Sacajawea (133 page)

From then on the shouts took on a more erotic turn. The Quohadas laughed and made earthy jokes about marriage customs and sex. One man said, “Is it true women have a hole with blue lips and no teeth?”

Gray Bone, Weasel, and She Cat glanced neither right nor left, neither up nor down, but stared only straight ahead. Their legs moved jerkily as they sulked back to Gray Bone’s tepee, put down for the day at least.

Sacajawea breathed a sigh of relief and went back to fold her old blue coat and collect her other possessions. She helped Spring tie Jerk Meat’s bow and arrows, steel-bladed knife, winter moccasins, extra leggings, shirt, and rusty pistol into his buffalo robes.

This day would now date passage of time for the Quohadas. They would retell what Lost Woman wore and how her hair shone. They would say, “She was a woman that was found half-dead out on the plains, brought to us to mend, and became one of us. She was a hard worker and full of laughter. I knew her personally.”

Sacajawea’s thoughts ran deep. She and Jerk Meat met and from that moment they were never strangers. They were sensitive to the feelings of one another. Shefelt he was the only person she could fully trust with her innermost spirit and her outer body.

Hides Well and Spring left to make the last minute arrangements in the marriage tepee. Sacajawea was left alone with Big Badger and Wild Plum. Pronghorn had gone to look over his increased herd of horses until he could calm his fury with Gray Bone and her friends.

“I feel a need to eat,” said Big Badger. “Do you suppose you could fix a little fire in front of the lodge so that I can sit out there and keep my bowl of stew warm? I’d enjoy seeing people stand around and gossip.”

“Ai.
It will be good to use the time to do something you desire, Grandfather,” said Sacajawea, moving beside him, patting his thick-knuckled hand. She leaned closer and kissed him on the forehead. “You are the best go-between in the band.”

“Tee-hee! That is something magic you do with your lips. Will you teach this to the little grandmother on the other side of the village for me? Tee-hee!”

Sacajawea looped a worn blanket under Wild Plum so that he hung against her hip, and she went to the fire hole and dug a coal from the ashes and pushed it with a piece of bark to the front of the lodge. She broke a few twigs over it and fanned a flame alive. She put stew in a small clay pot and nestled it down against the little bed of smoldering sticks, then called for Big Badger to come out. He brought his willow backrest and settled himself against it, smiling.

The neighbors pointed down the path in front of some tepees. It was Jerk Meat coming back from his bath, carrying his dirty clothes in a roll under one arm, and in the other hand the heart of a fresh-killed horse from his herd.
¹¹

Spring and Hides Well met him behind the village, finished butchering the horse, delivered the meat to those who were most needy and gave the untanned hide to the same little grandmother Big Badger had mentioned living on the other side of the village.

Jerk Meat hung the bloody heart on a wooden closing peg of the tepee flap.

“What is that?” asked Sacajawea, clicking her tongue. “I like your clean leggings and white moccasins.”

“I like the design on your dress. I see you can sew,”

Jerk Meat said. “This heart is for one ceremony my Shoshoni cousins may have forgotten. You roast it, divide it, and we eat it. It keeps our two hearts on the same trail for life.” Jerk Meat sat on his haunches near Big Badger, who grinned toothlessly.

“Then you go to the marriage lodge,” whispered Big Badger, slapping Jerk Meat on the back.

Sacajawea thought she understood, and liked the meaning of the heart ritual. She found a thick green stick in the lodge’s wood pile. She pushed the heart on the stick and held it over the little coals. When it was browned and tender she let it cool in the evening air, then nervously divided it into two parts. All the while the villagers were looking, talking, laughing, gossiping, but not coming too near the tepee. They knew they should go home, but they were reluctant to leave. Jerk Meat ate two or three bites from his half. His face shone and his eyes were bright as he watched Sacajawea. She picked at her half, not daring to look Jerk Meat in the eye because of the excitement that was building inside of her.

The dark was almost in. Jerk Meat whispered, “Let us leave.” He wiped the meat drippings from his hands on his freshly braided hair.

