Charbonneau (20 page)

AUGUST 14: “Now
le sauvage naïf
has apparently gained the place of an acceptable young gentleman about town. Today I took Coco riding to see the convent below the islands of the Missouri, borrowing Gen. Clark’s handsome roan for myself. Mme. Berthold may not have been entirely pleased with Coco’s choice; but she is now a young widow and therefore of status where she may be neither directed nor chaperoned; and she could see no objection to her riding with her “old childhood friend.” Did Mme. Berthold know what transpired between us, she would he most displeased, volcanically displeased. For when Coco spread the cloth for our picnic luncheon, I gently untied the bow of her chapeau, unfastened her elegant white dress (which took so much time that she very nearly recovered her resistance), and in full daylight under the hot August sun, put it to her. As it happened, when I gave her my
love
, it was full of anger and therefore of energy. I have the distinct impression that she had never been loved quite so actively before. It seemed to surprise her, but from her reaction I can only judge that she wishes thus to be loved again and again. That causes me to regret that my time in St. Louis, on this occasion, is no longer than it is. A happy event, a happy day.”

The next morning Isaiah appeared at the hotel to summon Baptiste to see General Clark immediately.

Baptiste found Clark in the big Council Room with five Indians—chiefs, he guessed, from the elaborateness of their dress. Clark asked him to sit down. No one knew the chiefs’ languages, and maybe Baptiste could help out.

They were Flatheads and a Nez Percé, Clark explained. Ashley’s crew had directed them to St. Louis from the trappers’ rendezvous because they wanted to see the Red-Headed Chief. Clark did not remember any of them, but the Lewis and Clark expedition had camped with both tribes crossing the Rockies westward in 1805. And he’d be damned if he knew what they’d come for. General Clark was evidently a bit out of patience. Had they been a tribe of the Great Plains, any number of trappers, boatmen, and interpreters might have spoken their language. But this bunch was from Oregon.

Baptiste didn’t speak their languages either. He could do nothing but confirm for Clark that the ambiguous sign language conveyed what it seemed to convey, though with signs you could never be absolutely sure.

Right now the chiefs were again going through the ceremonial greetings and expression of deference and declarations of sincerity and friendly feeling that they had gone through yesterday. Clark had Baptiste flash back his similar declarations. Baptiste knew that there was no way to hurry an Indian through this.

Then came the first bit of substance. The chiefs promised for both their peoples, and all the tribes and bands of both peoples, their everlasting allegiance to the Red-Headed Chief. Clark explained to them through Baptiste about the greater White Father, the one in the great village on the Salt-Water-Everywhere many sleeps to the east, the father who was chief of all the white men. This confused the chiefs. They had been told about another chief of all the white men who lived on the other side of the Salt-Water-Everywhere to the east. Clark cussed the Britishers—the Oregon question wasn’t yet settled—and had Baptiste tell them that the White Father he spoke of was their chief. They may not have understood, but they pledged their allegiance. They promised peace as long as the sun shone and the water flowed. They promised never to fight with their white brothers. They promised to befriend those of their white brothers who came into their country, to give them shelter, to feed them when they were hungry, to give them the skins of animals. They begged their white brothers to come to them.

Baptiste figured they were trying to get trade—must be needing guns, maybe to fend off the Blackfeet again. Clark had said the Blackfeet were well armed by the Hudson Bay Company, damn John Bull. And maybe these chiefs were wanting some big gifts to make them everlastingly friendly.

Clark, though, knew that was enough for the day. He summoned the chiefs to a meal, and asked Baptiste to come again the next morning. Hell, Baptiste thought, he still wants to initiate me into what he thinks is my natural career.

AUGUST 19: Baptiste’s diary: “I spent the morning again in finger converse with the chiefs and General Clark. The affair is outrageously stupid, and would try anyone’s patience. The afternoon more satisfactory: I sneaked into Coco’s room when everyone was out and dallied in bed with her. The enterprise, though, was taken at great risk to us both, and it would be unwise to repeat it.”

