From Sea to Shining Sea (134 page)

William felt his own heart aching with a bittersweetness. There was something about this affectionate meeting of the two alien peoples here in this beautiful little valley on the top of the world—the end of the long, desperate search, the plaintive greeting song, the sight of his compatriot Lewis, the reunion of the two young squaws—that was making him feel so delicate in his heart that he could hardly stand it.
God Bless ye, Janey
, he
thought as the Shoshoni squaw led her gently into the crowd, holding her wrist with one hand and stroking her cheek with the other.

And now Lewis came through the crowd straight to William. They saluted, smiling, then Lewis gripped his hand and slipped an arm over his shoulder, saying, “Begod, Clark, but you’re a balm for these eyes o’ mine!”

“And you!”

The Indians were murmuring and patting their hands together as the captains met. The chief was standing nearby holding his hands together in front of his chest with the two upraised forefingers laid alongside each other, and his cadaverous yet handsome face was aglow with a smile as tender as a woman’s.

“I’ve a thousand things to tell, but first must present you to their chief. He’s Ca-me-ah-wait, and he’s as lovable a savage as I’ve met.”

As if to prove it, Ca-me-ah-wait swarmed over William with the Shoshoni hug, smearing his cheeks with the paint from his own, and that was the signal for everyone else to dismount or run forward and do the same, and everyone was chorusing, “A-hi-ee! A-hi-ee!”

“Godalmighty!” William wheezed to Lewis over the shoulder of some mighty brave who was hugging the breath out of him, “ye’ve sure seduced
these
folks!”

T
HE
BOATS
REACHED
THE
FORKS
AT
NOON
,
AND
THE
HUGGING
took all of an hour, there being so many white men to greet, and the cries of joy and amazement never let up. The Shoshonis were astonished by everything as the men arranged the baggage onshore, by all the tools and instruments and goods. And they were captivated by the black giant York, and by the sagacity of Scannon, who put on a perfect show of cheerful, grinning obedience as Lewis put him through his tricks. The hunters had killed four deer and an antelope, which they shared with the Indians in a high-hearted banquet. Lewis demonstrated the air gun, which Ca-me-ah-wait declared to be surely the greatest medicine of all the great medicines these wonderful strangers had brought, and for several hours the little camp was as festive as a country fair. Sacajawea sat in a willow arbor with the three other Shoshoni women and was queried about her place in a tribe of remarkable white strangers such as these, which she tried to explain with her imperfect recollection of her native tongue. Often she was overcome with happy weeping and could not explain.

The three women could not keep their hands off of little Pompey. They saw that he was as fat and strong and beautiful a baby as they had ever seen, and they learned that his father was the thick white man with thick face-hair and the red hat who had walked here with her. It seemed to the women therefore that if a Shoshoni woman coupled with a man of white skin, good blood would result and the baby of such blood must be fat and strong and beautiful like this one. This was a point of keen interest to the three Shoshoni women who were here in the arbor with Sacajawea, even the old one who was so bent that she had to walk with a stick. And so when Collins and McNeal paused outside the arbor, and Collins asked McNeal, “Eh, Hugh, is this all the women this tribe’s got?” and McNeal answered, “Heck, no, they’s a passel of ’em over t’ their main camp,” the women looked out at Collins and McNeal with fat babies in their eyes, even though they had not understood what the men had said. And the soldiers grinned and bowed to the women and were very polite.

The white men had very rosy memories of the villages around Fort Mandan, and it had been a long time since Fort Mandan, and judging by the appearance of the two young women with Sacajawea, these Snake women were far handsomer than the Mandan women had been.

D
OWN
BY
THE
CREEK
BANK
WHERE
THE
DUGOUTS
HAD
BEEN
unloaded, the Indian men strolled and looked with admiration at the fine articles that had been arrayed. The captains had ordered the goods laid out to dry, but they were aware too that the Indians were looking at these things like shoppers in a bazaar, and that their desires for these articles would grow, and this would be advantageous when it came time to bargain for horses. Ca-me-ah-wait had told the captains that his people did not steal, and it soon became apparent that this was absolutely true. Even when no one seemed to be watching, a Shoshoni who picked up a kettle or a knife, a tool or a string of beads or a hat to examine it, would always put it back. The white men and the Shoshonis were growing ever more pleased with each other.