The small fire threw shadows on the outside lodge wall. A soft whisper went out from mouth to mouth, “They are leaving. They are going.” The men stepped back into the darkness, and the women gathered in groups, their hands over their mouths as they whispered with their eyes cast down.

Sacajawea and Jerk Meat stood up. Then she kneeled, picked up both their packs with a leather carrying strap, and hoisted them on her back. They walked together to the newly built tepee at the edge of the village.

Neither was aware of the twinkling stars, the curious camp dog that pushed a cold nose against the back of Sacajawea’s legs, the chirping crickets, nor the howling coyote.

Inside the marriage tepee they stood side by side. Sacajawea was overcome with shyness after unpacking the sleeping robes, and took a few twigs from the wood pile to place on the red coals of the center fire. Jerk Meat touched her hand and motioned to the pile ofrobes. He too felt bashful and had to say to himself, this is my woman. Sacajawea crept to the far side of the buffalo robes and removed her moccasins and tunic and drew a robe about her shoulders. She lay quivering, every nerve of her flesh alert. She watched the slow, silent movement of her man pulling off his shirt and coming beside her. Gently he pulled her close to him. The thrill was strong. Both felt the explosion at the same time.

Sacajawea had five children while with the Comancnes, but only two lived beyond infancy, the oldest, a son, Ticannaf, To Give Joy, and the youngest, a daughter, Yagawosier, Crying Basket.

CHARLES A. EASTMAN,
Report to Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, March 2, 1925, pp. 1–69.

T
he tepee at the edge of camp was hidden by burr oak and wild grapevines. It was small, built for two, with highly colored paintings on the sides. The paintings were of the sun, depicting happiness, the moon, depicting restful nights, rain, meaning a good harvest of roots and berries, and at the sides of the door flap were fastened six silver bells. The hawk’s bells were cut from the fringe of Spring’s skirt. When the air stirred, the bells moved lightly with it.

The inside of the tepee was filled with branches of oak and sweet-smelling sassafras.

When Sacajawea woke in the morning, she glanced at Jerk Meat. He was still asleep under his robe. She smiled and brushed her hand along his long side hair. She sat up and threw off her robe and rushed from the tepee. The sun was high. She started a fire outside and listened to the distant barking of dogs, the creeping of the breeze through the oaks, and the soft speech of the villagers, barely audible. She ran on down through the trees to the creek’s edge. She knelt. Nose touching the water, she sipped a drink before bathing. She heard Jerk Meat call as she hummed softly to herself, letting her hair dry in the sun and by the heat of her small fire.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Bathing.”

“Why did you not waken me?”

Her dark eyes crinkled. “You were sleeping with a smile on your face; I could not waken you.” She took his head in her hands and pulled it down to her own.

“It was bad to wake and not find you at my side.” He stroked her streaming hair. “Why did you not wait for me?”

“Come, let us go swimming together, then.”

“Together?” he asked, startled.
“Ai.”

“A man and woman do not swim together.”

“Why not?”

“No one does,” he said. “No one ever does.”

“And so—would you like to—with me?” she cupped his chin and kissed him. He moved his lips against hers.

“Do I do it right?” he asked. “I like to touch your lips.”

“Ai,”
she said. She kissed him again. “You do it right.”

He cupped her chin gently and kissed her. His hand moved across her firm, round breasts and fingered the sky blue stone in the hollow of her throat.

She could see the wisps of smoke rising from the tepees of the village.

“We have everything here,” she said happily, pointing to the inside of their tepee. Inside were parfleches of mesquite bean cakes, roasted yucca fruit, ripe acorns. Even the necessities for preparing the food had been left by Hides Well. Spoons of buffalo bone, water gourds, fire drills, and woven grass containers.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“Happy?” she repeated. “Even more happy than I have ever been. More happy than when I was with my son, and the other one, called Tess. More happy than when I was with the white soldiers.”

“White soldiers!” He jumped backward, and his dark eyes blazed.

