That night they camped in a copse of white birch. Grass Child felt herself pushed and then pulled off the horse. She could not stand at first. The ground floated closer and closer to her face. She placed one small bare foot beneath her and managed to stand straddle-legged. Her body throbbed.
Buzzard Beak lifted her and sat her on the ground beside some rocks. Willow Bud, the four little boys, and four Agaidüka squaws were there. How good it was to see them. Her head cleared, and Grass Child began to pour out words of hope for their early rescue.
Moon Woman, tall, almost gaunt for an Agaidüka, with angular features, shook her head, her eyes focused on the firelight. She cringed and drew into herself, going rigid. To lighten the moment, Grass Child said, “This will be the last night with them. Even now, No Retreat and Yellow Rope, Red Eagle, and Medicine Man are following our trail.” Moon Woman had not heard her. “Moon Woman—”
But Moon Woman’s black eyes were glazed, turned toward the captors’ fire, seeing neither the fire nor the men around it, but some specter Grass Child could not glimpse. She sat there ill at ease, not knowing what to say. She could feel tears of exhaustion just under the surface. She kept them in check.
Blue Feather and Drummer clung to their mother, Water Woman, a buxom woman whose abundant black hair looked as if it had not been combed in a long while. Her eyes were a fathomless brown in which were traces of fatigue. She looked calmly, unblinking, at Grass Child for a long minute. Depths of quietness, wells of thoughts seemed to lie behind those eyes. Still she said nothing.
“I’m not staying with these skunks,” said Willow Bud. “I can follow the Big Muddy back to our camp. I can.”
“Anyone with feeling would say the same.” Water Woman’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Maybe this was bound to happen,” she went on. “Now is as good a timeas any to decide whether we’ll escape or not—provided we make our decisions based on truth.”
“What do you mean—truth?” asked Willow Bud.
“The way life really is.”
“Not all life can be as bad as what we saw yesterday.” Willow Bud’s words had rebellion in them.
“Ai, every bit of life, every one of us has a dark side,” Water Woman hurled back. “When we decided to hunt the buffalo, we were venturing out of our hiding place in the mountains. Moon Woman knows. She lived in a secret place, too. Her people were confident they could not be found by their enemies. Yet she was found drinking at the water hole one day by an Arikara. She got her first good look at the way life really is, and she ran back to shelter in a hurry.”
“She? Was she a captive once before?”
Water Woman’s reply was a chuckle so soft that it was almost a sigh. “She? Ai. And she loved the young Arikara man. But she was not yet ready for living with any man. She was a child, and the idea of a man had not entered her mind, except as in the manner of a father. After that, she never wanted a man. And ever since, she has thought of nothing but her Arikara.”
“Pah,” spat Fish Woman, “a child like Willow Bud would die or be eaten alive by wolves—or worse, tortured by Blackfeet—before she reached the river of three forks. The only road to survival is for all of us to hide again in the mountains.”
Small Man and Something Good sat close to Fish Woman. In profile she had a rugged face, as if her features had been chiseled out of rough stone and the final smoothing and polishing had never quite been finished. When she looked at Willow Bud, her eyes were intuitive, perceptive; their corners were crisscrossed with smile lines. She had a sensitive mouth, as if the sculptor had given special attention to that. Her hair was neatly chopped off at the ends and fell into her face. This gave her a girlish look.
“Those evil devils,” said Pine Woman, pointing with a broken fingernail in the direction of the resting Minnetarees. “They would slash your throat if you tried to creep away.” Her dark eyes blazed in her wrinkled face. She folded her hands across her stomach. “Grass Childis right. We must wait until our own braves come for us. We must wait and see what happens next. In the meantime, we might see if we can get some sleep, and think of making trail signs every chance we get. We must keep our minds occupied with good thoughts.”
Water Woman looked at her curiously. “Ai, that is good to say, but no man will come.” She seemed to be seeing into the past. She took a deep breath, plunged on; nothing could stop her. “Remember, I said to look at life the way it really is now? So you’ve got to take your hands away from your eyes before you can do anything about changing our course. Grass Child, no one can mention the name of our chief again. His name is gone from our lips.”
