Sacajawea (182 page)

—A.L.W.

CHAPTER 1
Old Grandmother

1
. The Agaidükas, or Salmon Eaters, were the Lemhi Shoshonis first seen by explorers in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains. The Tukadükas, or Sheep Eaters, probably merged with the Agaidükas just prior to discovery by white men. From
The Shoshonis, Sentinels of the Rockies,
by Virginia Trenholm and Maurine Carley, p. 22. Copyright 1964 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

2
. Halfway up the mountain toward the large medicine circle, there are several huge horseshoe prints, and another close to the top. All are made of stones. Apparently pointing to the large circle from nearly one hundred miles away to the southwest is a fifty-eight-foot-long arrow made of stones. Trenholm and Carley, p. 25.

3
. A Shoshoni chiefs office was not hereditary. The chief depended on his valor and integrity to acquire and retain the office. Trenholm and Carley, p. 32.

4
. Many Native Americans, including the Shoshonis, incorporate a story of a great flood in their myths and legends. Trenholm and Carley, p. 35.

5
. A mother bear seldom leaves her cubs very far away, even during the second summer. She will attack anything she thinks is trying to molest the cubs. Scharff, p. 126.

CHAPTER 2
Captured.

1
. The journals of Lewis and Clark give a most complete record of the daily progress of their expedition. The inventive spelling and laconic prose style have endeared both men to generations of readers.

2
. Some say that the storytelling period of the Shoshonis is during December, January, and February, and that they refuse to tell their stories any other time. Good storytellers were always in demand, but no one had exclusive right to any particular tale. From
The Shoshonis, Sentinels of the Rockies,
by Virginia Trenholm and Maurine Carley, p. 36. Copyright 1964 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

3
. On July 28, 1805, nearly five years later, Captains Lewis and Clark named the eastern fork of the Missouri, which was 2,500 miles from its mouth, Gallatin, after Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin; the middle fork, the Madison, for Secretary of State, James Madison; and the western fork, the Jefferson, “in honor of that illustrious personage Thomas Jefferson.” R. G. Ferris, pp. 149, 152.

CHAPTER 3
People of the Willows

1
. Flintlock is a term used indiscriminately for any type of gun that has a spring that activates a hammer so that it strikes a piece of flint against a vertical, pivoted, striking plate to produce sparks that ignite the charge. From the late 1600s to the early 1800s the flintlock was the dominant firearm in use. From
Encyclopedia of Firearms,
edited by Harold L. Peterson. Copyright (c) by George Rainbird Ltd., 1964. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, E. P. Dutton, Inc., p. 130.

CHAPTER 4
Bird Woman

1
. Mandan bull boats were different from any boats made by other tribes. They were surprisingly similar to the Welsh
coracle.
Both were made of rawhide stretched on a frame of willow and shaped round, like a tub. It was light enough for a woman to carry from storage to the water. The Mandan woman stood in the front of her bull boat and dipped the paddle forward, drawing it back to her. She did not paddle at the side. She moved rapidly in her little round boat. Catlin, Vol. II, p. 261.

2
. This Shoshoni girl’s name is spelled in this fashion only because it is the most common spelling found in the U.S. Most readers are probably aware of the good-natured disagreement the various spellings of her name can inspire. The National Park Service, in 1979, adopted the spelling
Sacagawea,
because despite the varied spelling in the Lewis and Clark Journals, the
g
is generally present. Also, since she was Shoshoni, this is a Shoshoni word (meaning
boat launcher).

Historian John Bakeless used
Sacagawea
because Clark wrote in his journal on Monday, May 20, 1805,“… this stream we called Sah-ca-gah-we-a or bird woman’s River, after our interpreter, the Snake woman.”

It was George Shannon who spelled the Shoshoni woman’s name
Sacajawea,
with the soft
j
in the middle.

The people in the Dakotas, close to Hidatsa territory, write
Sakakawea.
The famed Mandan and Hidatsa anthropologist, Dr. Alfred Bowers of Moscow, Idaho, told me in May 1979 that she was given her name while living among the Hidatsa, and it means
Bird Woman.

