Sign-Talker (28 page)

The erection of the palisade across the front of the fort was in process now, and it had become an ordeal. With the ground frozen hard as rock, ditching for the palisade poles required burning fires in the ditch to thaw the earth enough to dig out an inch or two at a time.

In the hard freeze, the problem of securing food for the troops had become critical. Jessaume the interpreter had exaggerated the ability of his Mandans to provide meat. Though they had many horses and were good hunters, they were cautious about ranging far for the buffalo because of their fear of large Sioux and Arikara war parties. They brought some meat, but most of their food contribution was in corn, which they brought across the river to trade for manufactured goods. They wanted spear and arrow points and war axes that the corps blacksmiths, Shields and Willard, fashioned for them out of any metal scrap they could spare. The ringing of hammers on anvils went on every day. Visiting Mandans, fascinated with the bellows and the metalworking, were usually crowded about so tightly that the smiths could hardly work, and they had to watch for pilfering.

Drouillard had been of no use as a hunter because of his
broken hand. He had, in fact, missed opportunities to hunt buffalo on a grand scale, the way the Mandans did it: racing on horseback alongside great, fleeing herds, shooting point-blank at them with powerful short bows reinforced with sinew, bows so strong that an arrow might pass clear through a buffalo’s heart. Both captains had gone out on such hunts, with parties of soldiers and Indians. Their accounts of the skill and recklessness of the Mandan horsemen were thrilling, and Drouillard was impatient. He longed to go out and ride with these free, brave, cheerful people over these spacious slopes and plains in pursuit of the swift and mighty
t’ tanka
, as they called the buffalo—the
kith tippe
, in his Shawnee memory. Sometimes he stood in front of the fort and watched these people ride out, a people as yet uncorrupted by whitemen, a people still free on their own land, and his heart ached for his own people’s past.

And yet, how free were they, really? They had their picketed, fortified town, and they were happy and secure within it. But their women prayed and wailed when the hunters went away, because the Sioux and the Arikaras were out there. The men were happy to go out when a dozen soldiers went out with them, soldiers with their long-shooting rifles. But their enemies were always in their minds, and it took all their courage to go on long hunts, out of sight of the towns. Their enemies were like an invisible prison wall.

Sometimes Drouillard wondered: How free is anyone? Even soldiers sleep in a fort. Even the strong, far-ranging buffalo were ringed about with enemies they feared: the packs of wolves who stalked their weak and young.

These wolves of the plains were so numerous and aggressive around the hunting camps that the captains said they usually got more than half the meat of a hunt. When the herds were far from the fort and villages, the hunting parties sometimes had to build wooden pens to protect the meat from the wolves until it could be packed home on the hunters’ backs, on horseback, or on sleds. When the hunters came in from those distant hunts, they were usually frostbitten and fatigued almost to death from camping a few nights in the bitter cold.

Every ordeal of that kind increased the captains’ admiration for the Mandans. He heard them tell in awe of Mandan hunters caught out in the plains with no way to make fire, surviving all night with no shelter but a buffalo skin despite cold so intense that ax heads were too brittle to use.

“I’ll wager,” Captain Lewis said now as he prepared a mercury dose in a penis syringe for York’s venereal complaint, “I’ll just bet you that you’ll never find one of these Indians with a frosted cock!” He shook his head.

York chuckled. “Well, Cap’n, I do try t’ keep it in warm places much as I can.”

“Oh, don’t you, though!” Captain Clark exclaimed.

The captains regretted the spread of the venereal complaints among the troops, but did not try to forbid or even discourage carnal relations with the village women. The officers had finally come to understand that this was a part of the diplomatic accord they wanted to achieve. It was helping to dissolve the line of suspicion between strangers and strangers. Some of the soldiers, originally after mere sexual relief, now had genuine sweethearts in Mandan families, and those families were pleased and honored, because they esteemed the Americans as brave, strong men with spiritual power.

The interpreters with their wives moved into the cabin built for them in the fort. Jessaume’s Mandan wife was sluttish and overbearing, and the captains expected that the couple would not contribute to much harmony in the fort.

Charbonneau’s diminutive wife was now obviously pregnant, with a hard-looking protuberance standing forth on her tough little torso. She was still so shy that it was impossible to forget that she had been a captive and a slave before the Frenchman bought and married her. With the interpreters’ quarters adjacent to the captains’ room, York found it easy and natural to keep an eye out for her comfort and welfare. York continued to refer to himself and Drouillard and this little Bird Woman as “us colored folks of the house,” and Drouillard would look at him as if
annoyed, but in his heart he was pleased. There was something he liked about not being considered a whiteman.

S’ Kaka Weah, the Bird Woman, found that she liked coffee, with a great deal of sugar in it. And so York made much coffee. Charbonneau was miffed and mystified that the captain’s servant ignored him to wait so solicitously upon his little wife. York did not know that in the captains’ estimation this girl who spoke Shoshone, a language they would need in the Shining Mountains, was much more valuable than her husband. Charbonneau believed they were allowing Bird Woman to go along because they needed him.

Drouillard often heard the officers discussing that notion of President Jefferson’s that the pale, light-haired people among the Mandans might be descended from Welshmen who had come to America some six hundred years ago.

