Charbonneau (33 page)

Paump had his work cut out for him. In the autumn he had made a long ride alone through the Salmon River Mountains to think it through. He spent more than a month wandering through that country. He rode over the big east-west divide, through a succession of wide alpine meadows full of deer and laid out like immense parks, to the head of Middle Fork, then down that river—the swiftest and most violent he had ever seen—all the way to its mouth at the main Salmon. He loved the country: The river canyon was too deep and narrow a cut ever to permit wagon traffic or any sizable party through; it abounded in grouse, deer, elk, bear, mountain-goats, and bighorn sheep; he had never seen so much game; the canyon would stay warm in the winter, and the animals would be forced down to the river; it was an ideal spot, far too wild for any white men and for most Indians; he marked it down as a vacation spot. And he caught glimpses of the Sheep-Eater Indians, relatives to the Shoshones, who were too man-shy to come even to him. He saw their ancient paintings on rock walls. There were only a few of the Sheep-Eaters; they had probably seen white men, but not even trappers had seen them. Aside from riding and hunting, he played the harmonika, lay on his back on the grass, and thought. When he came out, he had made up his mind what to say to Washakie.

Now he had to persuade the council. He spent the last two days before the parley politicking—talking to Bazel and Sacajawea, to Mountain Ram, who was now crippled, to Broken Hand, Little Eagle, Fat Bear, Buffalo Horn, Crazy Eyes, to every man who would attend the council. He had no idea whether he would get support from anyone but Jim.

Washakie puffed, then saluted the earth, the sky, and the four winds. “Our brother Paump has asked to me to call this great council,” he began. “We will speak of what we must do concerning the Frenchman, who now comes as many as the locusts—who drinks the water, burns the wood, and kills the buffalo of our hunting grounds, so that the Shoshone people may one day have not enough to eat. Paump has lived among the white men and knows their hearts. Therefore do not be offended that I have invited him to sit here beside me and to speak to you his heart about the Frenchman.”

He passed the pipe to Paump, who puffed ceremonially. Ordinarily, the first speeches would have been preliminary skirmishing, but he decided to pitch straight in.

“My brothers, the white man wants your land, your game, your water, your wood, your children, your minds, your hearts, and perhaps your lives.

“Before the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men, the Frenchmen came across the salt-water-everywhere to this land. From the beginning they fought with the Indians and took the land where they had lived since the time before the memories of the grandfathers of their oldest men. First they pushed the red man away from the salt-water-everywhere, beyond the first range of mountains, and took their land for themselves. They promised, however, that the red man would have the land beyond those mountains to live upon as long as the grass shall grow and the sun shall shine.

“Then the white men themselves crossed the mountains and began to take the land. When the Indians fought them, they sent the long knives with many guns to drive the red men far to the west or to kill them. They killed many, and stole the lands of the others. Only fifteen years ago they declared that all the land west of the Missouri River shall belong to the Indian as long as the grass shall grow and the sun shall shine. They herded all the red men of the east together and drove them in herds like tamed oxen to the west side of the Missouri River. Even to the Frenchman that march is now known as the Trail of Tears, for many died of weariness, of hunger, and of sorrow.

“Now, however, they wish to use the land for themselves which they promised to the red man for as long as water shall run downhill. They wish to make a great trail to the salt-water-everywhere that lies to the west. Last summer wagons came thick as grasshoppers across our land, scavenging all that lay in their path and leaving it barren. Last summer the long knives sent out a band to mark the trail. Soon the long knives will come to guard the trail with their rifles, and the long knives will live in the forts and feed off the land.

“My brothers, the Frenchmen are many. The Great White Father alone rules a hundred villages each with as many Frenchmen as there are braves, squaws, and children in the Shoshone nation. And for the Frenchmen in those villages there are ten more living in smaller villages. Many more white men live across the salt-water-everywhere, and now they come to increase the number swarming across our lands. They outnumber us as the flies outnumber the buffalo.

“They will come as thick as mayflies if we permit it They have the boat that moves driven by mist, as you have heard, which carries many people. They also have a wagon that is driven by mist; it pulls many more wagons behind it, so that together they stretch farther than the highest lodgepole pine. This wagon travels many sleeps in a single day. Many will come to our country on that wagon and will spread like plague through our land.