“Ai,”
she said. “I will tell you how it was that I was chosen to show them the homeland of the People.”

“Chosen?” he asked, more perplexed.

“It is something I could not tell everyone. They would have thought my tongue the most forked in the whole Quohadas band.”

“Tell me,” he commanded.

When she finished, however, it was not soldiers he was indignant about. “What a stupid, cruel man—that one, Toussaint Charbonneau!”

Sacajawea slumped against Jerk Meat with an inner amusement mixed with a draining sense of relief. She thought, Who can ever tell how a man is going to react. In her moccasins most women, especially a woman of the Quohadas, would have held to a rigid adherence to the ideas of the tribe. She would have shaken her head and said it was a squaw’s duty to follow along with her man and take whatever he gave. Instead, Jerk Meat had immediately and emotionally identified himself with the captains. His whole reaction was masculine, personal, and uncritical. Charbonneau was the only one at fault.

“A squaw should not talk of these things—maybe. The Quohadas would say it is not modest. But I must tell you so that you can know me and know that I am not like all other squaws. But it must be between only you, my man, and me. No one else must know all these things. They would not believe. They would not understand how such things could be true.”

“Ai!
Tell me what I already know. How are you not like other women?”

“Last night I was happiest of all. When we came here, the feeling was so good it seemed as though it could not go on. It seemed that surely I must die, and when I was with you as one man-woman that I could never live again and be happy alone without you. I have never felt that way. I found something new. And then, this morning I did not want that feeling at all. I woke and looked at you and touched you and felt your face and hair and listened to you breathe and there was nothing I wanted different. This is how it should be! I thought. And I have never before known of it. I am a grown woman, but I do not know very much. Then when I left you, I knew I could have remained at your side. Then the coming-back thought gave me the feeling of my heart coming through my skin.

“And at the creek there is a deep place and the water against my body makes it feel good because my body was clean with you, not used in whatever manner traders and mountain men deal in sordid acts with squaws. I kept thinking what you did to me, and I loved my own body because it had given you happiness.” She pulled away from him, blushing. “I think now it is not modest for me to reveal inner thoughts to you. You asked me if I was happy,” she said defensively.

“There is no modesty between us,” he said. “I had another woman once. I know something of what a woman thinks.”

“A woman should not talk too much, though. Pronghorn and Hides Well would be shocked.”

“No,” he said, “between us everything can be said. We are two people, yet one unit. Everything can be said. The good and the bad, the most beautiful and theugly. There must be nothing secret, no words that we cannot listen to from each other, nothing we cannot do with each other. We are bound together, yet separate.”

“You are more wonderful than I thought. You think deeply. You are gentle. You understand. You are a man. I give my love to you.” She put her hand on her heart and made the sign of love and held her hand out to him.

“Now listen to me.” He held her off, surveying her brown body, frowning at the white lines of the old scars on her back. “Each time something is held back, it builds part of a wall. Each little thing, no matter how small, builds on that wall. And then one day you will find you are on one side and I am on the other and it has become so high there is no climbing over. For a time we have each lived within ourselves, alone, and now we must start something new and share everything together. Everything. We must not grow alone in any way.”

“Ai,”
she said, “like two wandering streams that come together. Can you feel the same happiness I do?”

“Ai,
I can feel it. It is as though I have never felt happiness before. Let us not lose our good feelings. Each person thinks he or she alone has these feelings, as though the feeling were created each time. And each person is right. No one feels the same things. They go by the same names, but they are different, just as faces are different.”

She squatted by the glowing fire pit and dipped a flat bean cake in the meat stew she’d started earlier. “I must be a good woman and feed you.”

“I have forgotten about food.”

“You must eat,” she said seriously. “Many seasons ago my own mother used to say that a man judges his woman by the way she prepares his food. I do not want you to think I have no skill.” She hastened to the inside of the tepee for a cooking basket. She quickly brushed a tear aside and desperately wished she did not feel so much like weeping at this very moment of joyousness. “Go for a swim in the creek.”