Sign-Talker (24 page)

Drouillard veered toward the river and looked down on yet another burned-out ruin of an Arikara town. There were many like that since the smallpox; the survivors had migrated upriver to join with other survivors. One of the towns had been abandoned so recently that its fields were full of squash, pumpkins, corn, and beans ripe for harvest. The Americans had stopped there and collected enough to vary the diet. York had been able to make a pumpkin pie, gleefully remembering just how his wife used to do it.

Drouillard felt good now as he thought of York. The man seemed less and less like a slave as they came along. Though he still kept up his duties as Captain Clark’s manservant, he also did his share on the oars, setting poles, and tow ropes, where his great physical strength was appreciated, and the more it was appreciated, the more he was willing to show it off. He had grown from gunbearer to hunter on his long shore walks with his master, his marksmanship becoming better under Clark’s instruction. As the soldiers’ respect for him grew, so did his openness and high humor. He had rigged himself out with flair, perhaps remembering Drouillard’s description of Caesar the Negro Shawnee. He had been gathering muskrat skulls, hooves, mussel shells, arrowheads, Indian hairpipes, feathers, bear claws, and pretty pebbles, and had drilled and strung them to make for himself a big hank of barbaric, rattling necklaces, inventing for
each a legend of magic. He wore a blue, old-style Continental Army coat, breechcloth, and handmade leather leggings and moccasins. He wore a red headkerchief, sometimes with a three-cornered black hat on top, with a buzzard feather sewed to the crown. A few times he had been permitted to range the hills hunting with Drouillard, away from his master, and those had been wonderful times for York, who still liked to think of himself and Drouillard as the expedition’s only “colored folk.”

“I still been pesterin’ Mas’ Billy. ’Bout lettin’ me free.”

“What’s he say?”

“Like with ’em Sioux. Li’l promise, ’n’ then a li’l threat.”

Drouillard had elbowed him and joked, “Next time you’re out alone with him carrying his hunting gun, just poke it in his back and make him put it in writing.”

“Ooooh! Man! Can’t do ’at!” The thought was too much for York, who didn’t realize it was a joke.

Drouillard shrugged and said: “Guess it wouldn’t do any good, would it? Even their writ-out promises they don’t keep. Just ask my people.”

Still, York was getting to be a lot more than he had been, and Drouillard was growing ever more friendly toward him. He liked to imagine him free, another Caesar.

A trace of flattened grass caught Drouillard’s eye now, and a faint scent. He stopped and looked along it. Big print with claw marks. Bear.

It had been a long time, far down the river, since he had shot bear.
Makwa
, whom his people called the Brother of Man. The only bears he had known were black bears, amiable, self-contained grubbers and scavengers who minded their own business and took good care of their children, like a good Indian. They were easygoing because they feared nothing. But this track was much bigger than a black bear’s track. It would be what the tribes along this river called a white or yellow bear. Yesterday Captain Clark had seen the tracks of one of these and spoke in excitement of the size of the track. An Indian who wore a necklace of the claws of a white bear he had killed had as much prestige as a man with many scalps on his pole. The captains anticipated
meeting those plains bears, confident they would be less formidable before the army’s superior rifles.

Angry bears, Drouillard thought. I wonder what they’re afraid of, to make them angry?

Now he saw the boats. They were in a channel running alongside a big, wooded island, an island two or three miles long. He looked down on the unexpected sight of hundreds of cheerful Indians walking along the near shore of the island, watching the boats. There was a big village on the island, a cluster of the eight-sided, earth-covered lodges like those in the abandoned towns. These farming Indians lived in large, snug, permanent houses, surrounded by palisades, so different from the cone-shaped, skin-covered tents of the buffalo-hunting Sioux. This was apparently one of the three remaining Arikara towns Vallé had spoken of; it sat amidst a sprawling garden of corn and vegetables. Several small, round, tublike boats were following the keelboat and pirogues, and although he was still a long way off, it appeared to him that the boats were occupied by women.