In 1970 the Lemhi County Historical Society, Salmon, Idaho, published a letter written by a historian, John E. Rees, sometime in the mid-1920s to the Hon. Charles H. Burke, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The1970 reprint of the letter was edited by David G. Ainsworth and titled, “Madame Charbonneau: The Indian Woman Who Accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–6: How she received her Indian Name and what became of her.” Rees points out that both
Sacajawea
and
Sacagawea
are Shoshoni versions and mean “travels with the boats that are being pulled.” The Hidatsa language contains no
j
or
g. Sakaka
in Hidatsa means “bird” and
wea
means “woman.” The Lewis and Clark Journals are clear that her name means
Bird Woman.

3
. Coyotes belong to the same mammalian family as domestic dogs. In summer they hunt and kill small prey, gophers, mice, and squirrels, and in winter they feed on large, dead prey such as carrion of deer, moose, and elk. Coyotes mate once a year and the same pair returns to the same den site each year. Bekoff and Wells, pp. 130–48.

4
. Catlin writes about these people’s “extraordinary art of manufacturing a very beautiful and lasting kind of blue glass beads.” Catlin, Vol. II, pp. 260–1.

It is assumed that by the early 1800s there had been a cultural exchange between the Mandan and Hidatsa (origin, early Crow). They lived close together in the five-village area near the confluence of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, in what is now North Dakota. Thus, their lodges, food, clothing, religious rites, etc. were quite similar.

CHAPTER 5
The Wild Dog

1
. Besides hunting the buffalo, the Mandan also “gathered” buffalo meat. Every spring when the ice of the Missouri River and its tributaries began to melt and break up, the buffalo which had drowned or been frozen in the ice floated downstream. The Mandans swam or floated out on the river on blocks of ice to gather in these buffalo. This soft, rotten meat was a great delicacy to these people. Spicer, p. 219.

CHAPTER 6
The Trading Fair

1
. In 1736 a Jesuit missionary told about the Assiniboins’ annual spring visit to the Mandan to trade for dried corn. La Verendrye, two years later, experiencedthe Mandan trade fair and wrote about the dried corn, tobacco, grain, and squash exchanged for flintlocks, axes, kettles, powder, knives, and awls. A decade later the Arapaho were holding trade fairs on a branch of the Platte River to obtain British steel knives and axes from the Cheyenne, who in turn had traded them from the Mandan. During this heightened trade period, the Crees traded their furs and snowshoes for guns and in a period of a few years turned from a secluded Woodland type people to a typical nomadic Plains people. From
Indians of the Plains,
by Robert H. Lowie, pp. 22, 130, 211, Natural History Press. Copyright 1954 by the American Museum of Natural History.

CHAPTER 7
Toussaint Charbonneau

1
. Grace Raymond Hebard,
Sacajawea, A Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1957, p. 93.

2
. Hebard, 1957, p. 93.

3
. Hebard, 1957, p. 94.

4
. The big timber was heavy that was used to build this fort near the Mandan villages so the men used what were called hand sticks to carry it. Hand sticks were usually made of ash, about the diameter of a man’s wrist, and were pushed under the large log at each end. Four men could then carry the log by having two men on each stick, one at each end.

5
. John Bakeless,
Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery.
New York: William Morrow and Co., 1947, p. 155.

6
. Bakeless, p. 155.

7
. Bakeless, p. 155.

8
. Bakeless, pp. 155–86; Hebard, 1957, p. 98.

9
. Hebard, 1957, pp. 89–80. Charbonneau evidently did not care for the life of a farmer or staying in one place for too long.

10
. Bakeless, p. 454; Hebard, 1957, p. 90.

11
. Hebard, 1957, p. 99.

12
. Hebard, 1957, p. 99.

13
. Hebard, 1957, pp. 99–800.

14
. Hebard, 1957, p. 100.

Duke Paul visited General Clark at his home on Main and Vine in St. Louis in 1823 to ask questionsabout the fertile land in the Midwest. Five years later Duke Paul was back on the Missouri River. This was his third trip to look for good areas in which to establish German agricultural, Utopian communities. Marshall Sprague,
A Gallery of Dudes.
Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1966–8, pp. 34, 37.

