Sacajawea (178 page)

“Porivo, I have your rations and will bring them later, but now I feel like I am in a box canyon with no way out. Those piercy-eyed boys want me to lead a Sun Dance. They said you told them about the revered Mandans. I cannot do that dance! They cannot do that! I thought about doing a Shoshoni Round or Scalp Dance with the big whip. I told them I was going to get my whip, but I do not have one.”
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Sacajawea went into a deep chuckle for a moment, then slowly got to her feet and motioned for Shoogan to follow her into the tepee. Together they rummaged through several old parfleches and leather boxes. They discarded everything until Sacajawea pulled out a big wooden comb with pictures of leaves carved on the back.

“Ai!” yelled Shoogan, “that’s perfect! See, it is enough like the wooden blade with the serrated edge and the carved scalp symbols on top. Now, how can I put two otter-skin whips on the end of this handle?”

Sacajawea was pulling the binding off a cracked and peeled leather case. Several good beaver skins were inside. “I recall the Comanche also used the big whip to brag about their bravery,” she said, shaking out a skin and measuring it against the comb handle. “I can make a couple beaver-skin whips and tie them on here. What do those feisty youths know about the old ways? This will be a shabby fake. We both know that. But it will take you out of the box canyon. The dancers will be satisfied, my son.” She cut the strips with her butcher knife and tied them to the end of the big wooden comb.

Shoogan nodded and smiled his thanks and hurried back with a grin on his face.

Sacajawea put the parfleches and boxes in their places, picked up her cane, and left her tepee. She shuffled along the dusty flat to the agency grounds, passing the jack pines, mountain ash, harebells, asters, a chipmunk, and several ground squirrels. She smiled when people passed and nodded toward her. She rested on one of the overturned barrels the soldiers had moved to the side of the road after the horse races.

The mountains behind the agency had changed from blue to purple in the sunset. The bugle was blown and the flag lowered. She stood up and her mouth fell open when she saw the broad-faced youth hand the flag to the soldier. The soldier took it quickly before the trailing end touched the ground. She thought he folded that big bright banner more carefully than a mother would fold her baby’s newest blanket. She moved closer so that she could hear what Shoogan told the youths moving around the flagpole.

“Anytime during the dance, if I point the big whip at anybody he must stop and tell of some bravery or good hunt, as I said before.”

The youths nodded in agreement.

“The story ends with the sun curse, which goes like this: ‘Oh Father Sun, shine on me, draw away all my juices so that I am crisp as a leaf in winter if I speak with a forked tongue about my brave exploits.’”

The youths nodded again. They understood and for the first time thought it was an honest Sun Dance if the dancers called upon the sun to prove their truthfulness. Most felt it was better than the Sun Dance old Porivo told about. Hers was a violent, grisly affair that was probably made up to frighten them, they thought. The Sioux might subject themselves to hanging by thin thongs from wooden pegs implanted in the chest and shoulder muscles, but only a crazy would also add heavy buffalo skulls to his arms and legs.

Shoogan continued, “When I point my big whip at somebody, he has to come to the center by this tall pole and tell of a coup. If not I give him a sound lashing.” He swung the whips through the air, stopping suddenly so they cracked. “If your coup is not as good as the one I will tell, I can whip you four times.” He pointed at the chest of the young man who had the knife. The man looked around and gave a stifled laugh. He told about stealing watermelon in Riverton and being shot with rock salt in his butt and legs. He pulled up his black woolen pants and showed scars on his legs. “I ran like a cougar, doubled back, and picked up another melon before the night was gone.”

Someone said, “Good coup.”

Shoogan growled deep into his throat and looked at the circle of youths. He was amazed to see that a few young girls had joined in the circle and were holding hands with the smiling youths. This made him growl again in disgust. In the old times the females danced behind the braves. He looked through the circle toward the crowd sitting on the dry grass watching. He wondered how many of the old people knew the dance was only a flouting of the real thing, a big sham.

Sacajawea was sitting in the front row with some of the other grandmothers when the watermelon story was told. She was afraid to look at the others, so great was the feeling of sick distaste. Was this what the youths who had listened to her speak had come away with? Was this all they honestly believed the Sun Dance was? No, it could not be. The young braves were doing this because they could not bring themselves to try a true Sun Dance. Now there was no need for the real thing. So, maybe the youths had kept their ears uncovered, she thought.

