In the course of the day, Black Buffalo again offered Captain Clark the company of a young woman, asking him to take her and not despise the people, as she would represent all her people in a spiritual connection with him. This time Drouillard found the chief so earnest and sincere that he hoped Clark would accept, thinking it might be the single key to open the door of friendship they had so wanted with this nation. The chief said the girl was a maiden. Drouillard took one look at her and said, “Cap’n, accept her and I’ll perform your duty!” Clark laughed and turned his back on her; Black Buffalo’s eyes hardened.
In the evening, after sitting through the same entertainment again, full of food, the drums monotonous, the stupefied captains excused themselves early. Partisan went down to the boat with them. He boarded the pirogue with Clark and Drouillard and several of the soldiers. As the voyageurs rowed across the gurgling, hushing river, the keelboat’s little tin lantern cast a tiny glittering pathway of yellow light across the turbid water under the starry vastness. Captain Lewis, with Cruzatte and four other soldiers, stayed on the bank to wait for the pirogue’s next trip. Cruzatte had talked to the Omaha prisoners during the evening. They had told him they heard that the Sioux intended to stop the boats from going on up to other tribes farther north. The captains had been careful to show no sign of suspecting those intentions, but because of Cruzatte’s report, Captain Clark specifically invited Chief Partisan to spend the night on the boat, with the idea of keeping the most troublesome one where he could be watched—a willing hostage for this last, wearisome night.
Drouillard knew that was how the captains saw it. But as the oars dipped and rose and the pirogue’s prow swashed across the current toward that little tin lantern, he was thinking that not only was Clark a fool for turning down an uncommonly lovely maiden, but that he had insulted Black Buffalo and his whole great people in an unforgivable way. It was beautiful and peaceful here under the silent stars on the great, tugging current of the mighty river, but the spirits were bad, and there would be more trouble.
It came at once.
In bringing the pirogue to the keelboat, the steersman went too far forward of the big boat’s bow, swung the tiller and caused the pirogue to turn sideways in the current. The pirogue, heavy with passengers and tons of cargo, came down broadside on the keelboat’s anchor cable, which was tight as a fiddle string.
Drouillard heard a grating and a cracking of wood, felt a tilting, and then a dull thump. In the next moment, querying voices were rising on both boats, and the huge, dark bulk of the keelboat was turning sideways and away.
Captain Clark bellowed into the darkness: “All hands up! On the oars! You’re adrift! Hey! Everybody up! Anchor cable’s broke! You’re adrift!”
Drouillard felt water over his feet. “We’ve sprung a leak, Cap’n!”
In a moment there was a commotion of voices yelling, footsteps pounding, oars clattering. Partisan, not knowing what was happening, began yelling in his language. And back on shore Captain Lewis’s piercing voice was shouting from the darkness, demanding to know what was going on.
Captain Clark kept yelling to the keelboat oarsmen. “Hurry! Get ’er nose upstream and pull! There’s sandbars just below! Don’t get sidewise on those sandbars! All hands pull!” It was the nightmare they had avoided in half a year of struggling up this swift and tricky river: their precious ship adrift at night. And adrift not just anywhere, but in the midst of hundreds of Indians of a notorious nation. Chief Partisan all the while was bellowing something incomprehensible.
It was past midnight by the time the keelboat was secured to a tree on shore, and by that time Black Buffalo and two hundred warriors had arrived from the town, excited, shooting in the air. All the soldiers who had been routed from sleep to save the boat had dropped their oars and picked up their rifles, ready to make a last stand against overwhelming numbers of Indians. And the security of a mid-river anchorage was gone now; warriors could pour showers of arrows and musketballs down the bank into the keelboat. The locker lids Captain Clark had designed as breastworks were raised and propped, and the soldiers crouched behind them listening to the commotion of running and shouting all along the banks. Captain Lewis was still on the far shore with five men, and the white pirogue could not be used to go rescue them until the leak caused by her collision could be found and caulked. Two men were down on their knees with a lantern trying to do that. Partisan was still emitting an occasional shout but was apparently too terrified of his precarious position in the leaking boat to try anything.