He now and then saw some of those remarkable-looking men and women. In every detail of dress and manner they were Mandans, speaking that Mandan tongue that sounded a little like the Sioux but seemed to come from far back in the throat. But some, even young warriors and girls, had hair that was yellowish-gray or light brown, and gray or greenish-blue eyes. Families in which these traits prevailed were integrated in the age-group and apprentice societies of the tribe, not separated out by their appearance, and seemed in fact to be held in high esteem. Chief Sheheke himself, Big White, appeared to have that influence in his face and blood, though his hair and eyes were not light. The captains made their usual vocabulary list, as they had tried to do among all the other tribes, and noted that there were many Mandan words that sounded like nothing they had heard before. But nobody in the Corps of Discovery knew the Welsh tongue, so they reached no conclusions. The Mandans’ stories of their old origins were hard to come by because Jessaume’s English was barely comprehensible, and even his own French tongue was so out of use that Drouillard had trouble understanding him. The story was, it seemed, that their ancestors had lived in a parallel world under the ground, until a hole was seen above with
light and sky. So First Man had climbed up on roots and vines and emerged onto this world. Others had followed the scout up, until a very fat woman broke all the roots and vines in trying to climb up, and all the other ancient ancestors remained stranded in that world underneath, even to the present. Some relics of the ancient times were still kept in the sacred vessel in the middle of the town of Mittuta-Hanka, where they would remain under guard until next year’s ceremonies. By that time, these white soldiers would already be gone, and would miss the ceremonies.

There was one curious coincidence that the captains spoke of: the Mandan origin story said that the hole they had come out of was down at the very end of the river, where it flowed into the southern sea. According to the story Jefferson hoped to prove or disprove, that was where the Welshmen had landed.

The river was frozen solid, and it became a road between the fort and the towns. The chiefs of the various towns came down to talk to the captains, and the captains went to the towns to talk to the chiefs. Big White had gained much prestige by having the American fort closest to his town, but the grand chief of the Mandans lived in a town called Rooptahe, about two leagues north and on the same side of the river as the fort. That chief’s name was Black Cat. He was eager to please the Americans, and agreed that peace among the tribes would help everybody. He smoked with the Arikara chief, Eagle’s Feather, and offered to send some of his best men back down with him to the Arikara towns to speak of peace. And Black Cat told the captains that he himself might go next year to speak to the new Great Father in the East. The captains, of course, were very pleased. But one day Jessaume, with a shrug, told Drouillard something that seemed closer to the truth:

“Black Cat does not understand why the captains are going through here. He wonders why they tease the people with little gifts. He is afraid they are saving their goods for the Hidatsa. And some Mandans tell the Hidatsa that these captains are going to help the Sioux attack the Hidatsa, which is why they build so strong a fort down here. Jealousy.” Jessaume shrugged. “I would
not want to be those captains. They are too hard to believe. Some people think they are here just to keep the British from bringing down goods.”

“Why don’t you tell those things to the captains?” Drouillard said.

“I thought you might tell them,” Jessaume said. “They know you a long time. They believe you. I think they do not believe me.”

“I am their hunter, not a carrier of rumors. That is why they believe me.”

Later that day, when York had been teasing Drouillard about being one of the “colored folks,” he led the slave to the gate in the fort’s palisade and waved his hand to point out the wide, bright, frozen river valley, the boats frozen fast, the distant domes of lodges at Mittuta-Hanka, and the lines of ant-size human figures crossing the river ice in all directions, carrying loads of firewood on their backs, or pulling loaded sleds, leading packhorses and dog sleds. Even in this intense, bright, hazy cold, there were more people out and moving than one would see on the mildest day in the cities of St. Louis or New Orleans.

“See what?” York asked, shivering, cupping his hands for warmth over his frostbitten crotch.

Drouillard laughed voicelessly, his breath turning to frost. “This is why I’m glad I’m not a whiteman. Look how we colored folks got them outnumbered. Wouldn’t you hate to be telling so many people things that they can’t believe?”

“Mist’ Droor,” York said after a moment, “ever’ time you talk to me, I think troubles. Wish you stop that.”

Drouillard said, “You’re a big, important man out here. When you’re being treated like a king in one of these Indian lodges, do you ever think of just setting yourself free and hiding with the Indians? You could be like old Caesar I told you about.”

York was gazing out with that worried look on his face. Then he looked sidewise at him. He shuddered violently. “No, s’,” he said. “I wou’n stay in a place this cold if I was its king!” And he turned and hurried back into the fort.

Drouillard remained, and kept gazing out over the immense
landscape of snow and slanting sunlight, blue sky, blue shadows, tiny figures moving. Above the domed earth lodges of Mittuta-Hanka the smoke of family fires rose. Over the town’s medicine lodge he could see the three tall poles with effigies hanging from them. They were a part of the ancient mystery of the Mandan people, something to do with their original person who came up from underground. First Man, they called him, or Lone Man. He was represented by the effigy between the other two. It made Drouillard remember something from the old Black Robe teachings: Jesus between the thieves. He didn’t know whether any of the soldiers had thought of that when they saw the effigies, but he had seen Sergeant Gass looking up at them with some kind of thinking going on behind his eyes.

Drouillard liked it here despite the cold; he liked these people. He had thought very often about how good it could be to step away from the whitemen here and live among a people like this, who did not have those whiteman ideas that always made them go on and on in a direction, changing everything as they went.

But no, he thought. The whitemen are already here and it will have to change now. If I do hide with the Indians, it must be farther on.

Thank you, Colter, Drouillard was thinking, and he meant it.

He was sitting with a circle of very old Mandan men around a fire in the big Medicine Lodge of Mittuta-Hanka Town. By the warm, dim light of that fragrant fire, as his heartbeat kept pace with hand drums and rattles, he watched a pretty young woman come dancing toward him straddling a line of sticks laid end-to-end on the floor and ending at his feet. The young woman was stark naked, holding open a buffalo robe across her shoulders. She squatted over each stick, stood up, straddled the next stick and squatted over it, so that it was taking her a long time to come to him.

Kneeling by his shoulder was the young woman’s husband, who was chanting something into his ear in a pleading, almost whining tone. Though he did not understand the words, he had already learned what the young man’s entreaty was: Great Hunter! Favor me by copulating with my wife, so that she may pass your hunting powers on to me when I copulate with her!