Sacajawea (146 page)

He felt the cool light of stars upon him and saw the calm Moon Mother. He thought he saw the tiny thornpricks of yellow fires in rows glowing up at him. He blinked his eyes to make them water and squinched his lids down to see better. It was only the starlight reflecting from some placid stream far below. His imagination could not trick him.

He did not sleep, but suddenly he was aware of a light that had not been there before. It filled the air and danced over the gray stones of the Hill. He had never seen a light like this before. He pushed aside the robe and got to his feet. He could see every detail of the cap rock vivid with this silver glow. The sky was covered with blazing streaks, like arrows of white light, showering down on the land as far as he could see. The dripping fire seemed to radiate from one point in the sky. He raised his hands, offering himself to the brilliant silver light, to the four directions, and to Mother Earth. He felt faint. His head felt light. The four Holy Cedars seemed to jump out at him, and their shadows were long fingers pointing toward him.
³

Then it was there on the desert floor below him—the yellow-orange reflection of the flaming arrows in the sky in a neat row. Now he knew there was no water in that place. This was his vision! He was having a Holy Dream. Ticannaf could hear himself breathing. He listened for a sound from the flashing sky. There was no sound from those vivid silver streaks, not even the wind, only his own breath moving in and out. Then he heard it—the Voice, a whisper, and it was familiar. The Voice was his own great-grandfather, Big Badger, speaking from the fiery sky.

“This is your medicine, the night sky filled with stars. The stars push one another off their path of life. See them fall from their trail. They fall as enemies in battle. They fall as white soldiers fall before Quohada warriors. Below is the steadfast reflection. It has nowhere to fall. This is security against enemies. You will dream up this vision of the firm yellow lights when you need protection. It will make you strong. Keep a piece of the yellow light with you forever, for courage and patience. I will leave it for you. Remember how I appeared to you.”

Ticannaf blinked, and the shimmering sky was quiet. The morning star blinked at him from her proper place.

No stars were falling. Ticannaf shook with excitement. He ran across the cap rock and looked far below. He looked beyond, down into the plains. He could see nothing but grayness. He fell to his knees, looking, looking.
Ai-iii!
There it was, a tiny, crystalline rock. A piece of yellow light. It was a clear rhombohedral prism of cal-cite. Ticannaf felt one of the corners depress his fingertip. It was real. He held it tightly in his shaking brown hand. His heart was hammering against his ribs. A piece of yellow light. The soft dawn came up over the rim of Mother Earth. He laid the crystalline prism before him in a soft shaft of light. It seemed to give off a fluorescent glow. He examined the pale yellow crystal in his hand over and over, then held it up so the shaft of dawn pierced it. A tiny rainbow stood against the crystal. Many times that day he made the rainbow appear.

The sun moved in and out of clouds. Once a thunderstorm rumbled overhead, but no rain fell. The air was hot and stifling; his mouth felt dry as dust. But he was not thirsty enough to wish for water. He could not sit still. He climbed down the hill; his legs were weak. He patted his horse and then went to the spring. He stared at it, then put his whole head in the muddy pool of water. But he did not drink a drop. When he straightened up, he felt faint. He put his head in again and let the water run through his hair and over his eyes and mouth. He did not open his mouth.

When he went up the Hill again, it was a steeper slope than it had been the first time. It was much harder to climb. He wondered if he should stay through the whole four Holy Days, then told himself there could be another vision, so he had better stay the prescribed time. He was light-headed and dizzy. He seemed to have no control over his legs. He had to drag them over the cap rock, and his hands were cut on the rocks, but he did not mind.

In the evening the rain fell, and he wondered why he had gone down to the spring to wet his head. His head buzzed; he shook it to clear it. The day had passed. The night passed.

The third day was gray. He kept the pale crystal in the palm of his hand. He could not see the rainbowbeside it. Occasionally the rain drizzled. Toward evening, the clouds disappeared and the stars shone. He watched all night. None fell from their place. Everything was calm. A breeze dried the rocks and made Ticannaf shiver. Mother Moon shone on him, but her light could not make the rainbow come from the crystal in his hand. It is locked inside, somewhere, he thought. I will try to get it out again during the day. He pulled his robe tighter around his chest. The night passed into the fourth day. This day he was not a boy. He had passed the Four Medicine Days. Ticannaf was a man.

