Sign-Talker (15 page)

The weather held pleasant, with a refreshing breeze. The great Missouri flowed by below, and the tall yellow grasses on the bluffs waved and rippled in the sunlight. The meal was not only succulent fat meat but also a profusion of grapes, currants, plums, and berries the soldiers had been gathering during their wait in this beautiful place. York, carrying food around, was so awe-inspiring that many of the Indians almost forgot to eat when he was in sight, although these tribes had been exposed to traders long enough to know there were people with black skin. Captain Lewis’s dog sat trembling near his master in anticipation of meat scraps, his patience and good manners amazing to a people whose own dogs prowled and cringed around feasts.

The Indians wanted Drouillard to sit with them, so he sat between the young Missouria and a leathery, cheerful Oto whose main interest seemed to be in the magic by which Drouillard could ignite tobacco through the magnifying lens in his compass cover. Drouillard conversed with the two by hand signs and learned a few things that made him realize the afternoon would be amusing. He and Hospitality talked about tribes and soldiers. The young man was a quick and graceful sign-talker, and didn’t bother with the grim reserve that warriors affected. One thing amusing Hospitality was that the officers seemed to think these Indians they were entertaining so diligently were chiefs. Actually, they were just family clan headmen, as good a hasty collection as could be got together while the main body of people was out hunting on the plains.

The young man himself, being treated to all this ceremony, was not even a family headman. He was just a boy whose dreams and bright nature had marked him as one likely to become a spiritual leader. He wondered whether the captains had even recognized him as the person who had been here before. Drouillard put his right thumb to his chest, then put his fist over his heart
with forefinger extended and thrust it away, turning it down. Then he flipped his open hand over and back.

I think no
.

So Hospitality just tried to look dignified and enjoyed the joke.

In the afternoon the Indians, through their interpreter Faufon, explained that these were not principal chiefs here, and proclaimed themselves ill-qualified to speak for their people.

But they said they had been pleased to hear that these new people coming in would not be stingy, like the French and Spanish traders. “They will not give us any gift for nothing,” said one of the older headmen. “We will be glad to be out from under them.”

Hospitality stood up to speak. His deer-hair crest rippled like blown grass in the breeze under the awning. He was shy and his voice soft. “You please us with good advice and tell us how you want us to behave. We will try to bring our headmen to talk to you before you go too far up the river and away. Your great boat is full of beautiful presents. We will take some to our headmen, and they will want to talk to you. Perhaps they will go to see the new Great Father in your country. We are a poor people. When our hunters return they will be out of powder. Please give us some gunpowder and a drop of your milk.” The Frenchman translated, saying that by “milk” he meant whiskey.

One more headman spoke. He said one of the big troubles of his people was the hostility of the more powerful Omahas up the Missouri, as well as the Pawnees who lived up the Platte. He said that if the Americans could heal those troubles and truly make the road of peace they promised, the Otoes and Missourias would owe them much gratitude and respect.

Their Frenchman concluded with a report that the Spaniards in Santa Fe had recently invited the Platte River tribes to go and trade with them there, and that a few people had set out this summer for that city, which was a journey of about twenty-five days.

Immediately, then, Captain Lewis moved to resume control of the council. He told the Indians again that they now lived on the
land of their great new American Father, who would be angry if they traded with the Spaniards of Santa Fe, or the British from the north. He swept his hand around to indicate the bluffs above and this good, level bottomland, and told them that this would be a good place for an American trading center, and that it would be full of more and greater goods than anything they had ever seen, because big boats could carry so much more up the Missouri than could be carried overland from the Spaniards. He said the White Father would surely want to put a store here because it was a place close to so many tribes that would soon be at peace with each other.

In fact, he said, if you will send up your chiefs and have them catch up with us there at the towns of the Omahas, we will halt there and help you make peace with them.

Drouillard translated these grand promises, but thought: the Creator gave me two ears, one to hear like a whiteman and the other to hear like an Indian. Captain Lewis certainly talked like a man who believed he could do anything, and he seemed to believe his own words. He had wealth to buy anything he needed. But the Indian ear heard a stranger who showed up one day and claimed he owned the Great Spirit’s land and could not only make all Indians obey his wishes, but all British and French and Spaniards too.

