Across the Endless River (5 page)

It was important for Baptiste not to cry in front of his father; he felt that if he could keep the tears back, he could keep the ground beneath his feet from spinning and hurtling him down.

When his father went back north two days later, he cried many times, always alone. Captain Clark was away in Washington when the news came, and he didn't return for several months. Soon after Clark came back, Baptiste saw a light in his office late one evening; he knocked and let himself in. He found the captain, red-eyed and distracted, at his enormous desk in the big cluttered room. They looked at one another and both of them began to cry, and neither cared to hide it. Clark hugged him and tried to dry his tears, but Clark's own sobs would not stop. They gave in to their sadness then and wept together.

When Baptiste thought of his mother, he thought of his spirit bird. The summer before she died she took him aside, down to the stream where they gathered willow branches in the Mandan villages. She had him show her the small black bird she had given him. He knew that it wasn't a Mandan or Hidatsa piece; it was one of the small fetish objects—all of them birds—that she kept in a medicine bundle that was always with her, whether among the Mandan, along the river, or visiting him in St. Louis. She sat him in front of her and declared in a kind of solemn song, “I am the Bird Woman, and the spirit bird will always protect you, no matter what path I have taken.”

Now she was gone someplace he could not follow. Everyone claimed to be his father: Charbonneau, Clark, Chouteau, Limping Bear, President Jefferson, Jesus himself. But he missed his mother. When he attended Mass with the Chouteaus, the priest often reminded him that the Virgin Mary was everyone's mother, but Sacagawea was
his
mother, and the sound of her voice, her smell, her touch came to him in dreams. When he woke he was pained by the endless distance that lay between them, and he gripped the bird as if it were life itself, his fingers bloodless and trembling. Opening his palm, he saw the stone's faint imprint on his skin, slowly fading in the pale light of morning.

T
HREE

1813–1815

F
or the next two years Baptiste remained in St. Louis. The United States was at war with England, and the Missouri and Mississippi river basins were disputed territory in their conflict, with many Indian tribes siding with the British. Word drifted down the river that Charbonneau was missing after a battle on the upper Missouri—perhaps killed, perhaps captured—and more than ever Baptiste felt cut off from his life among the Mandan.

He thought often of his mother, the Bird Woman. Not every bird he saw made him think of her. The great flocks of blackbirds over the prairie, the eagles and vultures soaring above rocky outcroppings, the owls and nighthawks that flitted along the roads in the dusk: none of these brought Sacagawea to mind. But when he sat along the riverbank, immobile and watchful, and a single bird landed nearby to search the ground for food, his thoughts were full of her. As when she prepared to leave him that first time, the bird would hop about, then stand unmoving with its head tipped to one side, waiting for something unseen. At these moments he felt her presence, and he sensed that she still watched him.

It was during this time that he discovered the miracle of letters. He saw Captain Clark write down his thoughts, send them far away, and the person who received the folded paper with his name on it would be able to read what was on his mind. He knew that Captain Clark sent such pieces of paper to family members in Kentucky and Virginia, with traders and merchants along the river, and with government officials in Washington. The Mandan said that this was one of the white man's mysterious powers, that he could make known orders, plans, and wishes by sending paper along this great system, but only now did it come to mean something to him.

Baptiste asked Captain Clark if he could send a letter to his mother so that he could share his thoughts with her. Clark looked up from the map he was working on at the long table.

“You can write out what you have been thinking, Pomp. But it would be wrong to tell you that I can deliver it to her, or that she can reply. Do you understand that?”

He did and he didn't, but he said yes anyway.

Clark put down his pen and laid his hand on Baptiste's shoulder. “Pomp, I am sure that wherever she is, your mother can read your thoughts. But if you want to write them down and keep the letters for yourself, we call that a journal.”

The next day Clark gave him a small cloth-bound book with blank pages and taught him to write the date at the beginning of each entry. He also cautioned him to keep his book in a secret place where others would not be tempted to read what he had written.

Baptiste got into the habit of writing in his book once a week. It became a time that he looked forward to. At first he wrote only a line or two of what was on his mind, but gradually he included events and news that others talked about. And he always started as if it were a letter to his mother, since she was the farthest away.

O
CTOBER 1813

Dear Mother,

I think of you in the spirit world and hope you are content there. Sometimes I am sad here but I know it is my path and I will walk it. Your bird is always in my pocket.

Your loving son,
Jean-Baptiste

J
ANUARY 1814

Dear Mother,

Captain Clark is now the Governor of the Missouri Territory and also the Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He wears a sword sometimes, and says we will beat the English.

Mrs. Clark had a baby girl on the first day of the year. She wants to take her away to Kentucky before the tribes fighting on the side of the English kill us all. Many people are afraid.

Reverend Welch preached last Sunday that we are evil and must be washed in the blood of the lamb to be pure. I do not want to be evil or pure. Lamb is something we eat sometimes at the Chouteaus'. I do not understand what he says in church.

Your loving son,
Jean-Baptiste

A
UGUST 1814

Dear Mother,

Papa has come back to St. Louis! He escaped to the Mandan villages after fighting at Fort Manuel. He is often drunk, but I am still glad to see him.

Soldiers came back last week from a fight on the Mississippi. Many were hurt, two have died here. The war is getting worse, the river is still closed. I want to see my Mandan cousins but I must wait.

Mr. Chouteau explained why some tribes fight with the British and others with the Americans. I do not understand it.

There are more water birds on the river this year than anyone can remember. No one knows why. I think of your spirit.

