Charbonneau (19 page)

“Does the Indian live any less in a dream world?” Karlheinz poked lightly.

“Not much. His life is based on dreams in a sense. In his favor, he does not devise the elaborate metaphysical schemes of an Aquinas, or debate about how many angels can stand on the tip of a porcupine quill.”

“Will you return to your people?” Anna asked.

“No,” Baptiste started, and then hesitated.

“Consider the difference between the primitive and the European,” Karlheinz offered. “The primitive lives at the mercy of things, the European masters them. Because he thinks about the world differently, the Indian accepts it as he finds it—and lives in fear and supplication. The white man considers how he can change the world, and reshapes it to suit his purposes, to make his life safer and more comfortable. Where the Indian appeases natural forces, the European studies them, discovers how they work, and puts them to this service. He uses running water to grind grain. He cuts trees into planks for houses. He converts boiling water into energy that drives machinery. He shears the sheep, weaves its wool into cloth, and sews warm clothing from it. The Indian hasn’t the knowledge for that; the knowledge comes from a European habit of mind, the inquiry for the causes of phenomena.

“That’s why, in the end, the European will take the rest of that vast New World for himself and push the Indian off. The European will be master because he has the mastery.”

“He’ll leave the Western lands alone, I think. They’re useless—vast empty plains, mountains, and deserts. Useless.”

“Anna and I believe you,” Karlheinz smiled, “on all counts. An interesting thesis you have. Shall we go now,” he turned to her, “and make love in our own persons?”

Baptiste walked with them into the cold November twilight. Karlheinz beckoned to the setting sun with a finger, saying, “Come, sweet one, come, you are leaving us to cold once more.” He wrapped his other arm around Anna. “A good day to be indoors in the warmth, a good day to fornicate, and a poor day for too much thinking. Let’s leave that to philosophers with troublesome stomachs in dark, dusty rooms.”

Just then, his eyes glazed and he humped over strangely. He put a hand to his chest, and his eyes stabbed up at Baptiste, as though calling for help from a great distance. Then he pitched hard to the sidewalk. Hamlet whined loudly, circling his master’s form.

Rolling him onto his back, Baptiste tore open his shirt. Karlheinz gave a squeaking, wheezing moan. His arms were rigid, fingers pushing stiffly at the sidewalk. His face was contorted horribly by pain. The thought crossed Baptiste’s mind that he had never seen such an ugly face. He was barely aware that Anna had run for the doctor. He could feel no beat at Karlheinz’s heart. He pressed and eased upon Karlheinz’s chest, pressed and eased up. He did not know if it would help. Baptiste was shaking all over.

After a minute Karlheinz’s face softened a little and did not look so horrible. His hands and arms relaxed. Baptiste could still feel nothing at his heart. He sat back on his heels and stared at the face, with its traces of surprise and pain and fear. He was sure that Karlheinz was dead.

“He always had a weak heart,” the doctor said later at the office. He had no more than that to say.

Karlheinz’s face picked up soft light from the satin that framed his head. His hair was ridiculously red. The closed eyes, the still mouth, had taken from the mortician’s hand an air of unrufflable repose. It made Baptiste damned uncomfortable. He forced himself to stand by the casket longer than he wanted, looking down at his friend’s body; he was trying to figure out why the thing in front of him did not remind him of Karlheinz. At last he realized that he had never before seen Karlheinz’s face when it was fixed, when expression was not moving, flowing, on into another expression. He tried to plant Karlheinz’s amused, curling smile on this face; it wouldn’t work. Anna tugged at his hand.

At the cemetery Baptiste was not aware, amid the strangers and watching the shovelfuls of fresh dirt pitch into the grave, of feeling sorrow, just a peculiar hollowness. He heard nothing of what the priest was chanting. He was held by a single thought, which seemed luminous: So this was in him all along.

As they walked back toward the carriage, Anna murmured, “Why? Why? It’s senseless.”

Baptiste let a flicker of anger pass. No reason, he thought. There are no reasons. He was here, alive. Now he’s gone, dead. Damn.

Chapter Five

1826: Various Northern states passed laws forbidding state help in returning fugitive slaves; colony Nashoba founded to train Negroes for colonization in Africa.

