The True Account (27 page)

Early that evening Franklin decided to go a-fishing on No Return River, as the Shoshone called the tumultuous waterway that ran in front of their camp. Now the No Return was said by the Indians to flow a hundred miles before joining a larger river that they called the Serpent. The Serpent, after another two hundred miles or so, debouched into a major tributary of the Columbia. This network of watercourses would certainly have been our first choice, and the captains', too, for proceeding to the Pacific, but for one difficulty. According to the Shoshone, the first sixty or seventy miles of the No Return passed through a canyon said to be utterly unnavigable.

Just at twilight, while angling from a borrowed canoe below two long fish weirs in the pool in front of the Indian camp, Franklin hooked an enormous salmon. “Fish on!” he cried, as the silvery giant raced up the length of the pool, stripping line off his reel. The savant held his rod high over his head for maximum leverage (and show) as a great crowd of Indians gathered on the bank to see the outcome of this epic battle. My uncle, in the meantime, was running along the shore calling out all kinds of advice, much of it contradictory. One moment he told Franklin to keep a tight line, the next to let the salmon run or he would certainly lose his trophy. The fish jumped once, twice, thrice. “Heyday!” cried Franklin. “I shall call this fish Izaac Walton.”

Izaac Walton leapt yet again. But then, as hooked fish will sometimes do, he took it into his head to make a dash straight down the river toward the raging whitewater below. “Follow the fish, the rapids be damned!” called my uncle. Whether Franklin actually intended to do such a foolish thing, I do not know. But the current above the rapids ran deceivingly fast, and before the Blackfoot sportsman knew what was happening, his canoe had been swept past the fish weirs and was bobbing down the river on the crests of the whitecaps. Sooner than one would think possible, our dear friend had disappeared around the far bend between the sheer red walls of the No Return, leaving our entire party stunned and grief-stricken—all but Yellow Sage, who said that Napi would never let his grandson drown in that or any other river. I was not hopeful, however. For mile after mile below our encampment the No Return was said to be one unbroken thundering cascade between high walls of rock; even Captain Clark, the expedition's best waterman, was obliged to conclude that no canoe could survive for ten seconds in such water.

F
ALL HAD ARRIVED
. The clear slanting light, the bull elks bugling in the mountains, the aspens turning yellow along the river—all were signs of the turning season. Cameahwait was now warning us every day of the severe September blizzards common in the Bitterroots. He explained that we would have to travel
north
for several sleeps just to strike the pass through the mountains and that the trail through the Bitterroots was faint and uncertain, and game very scarce.

Yellow Sage seemed no more anxious over the impending crossing than over the fate of Franklin whom I continued to mourn. She sewed for herself and my uncle and me large buffalo-skin parfleches to carry extra food and gear; made each of us several pairs of spare moccasins; and dried some elk and venison jerky to take with us. But while she was a capable planner, like my uncle she seemed not to worry much about what lay ahead, but rather to live for today.

Sage loved to play with Sacagawea's little son, Jean Baptiste, or Pomp, as the men of the expedition called him. At our encampment in the Land of the Shoshone she ran about with him in her arms by the hour, chasing the cottonwood fluff blowing in the air. “Look, Pomp, it's snowing,” she cried. “Catch a snowflake!”

At first the Shoshone were suspicious of Sage, since they and the Blackfeet were ancient and bitter enemies. But soon enough they were won over. For their littlest girls she made birchen dolls, and for the boys she fashioned hobby-horses from crooked-trunk firs. She taught the older boys a Blackfoot game similar to snap-the-whip and showed them a contest called walking arrow. She would shoot an arrow into a tree, then each of the boys would shoot at it, and the boy whose arrow came closest would claim all of the other arrows; then she would shoot at another tree, and the game would continue, sometimes for hours on end. She showed the older Shoshone girls how to play a Cree game in which they kept a fist-sized ball stuffed with elk hair and wrapped in tanned buffalo hide aloft with their fists for minutes at a time. In another game a short pole was thrown through a small rolling hoop segmented with rawhide spokes.