The words poured over Grass Child. “They killed him?” Her horror showed in the half-light from the campfire. But Water Woman took no notice.
“I was in the ravine running to my man, who was down. I saw an enemy horse trample him. I was wild with fear. My heart was in my throat. I could not get to him; I saw his face and could not recognize it—it was nothing, pulp. The men were regrouping and riding toward the camp, but I noticed some of the women running up the river, pushing the children ahead of them. I ran to them to help pull the little ones along. But before I reached them I saw a horse running in circles and pitching up on its hind legs, trying to shake the rider off. The man was hanging over the front of the horse. A loud crack came from the front of me, and the man slid from the horse. An enemy horse ran over him, the rider screeching to heaven. Out from a grove of aspen rode a man waving a firestick. I knew it must be something from the firestick that had knocked the man from the horse. The man was our chief. I must have kept running. I do not remember. Finally, when I thought my chest would burst, I stopped and hid in the woods by the river. I had each of my boys near me. I had not noticed them before. I saw Rain Girl, and Something Good, and several other children lying under a juniper. The horse fell, the one carrying our chief; I remember red bubbles coming from his nostrils as he lay still beside his master.” Water Woman stopped and looked around at the listeners; her pause was long.
Grass Child held her hands to her face. She made no sound.
Pine Woman asked, “Did you hide or stand in the open gawking so these dirty skunks could find you?”
Water Woman soothed the sleeping children on her lap. “I do not know any more. That is all I remember. When my eyes opened, I was on a rawboned horse and my two papooses were bound together next to me.” She nodded, smiled with her eyes at her two sons, saying nothing more.
Around and behind each one’s thoughts stood the question: Could anyone escape? Would they try?
“So what does that have to do with me following the Big Muddy back to the People?” Willow Bud dared to ask.
“Everything to do with it. Who are we?” answered Moon Woman, slapping her thigh for emphasis.
“I wish I knew,” said Grass Child feverishly, half-asleep.
“But you can know. Each of us is important. No one can fill our place.” She hesitated with this new thought. “If you don’t do the work that is given you to do, that work may never be done. Why are we here?” She folded her arms and legs into a comfortable position and began snoring, as though her thoughts had been deep and taken much out of her. No one answered her question. The question was to sleep on.
Permission to reproduce this map was given by James E. Sperry, superintendent of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, January 28th, 1970. Taken from Sakakawea, by Russel Reid, State Historical Society, North Dakota, 30, No. 2-3, 1963, p. 110-11.
CHAPTER
3
People of the Willows
A little way up the Missouri, at the mouth of the Knife River, near the modern cities of Washburn and Stanton, North Dakota, to the west of U.S. 83, was Mahaha, a village of the Wetersoon, or Soulier Noir Indians. Farther up the Knife River were two Minnetaree villages, Metaharta and Hidatsa. The chief sachem of the Hi-datsas was an ancient and patriarchial looking man by the name of Omsehara, the Black Moccasin. He sat tottering with old age and silently reigned sole monarch of this li
ttle community, People of the Willows. His people dropped in to cheer his sinking energies and render him their homage. His sight and voice were nearly gone, but the gestures of his hands were yet energetic and youthful, and he freely spoke the language of his kind heart. He was the first chief of the Minnetarees.
HAROLD MCCRACKEN, George Catlin and the Old Frontier. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1959, pp. 111-12.
The next morning, two men passed jerky and parched corn among the captives for their morning meal. Grass Child had never seen parched corn before. She pushed it around in her hand.
“These people plant the seeds, and it grows for them on sticks,” Moon Woman explained.
“Oh, I would like to see that!” laughed Willow Bud, unbelieving.
Grass Child’s back and legs were stiff, but the raw places were scabbed over, and even though they looked ugly, she knew they were healing underneath. She chewed on the corn, wondering why anyone thought it tasted good.
