Read St. Clair (Gives Light Series) Online
Authors: Rose Christo
Dad out here.
Aunt Cora took me into a hug, patting my hair with
her bony hand. "You're a good boy," she said
kindly. "Make sure you come around for the
winter pauwau."
"Goodbye, Skylar," Marilu said somberly. "I'll
write to you if Danny comes home."
I felt a very real pain in my heart. The both of us
knew Danny wasn't coming home.
I waved after Marilu and Aunt Cora as they
boarded the bus. Marilu put her hand against the
hazy window and waved back at me. The doors
hissed closed; the wheels squealed on gravel.
They were gone.
"Just in time for school, too," Dad said, his hand
on my shoulder.
I went to the schoolhouse early the next morning,
Annie walking at my side. Together we sat at a
long wooden table in the back of the room. It was
bizarre to think that we were twelfth graders now.
Mr. Red Clay hadn't arrived yet, but the entire
room was buzzing with conversation. Everyone
was talking about the forest.
"Good job, you guys!" said Daisy At Dawn,
grinning. "The pines look truly disgusting.
Awesome."
"Not awesome," her twin sister, Holly, replied.
"If they really want twenty-five acres from us,
they'll take it. Doesn't matter which part of the
reserve they take it from."
"But they
can't
take it from another part of the
reservation," Annie pointed out. "That ridiculous
law they're relying on stipulates that the land has to
be undeveloped for them to reclaim it. That only
leaves the badlands."
"Well, then, they'll take the badlands," Holly said.
"Why on earth would they take the badlands? You
can't farm or build out there, the clay's too
unstable. That's why it's called the badlands."
"Then they'll knock down our houses and declare
the ground beneath the shambles undeveloped. I
don't see why you have to make this harder than it
really is."
"I think we'd all better settle down," Mr. Red Clay
said, closing the doors behind him as he entered
the little schoolhouse. "Before someone mentions
something I'm not meant to hear."
Daisy giggled unrepentantly.
How school works in Nettlebush is that Mr. Red
Clay teaches grades one through twelve all at the
same time; and when he reviews with you later on,
he adjusts the complexity of the topic depending on
how old you are. Talk about multitasking. To this
day, though, I've never met anyone with a brain
like his. The guy's a walking encyclopedia.
"Let's start the new school year off with a favorite
topic of mine." Mr. Red Clay wound through the
tables and bookshelves and over to the
chalkboard. At once, he started to lecture in both
English and sign language. "Let's talk about
Sacajawea."
Rafael opened his notebook at his side. He nudged
me with a meaningful look. I hated taking notes. I
grinned shamelessly.
"Sacajawea is possibly the most famous Shoshone
of all time. Very few Americans know the names
Pocatello, Washakie, and Cameahwait, but almost
everyone knows Sacajawea. Of course," Mr. Red
Clay went on, hiding a smile, "the Shoshone did
not actually
call
her Sacajawea. Can anyone tell
me her real name?"
Hands shot into the air.
"Mr. Calling Owl?"
"Lost Woman," said an eleventh grader.
"Lost Woman. We called her Lost Woman. Or, in
Shoshone, 'Wadze Wa'ippu.' And why did we call
her Lost Woman?"
More hands.
"Mr. Takes Flight?"
"Because the Hidatsa tribe kidnapped her," Aubrey
said, in one quick breath. "When she was a little
girl."
"That's correct. See, a Shoshone in those days had
many different given names over the course of his
or her lifetime. They were self-named, too,
meaning that each name was sacred, representing a
different stage in that person's life. As a little girl,
Lost Woman identified with the name her parents
liked to call her. 'Po'i Naipi'--'Little Grass Girl.'
"Now let's look at the Hidatsa tribe for a second.
They were--are, I should say--a Plains tribe, like
us. The Hidatsa and the Eastern Shoshone crossed
paths countless times while we were sharing the
Plains. I'm sorry to say the Hidatsa never liked us
very much. More than that, the Hidatsa had some
bizarre customs involving children. If a Hidatsa
child died, the parents didn't mourn the death.
They went out and kidnapped a child from an
enemy tribe to take the deceased child's place."
Well, I thought, way to kick grief in the pants.
"So the Hidatsa tribe kidnapped Little Grass Girl
when she was nine, maybe ten years old, and took
her far north to live on Knife River. And she grew
up there with the Hidatsa--albeit she was very
unhappy about the arrangement. She tried to
escape many times, never succeeding--"
I swallowed, thinking about Danny.
"--and by the time Little Grass Girl was fourteen,
she was such a nuisance to her abductors that they
sold her to a French settler, Toussaint
Charbonneau, who married her on the spot."
Mr. Red Clay wrote a couple of names on the
blackboard, connecting them by arrows. I finally
relented and opened my notebook.
"At this point in her life, Little Grass Girl left
behind her childhood name and started calling
herself 'Carries a Burden.' Can anyone tell me
how to say 'Carries a Burden' in Shoshone?"
Immaculata raised her hand. "Tsaikka Tsa Wea,"
she replied, when Mr. Red Clay pointed at her.
"Right. I'm sure you can see how 'Tsaikka Tsa
Wea' got corrupted over time to sound like
'Sacajawea.' In any case. Why did she call herself
'Carries a Burden'? Let's look at that for a second.