“I tell about counting coup on the enemy and getting one of my legs shorter than the other,” said Shoogan. While he recited, the young men and women circled around him and the steel flagpole, slowly heel-toeing, bending, straightening. As soon as he finished he pointed the big whip to the boy with the knife. “You must stay in the dance until the end,” he said. “Your coup was weak.”

He did not strike the boy four times with the whip, because he felt it was useless and would only rile him to some unpleasantness. Not thinking straight, he carelessly pointed the whip toward a young woman. She had nothing more to recite than how she fought off an overly passionate brave in the juniper breaks. “You must dance until I announce the end,” he said, feeling shame for his part in this watery imitation of the old ways. Another young woman told how she had licked the whooping cough by regularly eating a little bit of the gray-green, spineless cactus brought in by some traders from the south. “I no longer felt worn out, but instead felt I was a living part of all the tribe. And see, now I do not cough.”

One of the young men told about how he wrapped a thong with sinew, softened it in warm water, and pushed it down the throat of a younger brother who was choking from lung congestion. “That cleared his throat better than my finger,” he bragged. Shoogan indicated they all must continue dancing by cracking his big whip four times above his head.

When the stars became visible a bonfire flared up in one of the meat-roasting trenches and threw a flickering yellow light in a wide circle on the field behind the agency. The drummer got up and sauntered toward the fire. Then the dancers stopped. One couple followed the drummer, saying they were tired of dancing and wanted some hot coffee with sugar.

“I did not end the dance!” shouted Shoogan.

“It is ended, Grandfather,” said the young man with the knife.

Several of the grandmothers Sacajawea was sitting beside got up and shuffled toward the bonfire. “The dance was a fake,” whispered one.

“Our young people didn’t seem to notice or care,” said another.

“The dance is officially over!” announced Shoogan. He knew the momentum was gone and it could not last through the night as the old dances did.

Sacajawea waited until Shoogan came limping from the flagpole area. She shook her pointing finger at him. “I have been thinking. Maybe this white man’s peace is nothing. On the other hand, when the red man had war there was death. Can there be only two directions?”

Shoogan ran his kerchief over his face and through his graying hair and grunted. “As I see it, maybe we are all in a box canyon with only game trails marking sides that are steeper than man can climb, and a swift creek running in the narrow gorge that is too treacherous for a canoe and too deep for wading.” He searched for his women and children and found them around the crackling bonfire holding tin mugs of coffee.

Sacajawea started toward her path home, then noticed a white man, well dressed in dark trousers and a dark coat. On his head he had a black, wide-brimmed hat with a chin strap. His hair and mustache were gray. She knew who he was, but could not recall seeing him more than once or twice before.

He held up his hand and said, “Ho!” Then he began to make clumsy signs. Sacajawea held out her shaking left hand and said impulsively in English, “Hello, Dr. Irwin. How are Sarah and your two daughters?”

The agent was surprised at the good English. He was pleased and said, “What is your name, Grandmother?”

“I go by many names,” she said. “Your woman has come often to my tepee. She calls me Porivo.”

“So you are the one she has been writing about.”

“I guess so,” Sacajawea said. She was thinking, This man does not really care about the People. He does not even know where it is his woman goes each morning.

“May I say good-bye?” He tipped his hat. “This is our last day at Wind River. We are moving to the Pine Ridge Agency.”

“The Sioux Reservation?” Surprise showed on her face. The Story Writer Woman had not mentioned this.

“Grandmother, I am a doctor, and my duty is where I am called. I’d like to have you cooperate with the new agent as soon as he comes.
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Tell the mothers to keep sending their children to Bishop Randall’s church and mission school.” He again tipped his hat and turned away.

It was not lost on Sacajawea that the man had mentioned Bishop Randall when there were so few that attended his Sunday morning services, but most of the reservation children went to the school. Whether the statement reflected on the agent’s ignorance or forgetfulness, she could not guess.

