The interpreters with their wives moved into the cabin built for them in the fort. Jessaume’s Mandan wife was sluttish and overbearing, and the captains expected that the couple would not contribute to much harmony in the fort.
Charbonneau’s diminutive wife was now obviously pregnant, with a hard-looking protuberance standing forth on her tough little torso. She was still so shy that it was impossible to forget that she had been a captive and a slave before the Frenchman bought and married her. With the interpreters’ quarters adjacent to the captains’ room, York found it easy and natural to keep an eye out for her comfort and welfare. York continued to refer to himself and Drouillard and this little Bird Woman as “us colored folks of the house,” and Drouillard would look at him as if annoyed, but in his heart he was pleased. There was something he liked about not being considered a whiteman.
S’ Kaka Weah, the Bird Woman, found that she liked coffee, with a great deal of sugar in it. And so York made much coffee. Charbonneau was miffed and mystified that the captain’s servant ignored him to wait so solicitously upon his little wife. York did not know that in the captains’ estimation this girl who spoke Shoshone, a language they would need in the Shining Mountains, was much more valuable than her husband. Charbonneau believed they were allowing Bird Woman to go along because they needed him.
Drouillard often heard the officers discussing that notion of President Jefferson’s that the pale, light-haired people among the Mandans might be descended from Welshmen who had come to America some six hundred years ago.
He now and then saw some of those remarkable-looking men and women. In every detail of dress and manner they were Mandans, speaking that Mandan tongue that sounded a little like the Sioux but seemed to come from far back in the throat. But some, even young warriors and girls, had hair that was yellowish-gray or light brown, and gray or greenish-blue eyes. Families in which these traits prevailed were integrated in the age-group and apprentice societies of the tribe, not separated out by their appearance, and seemed in fact to be held in high esteem. Chief Sheheke himself, Big White, appeared to have that influence in his face and blood, though his hair and eyes were not light. The captains made their usual vocabulary list, as they had tried to do among all the other tribes, and noted that there were many Mandan words that sounded like nothing they had heard before. But nobody in the Corps of Discovery knew the Welsh tongue, so they reached no conclusions. The Mandans’ stories of their old origins were hard to come by because Jessaume’s English was barely comprehensible, and even his own French tongue was so out of use that Drouillard had trouble understanding him. The story was, it seemed, that their ancestors had lived in a parallel world under the ground, until a hole was seen above with light and sky. So First Man had climbed up on roots and vines and emerged onto this world. Others had followed the scout up, until a very fat woman broke all the roots and vines in trying to climb up, and all the other ancient ancestors remained stranded in that world underneath, even to the present. Some relics of the ancient times were still kept in the sacred vessel in the middle of the town of Mittuta-Hanka, where they would remain under guard until next year’s ceremonies. By that time, these white soldiers would already be gone, and would miss the ceremonies.
There was one curious coincidence that the captains spoke of: the Mandan origin story said that the hole they had come out of was down at the very end of the river, where it flowed into the southern sea. According to the story Jefferson hoped to prove or disprove, that was where the Welshmen had landed.
The river was frozen solid, and it became a road between the fort and the towns. The chiefs of the various towns came down to talk to the captains, and the captains went to the towns to talk to the chiefs. Big White had gained much prestige by having the American fort closest to his town, but the grand chief of the Mandans lived in a town called Rooptahe, about two leagues north and on the same side of the river as the fort. That chief’s name was Black Cat. He was eager to please the Americans, and agreed that peace among the tribes would help everybody. He smoked with the Arikara chief, Eagle’s Feather, and offered to send some of his best men back down with him to the Arikara towns to speak of peace. And Black Cat told the captains that he himself might go next year to speak to the new Great Father in the East. The captains, of course, were very pleased. But one day Jessaume, with a shrug, told Drouillard something that seemed closer to the truth:
“Black Cat does not understand why the captains are going through here. He wonders why they tease the people with little gifts. He is afraid they are saving their goods for the Hidatsa. And some Mandans tell the Hidatsa that these captains are going to help the Sioux attack the Hidatsa, which is why they build so strong a fort down here. Jealousy.” Jessaume shrugged. “I would not want to be those captains. They are too hard to believe. Some people think they are here just to keep the British from bringing down goods.”