And now Captain Lewis began proclaiming certain of the Indians to be chiefs.

The first was the Oto, Little Thief. Though he was not present, and was already a chief in the eyes of his own people, he was now made First Chief by the Americans. They set aside a bundle of clothing, a flag, and one of the largest medals, to be delivered to him. They made Big Horse a second chief of the Otoes and made a bundle for him with a smaller medal. Then they gave Hospitality a medal of that same size and called him another second chief. Hospitality, delighted and bewildered to find himself suddenly a chief, shook the captains’ hands vigorously, seemed poised to hug them, but backed off, then stepped over and threw his arms around Drouillard with a laugh that was almost a squeal. Then he wandered out, blinking and shaking his
head in wonderment, while the captains named four other chiefs. In response to their earlier special request, the captains had a canister of gunpowder and a bottle of whiskey brought from the boat. The whiskey was served in little glasses to the Indians, and seemed to make them happier in their befuddlement.

It was still early afternoon. Captain Lewis had Sergeant Ordway bring the air rifle from the boat. Drouillard had heard of this device but had never seen it. He had heard the captain talk about demonstrating it to impress Indians, if they ever found any Indians to impress, and now they had found some. It looked like an ordinary long rifle, but without the protruding flintlock and frizzen, and with a thicker stock. The captain, in the shade of the awning and shielded by Captain Clark, pumped a lever. Then Captain Lewis went out before the Indians and let them see him load a ball in a greased patch down the barrel and tamp it with a ramrod, while Ordway walked out about seventy paces and set up a target, a kerchief attached to two sticks stuck in the ground. The Indians’ attention was called to the demonstration. Captain Lewis took standing aim; the Indians squinted in anticipation of the noise and smoke. Several smiled and turned to each other for some quick chattering, which Drouillard presumed to be wagering. With the smoothbore muskets they were accustomed to, such a shot would have been very unlikely.

Lewis announced, “Now!” and squeezed the trigger. With no smoke and less noise than a light sneeze, the shot flipped the target out of the ground and dropped it into the grass.

The whole party of Indians blinked and looked at each other, looked at Captain Lewis, looked at Ordway, who had stepped over to replace the target, and started talking rapidly. Monsieur Faufon told Drouillard that some of the Indians believed the sergeant had done a trick out there, perhaps with a snare string. All the while, Captain Lewis was putting another ball down the barrel. He waved Ordway to the side, aimed, asked Faufon to quiet the Indians’ discussion and have them watch, and then squeezed the trigger again. Again the white kerchief flopped away.

If the Indians had not had their dram of whiskey, they might have realized by then that this was actually a special kind of a
gun instead of some sort of a trick; as it was, it required four more successful shots to convince them that this white man was actually shooting the little target with something as quiet as bow and arrow but more accurate than a musket. By the time the demonstration was over, the soldiers had taken down the awning and struck camp. It was a good time to leave, while the Indians were still a little bedazzled and slightly tipsy. Hospitality, the new boy chief of the Missourias, caught Drouillard and pressed a cheek to his. Then he signed,
Question: See you when?

Drouillard signed:
Far, two winters
. He held up the shivering fists that meant winter.

Hospitality nodded gravely, and gestured:
I leave heart on the ground
. Then he stood with his fellow chiefs and warriors and watched the corps in its boats and its hunters on their horses move away up the river. For a change there was a southwest wind, and the boats moved under sail, a pretty sight that these Indians might never have seen before.

Drouillard had ridden about a league when he saw the red pirogue row up close to the keelboat. A soldier climbed down into the pirogue and was rowed to shore. As the man came striding back down the west bank, Drouillard saw that it was Moses Reed, one of the shifty malcontents of the crew. Drouillard rode down the slope and met him. “Where you headed, Mr. Reed?”

