he braced himself and bellowed. His body swayed. He fell to his knees. A moaning gasp came from his throat and he rolled over on his side and lay still.

  Charbonneau said, "Sometime no buffalo. White men kill them. No buffalo anywhere."

  I scraped two of the hides from the ten buffalo the hunters killed, fed the fire that smoked them, and helped to make moccasins for some of the men. My husband did not need a pair because he had refused from the start to wade over slippery rocks or struggle along the bank through stands of thorn bushes, pulling on a rope.

  Hunters killed more buffalo. Baskets of fat trout were caught and smoked. We got ready to go up the Missouri toward the Great Falls the Minnetarees and Mandans had told us about. Toward the Shining Mountains we could see against the sky. Shining because they were always covered with snow.

  Before we left, Captain Lewis had a wonderful day. In a red willow thicket he found a young owl sitting in a nest. It was white and no larger than his fist. He had never seen one like it before. He sat down and held it in his lap while he wrote in his journal. He put down how many claws the owl had and how many wing feathers, the color of its eyes, on and on. He was so excited he let his breakfast get cold.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We were ready to leave, but then Captain Lewis had a problem. He still was not sure which river to follow, the River That Scolds at All the Others or the Amahte Arzzha, the Missouri River.