Sacajawea (10 page)

The men sent a young warrior ahead to inform the village that they were coming in, and the captives watched in fascination as they prepared for their return home. The men smeared their faces and bodies with the black-and-yellow stripes of paint. They rubbed the horses with bunches of dried grasses and polished their lances and rusty flintlocks. Buzzard Beak circled the three long furrows Grass Child had clawed into his face with vermilion paint, as though he were proud of his wounds.

Then the Minnetarees cried out to each other and broke into long yells and whoops that rang over the prairie. They dug their heels into the flanks of their tired horses and hurried them toward the village.

The huge village consisted of hundreds of rounded earth huts standing close together in a circular pattern. In the dim light of the gray afternoon they looked dark and depressing. Smoke hung in pallid clouds over the flat rooftops, forming a low-hanging cloud over the entire village. Beyond the encampment, outside the closely placed skinned posts that formed a sort of fence around the village, horses grazed in large herds, speckling the gray prairie. Just inside the fence, near a small creek, lay a meadow and several thickets of willows. This meadow was not like any Grass Child had seen. Fresh green leaves were growing in it everywhere; some seemed a lighter shade of green than others, and these grew in patterns of straight lines, row after row. She paused to look, but Scar Face flew by, striking Grass Child’s mount across the hind legs, and the child was almost unhorsed as the beast lunged down the slope after the others.

As they rode closer, Grass Child saw brush arbors and fires and tied horses and many women and children among the earth huts. The smaller children, up to the size of Grass Child, wore nothing. Their skin was smooth and deep brown.

Some of the women began singing, a chant of the strangest nature Grass Child had ever heard. They were not singing the same song. Each seemed to be rejoicingin her own manner at the return of the men. They pulled open the huge picketed gate and let it swing wide as the horses rode through.

Grass Child thought the women hideous. They wore dark deerskins with fringes along the sides of their short skirts, and elk’s teeth and pink shells dangled from their ears and on their tunics. Some of the women were bare down to a short fringed skirt, with beads around their throat. Their coarse, straight black hair was chopped and uncombed. The insides of their ears were filled with vermilion paint. They looked as if they never used the river for bathing, and smelled like it, too. But the joy on their broad faces was unmistakable.

Grass Child was pushed from her horse, and she fell to the ground on hands and knees. Buzzard Beak had pushed her. She was taken to stand with the other captives. The Minnetaree women were shouting things she did not understand. One naked Minnetaree child picked up a handful of dust and flung it into the face of little Blue Feather. He coughed and clung to his mother.

“Stop that!” Grass Child told them. “He didn’t do anything to you. He’s only a papoose.”

They laughed, and one of the larger boys took the little boy into the crowd of
kiyi-
ing women.

“Stop him,” called Water Woman. “He’s my baby.” They only yelled and screamed back.

Too weak to resist, the captives were pushed into the center of the encampment. They were between lodges that were elbow-to-elbow, and the spaces between were not clean. Animal and vegetable refuse in every state of putrefaction was scattered about. Grass Child thought of her own clean village, kept all the cleaner by moving to a new camp each winter and summer. She held her nose to show her distaste of the smell and to keep out the slow black smoke that breathed out of the smoke holes and bit her lungs.

The Minnetaree squaws led the horses, grunting and jabbering and pointing. Water Woman carried Drummer and grabbed for the hand of Grass Child as she stumbled into one of the trenches that were dug around the outside of each lodge to guide off the rain. “Keep your head on,” she whispered. “I can see Blue Featherbeing carried by a young squaw. She is gentle with him.”

Grass Child noticed that the doors on the lodges were made of rough wooden planks tied together and painted blue, red, or yellow.

The smell of spoiled meat was everywhere. Ferocious-looking dogs came out from behind the huts to look at them. Their long red tongues dripped saliva upon the hard, damp ground. They barked and slunk away when the party came near them. It came to Grass Child that these animals lived only to devour the offal tossed behind the lodges. They were not pets.