Gradually the voices onshore grew calm, and finally Captain Lewis’s voice came across the hush of wind and water: “Is the boat secure yet? Lots of Indians here but no trouble!”
In the small hours of the morning Drouillard sat in the boat’s cabin with the chiefs Black Buffalo and Partisan and their bodyguards, Cruzatte, and the exhausted captains, with everybody trying to explain everything about the incident, hampered as usual by the lack of a Sioux interpreter. He had to collect the facts and convey them by hand language.
When the anchor cable had broken and Captain Clark yelled his orders and the soldiers began shouting and moving about on the boat, Partisan apparently had thought an Omaha war party was attacking, in retaliation for the recent Sioux raid. He had thus been screaming at the top of his lungs about an Omaha attack, and that word had been relayed to the town, thus bringing down Black Buffalo and his two hundred warriors. It had required all Cruzatte’s limited skill to convince Black Buffalo that there had been no such attack.
The captains, meanwhile, already irritated and exhausted, and alarmed by what the prisoners had told Cruzatte, did not believe Black Buffalo’s explanation for his quick arrival in full force; they thought he must have had the warriors already gathered to carry out the interference that Cruzatte had been warned about. By now the captains were beyond believing anything favorable of these chiefs. But again they did not want the chiefs to know what they suspected. Captain Lewis said, “I mean for us to move out of here at first light. I’m going to keep these treacherous savages right here under guard till we’re ready to sail. Might as well invite them to drink coffee with us till then. They’ll be asking for it anyway. They’re too excited to give them whiskey.”
“Another night with no sleep,” Captain Clark grumbled, wiping his hand over his white forehead. “All right. But before we move on, I want to retrieve that anchor. I’ll take both pirogues and start dragging for it soon as there’s enough light.”
28th of Septr 1804 Friday
I made maney attempts in defferent ways to find our anchor without Sukcess, the Sand had Covered her up. after Brackfast we with great Dificuelty got the Chiefs out of the boat … proceeded on under a Breeze from the S.E. we took in the 3rd Cheif Buffalo Medicine who was Sitting on a Sand bar 2 miles above—he told us Partisan was a Double Spoken man—we Sent a talk to the nation, if they were for war or deturmined to attempt to Stop us, we were ready to defend our Selves—we Substituted large Stones in place of an Anchor. we came to at a Small Sand bar in the middle of the river and Stayed all night—I am verry unwell I think for the want of Sleep
William Clark, Journals
October 8, 1804
The last week had been, for Drouillard, a wandering in paradise. With cold nights had come relief from mosquitoes at last. Also left behind were the Sioux. It had not been considered safe to send out hunters while the Sioux were hounding the convoy, and the diet of army pork, grease, and corn meal had been disgusting. But the Sioux were a hundred and fifty miles behind now, and again he was ranging the high plains hunting fresh meat, not letting himself regret the captains’ failure with the Sioux. He had translated and advised the best he could. The failure had been caused by the rivalry among the chiefs, as much as by Sioux determination to control the river trade. Drouillard was glad it was over and that it had not ended in shooting. If it had, these whitemen would have been wiped out, and himself with them.
He was hunting afoot now. The last
horse had been stolen by the Sioux while the big encounter was going on, so he could not go after buffalo. Fresh meat these days was mostly elk and deer killed in the bottomland timbers. Several pronghorns had been killed when, by good chance, they were caught swimming the river on their seasonal migration. The rutting season for Split-Hooves had begun, and buck deer and elk were reckless about concealment, and could be called by clashing antlers together. The captains, carrying espontoons as rifle rests, had killed some game with long shots, and their good humor was being restored.
Drouillard walked the high plains with a gait that could cover ground nearly as well as a horseman. He mused on distances. According to Captain Clark the Great Measurer, they had come 1,430 miles up the Missouri since leaving the Mississippi in May. Clark always sighted through his compass at every bend and turn, and wrote down the degrees of the course, then would calculate miles to the next change, and write that down. Drouillard imagined that constant counting and measuring of the world must be an incredible drudgery. But counting and measuring were powers the whitemen were best at, and since they always ended up owning everything they counted and measured, they obviously were well served by those powers.
