Sacajawea (189 page)

5
. The space was usually packed with feathers or hair and in some cases paper to stop the force of arrows or bullets or blows from spear points. The Comanches’ interest in books was usually for the purpose of using the paper to pack their shields. Wallace and Hoebel, pp. 106–7.

CHAPTER 47
Gray Bone

1
. This living bark turns white when exposed to sunlight. The bark of the year before does not grow anymore and thus it does not expand enough to fit around the growing trunk, and so it is forced off in patches. The sycamore is one of the earth’s first hardwood trees, and has survived millions of years. Piatt, pp. 44—5.

2
. When the ruffle or movement of the feathers was constant, as when the shield was shaken, it served to disturb the aim of the enemy. From
The Comanches, Lords of the South Plains,
by Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, p. 107. Copyright 1952 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

CHAPTER 48
Shooting Stars

1
. Usually no woman gave advice or became proficient in the use of medicinals until she had passed the menopause. The menstruation was believed to cancel all medicine or magic. This curse reinforced the social inferiority of women. If the woman lived long enough the menses disappeared with menopause and she could then make medicine on her own or act in the capacity of a chief. T. R. Fehrenbach,
Comanches: The Destruction of a People.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1979, p. 43. Also from
The Comanches, Lords of the South Plains,
by Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, p. 166. Copyright 1952 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

2
. The first vision quest was made before the adolescent male had been on the warpath. The vision was usually caused by hallucinations from going without food.

3
. Lavender, pp. 140–4, wrote that on November 12, 1833, the stars seemed to tumble from the skies. The warriors of various Indian tribes who saw this spectacular meteor shower dressed in clothes for battle and put on war paints. This was something they could not fight, but they could die as brave warriors, mounted on their horses, riding single file around their village. The women and children cried and the dogs barked and wolves howled. Next morning everything was normal. From that time on the night the stars fell became a part of legendary history. Many tribes marked future events from “the night the stars fell.” From
Bents Fort
by David Lavender. Copyright 1954 by Doubleday and Co., Inc.

CHAPTER 49
The Raid

1
. While the abduction of children angered the Mexicans more than rapes, murders, and robberies, the republic had no money for an intelligent ransom policy. Once adopted, the captive had the rights and recognition of a born Comanche. A child forgot its native language and old associations and strove to be accepted. For example, the girls looked forward to becoming the wife of a great warrior. A captive, adjusted to Comanche life, was almost never able to readjust again to civilization. T. R. Fehrenbach,
Comanches: The Destuction of a People.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1979, pp. 256–57.

2
. In Lawton, Oklahoma, on February 15, 1925, a Comanche woman, sixty-six years old, named Tahcutine, told Dr. Charles Eastman that she was the daughter of Ticannaf, who was the son of Wadziwipe, the supposed Sacajawea. Tahcutine told about a young Mexican girl her father captured. The Mexican girl’s name was Choway and she lived with Wadziwipe until the woman took her youngest child and left the band. Several other Comanche women who knew the wife of Jerk Meat or the tradition of her disappearance told Dr. Eastman about the young Mexican captive, Choway, who lived with Wadziwipe. Eastman,
Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
1925, which includes Eastman’s statements from Lawton and the Comanche Reservation, Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

CHAPTER 50
Bent’s Fort to Lupton’s Fort

1
. To see a
glory
close up, you must view a cloud of uniform water droplets in such a way that your shadow is projected on that cloud. You will then also see the shadow of your head surrounded by a series of colored haloes. These haloes are caused by the scatter of sunlight by droplets of water of uniform size. Bryant and Jarmie, pp. 60–71.

2
. Owl Woman was the daughter of Gray Thunder. She became William Bent’s woman when he was twenty-eight years old. Bill Bent named their first child Mary. From
Bent’s Fort
by David Lavender, pp. 174–76. Copyright 1954 by Doubleday and Co., Inc.

3
. Céran St. Vrain helped the Bents build their fort. Its front wall facing east was 137 feet long, 14 feet high and 3 or more feet thick. The northern and southern walls were 178 feet long. Inside were 25 rooms built along the walls, with their doors facing an inner court or
placita.
The main entrance was a kind of tunnel between the walls of the storerooms. There was a second story with another row of apartments and a watchtower with windows on four sides. On top of the watchtower was a bell that called the men to meals and on top of the belfrey was the flagpole which carried Old Glory. Lavender, pp. 135–40, 385–87.