The keelboat and pirogues were edging toward the riverbank at the upper end of the island. He saw Cruzatte heave off the bow the chained boulder that had replaced the lost anchor. It was time to trot down there. No hunting the angry bear today; the captains would be needing their hand-sign interpreter.

The cannon and air gun, the big boat and all its instruments and gadgets, had been acknowledged as great medicine by the Arikaras, but York was the biggest medicine of all. None of them had ever seen a black man. He pretended to stalk and be stalked by crowds of squealing children. He strutted and chuckled and growled. He lifted two grown men high off the ground at the same time, one hanging on each wrist.

He acted as if, for this day at least, he was not a slave but a king. Several Arikara men offered him their wives, believing that the spiritual power he put into them would then be transferred to themselves by a similar connection. Unable to resist, York went into a lodge with a moonfaced young beauty, whose proud husband guarded the door until York was done. That whetted his appetite for more. He wanted Drouillard to speak to them for him in sign. “Tell ’at perty gal her baby looks good, an’
I’m
hungry!
She looks ’licious too! Tell ’er I take ’at titty the baby not usin’!”

York was too strange or formidable for some women, who instead found the fair-haired, blue-eyed, tall and strapping soldiers better medicine. The air was full of lustful excitement. “Drouillard, tell this lady,” said Shannon in a half-strangled voice, “that she’s givin’ me a cockstand just a-lookin’ at me the way she is. D’ye know sign language for that?”

Drouillard shook his head, half smiling. “Think, Shannon: A cockstand
is
sign language.”

To the captains, the goodwill of this visit with the Arikaras was a delightful contrast to the ugliness of their Sioux encounter, but they worried that fraternization might jeopardize discipline and security, so they let only small groups of soldiers at a time go into the towns, with a sergeant in charge. Guards had to stay with the boats.

Moses Reed, no longer a member of the corps, was given no liberty in the towns, and since he could not carry a firearm or stand guard, he was confined to the cooks’ area, a gray, lone figure, shuffling, dispirited, cutting firewood, tending fires and carrying water. His friend Private Newman had Sergeant Ordway ask Captain Lewis if Reed might have just a few hours off to mingle with the Arikaras. The answer was such a firm negative that Newman clenched his jaw, left the village, had himself rowed over to the camp and sat smoking with Reed. That act of compassion and defiance did not go unnoticed, and Lewis declared both men confined to the cooking area.

Two unlikely looking and unexpected collaborators had appeared out of the countryside just when they were needed: both raffish French traders who had been living in the Arikara towns for years, fluent in French, English, Arikara, and Sioux, able to interpret easily in the councils. Pierre-Antoine Tabeau had the thick shoulders and powerful arms of a former voyageur, but also an impressive education. He was, he claimed, writing a narrative history of the Upper Missouri tribes. He also professed,
with dubious explanation, to having sworn fidelity to the United States long ago, and said he was joyful that this would be a trade route of the U.S., not of the Spanish or English. The other trader was Joseph Gravelines, an associate of Regis Loisel. Gravelines was without pretension, and Drouillard trusted him at once. Both warned the captains that many old factions were now living close to each other in the remaining Arikara towns, making for jealousy, and cautioned against naming as supreme chief any one of the three town headmen.

But in council, Captains Lewis and Clark went ahead and did so. They gave Kakawissassa, Lightning Raven, a bigger medal than the ones they gave the others, Pocasse and Piaheto. In the uneasy silence that followed, they gave fancy coats, cocked hats, and American flags to all three. They distributed beads, combs, scissors, cloth, wire, needles, knives, and hatchets for the chiefs to give to their men and women. They entertained the three with the twangy vibrations of the Jew’s harp and then gave each one two of them.

Drouillard recognized in the council two Sioux warriors who had been involved in the confrontation down at the Bad River, and found out that they had been sent up to persuade the Arikaras to stop the whitemen. They were watching the gift-giving with keen interest. They would of course go back and report to Black Buffalo, Partisan, and Buffalo Medicine that the boat soldiers had given the Arikaras much more than they had given the Sioux. Drouillard sat amazed that the captains imagined themselves ambassadors of peace. Tabeau had spent hours telling the captains just how to make the best impressions and longest-lasting arrangements with these Arikaras. Then Captain Lewis had done it the Jefferson way, and concluded the council with the usual air gun demonstration, fully satisfied with the impressions he had made.

