Sacajawea (20 page)

Toussaint Charbonneau was born in Carmela about 1758.
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His mother was a Sioux and his father a French Canadian. He and his brother were traders and fur trappers from Lake Ontario to Lake Superior and the James Bay region. Charbonneau was mentioned as an engagé of the Northwest Fur Company in 1793, when he was about thirty-five years old. He worked as a trader at Fort Pine on the Assiniboine River.
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In 1795 Charbonneau left from the Lake of the Woods area, moved down the Red River of the North and went west to the Upper Missouri where he lived, as a trader, among the Minnetaree in their Metaharta village on the Knife River. According to Hebard, a year later he was the only white man in the area and was living with the nearby Mandans. For a time he worked for the American Fur Company and in 1803-4 he was a co-factor at Fort Pembina with Alexander Henry.
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Sometime before the Lewis and Clark men built Fort Mandan with the heaviest local timber available,
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Charbonneau was back in the Metaharta village as an independent trader, bartering furs for supplies with the English in Canadian territory. During the latter part of 1804 until August 17,1806 he was an interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The fur trader John MacDonnell knew Charbonneau during the ten years they worked in and out of the Winnipeg and Upper Missouri area and also during the five years Charbonneau lived in the Metaharta village. Inhis journal, MacDonnell wrote that Charbonneau was one of three men who went “to court the Foutreau’s daughter, a great beauty.”
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A few months later an old squaw caught Charbonneau “in the act of committing a Rape upon her Daughter,” wrote MacDonnell. The squaw pounded Charbonneau so hard with a canoe paddle that he could scarcely walk back to his own canoe. MacDonnell finished the story by writing that this was “a fate he highly deserved for his brutality.”
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John Bakeless also wrote that Toussaint Charbonneau was “deep in aboriginal love affairs” during the years he lived in Indian country.
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The natives of the lower Minnetaree village knew Charbonneau’s character and gave him at least half a dozen names, none of them overly respectful. They were “The Chief of the Little Village,” “The Man Who Possesses Many Gourds,” “The Great Horse That Came from Afar,” “The Horse from Abroad,” “Forest Bear.” Another name, which Bakeless describes as “not very refined,” may be translated to “Squaw’s Man” or even more literally as “One Whose Man-Part Is Never Limp.”
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In August, 1807, Charbonneau, his two sons, and two Indian wives arrived at St. Louis. He left the women and children and took a fur company trapping job in the southwest. Three years later he was back in St. Louis. He bought a piece of farm land in the St. Ferdinand Township near the Missouri River from Clark, who was Indian agent for the Louisiana Territory. On March 26, 1811, he sold the land back to Clark for $100:
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It is well known that Charbonneau and one of his wives accompanied Henry M. Brackenridge on an expedition up the Missouri in April, 1811.
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In July, 1816, Charbonneau was hired by Julius DeMun for Auguste P. Chouteau and Company to go from St. Louis up and down the Arkansas and Platte rivers trading for a year with the Indians. Three years later he was on the payroll of Captain Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, as an interpreter at “$200 from July 17 to December 31, 1819.”
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In 1825, General Henry Atkinson referred to Charbonneau living at the Mandan villages with a wife and her brother. In the journal of Major Stephen Kearny for August 11 of the same year is a note about a Charbon-neau Creek named for “a Frenchman, who accompanied Lewis and Clark across the mountains.”’