Marriage to Toussaint Charbonneau was a
nightmare. History paints Charbonneau as a
flagrant drunkard and a domestic abuser. The man
drank like a fish and talked through his fists. Life
for the young Sacajawea was a living hell.
"Until two years later, when she met a pair of
young men from Virginia. Who can tell me their
names?"
I grinned. Everyone's hands shot up in the air.
Mr. Red Clay bit back a smile. "Mr. Nabako?" he
said, gesturing to a second grader.
"Lewis and Clark!" Jack Nabako screamed.
Mr. Red Clay winced. "Just in case any of you
were sleeping back there. Correct. Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark. The United States gave
these two men a very specific task: Explore the
unknown west and find out what it looked like.
Because the western half of America comprised a
majority of Shoshone territories, like the Badwater
Basin, and the Death Valley, Lewis and Clark
needed to find a translator who spoke Shoshone.
Their search for a translator brought them to North
Dakota, and in the winter of 1804, they met
Sacajawea.
"Sacajawea was desperate to escape her husband.
She signed up for the Lewis and Clark Expedition
in a heartbeat. Unfortunately for her, Charbonneau
insisted on tagging along.
"Now," Mr. Red Clay said. "Something very
peculiar happened on this trip. First of all,
Sacajawea was heavily pregnant. Heavily
pregnant, and accompanying two strange men
across the Continental US by foot. That's a
little...brow-raising, to say the least. More
peculiar is this: By all accounts, as these three
came to know each other, they also came to love
each other. Can you believe that? Two white men
from Virginia and one Indian woman, and they
loved each other. This was at the height of the
Indian Wars, you understand. This was a time
when whites and Indians absolutely deplored one
other. This was a time when white men didn't
even believe women had souls. Sacajawea
embodied everything Lewis and Clark ought to
have disdained. Yet Lewis and Clark loved
Sacajawea so much that they deferred to her
instead of her husband. In the 1800s! Not only
was this unprecedented; it was unthinkable!
Charbonneau didn't take so well to being snubbed.
One night, when he and his pregnant wife were
alone in their tent together, he began to beat her.
He had beaten her many times in the past, and
unfortunately Sacajawea was accustomed to
closing her mouth and taking the abuse. What was
she really supposed to do about it? There existed
a certain...attitude, in those days, among white
men, that they were entitled to treat their wives
however they wanted. Not among Lewis and
Clark, however. They had heard Charbonneau's
drunken rambling. They ran into the tent and
pulled him off of Sacajawea. And you know what
Clark said to Charbonneau?"
Nobody seemed to know.
"He said, 'You came with us from North Dakota.
You hit her again, and you won't go back.' "
I don't think I can describe how incredible I
thought that was.
"Long after the expedition was over, Sacajawea
and Lewis and Clark remained friends. Sacajawea
gave birth to a little boy named Jean Baptiste.
Clark was so worried about the both of them that
he asked Sacajawea if he could step in and help
her raise her son. She accepted. She moved to
Missouri to live with Lewis and Clark, and with
Sacajawea's consent, Clark adopted her son,
legally replacing Charbonneau as the little boy's
father. Charbonneau went back to North Dakota to
live on his own."
Serves him right, I thought.
"Still," Mr. Red Clay went on. "There was a hole
in Sacajawea's heart. She loved her two friends,
and she loved her son, but she longed for her
home, the great valleys and the plains. She longed
for her family. She wanted to see her hunting
grounds again, and her playful older brother. She
wanted to reunite with her childhood friends. She
wanted to hear her language spoken one last time.
"Lewis died unfortunately young," Mr. Red Clay
said. "Clark died in his sixties. Once her friends
had passed away, once her son was all grown up,
Sacajawea embarked on a journey of her own.
She walked, and she walked. She traveled the
Great Plains with little more than her instincts and
her memories. She was a very old woman when
she found the Plains Shoshone living on Wind
River. She gazed around at the incredible sight of
the tipis on the riverbank. Her eyes filled with
tears. Chief Washakie came running from his tipi
once his advisors informed him of her arrival.
And when he greeted her, he said, 'Welcome home,
Lost Woman.' "
The classroom started to applaud.
Mr. Red Clay raised an eyebrow. "I'm glad you
enjoyed that," he said. "I hope you enjoy reading
just as much. Open your history books, please."
After school I went with my friends out to the
grotto,
Zeke
already
complaining
about
homework. That had to be a new record. I sat by
the creek, watching in vain for any signs of Balto.
Annie read out loud from
A Comprehensive
History of the First People
. Rafael sat reading a
different book altogether. I glimpsed the cover and
read its incredibly long title:
The Anatomy and
Physiology of the Mammalian Larynx.
I tapped Annie's arm once she took a pause.
"Yes, Skylar?"
What do you want to do once you're finished with
school?
She considered it. "I'd like to help military
families," she said. "You know, it's so hard for
military personnel to adjust to civilian life once
the fighting's over. Mom always said as much.
That's why the Navajo have the Enemy Way
ceremony, of course, to help ease their veterans'
hearts. Did you know Native Americans are the
largest ethnic group in the US military? There are
about 200,000 Native American soldiers right
now. That's almost 20% of the entire army."
I tossed my notebook at Aubrey to get his attention.