Sacajawea (50 page)

After a while her voice came back and she was able to say with much shyness, “I have great feelings for you. You gave me back my life, my dream.”

“Oh, my dear Janey,” said Clark huskily, “you are so tiny, so young, and you’ve this boy to care for. I did what any self-respecting man would do.”

“Any man?” she asked. “Not my man.”

“Well, Charbonneau is not quite like any man,” said Captain Clark carefully. “You see, he has lived with the Minnetarees so long that he is not sure what he is. When we get to your people,” he went on, trying desperately to change the subject, “you’ll be the most valuable person in this whole outfit.”

The warm glow inside her grew in spite of her shivering and her feeling of being dog-tired. She stood by herself soaking up the sunshine and watching Captain Clark trot with her son across the buffalo grass to meet York, who was grinning and swinging his arms in welcome.

“Lordy, what a soaking storm that there one was! Yes, sir, I’se fairly wet through. And you two look no better than a couple of drowned rats. You nursemaiding for now, Master Clark?” York grinned at the sleeping infant on his shoulder. “I sent Charbonneau high-tailing it back to camp to get a pot of tea boiling. And if he uses his head, he’ll start up a hot stew.”

They walked into camp shivering in their wet clothing. York took the baby, who was now whimpering from hunger and cold, and wrapped him in one of his old woolen shirts. Then he fed him some pot liquor from the buffalo stew simmerings.

Charbonneau had lost his flintlock. The baby had lost his cradleboard and the clothing in the bottom. Captain Clark had lost his compass, the only large one the expedition had, his umbrella, his rifle, shot pouch, powder horn, and extra moccasins, but he was alive, and he knew what was needed to restore their spirits and give them warmth. He gave each of the men a dram of rum, then passed the tin cup to Sacajawea. She gulped her portion of rum and felt the warmth spread through her body.

A bobwhite called until another answered, then through the breeze came the sound of Cruzatte’s violin, and suddenly everyone had tales to tell of the hail and rain they had experienced during the sudden storm. Many were battered and bruised from the large hailstones, but none had found themselves in such a bad spot as the ravine Captain Clark and his party had climbed out of.
¹

Next day, a search party found the all-important compass and fished it out of thick red mud. None of the other lost items was ever found. The ravine was filled with rocks, washed down by the flood of water, each one large enough to have crushed Clark’s whole party to death.

Drouillard came to a stop. So did the Indian. In fact, the Indian turned his horse as if to wait for them, casting his eyes from Drouillard to the captain and then to Shields, who, however, on his part, was continuing to advance as before.

The captain, too, kept striding forward. He held high the trinkets for the Indian to see. He stripped his shirt sleeve to show the color of his skin. He called, at the top of his lungs the ringing words,
“Tab-ba-bone! Tab-ba-bone!
White man! White man!” Proceeding in this manner he was able to get, finally, to within one hundred paces of the Indian, when the latter gave whip to his horse, and disappeared behind some willows on the other side of the creek.

Reprinted by permission of the publishers. The Arthur H. Clark Company, from
George Drouillard
by M. O. Skarsten, 1964, p. 101.

O
n Monday, July 15, 1805, the canoes were launched above the Great Falls. Captain Clark followed by land along an old native trail. The contour of the country changed from level plains to hills and hummocks, and great rocks jutted from the earth. In some places cliffs rose from the water’s edge to over twelve hundred feet.

Captain Lewis was enthusiastic about the sights. “Never have I seen such a magnificent masterpiece of nature!” he exclaimed. He looked up at the canyon walls—vast columns of rock, beautiful overlapping precipices, clear gushing springs. He took a deep breath of the clear fresh air. “This will be called ‘the Gates of the Mountains.’ The entrance to the Rocky Mountains. I can almost see the sun glitter on the snow way up yonder.”

Sacajawea could not take her eyes off the mountains that lay ahead with their tops covered white as though clouds rested there during all the seasons. Unexpectedly she pointed to the southwest and cried, “My people! My people! Smoke in the hills!”

