Sacajawea (84 page)

A breeze stirred, mixing with the mutter of the river. “Damn,” sighed Clark, at the same time firing his rifle as a signal to his men. He scrambled down under the cliff, growling at Charbonneau, who feigned sleep.

They made camp and hunted for two days. Sacajawea watched her man relaxed and indolent. She said nothing to him. Lewis came in with an otter and two porcupines the last night under the cliff. The men gathered by the fire, where York boiled fish. York stirred the pot with a stick, and built a spit for the small game.

In the morning, they were moving up the wide river in the first grayness of dawn. A cool breeze came up, but there was no rain. By evening, the balmy weather had changed. A cold wind circled the shores and their cook fire roared fitfully, shooting sparks. The men built shelters with huge pine branches. Just before nightfall, a black cloud appeared to the south and spread across the sky. It was a flock of migrating birds, and everyone stared in disbelief as it broke into pieces overhead and the parts fell toward the earth, just out of sight up the river. In the gray dawn next morning, they poled slowly along the shore and came on the ducks in a reedy bay.

By April 7, there was enough dried meat and salmon to carry the expedition safely back to the Nez Percé country. The men began to look around for a village where they could find at least a dozen packhorses to use during portage and to carry Bratton, who still could not walk, around the Narrows and Celilo Falls. They had very little to trade for horses, and the natives wanted eye dags, which were a kind of war hatchet. The expedition had no eye dags, and all the blacksmithing equipment was on the other side of the Divide in a cache.

The cold rain clouds seemed to dissolve.

One night the men watched Skillute fishing canoes move slowly across the water by the light of pine torches. Clark and Charbonneau had not talked together since the afternoon Charbonneau had climbed into the canoeto rest his feet. Now they watched the spectacle of the black smoking lights side by side, brooding silently. Charbonneau was tired from the long days of poling and stretched on an elbow near the fire where he could not see Clark, sitting near his head. “I will make roast of the porcupine tomorrow,” he remarked, suddenly bored with the strain between them.

“I got two beaver today you can use,” Clark replied at once.

“Wagh, they would be better used to buy horses,” suggested Charbonneau. “The Skillutes have some—I have seen.”

Clark flung a piece of wood into the fire, wishing he could be sure Charbonneau spoke the truth. But to his surprise, he realized that his emotions were a mere echo out of the past months, more than an expression of his present feelings. He did not know how he considered Charbonneau at this moment—the fact that he himself had not seen the Skillutes’ horses was puzzling. Truthfully, this complaining, bragging squawman had a keen knowledge of the land and the inhabitants and the signs they left. He was actually better able to care for himself than he appeared. Clark turned to face the river. The fishermen were coming in, their shadows vague and monstrous as the torches waved. They pulled up the canoes and their low talking was clear in the quiet camp. Only their dogs whimpered and yelped. The Skillutes who carried torches stayed for a moment by the shore, bending to look at their reflections in the inky mirror. Then they quenched the flames and drifted silently downriver to their own village. Clark answered their greetings without moving. The stars glimmered faintly on the black water.

Charbonneau rolled up in his blanket and abruptly fell asleep.

When Clark awoke in the misty dawn, Charbonneau was helping York build a fire from the coals under the ashes. Clark watched them a moment, silently.

“Good day,” Charbonneau said unexpectedly, glancing up with a smile. “Meager comforts to this life.”

Clark stretched, then stood up shuddering. He walked along the shore a short distance, relieved himself, and came back, scratching his head and yawning violently, to stand close to the flames with outstretched hands. He felt rested and looked about at the others packing their blankets, getting ready to move out.

“Not so fast!” he called to them. “Take time for some jerky this morning! I’m going to take a look around the Skillute camp and possibly dicker over a couple of horses there.”

“No horses at that village,” said Shields, brushing insects and cobwebs from his hair. “I just wandered through the woods in that direction and didn’t see anything but those flimsy bark canoes.”

“Well, maybe they don’t want us to know about their horses,” said Clark quietly. “I heard they have some. I want packsaddles made when I return.”

