Sacajawea (168 page)

She often thought, Is this the way all our people willbecome? Will they be irresponsible and shiftless when the white men give them land and provide food and clothing? Will the incentive to be a proud, dignified being be lost? Even Toussaint, a man who received the white man’s learning, has lapsed into a state of dependence upon the white men for food and clothing.

And the white men—what are they? Some are leaders and learn quickly. There are good and bad among them. The white man will not let himself be dominated by another and also wishes to be free in his own way.

Toussaint sat there at the edge of the camp to remind Sacajawea of old Charbonneau and his sullen ways, to remind her of the good times she had with Otter Woman when Toussaint and her firstborn, Baptiste, were small.

One evening Sacajawea asked Shoogan if one of his children could sleep in her lodge. The child chosen was Little Red Eyes. He was old enough to ride a horse, but not old enough to hunt. He was pensive, but not sad. He sat quietly with Berry around the stew pot until it was his turn to eat. Then he asked, “Grandmother, tell the story of another feast day. The one that honored you where the whites gathered around.”

“Oh, that was when the Saints from Salt Lake gathered around and touched the silver medal I wear.”

“What did they say?” begged Little Red Eyes.

“Oh, ‘Something grand,’ they said.” Sacajawea took the child’s hand and let him sit close to her.

Berry sat in Crying Basket’s arms. Berry was small, with piercing black eyes.

“My father has papers the men from Salt Lake gave to you—why?” asked Little Red Eyes, as though it were a secret he should not have told.

“Ai,
those are precious papers, signed by the leader of the Saints, their chief, Brigham Young. He said I was a good woman and his God approved of my ways. That was on the paper. He told me to keep it forever. I will not live forever. So—I gave it to your father to keep because he will live longer. He can pass it on to one of his sons—Lance or you—to keep forever. Then you will know, when you are a man, that your grandmother was a friend of the whites and tried to understand and live in peace with them.”

“Did you make the design on the leather wallet the papers are in?”

“Ai,
I learned to sew the wild-rose design from the Mandans, who live to the north.”

“Oooo, you have lived everywhere,” said Little Red Eyes, yawning sleepily.

“No, not in the east, where the white men come from, and not in the far west, California, where many whites are taking the trail now.”

“But that is why our people call you Chief Woman,” said Little Red Eyes. “You have been over more land than most any other woman.” He patted Sacajawea’s knee. “I believe you are Chief Woman.”

“That is because I am your grandmother,” laughed Sacajawea in a pleased way. “Every child loves a grandmother who has time to tell stories and listen to what is in the bottom of a child’s heart. Here, you wear this medal while I tell you a story to make your eyes grow heavy with sleep as Berry’s have done.” She slipped the Jefferson medal over Little Red Eye’s head and watched it settle on his bare neck and chest. It was large for a child, but it did not seem to weigh him down. It is good-looking on a child, she thought. She took it off and slipped it back around her own neck, after telling the story of the great whale on the west coast.

“Something grand,” repeated the child. “Only you and Chief Washakie wear such a thing, and yours came first.”

Early the next day, the Shoshonis and Bannocks were in their large semicircle before General Augur, Washakie, Taghee, Shoogan, and other important men.

Washakie did not wait for Augur to begin talking. As soon as the pipe-smoking was over, he stood up and asked, “How is the land going to be marked off that the Shoshonis can call it their own?”

Augur looked surprised that a Shoshoni would ask such a thing. He began to explain the meaning of latitude and longitude as determined by the sun and stars. Shoogan began to use hand signs and stuttered in his interpretation. Washakie was respectfully silent. When Augur was finished, Washakie asked, “Would an Indian ever measure the height of a mountain that hecould climb? No, never. The legends of his tribe tell him nothing about quadrants and baselines and angles. Someday I hope that I learn more about the sun and stars and how to measure the land from them. For the present I prefer to have the boundaries of my reservation explained in terms of rivers and mountains.”

Washakie then looked through the surveyor’s transit that had been brought out. “White man’s medicine,” he murmured.