“Why don’t you tell those things to the captains?” Drouillard said.
“I thought you might tell them,” Jessaume said. “They know you a long time. They believe you. I think they do not believe me.”
“I am their hunter, not a carrier of rumors. That is why they believe me.”
Later that day, when York had been teasing Drouillard about being one of the “colored folks,” he led the slave to the gate in the fort’s palisade and waved his hand to point out the wide, bright, frozen river valley, the boats frozen fast, the distant domes of lodges at Mittuta-Hanka, and the lines of ant-size human figures crossing the river ice in all directions, carrying loads of firewood on their backs, or pulling loaded sleds, leading packhorses and dog sleds. Even in this intense, bright, hazy cold, there were more people out and moving than one would see on the mildest day in the cities of St. Louis or New Orleans.
“See what?” York asked, shivering, cupping his hands for warmth over his frostbitten crotch.
Drouillard laughed voicelessly, his breath turning to frost. “This is why I’m glad I’m not a whiteman. Look how we colored folks got them outnumbered. Wouldn’t you hate to be telling so many people things that they can’t believe?”
“Mist’ Droor,” York said after a moment, “ever’ time you talk to me, I think troubles. Wish you stop that.”
Drouillard said, “You’re a big, important man out here. When you’re being treated like a king in one of these Indian lodges, do you ever think of just setting yourself free and hiding with the Indians? You could be like old Caesar I told you about.”
York was gazing out with that worried look on his face. Then he looked sidewise at him. He shuddered violently. “No, s’,” he said. “I wou’n stay in a place this cold if I was its king!” And he turned and hurried back into the fort.
Drouillard remained, and kept gazing out over the immense landscape of snow and slanting sunlight, blue sky, blue shadows, tiny figures moving. Above the domed earth lodges of Mittuta-Hanka the smoke of family fires rose. Over the town’s medicine lodge he could see the three tall poles with effigies hanging from them. They were a part of the ancient mystery of the Mandan people, something to do with their original person who came up from underground. First Man, they called him, or Lone Man. He was represented by the effigy between the other two. It made Drouillard remember something from the old Black Robe teachings: Jesus between the thieves. He didn’t know whether any of the soldiers had thought of that when they saw the effigies, but he had seen Sergeant Gass looking up at them with some kind of thinking going on behind his eyes.
Drouillard liked it here despite the cold; he liked these people. He had thought very often about how good it could be to step away from the whitemen here and live among a people like this, who did not have those whiteman ideas that always made them go on and on in a direction, changing everything as they went.
But no, he thought. The whitemen are already here and it will have to change now. If I do hide with the Indians, it must be farther on.
Tuesday 25th Decr. 1804
cloudy. we fired the Swiv
els at day break & each man fired one round. our officers Gave the Party a drink of Taffee. we had the Best to eat that could be had, & continued firing dancing & frolicking dureing the whole day. the Savages did not Trouble us as we had requested them not to come as it was a Great medician day with us. we enjoyed a merry cristmas dureing the day & evening untill nine oClock—all in peace & quietness.
Sergeant John Ordway, Journals
January 4, 1805
Thank you, Colter, Drouillard was thinking, and he meant it.
He was sitting with a circle of very old Mandan men around a fire in the big Medicine Lodge of Mittuta-Hanka Town. By the warm, dim light of that fragrant fire, as his heartbeat kept pace with hand drums and rattles, he watched a pretty young woman come dancing toward him straddling a line of sticks laid end-to-end on the floor and ending at his feet. The young woman was stark naked, holding open a buffalo robe across her shoulders. She squatted over each stick, stood up, straddled the next stick and squatted over it, so that it was taking her a long time to come to him.
