Sacajawea (6 page)

Grass Child pointed back up the trail. “There’s a camp, maybe a day’s ride.”

“Our braves are still out hunting. It is their camp, I suppose. I hope they found a large deer or two. I want a new winter robe.”

“I need a new tunic,” said Grass Child, looking down at her soiled and torn one.

Overhead, the sky stretched blue and immense. Here and there a little pearl-white cloud sailed high and majestically. A fresh wind blew over the land, stirring the short, dry grease grass into ripples like those on a gentle sea. The dry leaves crunched under the hooves of their pony. Gradually the shadows of the trees grew longer, and the flies and yellow-jackets that had plaguedthe girls all day gave way to the stronger wind that came from the north.

Then they heard the happy shout of Spotted Bear as he informed the People that Grass Child was riding behind Willow Bud.

Lewis’s Journal
¹

From the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Saint Louis to the Pacific, 1804-1806.

Sunday July 28th 1805

Our present camp is precisely on the spot that the Snake Indians were encamped at the time the Minnetares of the knive R. first came in sight of them five years since, from hence they retreated about three miles up Jeffersons river and concealed themselves in the woods, the Minnetares pursued, attacked them, killed 4 men, 4 women a number of boys, and mad[e] prisoners of all the femals and four boys, Sah-cah-gar-we-ah o[u]r Indian woman was one of the female prisoners taken at that time; tho’ I cannot discover that she shews any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or of joy in being restored to her native country; if she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear I believe she would be perfectly content anywhere.

BERNARD DEVOTO
, ed.,
The Journals of Lewis and Clark.
New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, p. 171.

T
he days grew shorter, but the winter held off. The pleasant haze of a belated Indian summer persisted through half of the Agaidükas’ journey into a warm winter camp.

The band remained no place for long. The life of the Agaidüka Shoshonis was migratory. The People were profound realists. They hunted as they moved. Often the men brought in a deer or several antelope or a fat bear. The women cut the meat in strips and dried it over hot coals during the day camp. There were no fires at night to attract raiders. Many times now they moved only at night, heading into the foothills of the Shining Mountains for protection from the Blackfeet and Sioux.

One night Grass Child felt the piercing loneliness more than ever. Her thoughts were back on the Big Horn. She wondered if the spirit of Old Grandmother made this great show of northern lights spreading in shimmering waves over the dome of the sky. Sometimes it formed bands of pale green and rose; sometimes there were great beams slowly climbing upward.

“Far in the north it will talk,” said Fragrant Herbs that evening. “It crackles and hisses. Our people do not go that far these days. There, winds do not stop howling, the snow blows, and the fires go out. The People leave that land to the Blackfeet.”

“Where will we stop for our encampment?” asked Grass Child.

“We will cross the ridge to the waters of the Big Muddy, then slowly we will go on to the place where the river divides into three forks,” answered her mother.

“Will the Blackfeet be there?”

“Oh, Grass Child, you ask so many questions. It is really not fitting for a young girl-child. Wait and see. Look and listen. You will find you can teach yourself.”

“Well? Will they be there?”

“No, the People have never yet found the Blackfeet at this retreat.”

“What if this time they are there?”

“It will be too cold to fight or raid horses. They will not be there.”

Grass Child tried to imagine what it would be like, however, if the enemy were at their winter retreat. She could feel their savage eyes, but what they looked like and what they would do was a mystery.

The warmth of the next morning’s sun had chilled by midforenoon, and the temperature began to drop so fast that ice was forming on the horses’ nostrils by noon. Several times Chief No Retreat stopped and had the men clean off the horses’ faces before going farther. The women would take that time to rearrange the travois loads or let the children who were riding on top of the household goods walk a bit, then snuggle down again inside a buffalo robe to keep out the fingers of cold. The sticks on the drags were checked, and the leather that bound them to the horses was checked and repaired if worn thin. The gale whipping out of the darkening northwest gave promise of the winter’s first blizzard.