The troops fully understood now that this, after three thousand miles, was the end of their uphill canoeing, and if there had been a tub of grog available it could not have made them more jolly than this knowledge.

“What I’ve heard so far about the westering rivers isn’t very promising,” Lewis told William during one of the few times they could sit down and talk together. “I know the creeks over by their
main camp lead to the Columbia. One thing, a man gave me a piece of fresh fish to eat, and by Heaven it was salmon. But from what they say, those waters race down through steep canyons so fast that they’re beat into a perfect foam on the rocks, for miles at a stretch. Unless they’re exaggerating that, well, we’ll likely have to cross some mountains before we reach a navigable branch of the Columbia.” Nearby, a scrawny yellow dog of wolfish ancestry was trying to sniff up an acquaintance with Scannon, who, with an expression of injured dignity, kept turning around to try to confront him face to face. Lewis picked up a pebble and tossed it at the mongrel, which leaped up with a pained look and then ran off with its tail between its legs.

“And what of the mountains?” William asked.

Lewis looked westward, frowning. “I recollect when Mister Jefferson and I would sit there at his desk and plan this little voyage. He would say to me, ‘From all that’s known of them, the Western mountains oughtn’t be more obstacle than the Alleghenies—a day’s crossing at the most.’ I wish it would be so, but, well, I saw ’em from up there on the divide, and they like to made me timid.”

“Formidable, ye say.”

“Formidable. What we’ve come through thus far looks to be but a start of ’em.”

William almost shuddered. “Reckon there’s time to get over before winter?”

Lewis pulled back a corner of his mouth. “I’ll want your judgment o’ that. What I want you to do is take a party—with boat-making tools, just in case—go over the divide to the main Shoshoni camp and proceed downriver from there to see if it’s navigable, and where. I’ll stay here and arrange to get the baggage over the divide. Lord knows,” he said, “you deserve a chance to rest and languish with these folk. But we have to push on, as you well know.”

That was fine with William. Lewis had had his turn at being out in front, and he had done fine things with it, but now he felt it was his turn to be out in front.

B
Y
LATE
AFTERNOON
,
WHEN
Y
ORK
WAS
COMPLAINING
THAT
his skin had been rubbed raw by the fingers of the Shoshonis trying to get the soot off of him, it was time to hold a council.

Under the awning in the willows, the two captains were seated on white robes, with Drouillard and Charbonneau next to them. A dozen of the Shoshoni men sat in a facing semicircle, moccasins were removed, and the chief bent down and tied six small,
pearly seashells in William’s hair, while the councilors smiled and hummed their approval. William was aware that these likely were seashells from the Pacific, acquired probably by trade with Columbia River tribes, and so the significance of them was as real to him as it must have been to the chief. Then the pipe was presented to the earth and sky and the four winds and was smoked by the captains and the chief, then passed among the councilors.

“Now tell them,” Lewis said to Drouillard, “that in order to speak better with them, we want their permission to bring a woman into this council—the Shoshoni woman we brought here with us, the wife of Charbonneau.”

This was a shocking request, and was met with all the expected frowns and indignant protestations. Charbonneau seemed almost pleased; it looked as if his squaw, for once, might have to keep her place. But the captains insisted. The woman had been brought all this way as an official member of the party, they said, for this purpose. Some things could be said by hand language, they argued, but now there were things to be told and arranged that would require the completeness and exactness of spoken language.

Ca-me-ah-wait soon agreed that there was wisdom in this, and told his councilors that it would be so. “Go get Janey,” William told Charbonneau.