It had been debated at the agency before Dr. Irwin was transferred about bringing the Arapahos in to live on the Shoshoni Reservation a short while, until a reservation of their own could be laid out. It had been discussed for several weeks during issuing of rations, in the camps and degenerating councils. Finally, after many words, Chief Washakie and Chief Black Coal, of the Northern Arapahos, gave their reluctant consent. Chief Black Coal’s final speech was, “My people have no land to call their own because the Cheyennes drive them off hunting grounds, the Blackfeet drive our camps away from drinking water. Our women are thin, and our children cry out at night with hunger pains.”

“I do not wish to see anyone starve or have little children freeze to death on the cold plains or in the icy mountains,” said Washakie with his head bowed.

‘Perhaps these people will stay only during the cold winter until another place can be found for them,” said Jim Patten, the teacher. He shifted his seat on the ground, finding patience in the thought that their talk did not matter now because they all knew once the Arapahos came in they would stay. He looked off to where dusk was putting a dull shine on the Wind River.

Chief Washakie was also staring at the river, thinking it was good water before the people had begun coming in to spoil it, bringing plows to rip up pastures and cattle to graze ranges, and now the Arapahos with sheep to make affairs worse. This was the new way—too many people, too much stock, too many homestead claims, so that wildlife disappeared and streams ran tame and clouded.

Chief Black Coal spoke. “You won’t be sorry.” He spoke as if he wanted to say it again so that Washakie could hold tight to that thought and not lose it, an elbow resting on his cocked knee, his upheld hand fixed to his pipe.

The Shoshonis accepted this brief alliance only as a necessity.
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“The filthy Arapahos can sleep on the prairie with their sheep!” some said. Others said, “Why don’t they eat their sheep instead of trying to sell them to the white men? Then they would have full bellies and warm fur robes!” “We don’t want them near us!” “They cry like old women in a snowstorm.”

Some talked with Sacajawea, who shook her head and grinned at them. “I have no confidence in the Arapahos,” she answered. “I have seen them offer large amounts in trade for rifles and ammunition. They cannot be trusted. But someone must listen to them if they wish to live with the Shoshonis on the reservation. Someone must tell them they must live without arms and ammunition except for hunting meat.”

“There are more of us than them. One of our men is worth three of theirs,” someone said.

Sacajawea believed it was a natural thing that the strong dominated the weak. But she was against any deliberate wrong done by someone in power which advanced the powerful, but was paid for by the weaker underdogs. She believed in individualism, though the progress brought about by individual self-interest was slower than that achieved by one strong leader pushing around the masses. Her way required much patience and much time.

She saw the white man’s government temporarily place the Arapahos with the Wind River Shoshonis in 1872, then move the Arapahos back to Pine Ridge with their allies, the Sioux, and now return them to Wind River. The government men seemed at a loss for finding a home for the Arapaho, maybe because they repeatedly attacked miners, settlers, and other Indians in the Sweetwater, Bridger, and Wind River areas.
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The government men were now demanding that titles for the most productive portion of the Wind River Reservation be cleared for the Arapaho.

Sacajawea saw the shadow on her mind. She and Washakie had talked about the plight of the Arapahos, who had no land of their own and never enough to eat. Both agreed there was plenty of suffering, but it would be an injustice to reward the Arapaho by making them a permanent gift of the Shoshonis’ best land. The Arapahos were traditional enemies, the same as the Blackfeet, Sioux, and Cheyenne. Washakie admitted that he was sick and cold, meaning he was troubled. “I will hold a council with them. When I see their faces, I can understand their intentions,” he said.
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The wind had come up again. It shrieked through the pines, whistled over the rocks, and blew up the dust. Another winter was coming. Sacajawea would need plenty of wood before she would find herself slowly walking the trail to Shoogan’s wooden house next to the agent.

Now the Shoshonis did not refer much to the old times and the fights with their enemies. They had stopped referring to the winter tales and legends because they began to question them. But they passed around the story about some suspicious Arapahos who had murdered eight white men and escaped with live-stock and horses. “Stinking Arapahos,” they said. The settlers from a Sweetwater mining settlement organized and went into the Popo Agie to hunt the Arapahos and met a small band under the leadership of Chief Black Bear. The white men killed Black Bear and ten of his braves. Black Bear’s woman and seven children were captured. The word had been, “Serves them right.”