Augur ran his finger between his neck and collar several times. Then he pointed out that the reservation would be temporarily shared with Chief Taghee and his Bannocks until they could move to Fort Hall the following year. The reservation would begin at the mouth of Owl Creek and run due south to the crest of the Divide, between Sweetwater and Popo Agie; along the crest and the summit of the Wind River Mountains to the North Fork of the Wind River; due north to the mouth of the North Fork and up its channel to a point twenty miles above the mouth; then in a straight line to the headwaters of Owl Creek and along the middle of its channel to the place of the beginning.

Chief Washakie smiled broadly. The boundaries of the Wind River Reservation had been defined in a language he could understand.

The remainder of the treaty had been gone over the day before, and nothing was left but the official signing.

Sacajawea stood up as if to stretch her legs. Crying Basket motioned for her to sit down until the signing was over. But the urge to add something to this important treaty was greater than she could bear, and she found herself standing in front of the semicircle blurting out her words before they could be swallowed.

“The white men are great chiefs. Our chief is great. The Bannocks’ chief is great.” Her heart was beating so fast she thought everyone could see. She moved slightly so that she could see Shoogan. Her hands shook, but the words could not be held in. “I listen and wonder. Does the white man know that the Bannocks want a place of their own now? If they are going to live near Fort Hall and it is already known where, send them today. They will be happier. You gave the buffalo hunters of our tribe a plow to break up the land. What is aplow? Why would anyone want to break up the land? Seeds can be put in the ground by making small holes with a stick. I can show the hunters that. Maybe I should show the white men before they open up our land, the way you heard the man called Augur explain, with this thing called a plow. It is nothing we want. And these stockings the white man gives to us, we do not need them. But if we did, we need more than one pair. I know these stockings, they do not wear—
whoosht
—gone before one season has passed. Moccasins are better.”

Sacajawea looked over the crowd of people, then at the general. Her nervousness came back. Had he understood her words? Shoogan was making hand signs. Was her tongue plain enough, her English words slow enough? Shoogan’s head shook as though he approved, and there seemed to be a smile at the corners of his mouth. She breathed deeply and faced him.

“These red blankets are so thin. They will not keep a small child warm in cold weather. We need two of these. Or we need to throw them away and use our buffalo robes. They keep the wind off our backs. But even so—my heart is glad. The white men have given back our land, our woods to walk in. A woods where I can walk for half a day and never come to the edge is one of the finest gifts to give anyone. On this land I can place my feet on some old, grown-over trail of our ancestors and follow it until it ends; then I can make a trail of my own. In this land I can feel the springiness of moss and leaves beneath my feet, hear the crunch of pinecones and the snap of dry sticks. The outcropping boulders covered with lichen will cause me to stop and marvel at their small green twigs, like a painting.

“In spring I will find a patch of bloodroot, dogtooth violets, and wild moccasins. There is peace in those places where trading and squabbling are not known.”

She was more calm now, and her voice low and slow. Her words were absorbed by the whole assemblage; no child cried out as she talked, and when she lapsed into Shoshoni, Shoogan, noticeably moved, spoke her words accurately to the white man.

“There will be squirrels and birds to greet me. I may sit on a rotting stump and see the new sprouts of kin-nikinnick coming up, telling me that life dies, but life lives on.

“In summer I will see branches overhead, making it cool underneath. I will look through at Father Sun and the blueness of the sky and wonder about the endlessness of our land.

“I will go to the hills in the fall and drink in the tangy smell of the yellow grass, leaving behind the noisy trading post, to walk in quietness.

“In winter the trees with no leaves show the backbone of life. They teach us to face the stark realities of life. I will feel the crystal coldness of wind in my face, and the cold, deep sleep of Mother Earth. The white chiefs have given us back the land that belonged to us for all ages. I am grateful.

“I, then, give this gift to the white man. I let him walk alone in our woods so that he will receive peace with himself.”

No one stirred for a few seconds. The quietness spoke as an ovation for something reverent, akin to a prayer.

In later years this speech became something woven into the winter tales and traditions of the Shoshonis. It was to be forever remembered. Those who heard it kept it alive by retelling it to those who had not heard. It is still told on the Wind River Reservation.