Your loving son,
Baptiste

A
UGUST 1815

Peace was negotiated among the various tribes in the summer of
1815
, and Baptiste was again able to go up the river with his father. It felt strange to be returning to the Mandan without Sacagawea, but the tribe's village still felt like home.

Baptiste stayed in Limping Bear's lodge for two months rather than with Charbonneau and Otter Woman. The boys in the Kit Fox Society had learned much in the two years he had been away and were preparing for the ceremony in which the young men would become braves. His closest friend in the village, Jumping Fox, taught him some of the new skills, especially riding bareback and taking care of the horses. But the time passed too quickly and soon Baptiste was heading downriver in a canoe to continue his schooling. Now that the war was over, Baptiste wondered how he would choose between St. Louis and the Mandan.

J
ULY 1816

Prancing Wolf had allowed him to remain in the lodge that day to see the initiation of the boys his age. “Since your path is with your father's people, you cannot be a Mandan warrior,” Prancing Wolf told him. “But you can stay and watch, and send your friends your good medicine.” The pronouncement was harsh but true: since Baptiste would not be living with the tribe, he did not have to be excluded like all tribal members except the elders, the shaman, and the initiates. He sat to one side of the lodge, between the elders in their eagle-feather war bonnets and the drummers who chanted rhythmically over their ceaseless pounding, watching as the young men were led to the center of the lodge in groups of two and three. Each one submitted to the offices of a pair of experienced braves, who prepared them with grim efficiency for the ceremony's climax.

Each young man was allowed to choose whether to lie facedown or on his back for the trial that would make him a man. The initiate stayed still as an elder grabbed the skin and muscle of his chest or upper back, pulled the handful of flesh away from his torso, and pierced the taut skin between his fingers with a hunting knife, once on each side. Another brave then passed a sharpened foot-long length of wood through the slit until it protruded from both sides. Then he fastened the skewer with a length of cord lowered through a hole in the roof and over the lodge's main roof timber by braves waiting outside. The same was done with smaller pieces of wood through the skin on both arms and legs, and to these were fastened the initiate's bow and shield and a horned buffalo skull. When the brave wielding the hunting knife was satisfied, he signaled to those outside by pulling on the two cords. Immediately the young man was raised up by the skewers until he swung above the heads of those in the lodge. His body was distorted in a terrifying way, its full weight bearing upon the skewers and cords and stretching the flesh on his chest or his back until it seemed as if it must give way under the strain.

They were pulled up to the lodge's roof timbers two or three at a time, blood dripping from the cuts and their bodies shivering with the effort at self-control. The drumming and chanting continued their hypnotic cadence in the quivering light cast by a fire that was constantly stoked. After a lull, one of the elders approached the hanging bodies and gently touched their shoulders with a long pole, turning them as they dangled from their cords. They twisted slowly at first, then faster and faster as the pole repeatedly struck them, until their obdurate silence gave way to cries of agony that soon turned to entreaties to the Great Spirit for protection and strength. The screams grew louder and resonated for what seemed like an endless time until they overpowered the drumming and chanting. Then one by one the initiates fainted and grew silent, their bodies still as they twirled slowly overhead. The elders examined them closely for any sign of movement. When they were satisfied that the young men's spirits had temporarily left their bodies, they tapped lightly on the cords, the signal for them to be lowered gently to the ground. Each boy had to die completely in this way before he could be born anew as a man, and experience the transformations that awaited him in the rest of the ceremony.

Baptiste had watched as close friends, cousins, and childhood playmates from the Kit Fox Society filed in to undergo the rite of full membership in the tribe. He had been jealous of their new status, but as he watched the ceremony unfold he felt apart from his kinsmen. Partly he feared the violence that was being visited upon his friends, but he knew that fear was normal—many times they had talked about it as boys. The principal undertaking was to appear fearless. Beyond that visceral response, though, a voice spoke clearly in his head:
This is not
your world.
That he could witness their change was the ultimate expression of his difference: in strengthening their bonds through a shared ordeal, his friends were also excluding him from their number.

When Jumping Fox entered the lodge and submitted to the elders' knives, Baptiste saw the chasm widen before his eyes. He hardly recognized his sinewy playmate standing before him in the dancing light. As Jumping Fox lay on his back, he turned his head and sought out Baptiste's gaze. His eyes burned fiercely, and Baptiste wanted to look away as the knife flashed, yet he was unable to avert his eyes, so strong was Jumping Fox's hold on him. His friend's face was bathed in sweat, his jaw muscles were clenched, and when the knife pierced his chest, an involuntary shudder coursed across his face. But in the seconds before the knife was again forced through his skin and muscle, Jumping Fox smiled at Baptiste and his quivering lips appeared to be saying with fierce pride,
I will undergo this and you will not.
When the braves pulled on the cords and raised him up, his mouth opened in pain, and with a horrifying intake of breath he closed his eyes and threw back his head as his body was drawn upward.

Baptiste held his breath as he looked up at his friend dangling like the flayed body of an animal. Even though he knew it was what Jumping Fox and his companions wanted most in this world, it was like watching them die. Their acquiescence added to the atmosphere of sacrifice, resolution, and courage. The smell of their blood and sweat mixed with the smoke that rose around them to exit through the hole in the center of the lodge's roof. The drumming and chanting cast a feverish spell, and the firelight flickering across the feathered headdresses and buffalo skulls threw lurid shadows on the hide-covered walls. As an elder began to turn Jumping Fox's hanging form, Baptiste was overcome with concern for his friend. His body turned faster and faster and Jumping Fox cried out to the Great Spirit in a voice that Baptiste had never before heard. “Help me!” he yelled desperately. “Help me!”