Sacajawea (81 page)

EUBEN
GOLD THWAITES, ed.,
The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806,
Vol. 7. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904-5. Reprinted by Arno Press, N.Y., 1969, pp. 254-55.

Back around Warrior’s Point Clark came, whence the Multnomahs were wont to issue to battle in their huge war canoes. An old Indian trail led up into the interior, where for ages the lordly Multnomahs had held their councils. Many houses had fallen entirely to ruin.

Clark inquired the cause of decay. An aged Indian pointed to a woman deeply pitted with the smallpox. “All died of that.
Ahn-cutty!
Long time ago!”

EVA EMERY DYE,
The Conquest.
Portland: Binfords and Mort, 1936, p. 269.

E
ach morning the weather seemed warmer. Sacajawea often sat where she could see the shoreline and the seals playing in the sea and sunning themselves on rocks. She was convinced that the white men had made no effort to kill the plentiful seals for food because they were a strange race of people who lived in water. Her own people had believed in water spirits for ages. Even Shannon had told her of their “wonderous homes” underwater, one time in a teasing mood. She could hardly picture herself as a grandmother, but thought, If I am ever with grandchildren, they will be amused with stories about these water people who sit on the rocks and stare at us who live on land.

The men began to talk of going home. Bratton, still carried in the grass sling, was certain the warmth of the spring sun could bring healing to his back.

In preparation for the return journey, Captain Lewis “borrowed” a canoe from the Clatsops in return for some elk meat they had “borrowed” during the winter. Comowool, the Clatsop chief, evidently did not think it necessary to go through his trading routine with Lewis. He watched as Lewis looked over his canoes with the ornate prows. Later in the afternoon he stayed with Lewis, who was fishing with a couple of men, taking the line of first one and then another, while they took a look for better places to fish.

Lewis was thinking, Why doesn’t he just tell us where the fish are and then go sit in the shade and let us fish? Actually he liked Comowool, had found him cleaner and easier to be around than some of the other chiefs at the various Chinook tribes. But his very liking was for some reason a source of irritation, as much toward himself as Chief Comowool.

The men were working their way back toward camp by the middle of the afternoon when the row of ten or twelve Clatsop canoes came into view along the bank just ahead. Lewis pulled in his line, walked past Comowool, and said to the others in English as casually as if he were commenting on the weather, “We’ll take themiddle-sized one, second from the left, in payment for the half an elk he and his men took a month back.”

George Shannon paused to wipe his forehead, gazed out across the swampy land in the opposite direction from the canoes, and said, “I’d take that long-prowed black on the other side.”

“I haven’t had a chance to study them,” Pete Wiser said. “Is that big red one any good?”

“Too big,” Lewis told him. “We have to take it past some fast water on the way out of here. We need something small and maneuverable.”

“I’ll help you get it and have it well packed for the home stretch,” Joe Whitehouse said.

They took delight in this game of mild revenge against the Clatsop chief who fished beside them. Lewis thought that the others probably found it sweeter than he did. How many times they had faced the language barrier when they were around the Chinooks and felt their shortcoming of not trying to learn the language, even the jargon! They discussed the merits of the canoes—which ones might be best for shallow water, which ones appeared to be watertight, which ones were most beautifully carved. Sometimes they looked at the string of canoes in order not to appear to avoid them. They enjoyed the sense of their own cleverness, the audacity, the hint of danger in it.

The next morning, Lewis went back to the same place and bought a canoe from Comowool with his gold-laced uniform coat, the long-prowed black canoe. Comowool briefly checked the outside of the canoe for cracks, then began to pull it away from the main string.

Lewis caught movement in the low brush above the bank and looked hard. Three men were coming on foot. He said to Comowool, “Looks like some others are coming here.”

Comowool looked, frowning, then laughed and used jargon to talk with Lewis. “Yes, they are hunters from my village.”

All three men came close and grinned in a friendly manner. One man’s hair seemed to have oil on it to make the black hairs stick together and form stiff points at each shoulder blade. He said, “Good day to be breaking camp and heading up the river.”

“Pretty good,” Comowool said.

“What I wanted to see you about—How much is half a good elk worth? Maybe a small canoe?”

“Yes, about that.”

“I guess the white chief can borrow that one.” He pointed to the middle-sized canoe, second from the left.

“He knows you borrowed that elk meat.”

“Well, he didn’t make a fuss over it, so he must have known we had some hungry people in our camp.”

It seemed as if they were trying to outdo one another at grinning.

Comowool asked, “Why do you stand there? Pull that canoe over against the first one I sold you.”

Lewis began to grin. “All right. I’m much obliged. I’ll borrow this canoe. You fellows are all right.”

Comowool chuckled. “Move out!” he said to his three hunters. In a moment the three of them had departed through the trees.

Lewis was aware there had been a sense of comradeship and humor among the four Clatsops but that it was turned against him. He suspected that Comowool understood more English than he let on. Comowool started to follow his three men, then returned to Lewis, who was puffing as he pulled the borrowed canoe away from the others. The chief clicked his tongue, pointed to Lewis’s head, and put his hands together in the shape of a wedge. With more hand signs and jargon he said, “Friend, you are not as backward as some I bargain against. So, then—I am surprised that you people do not put your heads against the board as the Chinooks do. It would improve your looks.”