CHAPTER 51
St. Vrain’s Fort

1
. Some historians feel this was the site of a second fort built by Jim Bridger. Jackson and Penal, 1970, pp. 468–69.

2
. These were primitive carts constructed of two pieces of timber ten or twelve feet long, framed together by two or more crosspieces, upon one end of which the wickerwork body was placed. The front ends were rounded to serve as the shaft, and the whole arrangement was set on the crosspieces connecting opposite wheels. These were used to carry baggage, clothing, food, and supplies.

3
. This route runs parallel with the present-day line of the Union Pacific Railroad.

CHAPTER 52
Bridger’s Fort

1
. The fort was built by James Bridger and Louis Vasquez on the trail that led to Oregon and California. Bridger had no saloon nor gambling at this fort. At first there were only a few log houses inside a log wall, eight feet high. Gray, pp. 80–1, quotes one of the early travelers who stopped there:

It was built of poles and daubed with mud; it is a shabby concern. Here are about twenty-five lodges of Indians, or rather white trappers’ lodges occupied by their Indian wives. They have a good supply of deer, elk, and antelope skins, coats, pants, moccasins, andother Indian fixens, which they trade low for flour, pork, powder, lead, blankets, butcher-knives, spirits, hats, ready-made clothes, coffee, sugar, etc. They ask for a horse from twenty-five to fifty dollars in trade. Their wives are mostly Pyentes and Snake Indians. They have a herd of cattle, twenty-five to thirty goats, and some sheep. They generally abandon this fort during the winter months. At this place the bottoms are wide and covered with good grass. Cotton wood timber is plenty. The streams abound with trout.

Arthur Amos Gray,
Men Who Built the West.
Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers Ltd., 1945.

Ten years after the fort was built, Bridger found the Mormons wanted it for a supply station. They put a stone wall around the fort, and paid Bridger eight thousand dollars for the buildings plus a tenth of his thirty-mile-square tract of land. Vera Kelsy,
Young Men So Daring: Fur Traders Who Carried the Frontier West.
New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1956, pp. 254–55, 266.

2
. In the spring of 1832 Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrick had a skirmish with the Blackfeet in the area of the Missouri’s Three Forks. Bridger was shot in the back with two iron-headed arrows. Fitzpatrick pulled one out, but the shaft of the other broke, so that even probing with a knife, he could not get the three-inch-long piece of iron out of Bridger’s back. For three years the arrowhead caused Bridger great pain. Kelsey, pp. 202–3.;
Across the Wide Missouri,
by Bernard DeVoto, p. 90. Copyright 1947 by Houghton Mifflin Co.

Dr. Marcus Whitman removed the arrowhead in 1835. Afterwards Bridger had Reverend Samuel Parker perform his Presbyterian wedding ceremony. Bridger married the daughter of a Flathead chief, whom Parker christened Emma. Kelsey, pp. 205–7; DeVoto, 1947, pp. 230–31.

3
. Bridger’s first child was a girl, named Mary Ann after his sister. Mary Ann was sent to the Whitman’s in Oregon after the death of Emma. Bridger then married a Ute woman, whom he called Belle. They had three children. Two years later, in 1846, Mary Ann was dead. DeVoto, 1947, p. 372.

Bridger was heartbroken and took his family to his farm on the outskirts of Westport, Missouri. Next to Bridger’s farm was the Bent farm and Vasquez farm. The Vasquez children were white, the Bridger and Bent children were half-breeds, and they were all friends and playmates. From
Bent’s Fort
by David Lavender, p. 325. Copyright 1954 by Doubleday and Co., Inc.

Finally, Bridger tired of farming and put his children in a St. Louis Catholic school and brought his wife, Belle, back to his Wyoming fort in 1850. Belle died, leaving a baby girl called Virginia. Bridger found himself a Shoshoni wife to care for the baby. Kelsey, pp. 250–51. Grace Raymond Hebard,
Sacajawea, A Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1957, pp. 187, 241.

