Sign-Talker (20 page)

He woke to a shout in the afternoon: “Hey! Indian swimmin’ over! Lookee! Two more!” “Sioux at last!” Clark cried. “That last prairie burn got their attention! Hey! Red boat, bring Dorion up!”

His heart pounded with the drum, and when the Sioux warriors trilled, his own voice broke out of him in his people’s war cry, which he had never uttered in battle. The soldiers turned and looked at him, eyes big in the firelight with astonishment. He was as startled as they at his outcry.

The dancers’ chattering rattles sent wave after wave of shivers through him. He had never in his adult life been so stirred.

There were about seventy warriors and boys here, so the captains had warned the men to be on guard for any trouble, even though these were Dorion’s people—Yankton Sioux, who called themselves
Dahkotah
, or Allies—and were friendly. They were erect, sinewy, sharp-eyed and proud. Their chiefs were Shaking Hand, White Crane, and Half Man. Only a few had guns, cheap, rusty trade muskets; most were armed with bows, lances, clubs, hatchets, and knives. The soldiers’ fine rifles would not be much advantage if any trouble broke out in the crowd; it would all be face-to-face, hand-to-hand cutting and bludgeoning, and the soldiers were far outnumbered. The only sense of security lay in old Pierre Dorion’s assurances, and in his influence with them. He had Sioux wives, and sons by them; one of those sons, Pierre
le jeune
, had come to the soldier camp with all these Indians.

The captains, aside from their nervousness, were delighted. The President’s grand plan for peaceful commerce hinged on cooperation with the powerful Sioux tribes, of which there were about twenty; now represented here was one of their factions, acting friendly enough so far, and thanks to Dorion and son there was no language barrier.

Today there had been plenty of talking and gift-giving and
showing off, including an impressive display of archery skills by young boys. Now tonight there was this big party around the bonfires. Tomorrow the formal
parloir
, or powwow, would continue. The Yankton chiefs had already expressed an eagerness for a reliable source of goods, as the Teton Sioux farther upriver jealously controlled the flow of British goods from Canada. The quantity and quality of utensils and ornaments they had already seen today made their eyes gleam.

The Dorions had instructed the Americans in the protocol of rewarding the dancers and musicians: tossing them tobacco, hawks’ bells, beads, whistles, and cheap knives. And in the shadows outside the fire circles, some of the randy voyageurs were already trying the art of seduction by barter on the few women who had followed the warriors down. There was whiskey breath in the air.

Four tall, elegant, composed warriors held themselves apart from the rest, while staying close enough to the fires to be admired. They deigned to talk only to one another, cheerfully and with the familiarity of brothers. Dorion had pointed them out as members of a society known as Warriors Who Never Step Back. Whatever the odds or jeopardy, they never took cover or fled, but stood their ground until they won or died. Dorion said that the society had recently had twenty-two warriors but eighteen had been killed in a battle with the Crow people far to the west, and only these four survived. The captains had shown a fervid interest in this society. Captain Lewis told the chiefs that American soldiers were just such a society, and fled from no threat. Drouillard thought that was a pretty tall boast; as well as he had been able to discern, only two or three of the expedition’s soldiers had ever been in combat, except for their brawls among themselves back in winter camp at Riviere à Dubois.

Now a sweaty warrior stepped out from the rest dancing around the flames, and danced a tale of his exploits in war, all told by mime: stalking, springing, crouching, striking, holding up a scalp. The soldiers encouraged and applauded him with shouts, whistles, clapping, and tossing tobacco and trinkets at his feet.

Bratton leaned close to Drouillard, breathing whiskey smell, and said, “They think they’re so brave, tell ’em how we’uns went right up t’ their Devil Mount ’n’ walked all ’round on it! They’re ’fraid to do that!”

“No.”

“Huh what?”

“I’m not going to tell them that.”

“Puh! Just ’cause you were afeard to go up!”

“No. Because we didn’t belong up there. Believe me, they won’t admire that the way you want ’em to.”

And then Drouillard had to worry that Captain Lewis, with his liquor and bravado and his ignorance of Indians, might get carried away himself and brag about climbing the Bad Spirit hill. Surely old Dorion would have the sense not to translate it to them if he did. But then, it was Dorion who had told Lewis about it in the first place.

It was late at night before the Indian dancers yielded the dance ground and the corps could begin to put on its own show.

The opening spectacle was little Pierre Cruzatte, springing into the firelight like a grasshopper with his fiddle held overhead in his left hand, the bow in the right. To the Indians, the instruments must have appeared to be weapons. As he hopped all the way around the fire on bent legs, leering, his one eye rolling and bulging like a madman’s, he twirled the fiddle bow and waved the fiddle by its neck like a war club. Then, stopping right in front of the three dignified chiefs, he tucked the fiddle under his chin, stomped three times with his right foot, dragged the bow over the two low strings in a mournful announcing note, which probably sounded to them like the moan of a wounded animal. That was followed so quickly with a squealing, swiftly bowed tune on the high strings that the chiefs almost fell over backward in astonishment. For the next hour the soldiers stamped, whirled, swung, bowed and cavorted, whooping and yipping, to fiddle, tin horns, Jew’s harps, and finger cymbals. York was coaxed out to dance, and the sight of the huge black man dancing with the alacrity of a sprite finally overtopped anything the Indians had seen, and not long after midnight the festivities were closed. The
Sioux were ferried across in the white pirogue to their campsite across the river, with the understanding that the talks would resume tomorrow after the chiefs had held council. When they were ready, they would be brought back across and feasted again, and would have their opportunity to reply to all they had heard from the captains today. Laughter and cheerful voices echoed across the water, wisps of pleasantry through the hush of a strong and mild southerly wind.

