From Sea to Shining Sea (103 page)

Cruzatte was unable to come up with a word for “machines.”

“Tell them we will show them later,” Lewis said. “Tell them that if they are peaceful with our flag and with other nations, we will sell them good guns, to hunt better.” This made their eyes glint. But then:

“Also: Tell them that they must no longer stop traders on the river and frighten them and take their goods. Say our government will send many more soldiers like us to make them obey, if they keep doing this. Say they will grow rich only by being honest and fair and peaceful.”

It was plain that the Indians did not care for such admonitions. They were frowning and muttering to each other. So Lewis decided to bring his harangue to a close before the whole ceremony could deteriorate in rudeness.

“Tell them,” he said now, “that we have presents to give them, and some implements to show them.” He turned and looked darkly at William, obviously very disappointed that the Sioux had taken his President’s noble overtures so disrespectfully. In the crowded shade, a sense of trouble seemed to flicker like heat lightning.

William supervised the giving of gifts and Cruzatte translated. Black Buffalo was given a medallion, about three and a half inches across. On one side was stamped an image of President Jefferson. “This,” William said, “is your new father, the great chief of the United States.” Cruzatte grunted and burbled his Omaha syllables, and the chiefs looked scowling and murmuring at Jefferson’s resolute profile, as if to appraise his character from it.

William turned it to show the reverse side, which depicted two hands clasping, with a pipe and a hatchet crossed above them. “These marks,” he said, stooping so close to indicate the tiny letters that he could smell the chiefs’ strong breath, “these are American words put on the metal. They say, ‘Peace and Friendship.’ Those we want and expect: Peace and Friendship.”

Next he gave Black Buffalo a small American flag on a stick, a cocked hat with a feather in it, and a scarlet uniform coat decorated with lace.

The chief nodded and acquainted himself with his new treasures, rubbing them between his fingers, sniffing them and looking at them minutely. In the meantime, William gave Partizan and Buffalo Medicine each a smaller medallion. These depicted domestic animals, and a farmer sowing grain. Lewis had picked
up a large number of these plentiful medals from the War Department; they were left over from George Washington’s presidency. He also presented these two chiefs with pairs of red leggings and garters, a knife apiece, and twists of tobacco. Buffalo Medicine seemed pleased, but Partizan looked disdainfully at his small hoard, holding the items in his hands and sneering. William leaned to Lewis.

“Good thing for him my Ma’s not here,” he said. “She’d whap his hindy end for takin’ a gift in such bad manner.”

“Tell them,” Lewis now said to Cruzatte, “the chiefs are invited to come on our big boat, and we’ll show ’em some of our implements.”

Each chief summoned two bodyguards, and they all went down to the pirogue at the edge of the sandbar and got in. The chiefs looked quietly at the keelboat as they were rowed out to her, and then climbed aboard over the side. Buffalo Medicine almost leaped back into the pirogue when he came up over the side and got a glimpse of York standing there huge and plum-black.

“Get below,” William told the servant, “and have Ordway pump up the air gun and bring it out.” York disappeared into the cabin, followed by the wondering eyes of the chiefs.

Lewis seated the chiefs comfortably on lockers amidships and then began demonstrating, one at a time, his implements. First he showed them the steel corn mill that was bolted to the gunwale, and gave each a handful of corn to put in the top. Sergeant Pryor then turned the handle and Lewis gave each chief a handful of the fine corn meal that came out of the bottom. Then he brought forth a compass. “See this little arrow,” he said, stooping near. “Always the arrow aims at the north, whence the winter comes, you see?” He rotated it and they saw that it did indeed always point to the north, no matter how he held it. “A great power makes it point there,” Lewis said. “You turn it and see. You cannot make it point south.” Black Buffalo manipulated the brass instrument for a while and then agreed that with all his chiefly powers he could not make it point another way.