Somewhere along the way the captains had abandoned their idea of sending one of the pirogues back to St. Louis with their papers and specimens. Perhaps the Sioux had convinced them that they had no riflemen to spare. Some men who had expected to go back were grumbling their disappointment, in particular Reed the deserter, who was a mere oar slave, latrine-digger, and pot-walloper. Were it not for the continued friendship of his fellow malcontent Newman, Reed probably would have jumped in the river and drowned himself by now. Some of the troops speculated whether Reed and Newman were, as they put it, a “couple.”
As he loped along the flank of a grassy hill, Drouillard now smelled town ruins. It was the distinctive smell of a burned-out Indian village. Recently the convoy had met a solitary French trader, Jean Vallé, who had been trading far westward in a region he called Black Hills. Drouillard had met Vallé long ago at his uncle’s trading post, and some of the voyageurs knew him too. Vallé had given the captains very encouraging assessments of the good nature of the Arikaras, who lived not far ahead. The Arikaras farmed the bottoms and the islands industriously, growing corn and beans and squash which they traded to the Sioux for horses and for merchandise the Sioux got from British trading companies. The Arikaras were poor and weak now, down to a fourth or fifth of their population because of smallpox, the latest epidemic last year. Poverty and weakness made tribes more receptive and hospitable of course to newcomers, so the American captains would not be meeting the kind of arrogance they had recently found in the Sioux. It was likely that the Arikaras would agree to and accept anything the Americans said—especially if it promised to reduce their dependency on the Sioux for trade goods. That had been the practical wisdom of Vallé, another of those godsent informants the captains were lucky enough to find in the wilderness. But, Vallé had warned before bidding them adieu and going on his lonely way, always expect to find some Sioux among the Arikaras.
Drouillard veered toward the river and looked down on yet another burned-out ruin of an Arikara town. There were many like that since the smallpox; the survivors had migrated upriver to join with other survivors. One of the towns had been abandoned so recently that its fields were full of squash, pumpkins, corn, and beans ripe for harvest. The Americans had stopped there and collected enough to vary the diet. York had been able to make a pumpkin pie, gleefully remembering just how his wife used to do it.
Drouillard felt good now as he thought of York. The man seemed less and less like a slave as they came along. Though he still kept up his duties as Captain Clark’s manservant, he also did his share on the oars, setting poles, and tow ropes, where his great physical strength was appreciated, and the more it was appreciated, the more he was willing to show it off. He had grown from gunbearer to hunter on his long shore walks with his master, his marksmanship becoming better under Clark’s instruction. As the soldiers’ respect for him grew, so did his openness and high humor. He had rigged himself out with flair, perhaps remembering Drouillard’s description of Caesar the Negro Shawnee. He had been gathering muskrat skulls, hooves, mussel shells, arrowheads, Indian hairpipes, feathers, bear claws, and pretty pebbles, and had drilled and strung them to make for himself a big hank of barbaric, rattling necklaces, inventing for each a legend of magic. He wore a blue, old-style Continental Army coat, breechcloth, and handmade leather leggings and moccasins. He wore a red headkerchief, sometimes with a three-cornered black hat on top, with a buzzard feather sewed to the crown. A few times he had been permitted to range the hills hunting with Drouillard, away from his master, and those had been wonderful times for York, who still liked to think of himself and Drouillard as the expedition’s only “colored folk.”
“I still been pesterin’ Mas’ Billy. ’Bout lettin’ me free.”
“What’s he say?”
“Like with ’em Sioux. Li’l promise, ’n’ then a li’l threat.”
Drouillard had elbowed him and joked, “Next time you’re out alone with him carrying his hunting gun, just poke it in his back and make him put it in writing.”
“Ooooh! Man! Can’t do ’at!” The thought was too much for York, who didn’t realize it was a joke.