He scrambled down the hill, skinning his knees and hands on the sharp rocks, but they did not hurt him. His horse nickered at the new man he saw. Ticannaf ate a strip of jerky from the parfleche near his horse. Then he fell on his belly at the spring and ducked his head; then he opened his mouth and drank. The muddy water filled him, stabbing at his insides. He did not mind. His stomach cramped. He lay down, hardly feeling the pain. He slept before going back to the village. He did not have to hurry. He had a whole lifetime before him.

Sacajawea lived, approximately 26 or
27
years among the Comanches when her husband, Jerk Meat, was killed in a battle. It is a fact this was the first husband of her own choice and apparently she was devoted to him, therefore at his death she was heartbroken and very much depressed. At that time she was not in harmony with the relatives of her husband, therefore she declared she would not live among them any longer. When she said this the people did not take her seriously.

Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from
Sacajawea, Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
by Grace Raymond Hebard, 1957, pp. 154–55.

D
uring one of the hot, dry days of summer when there was no wind at all, only swarms of cicadas stridulating in the mesquite, Sacajawea gave birth to another female papoose. She was pleased with this papoose, who was small and perfect as her others had been. She hovered over the papoose, protecting it, keeping this link to her own mortality from the ravages of desert life, of Quohada living. She made a stout basket from willows in which to lay her new daughter. It was not in the manner of the Comanches. It was not in the manner of the Shoshonis, but more like the cradle that her first born, Pomp, had lain in while he slept at the edge of the Mandan village. She liked the basket. It was convenient to hang a strip of rawhide to a lodgepole, or from the limb of a tree while she worked outside. The baby was strapped in with wide leather straps so that Sacajawea could fasten the basket to her back, or take the papoose out easily to clean her, then hammock her in a soft blanket in a loop that placed the papoose close to Sacajawea’s breast. The other women did not make fun of her, but rather were curious and asked how to make such a baby basket for a daughter who was expecting or for a favorite grandchild.

Hides Well was amused. “Why must you always do things differently? Are the Comanche ways of making a cradleboard so awkward that you have to improve on them?”

“No, my mother, it is only that it pleases me to make my child warm and secure for the winter months.”

This new papoose affected Pronghorn. It helped him forget the death of Butterfly and the old, intelligent Big Badger. He would come into the lodge when Sacajawea was there with the child, and no longer did he seem to have the feeling of something missing slap him in the face. He found that his words were coming back to him and he was again remembering what was on his mind to tell the women, or in the council he could stand up and talk without a lump coming to his throat or an angry blaze in his chest when mention of white soldiers was made.

Also, it seemed that Jerk Meat was suddenly more cheerful and did not try to fill the conversation with inane speech such as “The berries seem bitter this year” or “The snow is white.”

The early winter weather was pleasant, and the sun shone warm and thin. The men were able to bring in many fat antelope for winter clothing and food. All the women were busy tanning hides, drying strips of meat and the soft, dark plums. They chopped pecans to add to their pemmican.

Sacajawea made tallow candles, with the dried fibrous mesquite stems as wicks, for Wild Plum and his young squaw,
Hebo,
Walking Against the Wind.

Jerk Meat teased Ticannaf one evening after a good meal. “Do you have many horses, my son?”

“No, my father. One for riding and one for carrying supplies. Why, do you wish to use one?”

“I do not wish to use one, but old Dancing Foot might like one or two.”

“Why would Dancing Foot need my horses?”

“If he is to be your father-in-law. I have seen you eyeing his youngest daughter, Happy Heart. So—your mother has also.”