Captain Clark saw the smoke signals, clear evidence that natives had detected their approach and were spreading the news. Suspecting that they might get behind him and follow on his trail, Clark left bits of clothing, strips of paper and trinkets at intervals, with signs indicating that his party were white men and friends. York helped Clark make a lop stick, a common trail sign. A tall tree was found and its branches lopped off so it created an unusual mark in the landscape. This was used as a portage sign or sign that the main trail was here. Sacajawea showed York how to make designs in the earth with a sharp stick to indicate that they were friendly. They tied the grass in three bunches to indicate that their trail went “this way.”

The party traveling overland found the going so rough that they decided to stop by the shoreline until Captain Lewis and the canoes appeared, and for the next few days they proceeded by water, watching for signs of the Shoshonis, killing game for food, and tending to blistered feet. But none of the men had eyes as sharp as Sacajawea’s.

Coming upstream in Captain Lewis’s canoe, with Pomp sitting in her lap and waving his chubby arms, Sacajawea suddenly pulled at York’s shirt. “Look!” she said. Long before he spotted them, she had pointed to several deserted brush wickiups and traces of old fires. She read him their story. “They were hungry and moved to find more game. They followed deer.” She pointed to the small cloven hoof tracks and told him a deer could easily be followed in the tall grass because it has a scent gland between its hooves and a larger gland on each hind leg that exudes a strong odor as the animal wanders through the brush.

She laughed like a carefree child, pointing to the bank where the rock was red, a source of vermilion for the People. Suddenly she was aware that she must not make a spectacle of herself before these men, especially Captain Lewis, who remained dignified and aloof much of the time. She did not want him to see her letting go and acting like a small child. Surely he would frown; after all, she was grown and had a child of her own. And so, she thought, what will the People say about this beautiful fat baby? Will they nod their approval? Will the old women click their teeth and smile, stretching out their arms to hold him?

Lewis put his hand on his mouth, indicating no more talk for a time. The canoes were facing a rapid current and everyone had to be at full attention. The oars were useless. The men poled and the poles would not grip the smooth, flat stones of the river bottom. Captain Lewis, however, rose to the situation and put fishing gigs on the ends of the poles. The gigs gripped the bottom or wedged between rocks much better.

“Hey, hey! Capitaine, sir, you push a tolerable good pole there!” called LePage to Captain Lewis, who was poling his canoe himself. Captain Lewis nodded, knowing that if he let go even with one hand to wave at the canoe opposite him, his pole might slip.

During the long afternoon Sacajawea watched the overhanging, gray granite walls pass by the canoes. She nursed her baby and hummed softly, but her eyes were on the passing shoreline. The walls she remembered as if it were yesterday when she was captured by the Minnetarees. She could almost feel the terror she had felt then; her hands tightened on her child. A constriction in her chest made it hard to breathe. She looked at the tops of the hills, anticipating an enemy riding there bedecked in hunting paints and feathers. Her outer countenance showed nothing. She hated this spot. Right here it was that she and Willow Bud had been tied to the horses.

Toward sundown her tension eased, and she told the men the story of her capture. “Tell that again,” urged Captain Lewis. “I’d like to keep that spot in our permanent records. I’ll write your story in my journal when we are in tonight’s camp.”

“My story? In your marking-book?” she asked, unbelieving. “A woman cannot be important enough to go down in those tiny markings. In that book the men mark about trees, flowers, birds, rocks, wind, and rain, but no marks about the babblings of a woman.”

“Yes, of course,” said Captain Lewis, “everyone on this trail is important.”

This was nearly incomprehensible to her, but she shrugged and told her story again.

Watching her, Captain Lewis thought she showed absolutely no emotion or sorrow in recollecting the event of her capture. He also thought she showed no joy in being restored to her native country. But Lewis had not listened closely to her words, nor had he watched her hands. Lewis, philosophic, introspective, and moody, did not share the fondness and interest in Sacajawea and her baby that Clark showed. Yet he was disturbed by this girl. Once when Clark had remarked, “She’s a good soldier,” Lewis had said, “Yes, a pity she’s red-skinned.”

The men camped at the Three Forks of the Missouri to refresh themselves for a few days. The men who had gone overland were suffering from badly cut feet, the result of the yellow prickly pear, which was beautiful and in full bloom, but a great annoyance, and the men who had poled the canoes were exhausted from the strenuous work. Lewis and Clark were excited by the prospects of a trading post at the spot.