Several days later, it was too cold to skin the hunters’ catch of several deer without risking frostbite. The squaws built a rough lean-to with a fire in the front and skinned the animals there. The small children sat around the fire for warmth and chewed small, succulent pieces of raw flesh that were handed them once in a while.

When they were on the trail again, thankful the wind was at their backs, the first stinging pellets of snow began flying. As they walked along the low gullies, their leggings became encased with ice from the knees down. They were half-frozen as they plodded along, always keeping sight of the river. Finally they dropped down into the welcome, comparative shelter of a cedar grove. This became their winter encampment.

That winter on the Three Forks was hard. They had set camp near water and good grass for the horses, in a place sheltered from the north wind, but the People had not killed enough meat during the summer to last the winter, and that which they had taken in the fall was soon gone. There was great concern, but thoughts of cold and weariness fled when a scout came to the village one afternoon shouting, “Buffalo, buffalo! There are many in a small canyon to the south!”

To the People, the welfare of the tribe came first. No Indian hunter practiced “free enterprise,” attacking and alarming a herd of buffalo alone in winter. Under the stringent laws of the winter hunt, he would have been put to death before he could climb down from his pony. The winter chase was communal, and the kill divided equally among all of the tribe. Soon the hunters were organized and riding to the south with bows and lances ready.

Chief No Retreat brought his hunting party back in a blizzard. The wind had struck in from the north in the afternoon, blowing sleet, and the People at the camp had taken to the shelter of their warm tepees. An old woman had been gathering buffalo chips against the cold, and she had not returned. Her family found her frozen body half-buried in the snow the next morning. Spotted Bear, son of No Retreat, brother of Grass Child, returned with his group just after the old woman was found. He raced his pony ahead of the rest and ran through the camp yelling, “Our group is back. More hunters are back!” The People spilled out of their tepees to greet the hunters in spite of the fierce wind, for they were returning heroes, and seemed saviors to those who had remained behind and were out of meat.

They brought eight fat buffalo; with the ten of Chief No Retreat’s party, each lodge was entitled to half a carcass.

Two weeks later. Chief No Retreat hunkered over the fire in his big tepee. “How much meat do we have now?” he asked Fragrant Herbs.

“We have only the bones of the half buffalo.”

“Were the scouts out while we hunted?”

“They have done their best, but the other herds went away.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No, we have the grass seeds.”

She put several flat, crisp biscuits before him. He mused as he munched the food. “Some laughed as you gathered the seed, but I hold with you. This will keep us from starving. We will divide what we have with the other lodges. They ought to be glad we saved the seeds.”

The chief portioned out the fine seeds carefully, cautioning the People about spilling them. They buckled down to the task of living on little, and they wasted nothing. The women could not dig for roots in the frozen ground. Children squabbled with the dogs for a warm place by the tepee fire. Babies cried. The grass seed was used sparingly—making it last.

Grass Child missed the storytelling of Old Grandmother—with it she could have lost for a time the gnawing hunger pangs in her stomach as Old Grandmother carried her to another place and another time where wonderful things happened. She remembered one and told the story to Rain Girl.

“About as long ago as it takes three men to live, a large tribe of Shoshonis stayed behind in the land of the Shining Mountains to be safe from the Blackfeet. There was a storm, and all the warmth went from Mother Earth. The Shoshonis died, and there were no signs of life. The snow made a robe as tall as the tallest man. The buffalo were gone.”

“This is a terrible story,” said Rain Girl.

“It is true, though,” continued Grass Child. “Snow covered the land and did not melt. It hung heavy on the great pine boughs. When the time for melting snow came, there was so much snow that there was a great flood over all the land. Everything was covered with water except the very top of one mountain peak. On top of that peak one Shoshoni man and his woman rested in a canoe. When the water dried, they were the only ones left. There were no great animals, only small ones and lots of birds. Their lodges had to be made from small rabbit skins and feathers. That is why we still weave some feathers in our summer lodges. Then the birds can see how beautiful they look and know that we are still grateful to them for helping our old brother and sister so many winters ago.”