In the fall of 1832, Prince Maximilian of Germany was in this country and fell ill. He stayed all winter in New Harmony, Indiana, a town established by Swabian rebels from Duke Paul’s Württemberg. The rebels called themselves Harmonists. Later, in 1833, Maximilian visited the town of Economy on the Ohio below Pittsburgh, which was founded by the same Harmony Society. These Harmonists were in disharmony over the question of being celibate or not. Sprague, pp. 36–7.

15
. Sprague, p. 50.

It was said by Captain R. Holmes of the U.S. Army in 1830 that Charbonneau never carried a gun. He had only his skinning knife as a weapon. Hebard, 1957, p. 100.

Charbonneau took Prince Maximilian and the artist, Karl Bodmer, to one of the Mandan villages to arrange a time for portrait sittings with the village chief and his subchiefs. Maximilian was most interested in the mode of dress and behavior of the Mandans until “a young warrior took hold of my pocket compass which I wore suspended by a ribbon, and attempted to take it by force I refused his request, but the more I insisted in my refusal, the more importunate he became. He offered me a handsome horse for my compass, and then all his handsome clothes and arms into the bargain, and as I still refused, he became angry, and” it was at this point that old Charbonneau dissuaded the Mandan by explaining that the white man would never trade the compass for any amount of goods. Sprague, p. 48.

At this time Maximilian wrote in his journal of old Charbonneau’s inability to pronounce the Minnetaree language, even after living among these people for more than thirty years. “He generally lives at Awaticai [Metaharta], the second village of the Manitaries, and excepting some journeys, has always remained at this spot; hence, he is well acquainted with the Manitaries and their language, though as he candidly confessed hecould never learn to pronounce it.” Hebard, 1957, p. 103.

While at Fort Clark, Maximilian was given the opportunity to read a document which he later wrote about in his journal. This document was written on long paper in English and Manitari language. Most of the Indian names, which were doubtless given by Charbonneau, were incorrectly written. Hebard, 1957, p. 104.

16
. Bakeless, p. 454.

17
. Bakeless, p. 454; Hebard, 1957, p. 105.

18
. Bakeless, p. 454; Hebard, 1957, p. 105.

19
. Bakeless, p. 454.

20
. Bakeless, p. 455; Hebard, 1957, p. 105.

21
.
Sublette Papers,
Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.

22
. Hebard, 1957, pp. 106–7.

23
. Personal letter, 1968.

24
. Bakeless, p. 155.

25
. R. G. Ferris, p. 115.

26
. Personal interview, May 1979. A similar story written by Jo Rainbolt appeared in
The Missourian
and was reprinted in
The Jefferson Republic,
DeSoto, Missouri, Feb. 22, 1979, Sec. 2, p. 1.

27
. Bakeless, p. 155.

28
. Chief Kakoakis was called
Le Borgne
or
One-Eye
by traders. He was known for his brutality, gigantic stature, huge aquiline nose, and coarse features. He glared savagely out of his good, left eye, while the white, opaque membrane that had destroyed the sight of the other made him most forbidding. “One white acquaintance remarked that if his one eye had only been in the middle of his forehead, he would have made a good Cyclops.” Bakeless, p. 146.

29
. This Shoshoni girl was
Penzo-bert
or Otter; sometimes she is called Otter Woman.

30
. Ecclesiastes III, 1–8.

The Mandan may have had an ancient tradition of Christianity from relationships with the twelfth-century Welsh or other early European travelers. Enough of that early tradition was handed down, age after age, so that the Shaman and singer used familiar Biblical quotations that were altered over the years into a kind of poetry similar in form to that used by old

Welsh bards, who recited or sang about their countrymen and important events. It is a fact that most early Indian religions were neither propagandistic nor dogmatic. Thus, the Mandans easily combined Christian doctrines from early priests and French-Canadian fur traders with a belief in the reality of spirits who appeared in dreams and the Indian, hunger-induced visions.

31
. When Shoshoni children were small, they were frightened into proper behavior with stories of red-haired cannibals or the cannibal owls that were able to catch an arrow flying through the air. The Shoshoni who first saw white men seemed to equate the men with the owls and were terrified to see “their big white eyes” staring from their hairy faces. From
The Shoshonis, Sentinels of the Rockies,
by Virginia Trenholm and Maurine Carley, pp. 83–4. Copyright 1964 by the University of Oklahoma Press.