Lewis was startled and confused. Was this more native humor or was it actual criticism? He took a deep breath, rested a moment before replying, and gathered his thoughts. Of course, he had seen Chinook mothers with their babies strapped to a cradleboard covered with soft moss. Across each baby’s forehead was a smooth slab of bark held on tightly by a leather band passing through both sides of the cradleboard. A grass pillow was under the back of the baby’s neck for support. Sacajawea told him the practice was vile and pointed to an infant whose mother was collecting seaweed. Thebaby’s eyes seemed to be about to pop out of his head from the extreme pressure of the flattening bark. Sacajawea told him that a baby was strapped in such a manner for the better part of his first year, thus causing the front of his skull to be flat and higher at the crown. She said, “The papoose cried when the mother cleaned him and quieted when the head lashing was again in place. Pagh! It is a practice for savages!”

Lewis cleared his throat, pointed to his own head, and said, “We might try it, if it improved our minds.”

The chief’s head bobbed up and down and his eyes twinkled in enjoyment of this competition of words. “How will you know until you try?”

When Lewis told Clark of the incident he said, “These natives are not slow-witted. They can even outsmart us white men at times!” They both laughed out loud.

On the day of departure, Captain Lewis gave Chief Comowool a certificate indicating the kindness and attention they had received. Then the captains made him a gift of the cabins and furniture in the fort as more substantial proof of their gratitude for his cooperation.
¹

Comcommoly, the one-eyed Chinook chief, was given a certificate along with Chillahlawil and several other important men of the tribe. The fat Chief Delashelwilt was given an “Indian Commission” to keep him peaceful. These papers were seven and one-half by twelve and one-half inches and filled out with the name of the man being honored.
²

Just before leaving, Lewis posted a paper inside the officers’ quarters, which read:

Both captains had given up the idea of the expedition’s returning by ship, even though they had carte blanche letters of credit, the main reason being that they sighted no ship during their stay on the west coast.
⁴

Departure day was gray, dreary, and wet. Sacajawea felt a lump in her throat when the canoes were loaded and they took final leave of the fort at one o’clock. Her head reeled as her canoe left shore and the water waved beneath her. When she looked back, the fort had sunk from sight beneath the low swell of the bay. She waved to the Chinooks packed on the shoreline. She wanted to weep.

For two days the dugouts tossed in wind from storms that hovered over the land. Thunder roared around them. Lightning struck on the hillsides and twice started fires that quickly went out with the downpour of rain. Then the wind died altogether and the waves quieted. The unexpected silence deepened; the crashing of water on the shore became the only sound, and a sense of apprehension grew in Bratton’s mind as he lay in the bottom of a dugout, his back in great pain.

“What is it?” he asked. His voice seemed startlingly loud without the wind to snatch it away.

“Another storm somewheres,” Pryor said, and his words, too, seemed loud. He spoke to Collins behind him and then said, “See, there? Over the far point. Drouillard and his men have found us a campsite. They are beaching their canoe; let’s follow.”

Charbonneau was in Drouillard’s canoe, dipping in time with the movements of fish-oiled backs before him. Sweat smarted in his eyes as he balanced on raw knees and bruised toes, remembering how he had asked for the poling job, saying if he had to have his share of upstream work, he’d do his now while the water ran wide and smooth. He readied himself to jump overboard and help pull the canoe onto the shore. His palms were gummy with sores from the paddling. While the other canoes were pulled in, he let Sacajawea wrap his hands with soft, pliant leather. “They will heal faster wrapped,” he winced. “But until they are better, I cannot hold a paddle or pole.”

Charbonneau woke the next morning and found he could not move without sharp pains; even his fingers were curled stiffly and felt like swollen growths.

Mosquitoes had plagued the expedition since the weather warmed, and a new rash of bites began to itch excruciatingly. Charbonneau scratched a chain of welts, staring about and waving peevishly at the clot of gnats whining around his head. Sacajawea sat beside him and wordlessly offered him a bladder of fish oil.

“I rub that on my hands and they will slip on the pole. I rub it on my back and I smell as vile as the rotten fish. You rub it on my aching shoulders.” He picked his teeth with a twig.

“It is time to push on,” she said, rubbing some of the soreness from his shoulders. “The canoes are ready to go. Some have already started along the bank on foot to hunt elk. Come, Chief Red Hair says you will paddle again.”

“With these hands? I can’t.”

“Ai,
you can with the leather protecting them. I promise you will feel nothing today.”

He followed her numbly into one of the waiting canoes. She sat near the back with Pomp held between her knees.

On March 30, the campsite was on flat, green prairie where the hunting was good.
⁵
Trumpeter swans beeped over green patches of sedges, and flocks of brant made rolling, guttural honks that blended into a babble of noise that carried far into the distance.

Wood smoke from the evening fires of a Shahala village rose into a high dusky sky trail that lay above the western larch with its soft, short bundles of green needles. When the expedition settled around their own fire, the Shahalas came to inspect them. They were dusky brown and their bodies squat from sitting most of the days in the bottom of a canoe. The man who seemed to be their chief had his hair cut shorter than the others, ragged above his ears.

“Katah mesika chaco?”
Lewis asked him in Chinook.

“Halo, muckamuck,”
said the man, shaking his head and rubbing his protruding belly. “Fish are gone, andthere is nothing to eat,
muckamuck.
The salmon will not come until the next full moon.”

“Do you hunt the deer and elk?” asked Lewis, again in Chinook.

This thickset chief chuckled with amusement. His people had no weapons for large game. They netted fish and made snares for only small animals.

For ten days the party camped near the Shahala village.
⁶
They needed meat for the mountain crossing. A dozen men went out to hunt the abundant game while the rest were kept busy cutting and hanging the meat on maple-stick racks over smoldering fires to dry.

With the leather bandaging off, Charbonneau rubbed the raw palms of both hands with fish oil. The flaps of dead skin were dry and horny. He stood beside Sacajawea, who was cutting meat into thin strips. “Shouldn’t these flaps be cut off?”