“I think you just made that up,” sniffed Rain Girl.

Grass Child, Rain Girl, and their friend Willow Bud worked up and down the river with the women, cutting cottonwood sprouts and dragging them in the snow to the small herd of horses near camp.

Some of the men spent the winter days hunting small game. They ran rabbits into hollow logs, one end of which had been tightly sealed with mud or hard-packedsnow; then they plugged the other end with sagebrush and set it on fire and fanned the smoke into the log. As soon as the rabbit stopped squealing, they pulled out the smoking brush and grabbed the animal. Others built snares for snowshoe rabbits by hanging a noose of tough bark from a tree, baiting it with the tender inner bark of cottonwood sprouts.

One day, Grass Child stood still and listened. There seemed to be a faint sound everywhere—the murmur of waters, snow falling off tree limbs, and, barely audible, maybe imagined, a knocking sound far away up the river. With progressive speed and gathering power, day by day now, the sun wore away and tore apart the river ice. More and more water flowed as it melted on the surface and close to the banks. The Chinook winds hurried the melting, leaving the snow honeycombed with pockets of air. Soon the last support broke free on the river, the cracks became crevices, the whole ice moved, fragments and floes grinding and heaving, ice cakes tilted endwise, and the Big Muddy was true to her name, too thick to drink and too thin for yellow paint.

The Agaidükas lost only one old grandfather during the time of the snowy moon and freezing winds and considered themselves fortunate. The winter had been cold and long. Several horses were dead and good only for buzzard bait. The warm Chinook winds were a signal that the winter storytelling period was over. The women could go out now and dig roots in the thawed, soft mud and the men could hunt, easily following animal tracks in the soft earth.

By the time spring’s first signs appeared it was forbidden by social tradition to continue telling winter tales because of the belief that it would displease the old trickster, Coyote. During the long winter months the older members of the tribe had often gathered around someone’s center fire, smoked a mixture of kinnikin-nick, willow bark, and buffalo dung, in an atmosphere of leisurely storytelling. The people’s memories were refreshed with the most important tribal records in this way. But the winter tales always ended with the coming of spring, letting the younger women hunt roots and the younger men hunt game for the stew kettle.
²
How-ever, once a story was started it had to continue until the end. Therefore, Grass Child continued making up dramatic events with her friend, Willow Bud. Each girl added a new thought as it occurred in order to lengthen the enjoyment of the story.

Grass Child was lying on her back near a smoldering center fire, looking through the smoke hole, inventing ideas to prolong a story she and Willow Bud had been telling for days. “And so, during the time there was water all over the land, Coyote paddled around until he found some geese.”

Willow Bud hitched her bare legs under the skirt of her tunic, took a deep breath and added, “Coyote asked those geese for feathers so that instead of paddling he could join them flying. The geese flew off to the nearest mountaintop for a powwow.”

Grass Child sat up, brushed a sleepy spring fly off her nose, and said, ‘Those geese decided to wash the whole earth and Coyote would have drowned but he pulled a white buffalo robe over the hole that lets water leak from the sky.”

Willow Bud laughed. “If we aren’t careful, we’ll finish our story and not be able to tell another until the snows begin again.”

Grass Child stood up. “Let’s look for something to eat. My belly cramps for want of food. I’d like to stuff myself and not have to share with anyone.”

Just then Fragrant Herbs poked her head in the tepee. “Girls, your daydreams are real! Come, listen.”

Grass Child and Willow Bud hurried to follow Fragrant Herbs outside. She put her hand over her mouth and they all listened. The camp crier was out, calling among the tepees on the other side of camp. ‘The scouts have sighted buffalo!” He continued to call as he came closer and closer to their side of the camp. “Everyone get ready!” By now everyone in camp was outside in the crisp spring air. There was happy chattering and questions. “When do we go?” “How many buffalo?” “Where are they located?”

The crier began his second round of the camp. “Hunters and strong women! Leave tomorrow morning! Due west to the high cliff! East of the Three Forks!”