“My brothers, they are many and they are strong. Perhaps they are too strong for us. But we must fight like made-to-dies. If we die now, that will be better than living to be toothless old men, starving as we wander the earth because we have no lands. Perhaps, however, we can in our brave fight stop them. For the land is on our side.

“The Frenchmen who cross our land in wagons do not understand it and do not love it. Therefore they come in fear and quake in their sleep. They are poor hunters, nearly starving in a land of plenty. We can use their fear, their lack of skill, and the land.

“All the wagons that cross to Oregon must come through South Pass. The next pass over which oxen may draw wagons is many sleeps to the south, further far than any Shoshone has traveled. The land there is a desert, without water or game. Few white men can cross it without perishing.

“Brothers, we can close South Pass to the wagons. Its western side belongs to us. It is narrow, and our braves can hold it against many guns. The eastern side of South Pass belongs to the Crows. We can ask them to join us in blocking the pass against the wagons. Against the Shoshones no Frenchmen will get through. The Crows will make the Shoshones even stronger, and we will no longer help the Frenchmen by letting Shoshones kill Crows and Crows kill Shoshones.

“Brothers, until now the white men we have seen have been men of good heart, and they were few. They took only the beaver, which we did not need, and they gave us guns in fair return. The Frenchmen who now come in wagons on the great trail are many, and they are not of good heart. They take our buffalo, our deer, our elk, our wood, our water, and give us nothing in return but misery. Brothers, we can force them to a halt, and we must.”

As a sign that he had finished, Paump passed the pipe to Mauvais Gauche. He hoped he’d done right spitting it all out at once like that.

It would be a long process now, for every brave who wished to speak would be heard in full, and none cut short. He would not know what had been decided until the pipe went full circle to Washakie, and then perhaps full circle again and again. Aside from the chiefs and the principal warriors who sat in the circle, many braves and even squaws sat and stood behind them listening: some of those braves would speak and be heard.

Mauvais Gauche supported Paump, except that he would not go in league with the Crows but would kill everyone he saw and curse their grandchildren. One Eye said that the Frenchmen were too many, and perhaps the Shoshone should demand payment for the crossing of their land, because they could not keep the wagons away. Buffalo Head agreed with One Eye, Fat Bear with Mauvais Gauche; Bazel said that he believed that the Frenchmen would be brothers to the Shoshone and teach them their great medicine; Crazy Eyes called for the closing of the pass. And so it went, hour after hour. Opinion seemed split, except that all were against making a pact with the Crows. Damn, Paump thought, they’d rather raid their old enemies than save their lives and their land. The pipe had circled nearly two full times when they quit for the day, but Washakie had said nothing.

The next morning it went the same. Paump had no idea what they would decide. Jim, sitting in the place of least honor on Washakie’s right, helped with an impassioned plea for war against all whites. He reminded everyone that the whites had made slaves of the black men—braves, too, not just squaws—and had bought and sold them like horses. They would do the same to the Shoshones, he said, if the Shoshones did not fight like made-to-dies. Baptiste saluted him with an eyebrow.

It was time for those sitting in the rear to speak. Mountain Ram was first. He said simply that the whites had killed his one daughter and his other daughter’s brave without cause, and he would see their blood in the dust even if he, an aging cripple, had to kill them himself. Three more braves called for war on the Frenchmen: If Paump, who had lived among them many years, said that their hearts were bad, it must be so. Baptiste thought maybe the ayes had it.

“Fathers and sons”—it was Sacajawea’s voice—“I also know the Frenchman’s heart, and know it to be good.” Damn, he couldn’t believe she would speak up in council, being a squaw. Washakie did not interrupt her. “I lived near the white man’s big village St. Louis for two summers and two winters, and visited there many more times. Always they treated me with sincerity and respect, and my children also. Furthermore, I have the word of the Red-Headed Chief that the Great White Father holds us as he holds his brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. This I believe, for the Red-Headed Chief always spoke the truth to me. The Shoshone must never black his face against the Frenchmen.”

That hurt. Baptiste looked at his knees while he listened to Washakie sum up. He invoked open hands for the Frenchmen, blackened faces for the Crows. It was settled.

