Sacajawea (116 page)

Sacajawea’s heart had fallen to the floor. She saw the peace of her little family dashed apart. Her whole being cried out against these two intruders. With nausea in the pit of her stomach, she watched Charbonneau, uninvited, take off his leather coat and toss it into a corner. Very much at home, he sat down expectantly at the supper table, while the woman, Eagle, stood stolidly in the doorway.

“How is—what’s his name now—Générale Clark?”

“He is away.”

“When will he be back?”

Sacajawea’s mood was not improved by this conversation. She felt perspiration standing out in beads on her forehead and upper lip, which felt as cold as ice. What to do? This man was the father of her boys. Sacajawea bit her lip, sucked in her breath once, stepped over to the young woman, and said gently, “What’s wrong with young people these days that they don’t show more respect to their elders? Come inside and close the door. It is cold out there. Inside we have hot tea.”

Charbonneau looked sharply at Sacajawea. She had developed into the full bloom of womanhood while he’d been away. He admired and at the same time resented this. He knew she was different. She knew when to speak and how to put words together.

That summer, Governor Clark and Miss Judy moved to a new home that they had built especially for their growing family of three boys and one little girl. It was a two-story brick house set on the southeast corner of Vine, running half a block south on Main toward the river. Miss Judy could hardly wait to show the wing attached to the south end to Sacajawea. It was called the Council Chamber and was a great room, a hundred feet long and thirty-five feet wide. At night it was lighted by massive chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling.

General Clark displayed all his Indian trophies there. Sacajawea saw feather headdresses, brightly colored ornaments, canoes, shields, bows, arrows, projectile points, clothes, cooking utensils, pipes, knives, dishes, agricultural and musical instruments, war bonnets, snowshoes, moccasins, cradles, robes and hides, and even a rare Roman coin found by a Fox chief on the bank of the River Des Peres.
²

During the summer, Miss Judy’s health failed, and even though it was a crucial time when the Missouri Territory was fighting for admission to the union as a state, Clark took his wife to the sulfur springs in Virginia. She did not rally, but became worse and died. Clark was heartbroken. It seemed as though the sun had fallen from the sky. His enemies took advantage of his time away from Saint Louis and his deep grief.

“He favors the Indians at the expense of the whites,” some said. “He is too good to the thieving Indians,” others whispered behind his back. “We want a new man for governor!” And the sounds spread like a brushfire in dry leaves.

When he returned, Clark found that Missouri had become a state and Alexander McNair was governor. And to add more sorrow to his grief-stricken heart, his little daughter, Mary, had taken ill and died at the home of her mother’s cousin.

Charbonneau said, “It has nothing to do with us. Stop your wailing, woman, and make me a pair of breeches. If I find you wandering off to somewhere, like to the Clark mansion, I will beat you with my bare hands.”

Sacajawea looked at Charbonneau and grieved in silence for her dear friend.

Late in the summer, Charbonneau announced he was going to Sante Fe with De Mun and Chouteau. Before he could even suggest that the boys go along, Sacajawea pointed out that they would be going to school in several weeks. Charbonneau said nothing, but studied Sacajawea, then laughed, showing his stubby yellow teeth.

She flung her arms fiercely around both boys. She heard the woman called Eagle gasp. She felt Charbonneau pull her back and heard him draw a deep breath.

“Little Bird, take your hands off the boys! They aregrowed now. Let them decide if they want to go to school. Don’t decide for them.”

Sacajawea winced. To her the boys were not yet grown, yet by Indian standards they would both have been on their own even a year ago. She looked at Charbonneau’s face with its graying beard. She looked at his hair—long, wavy, gray, shaggy at the neck, curling at the ears—and imagined it suspended high on a stick in a dance around some Blackfoot fire.

“I’m going back to Dr. Welch’s,” said Baptiste softly. “I—I really want to. I’d like to go trapping during the next summer vacation, though.”

“He wants to be an educated white man!” cried Tess. “He’s sickening.”

Sacajawea did not move or look up, but her fingers stirred restlessly over her mouth.

“Can’t sit around waiting for summer. Gotta earn a livelihood. Gotta get the good pelts now—this fall.” Charbonneau’s lips were pressed firmly together.