Charbonneau looked up from the fire, his face warm and red under the dark whiskers, but he said nothing.

Lewis began to call out names for hunting that morning.

Clark dickered for the rest of the day with the chief of the Skillutes for a couple of horses. The squaws fed Clark boiled onions, and still they could not come to terms on the horses. The men wanted more fish hooks. When they were put with the bundle of other things, the men nodded and said with signs that the horses were all in a valley where the women were gathering roots. They would send out and bring in horses the next day. Then the men began to ask for articles Clark did not have. They looked through the bundle of articles he had brought and complained it was not half enough for two of their fine horses. Clark could think of nothing to do but return to his camp. Then he noticed something he had not seen before. He bent to examine the deep, running sores on the left leg of the chief where a bear had pawed him several weeks before. Clark indicated he was something of a medicine man and would like to dress the wounds. The chiefs face brightened, and he stretched out his leg. When Clark was finished, one of the chiefs squaws complained of a sore back. Clark rubbed a little camphor on her temples and back and placed a warmed piece of flannel over her shoulders.

“I have not felt so well in many seasons,” she said, smiling broadly. “I will give you two horses.”

That afternoon, Charbonneau went to the villagewith Frazier and returned with a good mare for which he had given his belt, some elk’s teeth and a packet of paints.

But the following morning, the chief and several bucks came back holding out a bundle with all the articles used to purchase the horses. They wanted to return the purchase price and get their horses back. This was an acceptable practice among the natives. Charbonneau stepped forward, removed his woolen shirt, and gave it to the chief for the horse he was riding. The Skillutes asked for more woolen shirts and brought in more horses to trade.

That night, Charbonneau neglected to hobble his horses and lost one because it wandered off.
¹¹

On April 22, Charbonneau’s other horse became frightened with an elk-hide saddle and wool robe on his back and ran full-speed down a hill, leaving Charbonneau wheezing behind on the trail. Near an Indian village the horse threw off the saddle and blanket. An alert Indian hid the blanket in his hut.

Lewis sent Charbonneau to overtake the horse and baggage. He gathered up the baggage and found the saddle in the village, but not the blanket.

Sacajawea had seen the Indian skulk off with it, and she told Lewis she would find it. “The blanket keeps my child warm at night.”

Lewis turned to Clark. ‘Those pirates better deliver that blanket or I’ll burn their damned, flea-infested huts. I’ve had enough thieving. I’ll not forgive them the time their cousins, several villages back, tried to keep old Scannon for their camp dog.”

While they were swearing at the Indians, Sacajawea was getting the blanket. She told a squaw in the hut where she saw the man take it that her baby was blue with cold. She let the squaw hold Pomp while she searched for the blanket. She found it under a pile of rush mats, and the squaw seemed pleased and smiled. She let Sacajawea hold her papoose, who had a runny nose and sores on his face and shoulders. Sacajawea was happy to take back Pomp and the blanket.

“My papoose is the most handsome,” she told Clark.

On the twenty-fourth, Lewis decided that the canoes were of no more use as the river was getting narrowerand the large boulders and swift water much too frequent. Lewis asked some river Indians if they would exchange horses for the canoes. The Indians shook their heads no. Instead, they held out strands of colored beads, the same the expedition had traded for salmon the year before, and indicated they would trade beads for the canoes.

“We want horses,” said Drouillard in Chinook.

“I do not think they will trade their horses at all,” said Sacajawea quietly behind Drouillard. “Maybe so, then, you take their beads and give them the canoes. You can use the beads later in trading. Take the beads.”

Drouillard turned and scowled at Sacajawea. Her fine tanned tunic was worn and grease-stained. She held her back straight and looked directly at him. In a moment he decided she was right. He reached for the beads. Sacajawea barely seemed to move, yet she was standing in front of him putting out her hand, indicating that two strands of beads were not enough for the two well-made canoes. An old squaw with an opaque film over one eye added several more strands to the pile in Drouillard’s hand. Sacajawea made a low grunt inside her throat and stepped closer to the canoes. A large buck pulled a strand of blue beads from his neck, and several other men followed his gesture. Sacajawea nodded, but her face remained impassive. There was a pile of beads at Drouillard’s feet now. She walked around it once, examining it slowly. The expedition men stood in quiet wonder. A squaw added some bright pink seashells on a long thong. Sacajawea looked up and smiled at the Indians. She placed her palms together and held her hands under her chin.