1826: Jedediah Strong Smith led the first overland expedition to California.

1828: The U.S. and Great Britain agreed to joint occupation cf Oregon territory.

1828: Construction began on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, first to operate in the U.S.

1828: MARCH 4: Andrew Jackson was inaugurated the seventh President of the U.S.

1830: The 1830s witnessed a sharp increase in immigration from Europe and in American prosperity.

1830, APRIL 6: Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints.

1830: The forced march of Eastern Indians to Indian territory in the West gained the name “The Trail of Tears.”

AUGUST, 1829: “I left you,” Baptiste smiled, “at the age of eighteen an innocent much in need of your tolerance for my transgressions. I return to you at twenty-four a widely traveled, modestly educated, modestly cultured innocent, much in need of your tolerance for my transgressions.”

It was nicely done, and Clark proposed yet another toast to Baptiste, which Pierre Chouteau, Jr., again seconded loudly.

It had been Clark’s idea, a small dinner party with two Chouteau couples, the Bertholds, along with Coco, Father Neil, and Prince Paul. Clark had also persuaded one of the local newspapers to mention in passing that Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, half-breed protege of General William Clark, had returned to St. Louis after nearly six years in Europe. Baptiste was pleased, though he was aware that the homecoming celebrations were kept to a modest scale, and he knew why. He displayed his most gracious manners.

Mmes. Berthold and Chouteau and Coco were most curious after dinner about European society and fashions. Baptiste described, in circumspect terms, Princess Victoria, a lively young woman with whom he had passed a pleasant time, Charles X of France, to whom he had been presented only briefly, King William of Württemberg, the Marquesa du Breslin (he had not had the honor of meeting the Marquis), and other celebrated and high-born personages. He praised their beauty, their deportment, their qualities.

He offered as well something about his studies at the University, his devotion to music—he had brought back reams of sheet music which he would be pleased to lend them—and his reading, but they seemed only politely interested in that. Paul sat aside, somewhat to the ladies’ chagrin, and let Baptiste dominate the conversation. Baptiste was amused that they did not ask him whether he had met any attractive and suitable young ladies; he wickedly let a hint or two drop about his delight at European womanhood.

He was being generous because he could afford it: He had a plan.

On his arrival in New Orleans Baptiste had posted a letter to Harper & Brothers in New York:

New Orleans, July 17, 1829

Gentlemen:

I propose to write a book that will I believe be of uncommon, indeed
unique
interest. Since it concerns myself, I must give here a brief account of my own life:

I am a half-breed, son of a Shoshone woman Sacajawea and the French-Canadian interpreter and guide Toussaint Charbonneau; both, you may recall, are somewhat celebrated for their role in guiding the Lewis & Clark expedition across the Shining Mountains and to the Pacific Ocean. That I was carried as a
papoose
on my mother’s back on the journey has changed my life and brought about events that defy expectations and credibility; yet they are fact.

William Clark generously offered to have me educated in St. Louis and to treat me as his own son. From my fifth year, when I left the Minataree Indian tribe with which my parents and I lived on the upper Missouri River, until my eighteenth year, this General Clark generously and faithfully did. I was trained at some times by a Baptist minister and at others by a Catholic priest; my schooling included reading, writing, figures, world history, theology,
belles lettres
, and music, for which I showed a special aptitude. I also added to my native languages (French, Mandan, and Minataree) English and Latin. In two summers in Indian Territory, I was able to append some Sioux, Pawnee, Osage, and Mandan to my linguistic
repertoire
.

By good fortune, when I was employed in the fur trade on the lower Missouri in my eighteenth year and apparently gravitating into a career in the fur trade, I met Prince Paul of Württemberg, now Duke of that German principality: he was gathering botanical specimens for his collection and learning something of this continent for a book which he subsequently published in German. Being ambitious of greater things than guiding, interpreting, and trading in Indian Territory, I persuaded Prince Paul to retain my services and thereafter he took me with him to Europe. In Württemberg I lived for four years as Paul’s protege and virtually as a member of the royal family; I attended the University of Württemberg, which Shakespeare’s Hamlet attended, and added greatly to my knowledge; I deepened my study of musical history, theory, composition, and performance at the
pianoforte
; travelled widely in France, Spain, England, and North Africa, venturing to the Atlas Mountains and the impenetrable Sahara Desert. I am now returned with Paul to St. Louis at the age of twenty-four.