With their X’s Chief Washakie and his subchiefs, and Chief Taghee and his subchiefs, signed the treaty officially titled the Treaty with the Western Shoshoni and Bannocks, but more generally known as the Great Treaty of July 3, 1868. This signing was actually an anticlimax after Sacajawea’s speech. The reservation was almost as large as the state of Connecticut. To have, however, was not to hold. For later, by the cessions of 1872, 1896, and 1904, it was reduced to less than one-fifth the original area.

Despite treaties, atrocities were committed by both whites and red men against one another. During the Shoshoni fall elk hunt, the women put up a temporary hunting camp and went with their men. Sacajawea, Crying Basket, and Dancing Leaf were waiting for Shoogan and Smell of Sugar to bring down the grazing elk ahead. The women were hidden behind some tallcottonwoods watching the men approach the elk slowly. Crying Basket moved quickly to the other two women. “Quick, my man motions that enemies are near. Quietly, now.”

Hidden behind some brush was Smell of Sugar, who motioned for the women to stop and squat down. In the valley below they saw several braves strutting in ladies’ bonnets. Colored silks were thrown garishly around their shoulders and waists.

“I think they are Cheyennes,” said Shoogan. “The whites were in that white top. See out on the trail. They were going west, maybe following a group of white tops that went by two, three days ago.” He breathed deeply. “I will ride my pony around the other way and warn the other hunters. It is best if you go quickly back to camp with the children by going around the other side of these hills.”

He was gone. No sign, no noise was heard in his direction. Below, they heard the cries of a white woman and her children as her man was killed and mutilated. The leader of this small group of Cheyennes grabbed the younger child and hit his head against a tree. He dropped the jerking body and brained the second child in the same manner.

Sacajawea made a low, guttural sound in her throat. “It is not right. It cannot be,” she murmured. Crying Basket moved around the hill and retched in the bushes. Berry stood waiting for the older women to lead her. She was pale and shaking.

That evening, the men came back with only two elk. They had not seen what the Cheyennes had done.

Around the evening meal, Smell of Sugar told about the white man called Chivington. ‘This man was given a feast in a white village because he killed the Cheyenne chief Left Hand, and the same day he also killed women and children in another Cheyenne camp. Now the Cheyennes are avenged with what you saw on the trail of the white tops.”

Shoogan spoke up. “I heard that the half-breed son of the man known as Bill Bent led his own band of Dog Soldiers and lives as a Cheyenne constantly raiding the whites.”

Sacajawea’s hand went to her mouth. She recalledthe Cheyenne woman of Bill Bent, Owl Woman, and how kind she had been years back. Was this half-breed her son? she wondered.

Smell of Sugar said, “Half-breeds are not the same. Their world is split, and there comes a time when they can no longer straddle it. They will become white or Indian all the way. When they become Indian, they become more wolflike. When they become white, they are dandies, not wanting to do any hard work.”

Shoogan said, “If Bill Bent were in charge, he could have all the Indian nations at peace. It is he and Kit Carson who know how to deal with hostile men of any nation. It is said that he wept like a squaw, alone in the woods, when his Owl Woman was scalped by Pawnees.”

Sacajawea gasped. The voice of Shoogan went on, “But those whites do not interest me. They are traitors to their own people. They are nothing but Cheyenne-lovers. I think a man ought to work for his own tribe and not mix in the affairs of another, the way the white men do. We ought to stand up to those white men and tell them we will live in the old way, the way we know and love best. They have no business ordering us around on our own land.”

All the way back to the main camp, Sacajawea felt the ground was cut from under her feet. To know that Owl Woman was gone caused a penetrating loneliness to pervade her body. The old ways were leaving. Her friends were leaving.

The next several days, little things seemed to go wrong. She could feel her own emotions shaking her usually fine balance. The grandchildren had the power to disturb her as never before.

One day she found herself on her knees, hugging the weeping Berry to her breast in a passion of self-blame. She had just taken a beaded necklace away from the child that was made as a gift for Dancing Leaf. Oh, oh, she thought, why do I take my feelings out on a baby? She should be permitted to look and to feel the necklace. Why didn’t I give it to her? I could easily have made another. Why did I grab it away from her childish eyes so fast?