“Whar you went cockeyed, John, was askin’ ’em to jine up the Crows. Wagh! If Fremont come back with fifty men, the Shoshone would give him five hundred warriors to help kill Crows, and fork up the know-how besides. The Crows ’ud do the same against the Shoshones, or the Blackfeet, or the Sioux. And t’other way. John, they druther kill each other than the U.S. Cavalry.”

“Looks like it.”

“What ye gonna do?”

“Stay here a spell. The time isn’t yet.”

“It will be, afore long.”

Epilogue

SUMMER, 1847: The spearhead of the Mormon migration crossed the Wasatch Mountains and neared the Great Salt Lake, in country hunted and disputed by the Shoshones and the Utes for generations. Brigham Young announced, by the authority of divine revelation, that this territory was ideal for the cultivation of crops, for settlements, and for the Saints’ way of life; back up the trail a ways, Jim Bridger had announced the same to Brigham Young, by the authority of a quarter-century spent learning the whole interior West. Brigham exhorted his people to the stalwart courage and determination to succeed that would be needed.

1848: Paump, having observed the impassioned and inspired efforts of the Saints’ first year, and also having noted the astonishing numbers of Mormons who kept bumping into the area in wagons, decided that a little distance from them would be a tonic. By then he had a second squaw, a teen-aged girl named Aspen whom he thought remarkably beautiful. He packed up Spotted Deer, Aspen, and their year-old daughter, and rode north for Salmon River country. He promised Sacajawea that he would be back next summer to trade for supplies at Fort Hall.

Brigham Young’s representatives promised the Shoshones that they would teach them how to tend the soil so that they would have food, and how to tend their souls so that they would be saved. Washakie and the other chiefs, aware that their people were beginning to go hungry from lack of game, pronounced themselves grateful.

Paump sets up this lodge beside a swift-running creek seventy miles below the mouth of Middle Fork, in the upper part of the river’s deep canyon. Between his lodge and the river stretches a grassy meadow about a hundred yards wide. That winter he shoots an elk, a bear, and two deer, and could shoot as much in any week of that season. He builds a second lodge to use as a smokehouse.

1850: The Shoshones began to distinguish between “Americans,” whom they liked as good friends, and “Mormons,” whom they did not like.

Paump builds a log cabin. After living in it two months, he decides to travel to the plains to get buffalo hides for another tipi. And he presents to Sacajawea that summer, at the tribe’s camp on the Siskadee, now better known as the Green River, another grandchild, this time a son.

1853: Washakie, angered by a slight from the captain of the Green River ferry, shouted at the Mormons who owned the ferry that he would kill every white man, woman, and child he found on the eastern bank of the river the next morning. The Mormons spent the night getting ready to defend themselves. At sunrise Washakie came back with fifteen warriors and declared his people to be the good friends of the white man.

Paump’s year has evolved its own seasons: The winter he spends by his meadow in the canyon, where the animals join him for shelter against the deep snow and zero temperatures of the surrounding mountains. When the snow melts away from the bottom of the rocks and trees, and then from the meadows, and the brown grass begins to green and the wildflowers bloom, he moves slowly up the river. After a couple of weeks the salmon run, and for a few days he catches the huge fish on hooks made from pins and smokes the meat on wood racks above open flames. The squaws gather rosehips and every imaginable berry as they travel, for drying and for use in pemmican. All summer they camp above a savage set of falls near the mouth of the river, in a series of meadows that unfold as broad, flat, green, and gentle as any country estate in England. He spends his days on long walks or long rides, for here the country is high, cool, and truly alpine, the hills covered with pine, spruce, and fir, the water plentiful, the temperatures cool. Sometimes he spends whole afternoons inventing new tunes on his harmonika; sometimes he spends whole days sitting still in the forest watching, listening, drinking in. And in the autumn, when the aspens begin to turn color, he makes a circle through the mountains back to his meadow in the canyon. So he has a summer home in the high alpine plateau, a winter home low in the warm canyons, and a spring and fall of traveling.

1854: Brigham Young sent missionaries to Washakie with the
Book of Mormon
. The chief whiffed on the pipe, then passed it and the book left around the council circle without comment. Every brave puffed, fingered the book, and pronounced the book good for the white man, no good for the Indian. After the book had made the circle over twenty times, without a word being said in its favor, Washakie upbraided the councilors for their stupidity:

“You are all fools, you are blind, and cannot see; you have no ears, for you do not hear; you are fools for you do not understand. These men are our friends. The great Mormon captain has talked with our Father above the clouds, and He told the Mormon captain to send these men here to tell us the truth, and not a lie.