Kneeling by his shoulder was the young woman’s husband, who was chanting something into his ear in a pleading, almost whining tone. Though he did not understand the words, he had already learned what the young man’s entreaty was: Great Hunter! Favor me by copulating with my wife, so that she may pass your hunting powers on to me when I copulate with her!
This was what Jessaume had described as the Calling of the Buffalo ceremony. Every year young husbands gathered the greatest of the old men here and asked them to pass on their veteran skill and knowledge in this way, for three nights. When the ceremony was done, buffalo would usually appear nearby, and the young hunters, their spiritual powers enhanced, would go out and kill them. Often these old men were so feeble they could hardly walk, and could not perform the connection, but sometimes one would come back with the young woman, both looking satisfied.
Drouillard was astonished to find himself here, but Colter had changed his fortunes with the village women. On New Year’s Day and the next day, most of the soldiers of the fort had been invited to Mittuta-Hanka and Rooptahe towns to make music with their fiddles, tamborines, Jew’s harps, and sounding horns, and to demonstrate their ways of dancing. They had put on splendid shows, to the delight of the townspeople. Then this morning Captain Clark had called Drouillard to him. “You’re to go up to Mittuta-Hanka Town this afternoon, invitation of one of their medicine men. They want you to be in a ceremony that’s supposed to draw the buffalo.”
“Me? Why do they want me?”
“Well, as best I understand it, they wanted our best hunter, so they asked Jessaume who it was, and he asked Colter, and Colter told ’im it’s you. Nobody will argue that, so it appears you’re our man to go. From what I hear of this ceremony, Colter might be wishin’ he said he was the best himself. Wish he’d said I was. It’s sure something I’d like to see.”
And so now the young woman was close in front of him, almost enveloping him in her outspread robe, and he, sitting, was face-to-face with something he had not seen for many months. She bent her knees in time with the drum and thrust her pelvis forward so that his face was almost kissed by it, and she smelled clean with a musky odor which he recognized as eager sincerity. Above him in the shadowy robe her breasts hovered, her shadowed face looking down at him between them, her expression trancelike, smoky light flickering warm and ruddy on the rafter poles above her. And her husband, with one hand under Drouillard’s elbow, was urging him to stand up and go with her, his voice almost a cooing prayer. Drouillard was so aroused already that he was afraid he might ejaculate before she could lead him to wherever she was taking him. They went out and walked through smoky wind over packed snow and entered a smaller lodge, snug and warm with a bright fire burning in its fire ring, and there she plucked at the fastenings of his clothes and then threw her robe over a pile of bedding near the wall and lay down naked upon it, golden brown in the fireglow, and waited for him to undress.
He had never done this with a woman who knew none of the languages he spoke, and so he could not say anything about her beauty or his gratitude. And perhaps no language would be needed for that. But even in his eagerness, kneeling over her, he thought of York and the soldiers coming to the captains for venereal treatments, and before touching her he held his hand up in a question sign. She made a querulous frown, and he signed, You sick below? She answered so quickly her hands were a flutter. No. Hurry. I want. Then she reached for him and took him in.
He was quick as a sneeze, but she yelped and then sank back and sighed. He wanted a longer pleasure, but she hopped out of the bed, seeming marvelously happy, and signaled for him to get dressed. She led him back to the medicine lodge with its three effigies above it and took him in. The drum and rattle were still going and another young couple were importuning a scrawny, craggy-faced old man with snow-white hair hanging to his waist. They got him up and he went out with the young woman. People were smiling at Drouillard, and his young woman was beaming and nodding as she led him back to where he had been sitting. Her husband smiled and nodded and cooed to him, and pressed his cheek, then the couple went away behind the circle of elders as he was motioned to sit back down. He had hardly had time to reflect on that quick moment of pleasure before another fine-looking young husband brought him a pipe to smoke, then laid the trail of sticks across the floor again to him. Everybody was looking at him with great kindness and cheer, and very soon he realized that another handsome young naked wife was advancing upon him.