AUGUST 24: “Coco and I attended the dance
chez
Labbadie, and much enjoyed ourselves, to the unspoken consternation of everyone present. Our public demeanor, however, is impeccably impersonal. We had to part without touching.”

AUGUST 26: “Prince Paul sat in on one of our meetings with the chiefs. Afterwards I explained the entire affair to him, somewhat to his amusement. Coco and I managed to slip away this afternoon to ride, and ride, again.”

The hotel clerk handed Baptiste an envelope of heavy brown paper: It was from New York.

New York, New York

August 1, 1829

M. Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau

In the care of General William Clark

Superintendent, Bureau of Indian Affairs

St. Louis

State of Missouri

M. Charbonneau:

Harper & Brothers are pleased that you have thought of our firm in connection with the publishing of your projected book. We are receptive to seeing your completed manuscript, or to seeing any part of it that you may at present have written.

Sincerely yours,

A. J. Gurney

Editor

“Goddamn,” Baptiste grinned. He showed the letter to Paul, who declared himself happy for his protege; Baptiste begged for three or four days to do some writing so that he could send off a part of the manuscript to New York before they set out upriver. Paul consented.

Baptiste’s manuscript:

In the summer of 1829, after an absence of nearly six years from the shores of North America,
le sauvage naïf
returned to the United States with Prince Paul. Because of his wide experience of the world and his university education, he considered himself well fitted for a substantial post in commerce or any other post that might be open to a young man of twenty-four years of comparable knowledge and experience; yet because of his too intimate acquaintance with the prejudice of whites against “breeds,” he also feared that few or no avenues would be open to him. Therefore he was partly receptive to the arguments of his old benefactor and friend, General Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, that he should enter the service of the U.S. government as an Indian agent: General Clark declared convincingly that the young man, having the languages and the knowledge of both peoples, could render great service to his red people and promote understanding between the two races.

Fate, however, sometimes take a determining hand in these matters. Just as Charbonneau was giving heed to the General’s well-intended words, an event transpired, with an irony that seemed Providential, to close his mind to such a possibility forever.

In August, not long after Prince Paul and Charbonneau’s arrival in St. Louis, five chiefs of the Flathead and Nez-Percé Indians lifewise entered the city; though they had come only half the distance in miles, they had ventured from a place much further from St. Louis in other ways—from their home on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains in the Oregon Territory. They had made this journey, incomparably difficult for them, a wayfaring into the mysterious and unknown, as a kind of pilgrimage: They said they had come for the white man’s book, the Bible.

These Indians, living in one of the least accessible areas of all the West, the mountains where Lewis and Clark made their arduous crossing of the Continental Divide, have had almost no contact with the white man, much less than the warlike Sioux and the infamous Blackfeet. Yet they heard from British and French-Canadian fur traders of the Bible; and they wanted to discover the medicine hidden in this great book for themselves. Therefore they made a long journey from their homes through unfamiliar country to find the Red-Headed Chief. (They remembered Clark with trust and affection from nearly a quarter of a century earlier, and recalled the promises of friendship and assistance he had given them.) Hearing that he was in St. Louis, they did not heed that the way was long and hard and led through the lands of tribes hostile to them; they resolutely took the trail eastward.

On arriving in St. Louis, they found that no one in that city accustomed to Indians spoke their language. They were obliged to explain their pilgrimage to Clark through primitive and unclear sign language. (Clark, wanting to baptize his Paump in the responsibilities of Indian agents, asked your Charbonneau to assist in interpreting.) First there was much smoking of the ceremonial pipe, and many repetitions and elaborations on both sides of the friendship and loyalty both white and red had for each other. When the chiefs turned to the substance of their mission, General Clark could scarcely believe the words of the interpreter; he himself watched the hands of the chiefs carefully several times over while they repeated what they wanted. Were they indeed asking for the white man’s book that told the secrets of the white man’s God? The Bible? Even General Clark, wise in the ways of the Indians through his long experience, was inclined to see here the evidence of the hand of God, the sign of a miracle. What, other than the mysterious ways in which God works, could lead benighted Indians to seek the salvation of their souls through Jesus Christ? However, he remained uncertain that he understood them and continued the parleys.