Reed squinted up at him, the afternoon sky-glare in his eye. “I left my knife back there where we put up them shelters. Cap’n told me to go back an’ get it and then catch up.”

“Long walk. Three miles back, and then by the time you get back here they’ll likely be three more miles farther up. Kind of discourages a man from leavin’ things lying around, eh?” Reed apparently took it as a personal criticism, scowled, and started to move on. Drouillard thought of the distances and the descending sun. This fool probably wouldn’t come back till after dark and he’d get lost and then he or Colter or somebody’d have to waste a morning going back to hunt for him. So Drouillard said, “Why don’t you just get on my packhorse and we’ll trot back there real
quick and find your knife? If the Indians didn’t carry it off, that is.” He knew the captains wouldn’t like that, as the long walk was part of the lesson about carelessness, but he was willing to risk a little censure for that if it could save trouble the next day.

Reed was thinking hard, then he said: “Well, you don’t need to go back with me. But I’d be obleeged for the loan o’ that spare horse, and I could go back quicker.”

Drouillard looked at him and saw some cunning in his face. “I said I’d ride back with you. But I can’t give you my packhorse.”

“Why not, man?”

“First place, it’s in my charge. Second, I usually get a deer or elk this time of evening, and that’s why I’ve got this horse, is to carry meat.”

“Aw, hell, Drouillard. Get a deer, you can load it up when I come back up with the horse. Be a good Injin an’ gimme the borry of that horse.”

“Guess you better get down there while there’s light to hunt for your knife, Reed. Have a nice walk.” And with a light shift of his weight in the saddle he rode away.

Reed called after him: “Goddamn difficult half-breed! Hell, it’s an army horse, an’ you ain’t even in the army!”

Drouillard suddenly felt a tingle of danger in his back. He turned quickly and saw that Reed had raised his rifle as high as his waist, one hand at the flintlock. Drouillard reined the horse left and halted so that his own rifle across the saddle just happened to be pointed at Reed, and said quietly, “Yeah, better hold that gun with both hands so y’ don’t lose it too.” He glanced upriver. The keelboat was far up but still in sight. He looked back and saw that Reed was considering the boat too. He sat there and waited until Reed turned and trotted on down the riverbank. Only then did Drouillard turn back north.

He rode onto the higher ground to get out of the clouds of mosquitoes, the late sun glaring from above the western horizon, grass rising and flattening like flowing currents of gold. A dark shape raced along above the northern horizon, then rose and swerved and changed shape: a great flock of tiny birds moving as if all one. He scanned the slopes and draws for game. He saw
elk moving along a height, but they were on the other side of the river, so distant they looked like a line of ants on the smooth contours of the land. He tried to keep his mind clear in the hunting attitude, but he was not serene. The soldier Reed had annoyed him with his “half-breed” talk and his menace, but that was a small part of it. What was really bothering him, rising up like a bad digestion, was his part in that damned council. He remembered the eager, friendly faces of the Otoes and Missourias when the council started, and then the confusion and doubt that had begun to show as they listened to the vague promises and the veiled threats of Captain Lewis’s speech. He remembered their disappointment with the medals and pieces of paper, all of no apparent use, and the dearth of other gifts. They knew the big boat was full of useful and pretty things, and they knew it was going on upriver into the lands of their enemies, the Omaha and the Sioux, who would probably get much more.

But what gnawed sharpest in Drouillard was the memory of Captain Lewis telling those Indians who would be their chiefs.

In many ways, Drouillard had come to admire these captains—even Lewis, swollen as he was with his own importance.

But what Lewis did not know, or care, about Indian people and their tribal ways, was going to defeat his own cause. Worse, in Drouillard’s mind, was the trouble Lewis’s ignorance was likely to cause among the Indians themselves. He imagined Hospitality going back to his people and proclaiming that a passing whiteman had made him their chief. Maybe the youth wasn’t that foolish, but one never knew what would grow in a man’s head. The one called Jefferson had certainly planted such a seed in Lewis.

Drouillard remembered that one of his own justifications for coming with these captains had been that he might be able to help protect them from their own ignorance.