From willow sticks Sage made my uncle a handsome backrest, and from the gray shale abundant near the No Return River a new hemp-pipe. One morning she surprised a lumbering porcupine and tossed a deer hide over it, which it immediately filled with quills from its lashing tail. After releasing the indignant animal, she colored the quills red, green, and blue and made a beautiful star-shaped medallion for Sacagawea to wear on her best robe. Sage's method of dyeing the quills fascinated me. She wrapped them in dampened dye-plants, then placed the little packages under her sleeping robe for several nights until the weight of her body pressed colors into the quills.

“Oh, to be a package of quills,” I teased her. Whereupon she made me a spoon from the horn of a mountain sheep “to eat buffalo brains with and get smart.”

 

Before leaving for the Columbia, Captain Lewis wished to compile some notes on the customs and manners of the Shoshone. One evening over supper he remarked that Shoshone men, while honest and generous, had little respect for their women, of whom they were “sole proprietors.” Also, he accused them of being lazy, stating that their horsemen refused to walk anyplace, even the shortest distance. And they frequently boasted of heroic deeds that they had never performed. Lewis glumly concluded that there was little hope of persuading them, or any of the other Indians we had encountered, of abandoning war for peace, since in their society no man could rise to become a chief without having first proved his bravery in war.

“Why, sir,” my uncle objected, “but think. What is your crony the President, and every other slaveholding American, but ‘sole proprietor' of all the women in their quarters, and the men and children as well? As for the Shoshone's preference for riding, when did you ever, at home in Virginia, see any gentleman planter walk so much as fifty paces out-of-doors afoot? So far as exaggerated boasting is concerned, have you listened lately to your men bragging around the campfire of their conquests among the Shoshone women? You would suppose yourself the captain of a party of satyrs. As for the Indians' custom of choosing their leaders from their best warriors, what say you to America's choice for first President? George Washington was hardly elected for his Quaker sentiments. Human nature is human nature, sir, in a Shoshone tepee or a Philadelphia drawing room.”

Lewis kicked the fire; then, citing the long hard crossing of the Bitterroots, which we must begin as soon as we had obtained enough pack horses through trade with the Indians, he turned in for the night. I could see that my uncle had made no headway with him on the subject of the Shoshone. As Yellow Sage remarked afterward, while we walked on the edge of the camp and watched the moon rise, Lewis was as sure of the superiority of Virginians as she was of the Blackfeet's.

“I have a question for you, Sage. Your mother was a Piegan, your father British. Is that right?”

“Yes. I hope that's not the question.”

“It's not. The question is, are you more Piegan or English?”

“Worse and worse. For I can't and don't believe that at the heart of the matter, there's a particle of difference between the two. When it comes to ways and stays, however”—this with a sidelong look at me—“I am sure that all the
interesting
parts of me are Piegan. If you want the truth, your wonderful uncle is the only really interesting person I've ever met who
wasn't
a Piegan.”

“I suppose you think Smoke is interesting,” I said.

“He is. And has a great many good points as well.”

“Such as?”

“He's the most generous member of our nation. Piegans value generosity above any other trait.”

I was about to ask her to prove her point by giving me a kiss. But just then we were startled by a crashing in the nearby woods. Out of the trees about one hundred paces away stepped a pure white elk with a massive set of antlers containing seven points on one side and eight on the other.

“Oh, Ti,” Yellow Sage exclaimed. “The legendary White Elk of the Mountains!”

She whistled to him and he bugled back, then vanished into the evergreens. Sage told me excitedly that White Elk, who had been created by Napi ten thousand years ago, was as immortal as her grandfather. I was happy enough to have been vouchsafed a glimpse of this ancient gentleman, but I was quite annoyed with him for spoiling my chance at a kiss.