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Agent John F. A. Sanford, stationed on the Upper Missouri, paid ”
Tassant Charboneau,” for work as an interpreter for the Mandans and Minnetarees on February 29, 1828. Other payments were recorded at the subagency to Toussaint Charbonneau, acting as an interpreter, from November 30, 1828 until September 30, 1834, for a total of $2,437.32.
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According to account books kept at Fort Clark, on the Missouri River across from the Mandan villages, Duke Paul of Würtemberg bought supplies that were delivered to James Kipp, the chief factor at the fort, to be sent on to Charbonneau at the Minnetaree village. Duke Paul purchased supplies on May 5 and May 30, 1830, with gunpowder and tobacco especially for Charbonneau. Two weeks later Duke Paul was at Fort Union, farther up the Missouri River—near Williston, North Dakota, today— where he bought more supplies for the “interpreter, Charbonneau. ”
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The famous German traveler, Maximilian, Prince of Wied, hired Toussaint Charbonneau as his interpreter in 1833 while he spent the winter at Fort Clark and later when he visited the Mandan villages. In June of the same year some Mandans tried to force the unwilling Maximilian to trade his compass for a horse. “It was only by the assistance of old Charbonneau that I escaped a disagreeable and, perhaps, violent scene,” wrote Maximilian in his journal.
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Charbonneau always seemed to be involved in escapades with young women. In 1833 he had two wives, but one ran away. In his Fort Clark Journal, Francis A. Chardon wrote on October 22, 1834, that he was aware of Charbonneau’s “two lively wives. Poor old man.”
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At eighty Charbonneau married a fourteen-year-old Assiniboine girl and the celebration included “a splendid Chárivéree, the Drums, pans, Kittles and Beating; guns ftreing etc.”
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Afterward “the old rascal offered his bride to the rest of the men in camp.”’
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In many respects the Charbonneau of Lewis and Clark fame was a feckless character. For example, in an emergency he seemed to be a coward, he abused his Indian women, and always seemed to manage to have only younggirls in his lodge. Dr. Elliott Coues referred to him as clumsy and boorish. John C. Luttig suggested that he ought to be hung, and William Laidlow, of the Columbia Fur Company in charge of Fort Pierre, referred to him as “the knave.”
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In August, 1839, Joshua Pilcher, Clark’s successor as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, wrote in a letter that Charbonneau came to St. Louis “tottering under the infirmities of 80 winters, without a dollar to Support him.”
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A promissory note written on August 14, 1843, by Francis Pensoneau stated that he would pay J. B. Charbonneau $320 as soon as some land, claimed by J. B. Charbonneau as coming from the estate of his deceased father, Toussaint Charbonneau, was disposed of. This note implies that old Charbonneau died sometime before August 14, 1843.
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Grace Hebard wrote, “The exact date of the death of Charbonneau has not been ascertained, and even his burial place is unknown. Vague rumors persist… that Charbonneau married a Ute woman and eventually died and was buried…in Utah.”
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The Antiquarian Society of Montreal states that it is impossible to trace anyone with the name Charbonneau or even Toussaint Charbonneau who lived from the late 1700s to mid-1800s. That French-Canadian name was as common as John Smith is in the United States
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It is interesting to note that Bakeless wrote that Toussaint Charbonneau was born in Montreal about 1759.
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This is a year after Hebard wrote that he was born. Roy Appleman wrote for the National Park Service that the old French-Canadian was forty-four years old in 1804.
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This would make his birthdate 1760.