More squaws and naked children ran to join them, yelling and laughing. Big boys scooped up fresh horse droppings and pelted Grass Child and the Agaidüka women. Girls ran toward them. Grass Child felt the wetness of their spittle on her bare face and arms. They crowded and quarreled to get a closer look or to touch her, then fell away laughing.

Grass Child felt their behavior unbearable, and she began to withdraw inside. This feeling she had experienced several times lately. She said to herself, “I am one of the People. I am an Agaidüka.” She walked proudly and pretended to ignore them and their uncouth actions.

Somehow she became separated from Water Woman, but she kept going with the crowd. There was no way to stop. A woman with a baby at her bare breast jabbed a finger into the side of Grass Child and shouted vituperations down at her face.

The procession was now in the heart of the encampment, where there was a huge flat area with a Council Lodge at one side facing the rising sun. Grass Child had never seen so many people at one time. The people nearest her shouted wordy abuse and shook their fists threateningly. She continued to ignore them, but she was filled with apprehension. What were they going to do? What more could happen to her?

She shivered as the northwest wind grew keener. It seemed to forget spring, and to speak only of imagined fall and the onrush of winter. The small boys of the village had put on fringed leggings; the women had drawn robes over their shoulders. The horses swungtheir tails in the wind, waiting patiently, subdued, with bowed heads.

Suddenly Scar Face lined himself between her and the last remnants of daylight that seeped in through the crowd. He stood there, maybe two man-lengths away, silent for a moment. Then he laughed deep in his throat and began to talk. Grass Child could see his even, white teeth. She could not understand what he was saying. He began to use his hands to make signs. A circle with his index finger and thumb, then the other index finger pointing at the circle, then moving inside it.

“Do not answer,” said Fish Woman, coming out of the crowd.

Grass Child thought he was indicating something about eating. She had been without much food too many days. She did not feel hunger, only pain and weakness and a desire to sleep.

The men were forming a circle around the fire. Several women brought sticks and laid them in the shallow pit where the fire glowed. Grass Child and the women were pushed roughly to one side. Their wrists and ankles were bound. Scar Face bound her hands so tightly her fingers went numb.

People ambled past to stare at them, then leave. Something Good nuzzled Moon Woman and sobbed quietly. Grass Child’s mouth began to water. There was a wonderful smell in the air. Over the fire hung an iron kettle, and choice pieces of meat were being roasted, filling the air with a fragrance she had almost forgotten. She breathed deeply. The men seated in the circle passed the pipe, as in a council meeting. But they ate instead of talking, digging their fingers into the kettle and making many slurping sounds. Even so, Grass Child’s mouth watered.

When the men were done, the Minnetaree women ate, crowding around the kettle, pushing and shoving. Another kettle filled with food was brought, then another, and another, so that they all might be fed.

A short woman with fat legs came through the crowd, and the villagers moved aside to let her pass. She stopped in front of the prisoners with a broad wooden plate heaped high with chunks of steaming meat and fat yellow seeds. Grass Child fell to the business of eating asnoisily as her captors. She bent over the plate on the ground—the bindings on her hands did not stop her from using her mouth. She finally looked up. The four Agaidüka women were staring at her. Then Water Woman laughed, knelt down, and began to shove the plate down toward her boys with her chin. The boys sucked up the stringy hunks. Suddenly Blue Feather was lifted up. A young woman was holding him close and nuzzling his neck while making soothing sounds. The strange young woman then plunked the baby down in the lap of Water Woman and untied her wrist bindings. She whispered something Water Woman could not understand. Water Woman rubbed the warmth back into her hands. The stranger broke off hunks of meat for Drummer and the other two boys, indicating that Water Woman should nurse the baby, Blue Feather. She spoke again and slipped away.

When Blue Feather was asleep in his mother’s arms, Grass Child moved beside Water Woman, who loosened her tight wrist bindings. She loosened the bindings on Moon Woman so she could help Small Man and Something Good eat more of the warm, sweet yellow seeds.

Grass Child wondered at the seeds. They were so good, so different from the parched corn used by the men on the trail. Soon her stomach felt full, nearly bursting. All the women ate the yellow seeds and remarked at their goodness.