 

Each evening White Elk appeared for a few minutes just at twilight in the meadow on the mountainside above the Shoshone camp, though he never allowed anyone to approach him. On the fourth morning after we first sighted him, two days before the expedition was to leave for the Columbia, Sage learned from Sacagawea, who had heard it from her husband, Charbonneau, that the Shoshone were planning to slip away that night for their annual buffalo hunt, leaving the captains horseless and without a guide, since Cameahwait was angry that they would obtain no guns in the trade. When we alerted Captain Lewis, he was furious with Charbonneau for not telling him this disturbing news immediately, and with Cameahwait for planning to betray him.

My uncle then went to the captain and explained that many years ago when he was in Spain on summer holiday, retracing the epic journey of Don Quixote with his Oxford tutor and mentor, the great Scholia Scholasticus Aristotle, they had concluded their journey in the city of Seville. And there they had witnessed a wonderful event called a
rodear,
a competition to see which of the most famous Andalusian horsemen could stay on the wildest horses and bulls the longest. Recalling this competition, True said he had wagered with Cameahwait and some other Shoshone leaders that the captains' men could easily best theirs at this sport; and the Indians had agreed that if Lewis's men won, they would provide him with all the horses he desired.

“Oh, sir,” I interjected, “just yesterday Sage and I saw a party of young Shoshone ride down two grown mule deer in a show of horsemanship unlike anything ever dreamed of in the United States. What can you be thinking?”

My uncle said he knew very well what he was thinking, and that by tonight, the captains would have their horses and a good guide into the bargain—not that the guide was so very necessary, since he and I had come through these same mountains just the year before. But I, remembering all too well the unfortunate outcome of the
Flying Dutchman
at the Great Falls on the Missouri, anticipated the
rodear
with considerable concern.

That afternoon everyone convened in the natural bowl where, a fortnight before, my uncle had held his play and drawn the Indians out of the forest. There, under his supervision, a corral of lodge poles, about two hundred feet on a side, had been erected, within which the
rodear
would take place.

As impoverished as these mountain Indians were, it was amazing to see how richly they decorated themselves when the occasion required, with colored beads, seashells, elk-tooth necklaces and bracelets, richly dyed quills along their leggings, mother-of-pearl earrings, and tippets of otter pelts embellished with ermine tails. Their moccasins were ornamented with skunk tails trailing from the heels. And though I had heard Captain Lewis disparage the Shoshone for being “diminutive, with crooked legs and flat feet,” on horseback they were a nation of princes.

The
rodear
began with Cameahwait driving twenty young, unbroken horses into a chute adjacent to the corral, where they milled about, biting and kicking at each other and whinnying angrily. To ensure fairness, each of the ten Americans who had entered the contest was asked to pick a horse. A Shoshone brave would mount it, while my uncle and Cameahwait counted off the seconds the rider stayed aboard. The American contestant would then ride the same horse. The animals had been fitted with bridles and reins but no saddles, which the Shoshone disdained.

What can I say? The men of the expedition were fine riders, especially Drouillard, Labiche, and Shannon. But no one could compete with the Shoshone, who usually stayed mounted until the horses were entirely fatigued and stood with their tongues lolling out and their heads down—though they recovered quickly enough to dislodge most of our riders within six or seven seconds.

Captain Lewis rode last, galloping into the corral aboard a vicious little walleyed, hammer-headed stallion that had thrown its Shoshone rider after half a minute. Lewis spent more time in the air than on the pony, which spun, plunged, twisted, and reared. Well before fifteen seconds had elapsed, the wretch twisted its ugly head back upon the captain, savagely bit his calf, and unseated him.

It appeared that the
rodear
was over and the expedition still without its horses. But my uncle again spoke with Cameahwait—showing him his arquebus as if he would trade that—and then announced that we would reconvene at sundown for a winner-take-all finale.

 

When the sun was sitting on top of the mountains to the west, we assembled at the amphitheater once again. As the sun sank, bathing the entire wild scene in a luminous orange glow, the great White Elk stepped into the clearing on the mountainside.

“Now, Ti,” my uncle said in a hushed voice, “the precise nature of the wager I've made is that a member of our party will rope, ride, and break that splendid animal this very evening. If I win, Cameahwait will supply us with all the horses we need.”

“And if we lose?”

“We won't.”