“They have not got forked tongues. They talk straight, with one tongue, and tell us that after a few more snows the buffalo will be gone, and if we do not learn some other way to get something to eat, we will starve to death.

“Now, we know that is the truth, for this country was once covered with buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope, and we had plenty to eat, and also robes for bedding, and to make lodges. But now, since the white man has made a trail across our land, and has killed off our game, we are hungry, and there is nothing for us to eat. Our women and children cry for food and we have no food to give them.

“The time was when our Father, who lives above the clouds, loved our fathers, who lived long ago, and His face was bright and He talked with our fathers. His face shone upon them, and their skins were white like the white man’s. Then they were wise and wrote books, and the Great Father talked good to them; but after a while our people would not hear Him, and they quarreled and stole and fought, until the Great Father got mad, because His children would not hear Him talk.

“Then he turned his face away from them, and His back to them, and that caused a shade to come over them, and that is why our skin is black and our minds dark. That darkness came because the Great Father’s back was toward us, and now we cannot see as the white man sees. We can make a bow and arrow, but the white man’s mind is strong and light.

“The white men can make this [picking up a Colt’s revolver,] and a little thing that he carries in his pocket, so that he can tell where the sun is on a dark day, and when it is night he can tell when it will come daylight. This is because the face of the Father is towards him, and His back is towards us. But after a while the Great Father will quit being angry, and will turn his face towards us. Then our skin will be light.”

Paump is tramping, this summer, across a steep hillside above the mouth of Middle Fork; he moves slowly and keeps his eyes roving after rotten logs. He walks over a mile, stopping at seven or eight logs, before he finds what he is looking for: Hidden in the decaying wood, on the shady side of the log in marshy ground, grows an alpine orchid, pale burgundy tinged with violet. He picks it gently. It is his second of the day—one for each squaw. He smiles at the thought of the speech he has long since stopped giving them, about how they are getting free what only queens can afford to buy.

1856: One of them does move a little—just the quick jerk from freeze to freeze that birds make with their heads—and Paump has them. He’s carrying his Hawken, as always, but he also has a four-foot club in his right hand. He stands still for a moment and watches them, three prairie chickens perched stock-still on the ground underneath a big fir tree. He wonders if, when he stands still so long, they forget he is there, or can’t distinguish him. Then he bolts. He clubs the first one before it moves at all, and gets the second after the short step it takes before it flies. The third sits stupidly on the lowest limb of the fir, not thirty feet away. But he doesn’t shoot it. It’s by not shooting often, and never missing when he does shoot, that he keeps his trips to the fort for trading down to once in two or three years.

1859: Spotted Deer raises up from the ground, the newly pulled camas roots in her hand, and freezes. A hundred yards across the meadow, green with spring, Paump realizes something is wrong, then sees what it is: A grizzly, probably not long out of hibernation, is inspecting her closely from twenty yards away. No telling what the damn thing will do. He walks slowly toward Spotted Deer, his rifle in one hand; he doesn’t want to shoot it, because he doesn’t need the meat. It still doesn’t move. He passes Spotted Deer, who retreats to hold the horses, and yells at it: “Hey! Horse turd! Wake up! Get out of here!” The bear just blinks. “Move your ass! Clear out!” The bear doesn’t budge. It is stupid. He looks back at Spotted Deer, who is mounted and has the reins of the second horse. All right, OK, he’ll see what happens. He slides his wiping stick off his Hawken. Slowly, step by careful step, he eases toward the bear, which is on its hind legs. It’s just a yearling. Maybe it’s thinking of settliing in with his little family and teaching them a new dance. He raises his wiping stick.

Just then the bear drops to all fours with a growl and charges. Paump drops the stick and the gun and runs. Shit, the bear’s almost on him. He zigs hard to the right, stumbles, rolls, and is back on his feet running. Damn thing’s on him again. He zags toward some rocks. Hell, no choice. He turns for the edge of the rocks, shouts “Goddamn it!” when he sees it’s twenty feet to the ground below, and jumps.