General Clark could not easily give them the Bible anyway. They had no knowledge of writing, much less of the languages in which the Bible is printed. He had it in the back of his mind to report this extraordinary event to the various missionary societies that were beginning to clamor for the conversion of American savages to Christianity, but he took no action yet except to continue talking with them. It was during these extended talks that Charbonneau came to realize what great goal the chiefs had come to St. Louis to achieve.

Indian medicine, that is, religion, is the source of Indian power in this world, rather than the source of his salvation in the next. The Indian assuages and implores the forces around him with his magical chants, songs, dances, and prayers; in that manner he believes he gets what he needs to live. When he wants rain, he appeals to the gods of thunder and the west wind. When he wants meat, or blankets, or hides for his tipis, he does a buffalo dance. When he wants great strength, he prays to the grizzly bear, perhaps even eats some of the fur of that bear. He gets the necessities of life through his medicine, his religion.

When these Indians saw the white man’s guns, his watches and compasses, his brass buttons, his clothing, his saddles, they were amazed; they had no knowledge of manufacturing and therefore assumed that the white man got these marvellous objects through his religion, through prayer and the conjuring of his God. It must be a powerful God, they concluded, who dispenses such gifts on the people who pray to him.

Charbonneau, observing that the chiefs recurrently mentioned the white man’s book and the goods that they wanted, in close relationship, as though connected, at last realized that there was a connection between the two in the Indians’ minds: They did not seek the Bible to cleanse their souls against Judgment Day; they sought it so that they could pray to God and magically get guns and other trade goods. They wanted to own for themselves the goose that laid the golden eggs!

Charbonneau urgently pointed out to General Clark what he believed to be the key to the chiefs’ thinking. General Clark confessed that he was beginning to surmise the same. Then the extraordinary event: General Clark averred that he could see nothing to do but tell the chiefs that he would try to send them, in due time, someone who could tell them about the white man’s medicine as taught in the white man’s book; and he felt obliged to report the Indians’ plea for Christianity to the churches.

Le sauvage naïf
, feeling more than ever
naïf
and somewhat outraged, protested emphatically, to no avail.

Why, he demanded rather too peremptorily of General Clark, could the matter not be suppressed? Why could the chiefs not be told that the white man’s
science
, and not his
religion
, produces the wonders that the Indians coveted?

“Paump,” said General Clark, using still the affectionate name by which he knew me as an infant, “we must not cavil about these things. Perhaps the Indians ask to know our Lord for the wrong reasons. Our Lord has used even stranger means to bring lost souls to the light. My conscience could not rest easy if I did not at least inform the missionary societies of this appeal. I might be responsible for souls lost that could have been saved.

“Even if I wanted to stop the missionary movement to the Indians,” he continued, “I could not. This summer Bill Sublette has taken wagons to the Rocky Mountains. Organizations are being formed to promote emigration to Oregon, and in ten or twenty years white settlements there will be substantial. The duty of the government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens: That means that the wagon route to the Pacific Coast must be made safe; it means that the Oregon settlements must be protected from Indians. It means that the Indians of the West must learn to live with the white man. All that is inevitable, Paump. Perhaps missionaries can help to persuade the Indians to be peaceful; if not, then the U.S. Army must pacify them. The missionaries are the more kindly means. And,” he added pointedly, “the whites will make every effort to convert the Indians anyway.”

It is the old story, thought Charbonneau: First the traders, then the missionaries, then the soldiers.

It was a classic case of two races, two peoples of different cultures, misunderstanding one another. The Indians do not want salvation in the next life; they want material goods in this life. They have asked for goods, and they will be misunderstood, with cause, by millions of Americans who cannot know what the Indians really want. In good conscience these Americans will offer them a terrible delusion which will in time lead to terrible disillusion. It will also lead to the further subjugation of the American Indian.