CHAPTER 53
The Mormons

1
. Washakie’s name is interpreted as Rawhide Rattle, Shoots Straight, Shoots-on-the-Fly, Sure Shot, or Gambler’s Gourd. The Shoshoni story of how he acquired this name states that when he killed his first buffalo, he skinned the head, scraped the hair off, puckered it up, and tied it around a stick with a hole in it, so that it could be blown up like a bladder. He put stones in it and dried it so that it would rattle. When he went to war against the Sioux he rode among them, shook the rattle, and scared their horses. They called him
The Rattle
or
Wash-a-ki.
From
The Shoshonis, Sentinels of the Rockies,
by Virginia Trenholm and Maurine Carley, p. 98. Copyright 1964 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

When young he lived with his father’s band of Flatheads. When his father was killed by Blackfeet, his mother and her five small children found a band of her people, the Shoshonis, on the banks of the Salmon River. As he grew older, Washakie was distinguished for his friendship to the white man. Trenholm and Carley, p. 99.

2
. That map was so exact and practical that it became the route of the Overland Stage, the Pony Express, and later the Union Pacific Railroad.

3
. The Mormon sheriff seemed convinced Bridger’swife did not know where he was, but stationed men at several points to watch the fort and for the return of Bridger. In the spring of 1854, Governor Brigham Young of the Utah Territory ordered Mormon forces to take over Fort Bridger. The Mormons added several new buildings and replaced the logs of the stockade with fireproof concrete. Vera Kelsey,
Young Men So Daring: Fur Traders Who Carried the Frontier West.
New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1956, pp. 251–55.

4
. Jim Bridger filed this claim on March 9, 1854.

CHAPTER 54
The Great Treaty Council

1
. This is a reference to the cash accounts book kept by William Clark from 1825 to 1828. The book’s front cover contains the record Clark kept of most of the people on the expedition. After Sacajawea’s name he wrote:
Dead.
The book is now at the Newberry Library, Chicago. See page 821.

CHAPTER 55
The Jefferson Peace Medal

1
. Personal letter to A.W.L. from Dr. Kenneth O. Leonard, Garrison Clinic, Garrison, North Dakota, February 18, 1968: “ … as to the Medal (the one Sacajawea supposedly wore at Wind River Reservation) it obviously wouldn’t have been one Lewis and Clark handed out as they were silver. It could have been an early English one with a copper rim as many did come down from Canada. It was also highly unlikely that a woman would have been wearing a peace medal. Lewis and Clark didn’t give any to women as far as I can remember—and they were highly selective in which chief they did give them to.” Another letter from Dr. Leonard on February 29, 1968, states, “ … it could have been a religious medal which the missionaries handed out by the car loads. These seemed to be very common and all descriptions from crosses to medals.”

2
. The stagecoach most generally used was the Concord, which was made in New Hampshire. Blacksmith and repair shops were at the western division points. These points were also the main replacement places for the drivers and horses. Dick, pp. 234–36.

3
. A possibles bag was a small purse made from leather or cloth, carried by women. The name camefrom the white women, who carried all possible necessities, such as comb, handkerchief, coins, hair pins, etc. in the small, decorated bag.

CHAPTER 56
I Could Cry All Night

1
. Young, Vol. I, Parts 3 to 6, p. 207.

2
. Thwaites, Vol. 28, 1816, 1904–7, pp. 176–79.

3
. Rufus B. Sage,
Rufus B. Sage, His Letters and Papers,
ed. by LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Co., Vol. II, 1956, pp. 155–56, 192–93.

4
. Fremont, pp. 30–1.

5
. Sage, pp. 52–4.

6
. From
Persimmon Hill,
by William Clark Kennerly, pp. 144, 158, 187, 258. Copyright 1948 by the University of Oklahoma Press; Porter and Davenport, 1963, Chap. 23.

7
. L. R. Hafen, 1930, pp. 66–7.

8
.
Sublette Papers and Letters
by Solomon Sublette, May 5 and June 6, 1844, in the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.

9
. Abert, Sen. ex. doc. 438, 29 Cong. 1 Sess.