Drouillard listened to wind and water, watching a sentry pace the riverbank silhouetted against starlit water, remembering the great, surging feeling of wildness that had made him yip and trill with the warriors. Wind and stars and wild freedom: these were expanding his spirit until he felt a swelling under his throat, like another scream wanting to come out. The captains and soldiers had done well and had been respectful; he wasn’t ashamed to be seen with them by Indians. But he knew they didn’t belong here.

He lay there trying to sleep. Two soldiers, Werner and Whitehouse, were still awake nearby, in soft voices revising a familiar old song to suit the impressions of the evening. They sang in murmurs:

The captains were so elated by the success and harmony of their first council with the Sioux that even a night-long rainstorm at the next camp didn’t dampen their spirits.

Drouillard was in a turmoil of rich and troubling feelings. He was relieved that Captain Lewis had learned at least not to tell the Sioux who their chiefs were. But Drouillard hoped the officers weren’t fooling themselves. It had gone so well because of the Yanktons’ trust in Dorion and his son, and their fluency in the language. Dorion had been a gift from the Master of Life, but was gone now. Lewis had sent him back with the Yanktons to persuade some chiefs to go next spring to meet the President.

Chief Half Man’s last warning lingered in Drouillard’s memory: “I fear those nations above will not open their ears.”

With no one now in the party able to speak with the stronger bands of Sioux except by hand signs—though Cruzatte knew a very few Sioux words—the next encounter could not be as easy as this one had been.

But what a people! Drouillard thought. Nothing had ever heartened him so much as seeing an Indian people free in their own land. Again the notion whispered deep in him that it
might be just as well if this expedition failed to go farther into that land.

Every morning, Drouillard ascended the riverbank at first light and ranged out on the plains to take up the trail of the lost man, Shannon, and every day he found also the trail of John Colter, still following. Shannon had been missing nearly two weeks now, and for a week of that time Colter had been on his track, never catching up.

But yesterday Colter had returned to the boat. He had given up on catching Shannon and the horses, and on the way back he had killed a buffalo, an elk, three deer, five turkeys, a goose, and a beaver, which he had up on scaffolds not far ahead. He had come back to report that Shannon was apparently still alive and moving rapidly, and to find out whether to keep on in pursuit. “I don’t know what he’s livin’ on,” Colter had said, “unless it be grapes. No sign he’d kilt anything but one rabbit. Bones by a little fire. He’s sure the poorest hunter in this army. But I reckon if he gets hungry enough he can kill a horse. Maybe if he tied it to a tree and took real careful aim he could hit his horse?”

So this morning the captains had landed at a dome-shaped hill on the south bank and climbed it, taking a spyglass, hoping they might see Shannon ahead from that eminence. They didn’t see him. They were descending to the riverbank when they discovered a kind of animal they had never seen before.

The creatures had made burrow holes over several acres of the slope above the river. They were whistling to each other, apparently in warning as the officers approached. The captains heard the whistling sound and looked over to see several of the animals scurrying into the holes. Some then stood in the burrows with their heads and shoulders out, watching like sentinels as the captains stooped here and there trying to see into the holes.

The rest of the afternoon evolved into a single-minded campaign
to capture one of these rodents for the President. Drouillard gazed in amazement and amusement as almost the entire manpower of the corps passed buckets and kettles of water up from the Missouri River to pour into one of the burrows, hoping to flood a few of the rodents out. The equivalent of five barrels of water were poured in, the soldiers now and then probing the ground with long poles. Eventually Drouillard found himself involved in the mud-spattered eviction effort, and he was down on hands and knees when a soaked, furry, squirrel-like face bobbed up through the muddy water in the hole. Before anyone else had the presence of mind to move, he grabbed its nape and extended the animal to Lewis. “Here, Cap’n. My gift to Chief Jefferson.”

The voyageurs referred to the rodents as Little Dogs of the Prairie, finding their yips suggestive of barking. A cage was built for the specimen, in hopes that it could be kept alive until it could be sent to the President.

In this exhausting period of struggling up through the sandbars and twisting channels, worrying about Shannon and watching for signs of the next of the Sioux tribes, one natural novelty after another distracted the officers. Captain Clark became obsessed with a fleet prairie creature that was either a goat or an antelope, with short, forked horns and of a light sorrel color. He hiked onshore whenever he could, hoping for a shot at one, but it was impossible to get near them. To steady his rifle for the long, long shots that would be needed to get one, he began carrying an espontoon, which was a short infantry officer’s spear with a hilt-like cross piece behind its head. With the butt of the spear on the ground and the rifle barrel resting on the cross piece, a long, standing shot could be much steadier. But even with this, Clark failed to bring down any of the pronged-horn creatures. Sometimes he took York on the hunts with him, and one day the servant killed two buffalo. The uplift to his pride was a marvel to see. He swaggered and smiled, wordlessly declaring that no mere slave carried a rifle and killed buffalo.

One day Drouillard followed buffalo on a beaten trail and found a strong salt spring. The captains meanwhile discovered a
molasses spring and the fossil backbone of what looked to be some sort of fish or whale, nearly as long as the keelboat. The “molasses” was some kind of bitumen oozing from under a blue shale bluff; it looked, even tasted, like molasses. The vertebrae and teeth of the great fish protruded from the earth of a ridge, providing the troops endless speculation on how a fish could have climbed to high ground. It also gave them much to complain about, as it was carried piece by piece down to the river and added to the burgeoning load of specimens and souvenirs that had to be rowed up the river.