The success in this country and abroad of many romantic books and plays about Indians evidences the great popular interest in the native inhabitants of the North American continent. Yet these
oeuvres
are precisely
Romantic
; their representation of Indians is very fanciful indeed. As a member of both the white and red races, familiar with both cultures, and as a widely travelled and experienced observer, I believe that I can made a unique contribution to the knowledge of Indians, and to the attitudes that each race has toward the other. My experience, which is that of being regarded as an Indian in white society and as a white in Indian society, gives ground for observations that I believe to be original.

You may apply to General Clark at St. Louis and to Prince Paul (in care of General Clark) for an account of my character; and I have confidence that both of them might be persuaded to write notes of foreword for my book, which would add substantially to its interest.

In two months the Prince and I shall leave St. Louis for the upper Missouri and the Rocky Mountains; the Prince wishes to make more observations of Indian life; because of his generosity to me, I am obliged to accompany him on this journey which was the purpose of our taking leave of the continent of Europe; I shall take the occasion to reacquaint myself with the country and the people to which I was born. We shall return to St. Louis -next spring, at which time I plan to begin to transform the journals, which I have kept scrupulously since the age of sixteen, into a book. May I suggest the title An Indian Abroad, using abroad to mean not only “in foreign places” but “in alien places”?

I beg you to write me in care of General Clark about your interest in my undertaking.

Your humble servant, &c.,

Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau

AUGUST 7: Baptiste’s diary: “Coco remains in the situation in which I left her, but there is irony in that: She has been married; her husband, whom I never knew, took employment with American fur, went upriver for a single trip to learn something of the field end of the fur trade, and managed to get himself killed by an irate Sioux. Carelessness? Jealousy over a woman? It matters not. At 24, Coco was a widow and again living with her parents. Invited to dinner
chez
Berthold (a pleasant development, the result of my small
celebrity
), I rendered “Fur Elise” on the
pianoforte
, which is one of only three in the city. Coco pronounced it exquisite, and I believe Mme. Berthold was duly impressed. They were intrigued to hear more of Beethoven—his deafness, his virtuosity as pianist and violinist, and his titanic compositions, all of which they had only by vague report. Coco having been too impatient ever to learn to play, Mme. Berthold and I fumbled “our way through the slow movement of Beethoven’s
E-Minor Symphony
in the four-hand arrangement which I have brought. The reception much flattered the performance, and the entire evening was a grand success.”

AUGUST 9: “General Clark approves my scheme of writing a book, though the persuasion of Prince Paul added to my own was necessary to move him. He emphasizes that I must now make my own way in the world, and still talks much of my entering government service as an Indian agent. My further ideas of opening a shop to sell musical scores and musical instruments and to give music lessons he dismissed with the silence that with him means impatience. Nevertheless, he consents to write a foreword for my book. He also gave me a curious document, just published in
The Western Review
, that relates the life and violent death of Mike Fink. No one seems to know anything of Jim Beckwourth since he went with the Ashley men for the mountains some years ago. Winney is reported gone to New Orleans, doubtless a whore.”

