Sacajawea (12 page)

Day after day she stayed on the sleeping couch, too tired and too weak to move except to be taken by Antelope to the toilet place behind the lodge. Antelope watched her with compassion and brought bits of meatand the fat yellow corn seeds, which she pushed between her lips. Grass Child felt a growing thankfulness toward this strange woman who showed kindness. One day she thought of all the things her family had done for her. She had not thought these attentions unusual, but as part of her due. Now she began to appreciate their devotion. Surreptitiously she felt along the drawstring of her tunic for the little leather bag. She felt the bag to make certain she still carried her totem. The sky-blue stone on the thin thong had come to represent the family she no longer had. Now, thinking especially of her mother, who had given the blue stone to Old Grandmother, she thought that the greatest kindness must be that for which the giver gets no reward.

Soon, Antelope and Talking Goose began to give her small jobs. There was much to do. In addition to Catches Two and the women, there was Talking Goose’s baby girl, Little Rabbit, her old mother, who walked with an unexpected, hip-swaying gait, and her old grandfather, who kept his mouth shut and did very little talking. Grass Child pounded corn, carried wood and water, and gradually began to help the women scrape the flesh from pegged-out buffalo hides. As the summer progressed, her strength returned, but she did not laugh and found it hard to be amused by anything. Nothing seemed right. Her body was too thin and seemed more awkward than it had ever been before. Her thoughts were shallow—never of yesterday and barely of tomorrow. She felt constantly tired.

Antelope tried to dispel her depression by teaching her a few Minnetaree phrases. It was difficult for Grass Child to adjust her tongue and mouth to the new sounds and to make the correct accents on nasalized vowels, although soon she understood enough to know that she was in the big Hidatsa village, and lower down the river, called Knife, was another Minnetaree village called Metaharta.

One morning when she was coming back from the water hole, Grass Child was stopped by old Black Moccasin. He took her by the arm, peered into her face, then asked, “Do you like it here?”

She was afraid to answer him. A chief never took time to speak to a slave, especially a female slave. “Itis not a bad place,” he said, touching her head with his knobby fingers.

Antelope had watched this and noted that he had made a sign above the girl’s head. The sign of something valuable and worth having, like a prize. Antelope was puzzled because men did not go out of their way to praise women. The old one is getting childish, she thought. But as the days wore on, she noticed that Grass Child had eyes as sharp as the hawk’s, and ears as long as the rabbit’s.

“Her spirit is as strong as the grizzly,” said Talking Goose. “If only we can persuade it back into her face— so we can see it in her eyes.”

“Her spirit is gone,” contradicted Antelope. “She moves as one in sleep—seeing, hearing, but not planning.”

“She is not well yet,” said Talking Goose. “When she has more flesh on her bones, you will see someone who will make even the eyes of our man turn.
Pagh!
I will not like her then! Remember how our man said her people were strong-willed and fought hard to keep the hunting grounds for themselves. Our braves could not shoot the buffalo until they had shot some of her people. They were clever at dodging and hiding and knew how to use a bow and arrow with talent. Remember we had two warriors killed that day, and their men shooed the buffalo away so that neither nation could have them. It was a hard fight to capture their horses and a few slaves. Ah, she is strong.”

“I have an idea,” Antelope said.

Early in the morning, while Grass Child was pounding dried strips of lean meat into a crystalline powder to mix with fat or suet for pemmican, Talking Goose and Old Mother came out to show her the iron cooking pots that Catches Two had traded for hides with an itinerant British Northwester. Grass Child had never seen anything so black and heavy. Antelope was right behind, showing off two large Sheffield steel knives Catches Two had bartered for. Grass Child had never seen anything so sharp. Old Mother went back to the lodge and brought out several fresh-looking elk hides. Chuckling, she pointed out that Catches Two hadn’t found these while he was trading, so now they werehers. She put them in the iron pots and poured water over them, placing them in the sun so that during the day the water and hides would become quite warm. Grass Child wondered if they meant for her to work the hides and make pemmican at the same time.