“Now see me,” Lewis said. “I have power to make it point south.” He had palmed a magnet, and held it behind the compass, and the chiefs, who had just newly come to accept the truth that a compass arrow always points to the winter quarter, now saw it come vibrating around to point south. The chiefs were hard pressed not to appear as mystified as they really were, and were still apparently thinking about this when Lewis brought forth his next implement of great medicine, a telescope. William
stood watching and hoped that they had never seen a spyglass before. If they had, he knew, Meriwether’s proud show of gadgets would suddenly seem like a transparent display of trickery instead of great medicine. “See the flag over there,” Lewis said. “How small it is, so far away. But now aim at it through this stick and it will be close.” Black Buffalo held the telescope to his eye, and it took quite a while for him to learn to aim it. In the meantime, Partizan and Buffalo Medicine were growing restive and their attention was straying. Buffalo Medicine kept looking toward the door of the after-cabin for a glimpse of York, who seemed a bigger magic than any of this. Eventually Black Buffalo got the enlarged image of the Stars and Stripes, and his mouth fell open.

“Ai!” he murmured.

“The United States will come close to you like that,” Lewis said, and Cruzatte translated. The chief seemed to appreciate this analogy. Then Partizan and Buffalo Medicine took their turns at the eyepiece. And while they were still wondering at it, Ordway brought up the air gun.

The Indians looked at it with wonder. Being one of Lewis’s favorite gadgets, it was kept in a fine polish at all times, its brass gleaming and its varnished stock rosy; it was an elegant-looking piece compared with the nicked, rusty, ill-made muskets carried by those of the Sioux who had guns. Of greater interest was the apple-sized brass bulb just forward of the trigger guard. This was the pneumatic chamber, which Ordway had just secretly pumped full of compressed air with a hand pump below decks.

Lewis took up his espontoon and, standing near the bow of the keelboat, rested the gun barrel on it. “Sure hope this shoots better than last year,” he muttered to William, alluding to the lady he had accidentally wounded with the inaccurate gun near Pittsburgh. “See that tree,” he told the chiefs.

Lewis now aimed at a large cottonwood near the crowd on shore and squeezed the trigger.

The gun’s soft
pop
, no more than that of a puff of air expelled from the lips, made the chiefs smirk at each other; they thought the gleaming gun had misfired. Now Lewis dropped another pellet into the loading-hole above the breach and squeezed the trigger again. Again the
pop;
again the chiefs looked smug and contemptuous. But then a cry came from shore, followed by an astonished murmur from the crowd; a brave had gone to the distant cottonwood and found the pellet-holes in it. The chiefs were suddenly attentive again, and watched in amazement as Lewis fired several more smokeless, noiseless shots without seeming
even to reload. Black Buffalo was watching the tree through the telescope now and he could see bark fly from its trunk every time Lewis pulled the trigger. The chiefs were talking among themselves excitedly now, and Cruzatte said that they were calling this great medicine, a gun that shoots without powder. “He say it is beyond all he have comprehend,” Cruzatte said.

But William, who had been closely watching Partizan, saw that this chief was not happy with the proceedings. His mouth was fixed in a sneer. Apparently it did not suit him to have the great chief Black Buffalo responding with such childish wonderment to the gadgetry of the Americans. He seemed embarrassed for him.

The show was over now. “Captain Clark,” said Lewis, “now let’s serve ’em a dram. But just a small one. I don’t want to see that Partizan get uglier than he is already.” The chiefs were subdued, almost timid, while York towered over them, pouring from William’s favorite crystal decanter into wine glasses. William raised his glass. “To Peace and Friendship,” he said, and Cruzatte translated. The chiefs and their bodyguards, and the captains and their translator, drained their glasses.

William felt the rich, hot liquid steal along his tight-strung nerves and hoped everyone would become convivial. But the stuff seemed to dislodge the knot of rascality that Partizan had been containing down inside himself. He muttered something to the other two chiefs and held up his glass for more, and the other chiefs also extended theirs.

“No more,” William said. “You see it’s empty.” Cruzatte translated that piece of disappointing news. Partizan evidently did not like it. He leaned forward, snatched up the fine decanter, which William had received long ago as a present from his parents, upended it, and sucked on its neck. “Careful o’ that, ye scoundrel,” William muttered. “Break it and I’ll break y’r head-bone.” Partizan released it quickly when York reached for it.

But now the other chiefs had caught Partizan’s mood and began frowning and demanding more whiskey. Partizan, as if to mock the little ration he had received, got up and began staggering about the deck like a drunken sailor. Lewis was now grinding his teeth with pent-up fury, and his gray eyes were all but crackling. “Cap’n,” he said softly to William, “reckon it’s time we put this jackass ashore?”