She came into the shade, for once without Pompey on her back. She had left him with the women. Charbonneau had warned her that the chiefs were not pleased by this and had told her to remember that she was a squaw, not an American
capitaine.
When she entered, she felt the resentment of the Indian men and kept her eyes down. Ca-me-ah-wait was obviously a little embarrassed at having permitted this, so he did not look at her.

“Sit there, Janey,” William said, pointing to a place between Drouillard and himself. Sacajawea did not look around at the men; rather, she took on the proper aspect of an interpreter and looked at William. Ca-me-ah-wait, too, looked at William, as if the squaw did not exist, and sat attentive now, ready to hear the whole business like a statesman.

“First, say this,” William began. “Tell them we come to bring trade and peace to the Shoshoni people. Tell them that for the sake of peace we have already made the Minnetarees promise they will no more come and attack the Shoshoni people.” This seemed to William a very reassuring and favorable piece of news with which to bring the smiles back onto the faces of the Indian
men. He waited, looking at Ca-me-ah-wait, for these words to be translated: first by Drouillard in French to Charbonneau, then in Minnetaree by Charbonneau to Sacajawea, then by her in Shoshoni to the chief.

He heard Sacajawea utter a few syllables, and then there was a strange break in her voice, followed by a deep silence. No more words came.
Come on, Janey
, he thought. He had put faith in her intelligence and made an issue of getting her into the council, and it would be a huge embarrassment now if she could not do the job.

The silence continued, and people were beginning to stir.
Come ON, Ja
—

A small, strangled sound came from her throat. William saw Ca-me-ah-wait’s eyes flicker toward her, and he himself glanced at her. And what he saw was bewildering.

She was staring glassy-eyed at the chief, her mouth gaping like a fish’s mouth, and she was starting to rise. Her hands were clawing open the blanket she wore.

Then, before the astonished faces of the whole council, she fairly leaped across the distance between herself and the chief, flung herself on her knees before him, crying and gasping words, whipped her arms and blanket around him, and, looking in his eyes for an instant, began weeping and sobbing. Everyone in the tent was dumbstruck for an instant; some braves had started up as if to defend the chief; but now Ca-me-ah-wait was returning her embrace and his craggy face was softening, crumbling.

It was Charbonneau who first caught the sense of this. His mouth falling open, and eyes bulging, he rose to his knees pointing at them and exclaimed:

“Sa
frére! Mon Dieu
, thees her
brother!”

“Brother?” Lewis exclaimed.

“Oh, great Heavenly God,” William groaned, and then he could only kneel there watching the pair of them, the red blanket shaking with their sobs and outcries of
“ah-hi-ee, ah-hi-ee,”
and when he tried to swallow so that he could speak, it was like trying to swallow a horse.

I
T WAS QUITE A WHILE BEFORE THE COUNCILORS COULD GET
over this wondrous revelation. The Indian men were trying to be stoical as warriors should be, and the white men were trying to be stoical as soldiers should be. But the men of each race could see how those of the other were affected; it obviously was another part of the great medicine of this day, and it was not necessary or even good to hide one’s feelings in moments of great medicine,
and soon tears were eroding the vermillion of friendship on the cheeks of all the men in the shelter and all the braves were patting their palms together and crooning,
“Ah-hi-ee, ah-hi-ee!”
I rejoice, I rejoice!

The brother and sister held a choking, sniffling conversation for a while still, and then Sacajawea returned to her place by William, who put his hand on her arm and gazed encouragement into her stricken face until he thought she had recovered enough to go on. But after a few words her voice caved in and she poured tears, and at last it was decided to continue without her for now, and they let her go back to the women and her baby. They would try again when she was able.

What had overcome her, no doubt, Ca-me-ah-wait explained in hand language, was what she had learned today about the rest of her family, what she had never known in the five summers she had been gone: that the Minnetarees had killed her father the chief, and her mother, and her older sister. “I am alive, whom she thought dead; and our brother is alive, living now at another place, and this gave her joy. But we three are the only ones of our family now, and knowing this for the first time surely is why she could not continue to exchange words for us. Forgive my sister’s weakness, she is only a girl. Perhaps she will be able to speak tomorrow.”