The next morning the women were up before Grass Child. They staked out the hides, flesh side up, on level ground, pounding little wooden stakes through them into the ground every foot or so. The three women fleshed the hides using an elk leg bone that was set in a wooden handle wrapped with rawhide. By the time Grass Child came out to pound meat, most of the fat and tissue was scraped off. The women gossiped and smiled at Grass Child as they washed the smooth hides with soapweed, then rinsed them clean with several pots of water and left them staked in the sun to bleach and dry.

The following morning Antelope had Grass Child help her pull up the stakes and turn the hides over in order to take the hair off with a scraper made of elk antler. It seemed ages ago that Grass Child had used a similar scraper, helping her mother dehair a hide. Grass Child placed both hands on the scraper and pulled in a sidewise movement. Antelope was amazed at the dexterity shown by Grass Child. Even Old Mother and Talking Goose smiled with approval when they brought out the stone hammer.

Talking Goose worked with the hammer first, using short, glancing blows with the back of the stone head. The blows overlapped each other so that every bit of the yellow, horny hide was pounded. Whenever Talking Goose, whose face shone with perspiration, felt her arms would drop off, she made a grimace and handed the hammer to Old Mother.

When finished, the hides were beautifully white. Grass Child ran one hand across their softness and nodded in admiration. Antelope motioned for her to step onto the hide, smiling that it was all right. Grass Child thought that it would make a fine floor covering and wondered if anyone would paint designs on the rugs. Would they go over their bright designs with the juice of a prickly pear whose spines were sliced off, as her mother had done? She could almost see her mother patting the surface with a half cactus, leaving a light protective coating over the painted designs.

Old Mother, whose teeth were missing and whose hair hung in wisps, began to use one of the Sheffield knives to cut the hide around the dusty outline of Grass Child’s footprints. Before the sun set the three women and Grass Child each had a new pair of moccasins. They had no special decorations nor drags, but they were snug and comfortable.

Old Grandfather sat in the shade with his back against a pine tree. He watched the women as he chipped small bird points from several large pieces of red chert.

On an impulse Antelope darted toward the lodge. She was back in a few minutes, bringing a clean but well-worn tunic. She held it to Grass Child’s shoulders and clicked her tongue over how much of the skirt lay on the ground. Using one of the sharp knives, she cut a wide strip from the bottom of the tunic. Talking Goose grabbed the leftover piece, cut it into several same-width strips, and told Old Mother to braid the pieces together. Finally, Antelope yanked Grass Child’s old, dirty tunic off and, before she could object, pulled the clean, shortened one over her head, tying it at the middle with the newly braided belt.

Quickly Grass Child took the leather from her old tunic, opened it, and pulled out the blue stone. She tied it around her neck so that it lay in the middle of the front yoke. Antelope looked pleased.

“Such a pretty thing should not be hidden,” said Antelope, feeling the smooth blue stone.
“Ai,
that is something beautiful.”

Talking Goose gathered the scraps of skin, all the time planning how each piece would be used in a tunic for Little Rabbit. Old Mother took Grass Child’s tattered, outgrown tunic to the back of the lodge and left it on top of the refuse heap. Old Grandfather had left a small mound of wafer-thin chert discards. He carried a handful of bird points and walked silently around Grass Child as though examining the new tunic. His eyes were bright beneath his coarse, shaggy gray eyebrows.

At first she felt strange wearing these clothes, but the tunic was comfortable and slit at the sides, permitting her to take long walking strides. The tunic was longer than her short Shoshoni tunic, and no trousers were made to go with it. Old Mother walked around her, pulling here and there, chattering, smacking her gums together. “Well done, well done,” she said. “Good girl. Now work hard.”

“I would like to wash now,” Grass Child said.

Old Mother sucked in her breath and cackled as though it were some kind of joke. Talking Goose, always sharp of tongue, said, “Time to work, and she wants to bathe. If we let her go, she’ll want not only a bath but to sit in the sun and talk to other women as well.” Then she managed a smile and pulled Little Rabbit from the skin robe slung around her back as a carrier. She stood the naked girl-child on the ground. “Little Rabbit needs a wash.” She squeezed her nose with thumb and forefinger and with the other hand pretended to push away the foul odor of her papoose. Grass Child did not hesitate, but grabbed Little Rabbit’s hand and pulled her toward the river.