She looks like a child praying, thought Clark, looking around at the incongruous situation.

The Indians smiled in return and seemed highly pleased with the canoes. They were pushed into the water and floated downriver faster and faster.

Drouillard was overwhelmed by the actions of Sacajawea. That evening around the fire he told Clark, “She does not speak to me often, but when she does, she is eloquent.”

They stored the beads in a leather pouch and tied it to the pack on a pinto pony.

Clark’s Journal:

Thursday 22nd May 1806

Shabonos son a small child is dangerously ill. his jaw and throat is much swelled, we apply a poltice of onions, after giveing him some creem of tartar etc. this day proved to be fine and fair which afforded us an oppertunety of drying our baggage which had got a little wet.

Tuesday 27th May 1806

Shabono’s child is much better today; tho’ the swelling on the side of his neck I believe will termonate in an ugly imposthume,
¹
a little below the ear.

R. G. THWAITES
, ed.,
The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-1806,
Vol. 5. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904-5. Reprinted by Arno Press, N.Y., 1969, pp. 57-8, 72.

T
he gear and baggage were now carried by horses. Bratton, still not able to walk well, and several others with bad stone bruises on their feet, rode the few horses the expedition had. The rest walked. The stones along the river’s edge were hard, and the sand between was soft. This caused aching feet and legs. Sacajawea took Pomp to the water for a bath one evening and found York bathing his aching feet.

“My feet is plumb worn down to my legs,” he said. “Janey, we’se on our ways home. We’se homeward bound.”

“Ai.”
More and more she heard the word “home” in the men’s conversation. “Home.” They said the word tenderly, as though they had good memories to go back to. Sacajawea dried Pomp with soft doeskin and hugged him close in her arms. This was “home” to her—the best home she had known since she was a tiny girl. She slipped from her moccasins and eased her own bruised feet into the cool water.

“This little fella will sure have a lot to tell his little friends.”

“Will he remember?”

“Naw, not rightly. But you and I will. Some men would give a whole lot to have been on this here trip. I wouldn’t mind staying with some of the natives we seen. For instance, those Nez Percés or even your Shoshonis and them Mandans.”

Sacajawea smiled. “You would miss home.”

“Home—that’s where the heart is. Say, this stream is mortal cold, ain’t it?”

She saw that he had on only a torn leather shirt and short leggings.

“I have a robe if you want it.”

“Thank you just the same, Janey,” he said. He chuckled a little sadly. “It takes all my hands to cook supper, and I never did learn the knack of keeping a robe held on.”

“You will learn if you become chief of some tribe,” she teased.

“I never thought of that.” He chuckled to himself. “You’se got a way of teasing that makes it easy to take.”

She left her moccasins and ran to the camp bouncing Pomp on her hip. She rummaged through her bundle of clothing, then sat Pomp on a leather robe and ran back to where York was pulling his feet from the water and letting them dry off on a rock.

“Here.” She held a blue two-point blanket out to him. “I would rather have a lighter robe. This is too warm for me.”

“I’m all used to the cold now, and you’ll catch your death not wearing something on your shoulders.” He was shivering and wanted the blanket. His blanket had long ago been traded for the favors of some pretty squaw to keep him warm one night.

Sacajawea wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. He protested, but she talked cheerfully and he let her put it on him.

“Sure’s a fine blanket,” he said happily. “I’ll learn to hold it on and cook at the same time. I’m getting warmed up a mite. You really think I could be a chief?”

“Ai.”

“I’ve argued that with myself, but it don’t help the feeling I owe Master Clark my services. If he set me free, then I’ll be an Indian chief. I’ll be like something you never knew.” He said it as if he were joking. “I’ll be a black man that’s looked up to and leads his people to prosperity.”