Drouillard shrugged and said: “Guess it wouldn’t do any good, would it? Even their writ-out promises they don’t keep. Just ask my people.”
Still, York was getting to be a lot more than he had been, and Drouillard was growing ever more friendly toward him. He liked to imagine him free, another Caesar.
A trace of flattened grass caught Drouillard’s eye now, and a faint scent. He stopped and looked along it. Big print with claw marks. Bear.
It had been a long time, far down the river, since he had shot bear. Makwa, whom his people called the Brother of Man. The only bears he had known were black bears, amiable, self-contained grubbers and scavengers who minded their own business and took good care of their children, like a good Indian. They were easygoing because they feared nothing. But this track was much bigger than a black bear’s track. It would be what the tribes along this river called a white or yellow bear. Yesterday Captain Clark had seen the tracks of one of these and spoke in excitement of the size of the track. An Indian who wore a necklace of the claws of a white bear he had killed had as much prestige as a man with many scalps on his pole. The captains anticipated meeting those plains bears, confident they would be less formidable before the army’s superior rifles.
Angry bears, Drouillard thought. I wonder what they’re afraid of, to make them angry?
Now he saw the boats. They were in a channel running alongside a big, wooded island, an island two or three miles long. He looked down on the unexpected sight of hundreds of cheerful Indians walking along the near shore of the island, watching the boats. There was a big village on the island, a cluster of the eight-sided, earth-covered lodges like those in the abandoned towns. These farming Indians lived in large, snug, permanent houses, surrounded by palisades, so different from the cone-shaped, skin-covered tents of the buffalo-hunting Sioux. This was apparently one of the three remaining Arikara towns Vallé had spoken of; it sat amidst a sprawling garden of corn and vegetables. Several small, round, tublike boats were following the keelboat and pirogues, and although he was still a long way off, it appeared to him that the boats were occupied by women.
The keelboat and pirogues were edging toward the riverbank at the upper end of the island. He saw Cruzatte heave off the bow the chained boulder that had replaced the lost anchor. It was time to trot down there. No hunting the angry bear today; the captains would be needing their hand-sign interpreter.
Chapter 10
A Town of the Arikaras
10th of October 1804
the Inds. much astonished at my black Servent, who made him Self more turrible in thier view than I wished him to Doe … telling them that before I cought him he was wild & l
ived upon people, young children was verry good eating. Showed them his Strength &c. &c.—Those Indians are not fond of Licquer of any Kind.
William Clark, Journals
The cannon and air gun, the big boat and all its instruments and gadgets, had been acknowledged as great medicine by the Arikaras, but York was the biggest medicine of all. None of them had ever seen a black man. He pretended to stalk and be stalked by crowds of squealing children. He strutted and chuckled and growled. He lifted two grown men high off the ground at the same time, one hanging on each wrist.
He acted as if, for this day at least, he was not a slave but a king. Several Arikara men offered him their wives, believing that the spiritual power he put into them would then be transferred to themselves by a similar connection. Unable to resist, York went into a lodge with a moonfaced young beauty, whose proud husband guarded the door until York was done. That whetted his appetite for more. He wanted Drouillard to speak to them for him in sign. “Tell ’at perty gal her baby looks good, an’ I’m hungry! She looks ’licious too! Tell ’er I take ’at titty the baby not usin’!”
York was too strange or formidable for some women, who instead found the fair-haired, blue-eyed, tall and strapping soldiers better medicine. The air was full of lustful excitement. “Drouillard, tell this lady,” said Shannon in a half-strangled voice, “that she’s givin’ me a cockstand just a-lookin’ at me the way she is. D’ye know sign language for that?”
Drouillard shook his head, half smiling. “Think, Shannon: A cockstand is sign language.”
To the captains, the goodwill of this visit with the Arikaras was a delightful contrast to the ugliness of their Sioux encounter, but they worried that fraternization might jeopardize discipline and security, so they let only small groups of soldiers at a time go into the towns, with a sergeant in charge. Guards had to stay with the boats.