“I can get some gear and grub together and be ready to pull out whenever you say,” Tess said, looking expectantly at this father.

Charbonneau stared. “Little Tess, you growed a lot.”

“Everybody calls me Tess now.”

Sacajawea stared at Tess with her soft eyes wide and questioning. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. In her mind Charbonneau had closed a door and put his hand upon another. He was taking away one of her sons.

Baptiste saw her eyes and the remote sorrow that had suddenly come into them so swiftly, and his warm heart reacted at once. He said, “Mother—something hurts you. What is it?”

She did not answer him, did not even seem to know him. Baptiste had never seen her like this before, and yet the urgency of her hands moving over her mouth struck a chord of understanding within him. Whatever it was that bothered her, he knew she needed help.

Silently, he went to face his older half brother, and with his eyes he beckoned his father.

“I want you to tell Tess to finish this last year with Father Neil. Governor Clark has made provisions for us both to be in school again this fall. Clark says goodwords about your cooking on that trail west. He tells many people of your worth. He is paying you back for those good services by giving us a chance to learn of the white man’s world at a time when many half-breeds have to stay in the saddle just to keep alive.” There was no anger or outrage in his face as he continued. “By next summer we can both go out trapping with you.
Zut!
That is something to look forward to.”

“Hell,” said Charbonneau, “you’re telling the truth. I am also interpreter for the expedition. I saved some of the Army men from drowning and from falling off the mountainside. That’s straight. The world’s ahead by me.” He got out his tobacco and took a serious bite.

Eagle brushed her hair back from her eyes.

“I can load a smooth-bore flintlock fast as the next Army man. Ever hear about the grizzly I shot so my friend, Drouillard, wasn’t mauled? It was near the River That Scolds All the Others, and the day was calm, after a night of hard wind and rain. I had just—”

“A man,” interrupted Baptiste good-naturedly, a flicker of a smile touching his face, “naturally does a heap more shooting with his mouth than with his gun. And for two reasons. One, he’s a surer, quicker shot with his mouth; and two, it costs less ammunition. A man can load and fire his mouth off twenty times with a big swallow of whiskey.”

Charbonneau grinned knowingly at his younger son and began to rummage around in a large bag for a bottle of brandy. He tipped it up, jammed the cork back tightly, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“To be sure,” he said, still grinning. “I wouldn’t want you to call my bluff—but I never invited no ragtail half-soft son to come to Santa Fe. That is a man’s trail. Tess, you just stay put another winter and get toughed up. You’re growed all right, but still soft.” He kept looking Tess up and down.

Tess said, “You’re just a part-white man that is also part dog. I may just bury you in that there bag.”

“I’d turn you in for murder.” Charbonneau’s smile was slow to come, but it was broad when it got there.

It was as though a great light grew in Sacajawea. She had not dreamed that her own son, Baptiste, could use words in such a way. His words were like the thinedge of a knife, persuading and whittling away at the thoughts of a man so that he was turned on another path. She was no longer afraid to look at him, to see his youth, and to smell the freshness of him. She laughed aloud and squinted her eyes as if something stung them.

Looking at his mother, Baptiste saw that her eyes were swimming with tears, and they made him wonder. He guessed that maybe women always cried at a moment when they knew they had what they wanted, and his own sensitivity told him that Sacajawea seldom had what she wished, but accepted what came as her lot.

Taking a step toward his half brother, Tess said, “A white man’s liver with his own gall squeezed on it might be too bitter to eat. I am going to try yours with goat gall if I ever decide to kill you.”

“You shut your gab,” said Charbonneau.

Eagle said, “You are the talkingest tribe I ever seen. Did you know that?”

“Let every man skin his own eel,” answered Charbonneau, tipping up the brandy bottle again. Then his voice went high. “Why do I have to keep reminding the whole mess of you that I’m heading southwest? Somebody get the leather around my horse and bring up the packhorse. I want to get going.” He looked at Tess. “I never reckoned you could be so wool-brained.”

Clark kept himself as busy as possible and soon found good reasons to do so. The Indians were buying more and more trader’s liquor.