Buzzard Beak walked over and surveyed the group. Suddenly he pointed his flintlock directly at Pine Woman’s belly.1 His lip curled into a sneer. Grass Child noticed scars on his chest and arms. She stared unabashedly for some time, thinking that he must be a great warrior among his people. He must respect bravery in others. The flintlock was not lowered, but it moved slowly to point at the forehead of Grass Child. She sucked in her breath fearfully. She wanted to step backward, but she did not dare. She stared him in the eye, and, with no thought other than “How fierce he thinks he is,” she moved her hand upward little by little and lowered it just as slowly, taking the flintlock barrel with her, pushing it to one side. He spoke to her in his strange tongue. He pushed her forward as if he wished her to go somewhere with him, then suddenly his foot was in her path. When she fell to the ground, he guffawed loudly and walked away.
Grass Child fainted. When she came to, she was aware of blood in her mouth, and she was surprised by the saltiness of the taste. She did not want to sit up. She tried to push her mind deep into some inner sanctuary where nothing could hurt her. She thought this might be dying, this sinking into darkness slowly, slowly.
A long time later, it seemed, Grass Child felt herself moving hesitantly outward toward consciousness of the shell that was her own body. This sensation was repeated again and again. Each time she was rebuffed by the wave of violent pain and slipped back thankfully into the comfort of that inner oblivion.
It was midafternoon when she came out of it far enough to realize that she was lying naked on a clean blanket and that somebody was rubbing her with bear’s oil. It did not seem surprising that it was Buzzard Beak who was doing the rubbing. He had shown them what would happen if they tried to escape. Now he was sorry that he had hurt her. He felt her pulse. Several other strangers were standing around. Their faces and bodies had been washed, and they looked more friendly. Buzzard Beak nodded and laid her head gently on the blanket. She felt the softness. It was not a fur robe; she noticed the color—dark blue, like the sky on a cold starlit night. This was something different, something unfamiliar. She moved her hand against the blanket once more. Buzzard Beak began to feel her sides as if to locate broken ribs. Rolling her gently, he pointed to the swollen quirt mark on her back and the bump on her head under the blood-matted hair. He chuckled deep inside himself as he rubbed ample bear’s oil over them. She could hear his words, but she had no idea of their meaning. She continued to feel drowsy inside, with a fear wrapped lightly around the outside. The strangers all around her and the strange blue robe gave her no security. They wrapped her gently in the blanket and left her to sleep more.
Finally, at midmorning of the fifth day, they again started eastward along the river. Grass Child felt somewhat better, but her head still ached with the motion of the horse. When they stopped for water, she let herself be pulled from the horse and pushed beside the small stream. She lay in the cool leaves, rubbing some of them on her hot, swollen face, remembering the medicinal quality of crushed buffaloberry leaves. These cool leaves served just as well, her distant mind told her. She managed a few sips of the cooling water, then was placed roughly upon the horse again. There was no time to talk with Willow Bud.
A week passed, more slowly than Grass Child had believed time could pass. Her condition went from unbearable discomfort to outright agony. The leaves shehad reveled in at the spring were the low-growing three-leaved ivy. She itched and burned and longed to scratch arms and legs, and most of all, her swollen, parched face and lips. Buzzard Beak had tied her hands behind her back and placed her on the same horse with himself. There was no position she could assume in which his body behind her was not torment. Yet she had enough sense to know she could not have ridden a horse alone, sitting with her hands tied behind her back.
The midafternoon sun made the ivy-caused blisters on her legs and arms break and water. Once she thought she felt perspiration from the horse, but she was not sure. When the horse began to founder, Buzzard Beak used his quirt vigorously and the animal went a little faster. The horse made a sudden lurch and fell on its side, frightening Grass Child so that she cried out. Buzzard Beak leaped nimbly to the ground, pulling her with him. Holding the thong reins and Grass Child with one hand, he began to strike the horse. He kicked and pounded it over the head with the butt of the quirt. The horse tottered to its feet. Carrying Grass Child, Buzzard Beak leaped astride, and they galloped farther eastward.