“See,” said Lewis, “the rushes in the bottom, high as a man’s chest and thick as wheat. This would be a perfect winter pasture for cows and horses. And we could have the post built of stone or brick, much cheaper than wood, and all the materials are right here on the spot. The sandbars are near with pure white sand, and the earth on that bank—over there—looks as if it would make good bricks.”

Clark bent to pull a blade of grass to pick at his teeth and chew on. When he stretched, the heel of his hand struck the ground. It sank deep into the soil. He stood up to look out at the valleys of perennial green. He looked back at the print his hand had made. It was filling with water.

“This loam’s sponge,” he said. He felt excited. He felt good this morning. He looked at the blue jays, cedar waxwings, and meadowlarks. He thought of the beaver, otter, and muskrat cavorting in the river—this was a trapper’s paradise. There were sunflowers, wild rye, purple clover, sweet clover, buffalo peas, and Indian paintbrush. He looked about. All the trails seemed to converge at this point.

“This is it,” said Lewis. “This is where the squaw said the Blackfeet come on raids against the Shoshonis.”

“I’ll go find her,” Clark said.

Sacajawea was bathing herself. Her feet sank deep into comfortable mud. Wading out was like stepping into rabbit robes in a snug mud hut, pulling the robes up slowly, feeling the warm fur sleek against the skin. It was like that except that the water in this little backwash was softer than the fur. It curled in around her thighs. She treaded water, and paddled with her arms, helping out her legs. When Clark came to the bank for her, he turned his back. She came out, the tips of her toes touching silt. Coming up out of the river was like falling headlong into icy water. The wind cold, scorched her wet skin. She felt good. She pulled on her tunic and slipped into her moccasins, wrung her hair on the sand and pushed it behind her ears. It was early. Directly westward were the mountains, not dark, but blazing redly in the new sun.

Lewis asked her to tell them again about what lay northwestward, across the valley space and beyond the foothills. His right arm was sweeping back and forth. His body bent forward, as if he were trying, unconsciously, to gather all details of the great scene about him.

“The Shoshonis go back and forth here in annual hunts to the Yellowstone,” she said, sitting a little apart from the two men. “The Nez Percés and Flatheads come here for robes and meat. Big Bellies come from the north for good hunting.”

“She means the Gros Ventres from Saskatchewan, I bet,” said Clark.

“No tribe lives here permanently, but the roads are deep, like trenches, worn by trailing their lodgepoles and travois. This is common hunting ground,” said Lewis, his imagination spinning.

“This land would feed thousands of cattle and feed ‘em fat!” said Clark. “And it is sure enough wheat country.”

“Lordy, wheat!” said Lewis. “That’s it. Wheat would be up as thick as the hair on a dog’s back inside of two weeks after the last spring snow!”

“There!” exclaimed Clark. “We’ll come back here and farm. Wouldn’t Judy like it out here?”

“Judy Hancock, here? She’d have none but Indians to ask to her cotillion!” laughed Lewis.

Could either man but have known his words were prescient of the day when this would be the heart of the Montana wheat and cattle country, their thoughts would not have been so lighthearted.

Now there was a problem of more immediacy: which fork of the river to take? Patrols were sent out to explore while the hunters went for game and equipment checks were made. Their stay at the Three Forks was a long one, for it was vital to choose the correct fork, and although Sacajawea had been right before and now told them to take the fork leading west, Captain Lewis waited for the men to scout before reaching the same decision.

Lewis named the southeast fork, which he explored, the Gallatin, in honor of the Secretary of the Treasury. The middle fork became the Madison, after the Secretary of State, and the northwest fork was named the Jefferson, after the President of the United States. Captain Clark provided the first basic survey of the Three Forks area. He added it to his manuscript maps.

The canoes were reloaded, and the expedition began to ascend the Jefferson on July 30 to its head in the Bitterroot Mountains, and to continue their search for the Shoshonis.

“You’ll never find them in the open,” explained Sacajawea. “They lived once on the plains, but they have been driven from them by enemies.”