He proposed a lesson for the Indians. His idea was a long row of kettles placed on the grass in his front yard, all filled with whiskey. When many Indians were assembled, he struck at the kettles, spilling the whiskey to show that strong drink was an enemy to the Indians. But as Sacajawea had warned him, this method was much too sophisticated. The Indians’ main feeling was deep regret for the lost whiskey.

Clark confided in Sacajawea, “Even the Indians are laughing behind my back now. They expect some kind of miracle from me. And now my children need me at home to be a father and a mother.”

“What do your children expect?” she asked. She was all poise. The gentleness of her face betrayed no indication that Charbonneau slapped her around whenever he took the notion.

“They expect—and need—a firm hand. Rose is getting too old to take care of them.”

“So then—what about a younger woman? A mother for them?”

“It would take a lot of qualifications to be my wife, Janey. That woman would have to be intelligent, soft-spoken, and for my boys, imaginative. She would have to be someone they already know and respect.” Then he surprised her by holding out a small portrait, which had been in his breast pocket. ‘This is Harriet Kennerly Radford. She herself has two small children, Mary and John, and a twelve-year-old son, Bill. She has no man to help raise them. I’m thinking of being that man.”

She had known in her heart that Chief Red Hair would take another woman to help care for his lodge and children. Her suspicion fulfilled, she tried to hold herself so that his words would not cut. But the hurt was deep and it was all she could do to keep her hands from clutching at her heart to ease the pain. She knew this Harriet woman was the cousin of Miss Judy. Harriet! For a moment she thought of fleeing so that she would no longer hear him, when he suddenly took both her hands in his and said with surprising tenderness and deep sincerity, “Janey, no one can push you out of my heart.”

Her heart was so full that for a moment it threatened to choke her. After a while she managed to say, “I would like to see this woman called Harriet. I will tell her of your bravery, that you do not exaggerate, and that you make a good showing anywhere.”

When Clark was silent, she said, “Maybe she will be the best-looking woman in Saint Louis.”

Then he laughed. “She is a good-looking woman.” Then he quickly added, “But, Janey, you don’t hurt anyone’s eyes either.”

On November 28, 1821, William Clark married Harriet Radford. She was a great beauty and much admired by the small social set in Saint Louis. The following summer they had a son, who was named Jefferson Kennerly and called Pomp by Clark.

When this Pomp was a year old, Clark threw him inthe water of the quarry he owned. Clark stood by to rescue him if necessary, but the child managed to swim out, furiously kicking his legs and thrashing his arms.

This incident delighted Sacajawea. She felt great joy in the knowledge that Clark called his own new son Pomp. It was the same nickname she gave to her firstborn. A surge of pleasure made her face glow. She knew that her life was more varied than most Shoshoni women and it was due to friendship given her by all the men of that west expedition. Her sons were educated in the white way. She could come and go as she pleased, talk to whomever she wanted. She was no longer bound to her environment. She could make her own decisions.

June 21, 1823

The homes of the fur traders, two large houses, were scarcely more than a half mile further up on the right bank of the Missouri. I went to that place in order to visit the owners, the Messrs. Curtis and Woods. Neither of them was at home but the wife of the latter was there. She was a Creole, a daughter of old Mr. Chauvin, with whom I had spent the night near St. Charles. The whole population of this little settlement consists only of a few persons, Creoles, and halfbreeds whose occupation is the trade with the Kansas Indians, some hunting and agriculture. Here, I also found a youth of about sixteen years of age, whose mother, a member of the tribe of Shosho-nes or Snake Indians, had accompanied the Messrs. Lewis and Clark, as an interpreter, to the Pacific Ocean, in 1804–6. This Indian woman married the French interpreter, Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau later served me in the capacity of interpreter, and Baptiste, his son, whom I mentioned above, joined me on my return, followed me to Europe and has since then been with me. I remained for dinner with Mrs. Woods and after the meal went to the Kansas again.

PAUL FRIEDRICH WILHELM, HERZOG VON WÜRTTEMBERG,
Erste Reise nach dem nördlichen Amerika in den Jahren 1822 bis 1824,
vol II, 1835.
WILLIAM G. BEK
, transl.