In 1979, ninety-year-old Irene DeClue Haltermann Coyle, born in the DeSoto, Missouri, area, but living in Missoula, Montana, said that her family always claimed that Toussaint Charbonneau, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was her great-grandfather. Apparently, her family records show that this Charbonneau was born in Montreal on March 1, 1771. Mrs. Coyle said her grandfather, Louis Charboneau, a son of old Toussaint, was born on October 16, 1812, in St. Louis.
²⁶

In the small, Missouri community of Richwoods, closeto DeSoto and about sixty miles from St. Louis, there is an interesting white marble grave marker in St. Stephen’s Catholic Cemetery on which are carved these words:

Toussaint Charboneau, Mar. 1, 1781-Feb. 19, 1866

Beside that marker is another similar one with these words:

Marie LaViolette, Wife of T. Charboneau Died Sept. 23, 1869, aged 86 years

The Charboneaus in this area claim this is the Toussaint Charbonneau of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the cemetery are half a dozen other Charboneaus, all born in the mid or late 1800s. In the John Horine Private Cemetery, also in Richwoods, are at least four Charboneau grave markers, showing these people were born in the late 1800s and all used only one ? in the spelling of their name.

From the few things that are known of the character of the Charbonneau of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, it is doubtful that the man would marry a woman seven years his senior as was Marie LaViolette to her T. Charboneau. Old Charboneau liked his women young. Bake-less said he was a squawman “who had a special weakness for very young Indian girls.”
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The Coyle and Richwoods Charboneaus are both too young to have been on the Lewis and Clark Expedition because he was one of the oldest men in the group. If he had been twenty-four, he would have been in the same league with Shannon, who was the youngest member of the expedition. If he had been thirty-four, he would have been about the age of Lewis and Clark who, in 1804, were thirty and thirty-four, respectively.

Toussaint Charbonneau became a famous member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition because of his Shoshoni woman, Sacajawea. It appears that his birth and death dates and burial site are as elusive as hers.

S
acajawea was allowed to rest until her body felt completely restored. Until midday she lay dreamily inside the robe in Fast Arrow’s lodge and then, prompted by an evanescent sixth sense that flickers on in the wiser among us, realized that things might not be too bad. She had examined and evaluated her new surroundings. The lodge was clean. Fresh river sand lay on the floor. Clothing was hung neatly on pegs placed in the four wooden supports holding the roof of the lodge. There were no stale vegetables or yesterday’s meat lying around the cooking fire. Everyone worked, except the grown girl, Sweet Clover, who swayed and stared vacantly.

Sweet Clover’s eyes were similar to the old father’s, rimmed with white and ready to pop from her head. Her movements were slow and sometimes without direction, her mind elsewhere, her ears not hearing what went on near her. She laughed at nothing.

In the early afternoon the mother, Grasshopper, came to Sacajawea carrying a board with dried meat and cooked squash. She said, “Eat, you are one of us now.”

Sacajawea rolled over, found her tunic, put it on, and ate. Sweet Clover came and sat on her sleeping couch. She drooled and picked at some of Sacajawea’s meat. She grinned and stared at Sacajawea. With hand signs she indicated that Sacajawea was pretty.

“Shoo, outside!” said Grasshopper. “Play with the children.” Sweet Clover made a face, but she understood and left. The children, Sucks His Thumb, Half Moon, Hungry Horse, and Chickadee, followed. Chickadee, the baby, crawled more than walked.

“That is my baby,” said Grasshopper, pointing a stubby forefinger toward the door through which the grown girl, Sweet Clover, had just left. “She will never grow up.”

“Is she cursed?” asked Sacajawea.

“Ai,
but her torment did not come with age, as did Redpipe’s.” Grasshopper brushed her hand across her moist eyes. “Stay clear from the sight of Kakoakis, our one-eyed chief.”

“One eye? Why?”

“I think maybe one of his women pushed his eye out.” She put her short forefinger in her mouth and pulled it out with a pop. Over Grasshopper’s simple broad face grew a smile, stretching her mouth from ear to ear. “I wish to call you daughter,” she said impetuously. “What do you say? Are you pleased?” It was love the child hungered for, yet she was suspicious and held herself rigid. Then Grasshopper took the food board away. She motioned Sacajawea to sit close to her, and she cradled the child, who was now eleven summers old, against her ample bosom.

“This lodge is a good place to live, my daughter— except for one thing, one being. Listen and remember. The stinking Kakoakis came against this lodge. He is a chief, and thought by some to be wise. He is full of health and energy. One day he came here and asked for our youngest child to visit with his young wife. She was lonely, he said. With kindness in our hearts and gratitude to the chief for showing us special favor, we dressed Sweet Clover in her best and let her go with him. She was filled with fear when she found that his tongue was split. He had several white men and the Wolf Chief of the Mandans at his lodge. His wife was not lonesome. There were other young women in his lodge. It was Kakoakis who was the only man in his lodge without a woman that day. He then chose Sweet Clover. He had tricked us.” Grasshopper paused, smacking her lips.

“Sweet Clover used her wits and looked about her for a weapon. She had not taken her skinning knife. She struck Kakoakis with his own war club. She stood tall and strong. Never was such a blow struck!” Her mouth became round, and she drew in air. “It would have been one of many great blows, except that one of the white men stopped her and tied her hands and feet. That is all she can remember to tell us, but we did not see her for three suns.”