On the day after the council, the three chiefs returned and told the captains everything they wanted to hear. The chiefs weren’t lying; they really did want peace and trade. But as good Indian hosts, they did not want to shadow the whitemen’s shining vision
with the realities of intertribal life. Only Piaheto, the one they had named third chief of the Arikara nation, was candid enough to suggest that the nations along the river might misunderstand, or forget, or be unable to comply with, these promises being so politely made along the way. He doubted that the Mandans up the river would heed the whitemen’s demand for peace with the Arikaras. Drouillard thought it was appropriate that Piaheto spoke thus because his name meant Eagle’s Feather. In the tradition of Drouillard’s own people, one could speak only truthfully in the presence of an eagle’s feather. The eagle flew high enough to see everything and knew what was true.

The captains were glowing with pleasure. They had heard what they wanted to hear. The Arikaras had said they would send chiefs to meet their new Great Father in the East, even though the dangers of such long travel made them fear for their lives. Tabeau had given more information about the Arikaras, their language, customs, agriculture, and commerce with other tribes, than the captains could have hoped to learn if they had stayed here a month. They had written long into the nights to get it all on paper for the President.

Then Chief Piaheto, Eagle’s Feather, positively surprised the captains by offering to go upriver with them to the Mandan country and try to talk peace with them, and also promised he would go down next year to talk to the Great Father.

And Joseph Gravelines accepted an offer to hire on as Piaheto’s interpreter into the Mandan country.

What pleased the troops most, besides the lusty attention of the tribe’s pretty women, was that the Arikaras would accept none of their precious whiskey. They would not take anything that would make them act like fools.

There was a celebration, with music and dancing, just before the boats were to set out northward. Through the whole three-day sojourn in the friendly towns, Drouillard had been ignored by the flirtatious women. The white soldiers and the great black man were obviously remarkable beings, but he was obviously just an Indian. Though he was the only one who understood the connection for what it meant, the women and girls looked right
past him at the blue-eyed men who, not being merchants like most whitemen, must be on some long spirit quest to the far edge of the earth. The Arikaras had yearned to receive some of their magic by intimate connection.

Drouillard wondered if he would be ignored like this all across the country, and sighed.

Ten miles upstream from the Arikara towns, the evening camp was suddenly disturbed by a commotion of excited voices. Drouillard, sitting outside the hatch of the keelboat cabin, rose and leaned out over the gunwale to see what was happening.

“What is it, Drouillard?” Captain Lewis asked from inside, where the captains were interviewing Eagle’s Feather, with Gravelines interpreting.

“Two women,” he replied. “Followed us up.” Even in dusk he recognized them. An Arikara man at Piaheto’s town had been sending them among the soldiers. The man was not in sight, but the two slender beauties, apparently on their own, had walked a long way to resume their enticements. Over their shoulders they wore buffalo robes to serve them as cloaks or beds. At the edge of the camp the soldiers were strutting and jostling each other to be first in the courting play.

The captains were annoyed, but decided not to insult the chief by chasing the women out of camp as if they weren’t good enough for the soldiers. Better to let them stay, with rules on the troops, than have the soldiers deserting camp all night like tomcats, as Clark put it. The rules were no fighting over the women, or ganging up.

Drouillard felt both a yearning and a sadness. The soldiers would give the girls trinkets. In return they would get a swoop of delight, bragging rights, and probably a souvenir dose of dribble-and-burn. Gravelines and Tabeau themselves likely had passed the diseases hundreds of miles along these riverbanks. As dusk deepened, firelights brightened, the fiddle squeaked up by the cooking area, and the male and female voices laughed and giggled the wordless language of desire in the margins of the
camp. Drouillard’s heart cramped with a strange, miserable anger.