When he begins to get his breath, the damn bear is on its hind legs up on the rocks roaring at him. “Get out of here!” he yells. “You’ve got bad breath.” His damn shoulder hurts where he rolled on it. Spotted Deer comes up leading his horse, and nearly breaking in two with laughter. He gives her the evil eye, which only makes her laugh harder, and climbs on.

1862: No gifts had come to the Shoshones from the Great White Father for five years, despite many promises. Impatient with Washakie’s peaceableness and willingness to wait, the tribe was ready to fight. The long knives were not so many now, because most of them were gone to fight a war between the white men east of the Missouri River. Pash-e-co, who was warlike, won the hearts of most of the Shoshone and displaced Washakie as supreme chief. In March he mounted a huge and devastating campaign against the whites. It ended, the next winter, when General Connor massacred Bear Hunter’s band on the Bear River.

Paump and his son Paump are walking by the edge of a marshy place. Out in the trees they can hear a sow squirrel chattering as she hops through the trees. Her litter is squalling for food, sending its little shrieks from the hole of a tree twenty feet out into the slough left by the heavy rains. The sow squirrel flies from branch to branch and from tree to tree, ranging wide in her mission, all the while calling back that food is on its way.

The father points out to the son a black snake slithering into the water. It swims to the base of the slender tree and winds upward to the hole. The litter squawks a new signal—high, more piercing—just before the snake’s head slides into the nest.

The boy goes rigid before his eyes pick up the sow, charging through the trees in huge bounds. In instants she is at the hole, her hind claws dug into the trunk and her head ready to strike. Once, twice, three times the sow’s head whacks at the snake. The third time it holds, then cocks again, its teeth sunk just behind the snake’s head. The sow shakes it violently, shakes it again, and then lets the snake drop into the water. She disappears into the hole for a moment; then she darts down the trunk head first; holding on with her hind legs, she dips her nose and paws twice into the water.

The man and boy wade to the base of the tree and retrieve the dead snake. The man holds it against the trunk, slits it open, and shows the boy that there are no tiny squirrels inside.

1863: At the big treaty council at Fort Bridger in July, Washakie accepted the government’s terms for-peace with the Shoshones: The Indians granted safe passage to emigrants, the right to settlements as way stations for them, the safety of the mail and the telegraph, and permission for the railroad to cross their lands. In return they got a ten-thousand dollar annuity for twenty years, and their claim to the Wind River country was recognized.

1865: After the death of Aspen, Paump agrees with Spotted Deer that the two children must learn something of their people. The family joins a segment of Washakie’s band on a journey across the Bitterroots to the eastern side of the Continental Divide, where the buffalo are not yet so thin. Young Paump is given the name Mountain Goat by Sacajawea, and he kills his first buffalo. Paump gives his daughter to the brave of her choice, Three Hoops, and tells him with a grin that he may not find her as submissive as other squaws.

At Pierre’s Hole, on the way back from the hunt, Mountain Goat asks his father for permission to join the tribe, and it is granted.

Paump, now with only Spotted Deer as a companion, returns to his winter home on Middle Fork. He is sixty years old. On the long trail ride home he and Spotted Deer scarcely speak, and he plays the harmonika for long hours.

1868: The Great White Father did not pay the dollars he promised to the Shoshones; the people were restless, and Washakie was on the verge of anger. At a great treaty council at Fort Bridger the Indians and whites made a new agreement: The Shoshones would give up their nomadic life, settle down in one. place, and learn to till the soil. For this purpose they were given a reservation in the Wind River Mountains; the head of each Indian family would be entitled to 320 acres of land, which he would own as long as he continued to cultivate it. It would be a sea-change in Shoshone life.

Washakie, though, did not look back enviously on the old way. He said instead:

“I am laughing because I am happy. Because my heart is good. As I said two days ago, I like the … Wind River valley. Now I see my friends are around me, and it is pleasant to meet and shake hands with them. I always find friends along the roads in this country, about Bridger, that is why I come here. It is good to have the railroad through this country and I have come down to see it.

“When we want to grow something to eat and hunt, I want the Wind River Country. In other Indian countries, there is danger, but here about Bridger, all is peaceful for whites and Indians and safe for all to travel. When the white men come into my country and cut the wood and made the roads, my heart was good, and I was satisfied. You have heard what I want. The Wind River Country is the one for me.