“Aye, gladly,” William replied, getting to his feet. “Mister Cruzatte, kindly tell these gents they’ve wore out their welcome and we’re proceeding on up the river.” He cast sharp glances around to the sergeants, alerting them to the possibility of a scuffie.
Big Sergeant Gass moved to a position behind one of the Sioux bodyguards; Sergeant Ordway got around close to another. William hoped the chiefs would go peacefully; he was aware of the horde of Sioux a few hundred feet away, and of the other bodyguards on the sandbar who were, according to Loisel, dedicated to protecting their chiefs even at the cost of their lives. William hoped to avoid a scrap, but he remembered what George had told him: that it was a fatal mistake to waver in the face of Indian belligerence.

Cruzette had conveyed the message; the chiefs understood it but did not like it. All trace of friendliness left them now. Black Buffalo began speaking in a loud voice, while Partizan, suddenly acting stone sober again, grunted affirmation and looked hateful. The chief, said Cruzatte, was now telling the captains they could not proceed farther up the river. “Tell him,” snapped Lewis, “we didn’t come this far to be stopped by the likes of him.”

There followed another growling exchange through the interpreter, in which Black Buffalo said that if the party proceeded upriver, one of its pirogues must be loaded with goods and left here. Lewis’s reply was:

“Put these beggars off my ship.”

William closed a big hand around Partizan’s bicep, firmly but not roughly, and propelled him toward the side. One of the bodyguards gathered himself tight as a spring and reached for his knife, but found his wrist immobilized in an iron grip. Sergeant Ordway had him.

A strange, shuffling activity now occupied the deck of the
Discovery
, almost like an awkward dance, as the sergeants and officers tried to urge the chiefs into the pirogue without actually manhandling them or pitching them overboard. On the shore and the sandbar, warriors were beginning to stir, point, trot to and fro.

“York, c’mere,” William said. “We need a bit more muscle.”

When York moved into the activity like a large black bear, the chiefs stopped resisting and climbed down into the pirogue. They seemed a bit uncertain yet whether he was some kind of a medicine chief among the soldiers or a full-fledged evil spirit. They sat down sullen but obedient among their presents. William climbed over the side into the pirogue with them, summoning Cruzatte and saying to Lewis, “Keep me covered. I’ll try to mollify ’em as we go.” The soldiers in the boat dipped their oars, and the pirogue moved away toward the sandbar.

“Sorry y’re being like this,” William said to Black Buffalo. “We all could’ve had such a good time, if ye’d just been civil.”
The chief did not answer. “You’ll see,” William went on as the pirogue approached the crowded sandbar where many of the bodyguards and warriors stood poised, “we’re not like the traders. We can do more good for you. But if your hearts are bad, ours will be bad.”

At the moment the pirogue touched the sandbar, a big Indian wearing a raven headdress jumped onto the prow and hugged the mast. Three other warriors seized the mooring rope. The chiefs gathered their presents and stepped into the calf-deep water and waded ashore. Thirty or forty braves now milled about on the shore. William, with a rifleman on each side of him, followed them onto the sandbar, determined to pacify the chiefs if he could, or at least retrieve the flag and awning.

Partizan, meantime, had dumped his armful of gifts contemptuously on the beach, and now he turned on William, his face distorted with hate. He snarled some words.

“He say you do not give enough presents; you cannot go on,” said Cruzatte. William glanced at the four warriors who resolutely held the boat, and he knew they would not let go until ordered to by a chief. Partizan now advanced on William, pointing a finger in his face and spewing out words that seemed to have all the force of curses and the flavor of obscenities. William felt himself growing very heated. His mouth worked, as if it wanted, on its own, to spit into that yammering face. But he held it, remembering:
Clarks don’t spit. No matter who at.
He said to Cruzatte:

“Tell them we’re not traders, nor squaws, but warriors. Tell them it’s our own choice whether we go or stay, not theirs.”

Cruzatte conveyed that, then translated Black Buffalo’s reply.

“He say, t’ey have warrieurs, too. Many more. He say, if we go on the river, they follow, and take us bit by bit.”

And Partizan began yapping again, and with a quick move, lurched forward against William, as if to topple him into the water, then drew back, smirking. The warriors, all along the beach, put arrows to their bows.