Mike Fink: The Last of the Boatmen

In 1822, Mike and his two friends, Carpenter and Talbot, engaged in St. Louis with Henry and Ashley to go up the Missouri with them in the threefold capacity of boatmen, trappers and hunters. The first year a company of about sixty ascended as high as the mouth of the Yellow Stone river; where they built a fort for the purposes of trade and security. From this place, small detachments of men, ten or twelve in a company, were sent out to hunt and trap on the tributary streams of the Missouri and Yellow Stone. Mike and his two friends, and nine others were sent to the Muscle Shell river, a tributary of the Yellow Stone, when the winter set in. Mike and company returned to a place near the mouth of the Yellow Stone; and preferring to remain out of the fort, they dug a hole or cave in the bluff bank of the river for a winter house, in which they resided during the winter. This proved a warm and commodious habitation, protecting the inmates from winds and snow. Here Mike and his friend Carpenter quarrelled a deadly quarrel, the cause of which is not certainly known, but was thought to have been caused by a rivalry in the good graces of a squaw. The quarrel was smothered for the time by the interposition of mutual friends. On the return of spring, the party revisited the fort, where Mike and Carpenter, over a cup of whiskey, revived the recollection of their past quarrel; but made a treaty of peace which was to be solemnized by their usual trial of shooting the cup of whiskey from off each other’s head, as their custom was. This was at once the test of mutual reconciliation and renewed confidence. A question remained to be settled; who should have the first shot? To determine this, Mike proposed to “sky a copper” with Carpenter; that is, to throw up a copper. This was done, and Mike won the first shot. Carpenter seemed to be fully aware of Mike’s unforgiving temper and treacherous intent, for he declared that he was sure Mike would kill him. But Carpenter scorned life too much to purchase it by a breach of his solemn compact in refusing to stand the test. Accordingly, he prepared to die. He bequeathed his gun, shot pouch, and powder horn, his belt, pistols and wages to Talbot, in case he should be killed. They went to the fatal plain, and whilst Mike loaded his rifle and picked his flint, Carpenter filled his tin cup with whiskey to the brim, and without changing his features, he placed it on his devoted head as a target for Mike to shoot at. Mike levelled his rifle at the head of Carpenter, at the distance of sixty yards. After drawing a bead, he took down his rifle from his face, and smilingly said, “Hold your noodle steady, Carpenter, and don’t spill the whiskey, as I shall want some presently!” He again raised, cocked his piece, and in an instant Carpenter fell, and expired without a groan.—Mike’s ball had penetrated the forehead of Carpenter in the center, about an inch and a half above the eyes. He coolly set down his rifle, and applying the muzzle to his mouth blew the smoke out of the touch hole without saying a word—keeping his eye steadily on the fallen body of Carpenter. His first words were, “Carpenter! have you spilt the whiskey!” He was then told that he had killed Carpenter. “It is all an accident,” said Mike, “for I took as fair a bead on the black spot on the cup as I ever took on a squirrel’s eye. How did it happen!” He then cursed the gun, the powder, the bullet, and finally himself.

This catastrophe (in a country where the strong arm of the law cannot reach) passed off for an accident; and Mike was permitted to go at large under the belief that Carpenter’s death was the result of contingency. But Carpenter had a fast friend in Talbot, who only waited a fair opportunity to revenge his death. No opportunity offered for some months after, until one day, Mike in a fit of gasconading, declared to Talbot that he did kill Carpenter on purpose, and that he was glad of it. Talbot instantly drew from his belt a pistol (the same which had belonged to Carpenter), and shot Mike through the heart. Mike fell to the ground and expired without a word. Talbot, also, went unpunished, as nobody had authority, or inclination to call him on account. Truth was, Talbot was as ferocious and dangerous as the grizly bear of the prairies. About three months after, Talbot was present in the battle with the Aurickarees in which Col. Leavenworth commanded, where he displayed a coolness which would have done honor to a better man. He came out of the battle unharmed. About ten days after, he was drowned in the Titan river, in attempting to swim it. Thus ended “the last of the boatmen.”

AUGUST 12: Baptiste’s diary: “At breakfast Paul indicated that I must press forward with my St. Louis business so that our expedition upriver can begin; he has completed what preparations are needful, but can profitably spend more time conversing with General Clark about Indians and perusing Clark’s large collection of
artifacts
. I much impressed upon him that all my hopes rest on my book—otherwise I may end as only another buckskin-clad interpreter, scorned by civilized people—and that I wish to wait a while in anticipation of a reply from Harper & Brothers. He has given me until September 1. I have the $100 per month Paul will pay me for my services as an interpreter and guide, probably a sum of $900; and Gen. Clark has generously offered me $250 to carry certain papers to Fort Leavenworth, Fort Atkinson, and Fort Union. On my return, that much will I be able to count on for sustenance while setting down my story for the public.”