Ticannaf reddened. He moved a step toward his mother, then added, pointing to his baby sister who cried in a fit of hunger, “Mother, aren’t you going to do something about the
Yagawosier
? That Crying Basket is loud enough to attract the mother instinct of female wolves.” Then he lifted the tepee flap and stepped into the night breeze. It was true that he had been seen walking with Happy Heart, daughter of Dancing Foot, many times lately.

“Crying Basket,” Sacajawea crooned as she put fresh cattail fluff in the leather pocket between the baby’s legs before nursing her. “Our papoose has a name.
Yagawosier,
Crying Basket.”

Jerk Meat watched the smoke drift up and out through the smoke hole just below the top of the tepee. He moved to the back of the tepee and sat cross-legged on the buffalo robe that covered his slightly raised couch, watching Sacajawea nurse Crying Basket and prepare the baby for the night. His woman always dressed with care, and this pleased him. The sky blue stone lookedgood against her brown throat. The beads on her long deerskin tunic glittered in the soft light of the tiny fire. Her dark eyes were outlined in yellow paint.

“Come and sit,” said Jerk Meat.

She knelt on the floor beside him. She did not speak. Her close-cropped hair framed a face that was good to see in the gentle light; the strong line of her jaw was softened.

“I am glad that you have come to me.” Jerk Meat stood up, but made no move toward her. It was as though their bodies had never joined and he was greeting a friend. He felt uncertain, like a boy.

Sacajawea said nothing, but she looked at him openly. Her eyes shone. She seemed ageless, yet quite young somehow. He could remember her when she had first come to the Quohada camp. She had sometimes played bull-roaring with the young girls, swinging the flat cedar board through the air, holding it by the thong tied to the handle, listening with delight to the whirring noise it made. Her eyes were as bright then as now.

‘Tonight I feel the time passing,” Jerk Meat said abruptly. “Our son is a man ready to take a woman. Together we have seen many good things and many bad. We have been happier than most and sadder also. I sit with wonderment at my wiseness so many moons back when I chose you among all the beautiful Quohada girls.”

“Tell me,” Sacajawea said. “I will listen why you chose me instead of a beautiful Quohada woman.”

Jerk Meat knew an instant of shame, shame that he chose his words wrong, that he did not tell his woman he thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and this feeling had never diminished through all the years he had lived with her.

“I will always love you. You make life strong and worthwhile; you give me health; you give me happiness. A man could want no more. Many have less and are content.”

“I feel that for you also,” Sacajawea said, stirring the tiny fire until it seemed to fill the tepee with light. “We have held our hearts in our hands and laughed. We have found our hearts on the ground. In time we have picked them up and lived again. We grow closertogether with time. You are the handsomest horse rider among all the Comanches.”

“Woman, I believe you talk with sand in your mouth,” Jerk Meat laughed, pulling her on the couch beside him. She nipped once at his ears. He did not wait, could not. He took her body, took it with a violence that was more than hunger; it was more need to love and be loved. When it was over, they were both weak and trembling. It passed, and their bodies stilled. Jerk Meat felt a warm, comfortable drowsiness, akin to lovely tenderness.

“Sleep now,” she said, her breath soft in his ear. “I will stay with you.” She pulled the buffalo robe over herself and lay close against his curled back.

Jerk Meat slept. Sacajawea slept. Crying Basket slept. Ticannaf crept inside the tepee, lay on his couch, and slept. Their dreams were good.

Mother and father were awake before dawn. They whispered and lay close together in the chilled air. They came together again, slowly. There was still plenty of time before the others awakened. It was like a greeting, a comfortable greeting filled with all the warmth and good wishes exchanged by longtime friends with great respect and admiration for one another.

Sacajawea roused herself and built up the fire. They talked. He dressed. “The times are getting worse,” she said slowly. It was not good for a woman to complain. “This is a good winter with plenty of meat for us, but there will be sad times ahead. There will be sickness. Even the Comanches cannot withstand the sickness the white men bring in. Other nations will suffer.”

He shook his head. “It is shameful. It is wrong for some tribes to be herded like the
taibo
cattle to live in a place chosen by white men. This is Comanche land. The buffalo are still here, and the Quohadas will stay here. We are free.”