Snow was whirling in the dawn sky above the smokehole of the love lodge by the time he withdrew from the sweet, moist depths of the last wife. He rolled onto his back tingling and exhausted, ready to sleep for a day. But the woman’s husband and other family members arrived with the daylight, all full of laughter and caresses for him, and began fixing him a breakfast of beans, corn, persimmons, and chokecherries to fortify him for his walk back to the fort. In sign language they thanked him for calling the buffalo for them. They fed him and smoked with him, and touched him so often and so softly that he had to hold back a sob because he had not been surrounded by love like this since he had lived with his mother and cousins at Cape Girardeau.
Captain Clark was putting together a map from several small maps when Drouillard came out of the snow into the fort. The captain put the sheets aside and laid out some scribble paper. “You look a bit puny,” he said. “York can make some coffee, or a toddy. I’d like to make some notes about that buffalo-calling ceremony for our summary to the President. I presume you had one of their women and have the venereal now like everybody else.”
“Four women, sir. I know how careful you like to be about number-counting.”
“Four … four? They offered you four?” His jaw hung open.
“They offered me six, Cap’n. I didn’t take on the two sick ones.”
The captain had a pencil in his hand but seemed to have forgotten it. Finally he asked, “And how d’ye know that?”
“You hired me to talk to Indians, Cap’n. So that’s what I did. I asked them.”
13th of January Sunday 1805
a Cold Clear Day (great number of Indians move Down the River to hunt) those people Kill a number of Buffalow near their Villages and Save a great perpotion of the meat, their Custom of sharing meat in common leaves them more than half of their time without meat Their Corn & Beans &c they Keep as a reserve in Case of an attack from the Soues, which they are always in dread, and Sildom go far to hunt except in large parties Chaboneu informs that the Clerk of the Hudsons Bay Co. with the Me ne tar res (Hidatsas) has been Speaking Some fiew expressns. unfavourable towards us, and that it is Said the N W Co. intends building a fort at the Mene tar re’s
William Clark, Journals
Chapter 12
Below Fort Mandan
February 14, 1805
Hooves clopped on the river ice, and the waxed runners of the sleighs hissed and squealed. Willard had shod the three horses with cleated iron shoes that
gave them protection against rough ice and good footing on smooth ice, and so the frozen river had become like a wide, level road. In places where broken ice had frozen up jagged, Drouillard rode the mare up onto shore to detour over land, where the snow lay as shallow as an inch and deep as two feet, depending on wind-drifting. The three soldiers rode on the two sleighs behind him, their talk and laughter muffled by the high collars and scarves bound over their lower faces to protect them from frostbite. They all wore fur hats and mittens, and blanket coats or rough-tailored skin coats with the hair side in. Their faces were muffled to invisibility, but he could hear them joking about how this was the way the Corps of Discovery should have come up: just wait till midwinter and come up on horse sleighs and maybe ice skates, so much easier than rowing and towing a barge. Drouillard himself wore a fur hat made from the skin of what had been his pet beaver until the voyageurs ate it, and he wore it pulled down to his eyelids, and his face-scarf pulled up almost to meet it. So he was seeing the whole vast, glaring white world through a mere slit, the only way to avoid going snow-blind on days like this. They had swiftly come down the river more than twenty miles since morning, but still had almost twice that far to go down to the meat caches, near the Heart River. Down there, Clark’s hunters had left several hundred pounds of boned elk, deer, and buffalo meat closed up tight in wooden pens, and now Drouillard and three soldiers were going down to get it before the wolves could.
Actually, only two of them were officially soldiers, Goodrich and Frazier. The other man was John Newman, the man who had been whipped and expelled for talking mutiny. He had been brought along as a laborer to help load the frozen meat on the sleighs, and push or pull when necessary. Forbidden by his sentence to carry a gun, he had been issued a broken musket and a bayonet, so as not to appear defenseless.