“The People should have these,” said Fish Woman, her mouth full. “They would taste fine with the wind howling outside the tepee.”

Suddenly Grass Child felt as though she were being swallowed by her own stomach. Her hands and face were cold and clammy. The tightness at the pit of her stomach grew to a swollen ball that suffocated her. She was afraid to open her mouth for fear her insides would break apart. She could think only one thought: Nothing could be the same. The Agaidükas had lost their great chief. Grass Child could not say the name of her mother or father aloud to anyone. She was now no one. The captors did not know she was the daughter of a great chief; they did not even know her name.

Suddenly, involuntarily, her mouth flew open and she heaved. The half-chewed yellow seeds lay sour onthe ground. As the heaving subsided, she felt anger and fear of these kidnappers who spoke words that made little sense. She crawled to the other side of her group. Water Woman clicked her tongue and impassively pushed dirt and pebbles over the fermenting discharge, all the while holding her breath.

Grass Child’s sadness returned, but it was mixed with the pride of being Shoshoni. She vowed to conduct herself in a manner befitting the daughter of a great Agaidüka chief.

Grass Child raised her loosely manacled wrists and dropped her arms around little Blue Feather and hugged him. Then she leaned toward Drummer and gently nudged him with her chin and nose. His eyes opened wide, and he smiled when he saw it was Grass Child.

In the cold darkness a guard forced the Agaidükas to their feet and led them beside the great council fire. The warmth slowly edged through their stiff bodies.

Directly in front of the huge fire sat the chief sachem, titular head of all the Minnetarees, and his family. He was very old, his face as wrinkled as a dried apple, his graying hair piled in a spiral on his head. The Minnetaree women chanted one word, “Omsehara, Omsehara.”

Moon Woman whispered, “That is Black Moccasin. He is chief of all the Minnetarees. His word is law. People jump when he speaks. Not like the People, who can rule themselves. These people have someone tell them when to plant seeds, when to hunt, when to sing. This chief makes a fence around his people.”

Swaying to the chant, Black Moccasin stood. He spoke slowly so that all his people might hear and understand. His voice was strong and confident. It came from deep within his chest, and it seemed that he was kept alive by his heart that refused to grow old. He spoke two names. Moon Woman again whispered, “They are warriors who did not return from the hunt. They were killed in the Agaidüka raid.”

The women of the two warriors immediately mourned them in high, shrieking cries that could be heard throughout the entire village. The warriors’ names would not be mentioned again by anyone, since it was also taboo for the Minnetarees to speak of those announced dead. Yet their women and families might mourn them for many years.

Black Moccasin then brought his people good news. There were many new, beautiful horses in their herd. The fine horses of the Agaidüka Shoshonis. And besides that, there were four Agaidüka boys to replace the two warriors. There were five women; he showed them by holding up the fingers of his right hand. In time, these women might be taken by men of the People of the Willows and bring good warriors into the tribe.

Moon Woman whispered her translation as best as she could remember the language. Water Woman kept shaking her head up and down to indicate she understood perfectly well what he was saying if Moon Woman would keep up her explanations.

The Minnetarees shouted their full agreement with their tribal leader with
“Ai!”

The fire showed in his face as old Black Moccasin called out the names of those who would care for the little Agaidüka boys. His choice was made carefully. He gave Something Good to a couple who had lost two boys with winter sickness. Something Good held his little back straight and his chin high, just as Grass Child had told him, when his new family came to take him to their lodge. Little Man clutched tightly to Moon Woman’s fingers as he was pointed to by the old chief. A middle-aged warrior with many scars running down his neck grabbed Little Man by the arms and swung him high for the crowd to see. Finally he had a son. Before this there were only girls in his lodge.

Suddenly the chief pointed to Drummer. Water Woman whispered something to her elder son and pushed him toward the old man. The boy did not whimper, but held his face straight and fixed his eyes on the old man. Back at the center fire, with Drummer at his side, the chief began a speech.

“Speak up. What is he saying?” asked Water Woman.

“I cannot be sure. I think he wants Drummer for himself,” answered Moon Woman.