Water Woman, nursing Blue Feather, with Drummer held tight in her other arm, sang to Grass Child in the night when she could not sleep. The captives were permitted to huddle around the fire now for warmth. Each day Water Woman soothingly told of the great improvement in Grass Child’s condition. Willow Bud tried to describe the land they rode over, sometimes rocky and hilly, other times flat and grassy with small gurgling streams. Grass Child’s eyes were swollen shut.
Only the day that her eyes opened did Grass Child feel she was improving. That day the grass looked greener than it had ever seemed and the trees taller and straighter, her friends’ smiles broader.
“Tomorrow,” Water Woman encouraged, “you will be strong enough to ride alone. You can ride with us. No more sitting with Buzzard Beak.” That night she and Willow Bud pretended to gather wood, but stood on a small hill to see if they could see any sign of the rescuing Agaidükas.
“We are as ants in the field,” Pine Woman sighed, smoothing her dirty tunic over her stomach.
“But if they travel along the river, sooner or later they will stumble on us,” said Willow Bud. “We will watch for them while we remember landmarks each day, like putting beads on a string. Today there was the big cotton wood broken by lightning. Yesterday there was the spring water coming out of the dark earth. It took us half a morning to get through that muck. Before that, there was the tall stone with vines on one side and—”
Fish Woman placed a blue-veined hand over Willow Bud’s and spoke as if to one of her own children. “Poor girl! Your head is swollen with knowledge of the trail we’ve followed, and still you want to push more into it. Don’t shove so much in that it pushes on the trail back to the People and lets some spill out, or don’t let these skunks beat it out of you.”
Moon Woman sighed—and shut her eyes. They were closed so long that everyone was beginning to think she had fallen asleep when suddenly she began to speak. Her eyes were still closed, but her voice had changed: it was soft, almost caressing, with a smile in it. “I was about as many summers and as skinny as Grass Child when the Arikara warrior carried me away. I was young enough so that I never knew that women were carried off for slaves. I just never thought about it. I lived in his lodge with two other woman. They made me fetch water, push down weeds between the mounds of corn and beans, make the stew, and sew. My sewing was bad. I was not old enough to be able to make good trousers. At night they beat me. When he came home he scolded them and fed me thin hot soup to stop my wailing. Then he sent me out for firewood. I could scarcely find a stick around those lodges, and then he would beat me.” Her eyelid
s fluttered open. “I’ll tell you about them. They are called Arikaras. I was their captive once, as I have told you.”
Willow Bud nodded, then everyone nodded, not knowing what to expect.
“The Arikara village is downriver a short trail from the Westersoon. Once I heard the Wetersoon eat worms.
Farther up are villages of the People of the Willows, our captors, the Minnetarees.”
“And they probably eat dogs,” said Willow Bud, making a distasteful face.
“The Arikaras’ lodges are heaped up like an anthill, made of wood and mud outside.” She made a face. “Ugh. But inside, like something from a medicine dream. Big, space to put many things, even a horse in cold weather. And warm, no wind could get in, even the smoke hole fixed so the wind would not go down. The sleeping places not on the ground, but up on logs and soft branches. And pots for cooking, not clay or willow, but black and hard, heavy; never break. Houses inside of the lodge made with skins. People in one house and people in another. No one to get in someone’s way. Tunics laid across branches to keep them clean. These houses are not moved. These people do not move. I worked hard sewing, cleaning, keeping out of the way of those two women. My man sometimes smiled on me, and sometimes I was too tired to do as he asked and he beat me. That was proper for him. Inside, I felt myself fading. Once I fell against the ground and stayed there quiet, feeling the strength of Mother Earth before I pushed and pulled on more weeds in his garden. But the fading never stopped. I was starving to death, even though I was eating. I didn’t know what to do. Then one day I was cutting a tunic and something came to me: I could find my way to the People. It was simple. I could remember every step of the way. From that time on, I smiled a little more and stopped fading.