Little Rabbit was almost two and a half years old, nursed by her mother day or night, whenever she fussed. She was handed soft bits of meat and vegetables any time from the cooking pot, which she ate with relish. Antelope called after the two, “I’m coming! The rest of the sewing will wait for tomorrow!” Talking Goose turned to Old Mother and said something about lazy Hidatsa squaws washing the sweat off before it was there. Grass Child was never referred to as a Shoshoni. She was now a Hidatsa.

There were no palisades on the river side of the village. At the shoreline floated many bull boats, which were used for fishing and crossing the river. Many more of the round, tublike boats were turned upside down on the beach sand. Nearly every lodge had one stored on the top of its mud roof. A row of ball-tipped paddles leaned against a bleached piece of driftwood. Antelope pulled off her clothing and dropped it in a heap, then pulled one of the boats into the water and motioned Grass Child to climb into another. Grass Child sat Little Rabbit beside some bits of sticks and colored pebbles and pushed them around so that the child would play alone for a few moments. Quickly she left her dress andmoccasins behind and stepped inside a tub, wobbling back and forth with the circular motion of its spinning on the water. The body of the boat was made of willow bent round in the form of a basket and tied to a hoop three or four feet in diameter at the top. Green buffalo hide was stretched under the frame, the hair outside. The hide was dried and smeared with tallow.

Antelope half stood, half squatted in her boat and made pawing motions in the water with her paddle directly under the boat, which turned half around, then half around the opposite way with the alternate strokes. Grass Child tried pawing the water. The boat spun. She placed the rounded tip on the river bottom and poled the craft. Still it spun. Little Rabbit laughed from the shore. Grass Child began to laugh. The harder she pawed, the faster she spun.
¹

Antelope sprang out of her boat and swam toward Grass Child, dragging her lightweight boat behind. Grass Child laughed and leaped from her boat. The boat was almost impossible to climb into from the water. Grass Child was still laughing as she brought her boat to the shore. She then realized it was the first time she had really enjoyed herself or laughed since she had come to live with these people. Little Rabbit splashed the cool water. Grass Child shivered and ducked into the water again to keep the breeze off. The Knife River was still cold, but not as muddy as it had been before the spring rains had ceased.

Antelope stood in the shallows and marveled at Grass Child’s swimming ability. The Minnetarees thought no one else could swim as well as they. Grass Child dived to the bottom and brought up a large clam shell for Little Rabbit. The papoose chattered and rolled in the sand. Antelope told Grass Child the shell’s name. Grass Child knew many words now, and could make herself understood in the lodge of Catches Two.

“Tell me what your own people called you,” said Antelope as Grass Child sat dripping in the warm sand with Little Rabbit on her lap. “You must have a suitable name. I am tired of calling you Girl.”

Grass Child shook her head, scowling. It was taboo for an Agaidüka Shoshoni to say one’s own name. A name was something special, unique, and given because of some deed or because it was characteristic of the bearer. If the bearer spoke his or her own name, the goodness or power of the name would be lessened a little. Finally the name would be nothing if the bearer said it many times. So the Agaidüka never said their own names.

Antelope’s eyebrows shot up as Grass Child explained she could not tell her name. Then she said, “When you pushed out in the boat, I wanted to call you Boat Launcher. You looked like you knew exactly what you were doing. But when you began spinning around and around and just stood there giggling, I knew that was not right for you.”

“A name is something one has for a long time. It is important.”

“Well, so, I know that,” said Antelope. “My name came when I was older than Little Rabbit. One day I climbed a grassy hill and began running back down. I had not walked in the presence of my mother before. She said I looked just like an antelope loping over the ground with its behind waving in the air. And because of that name I do not walk slowly today, but with hurried, skipping steps.”

Grass Child nodded, knowing that a name could affect one’s whole life. She told Antelope about a man called Coyote who always played tricks on his friends. “That is because Coyote is known as the trickster among all the animals.”

“Now, was he named Coyote because he played tricks, or did he play tricks because he was named Coyote?” asked Antelope.