St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (11 page)

Dad out here.

Aunt Cora took me into a hug, patting my hair with

her bony hand. "You're a good boy," she said

kindly. "Make sure you come around for the

winter pauwau."

"Goodbye, Skylar," Marilu said somberly. "I'll

write to you if Danny comes home."

I felt a very real pain in my heart. The both of us

knew Danny wasn't coming home.

I waved after Marilu and Aunt Cora as they

boarded the bus. Marilu put her hand against the

hazy window and waved back at me. The doors

hissed closed; the wheels squealed on gravel.

They were gone.

"Just in time for school, too," Dad said, his hand

on my shoulder.

I went to the schoolhouse early the next morning,

Annie walking at my side. Together we sat at a

long wooden table in the back of the room. It was

bizarre to think that we were twelfth graders now.

Mr. Red Clay hadn't arrived yet, but the entire

room was buzzing with conversation. Everyone

was talking about the forest.

"Good job, you guys!" said Daisy At Dawn,

grinning. "The pines look truly disgusting.

Awesome."

"Not awesome," her twin sister, Holly, replied.

"If they really want twenty-five acres from us,

they'll take it. Doesn't matter which part of the

reserve they take it from."

"But they
can't
take it from another part of the

reservation," Annie pointed out. "That ridiculous

law they're relying on stipulates that the land has to

be undeveloped for them to reclaim it. That only

leaves the badlands."

"Well, then, they'll take the badlands," Holly said.

"Why on earth would they take the badlands? You

can't farm or build out there, the clay's too

unstable. That's why it's called the badlands."

"Then they'll knock down our houses and declare

the ground beneath the shambles undeveloped. I

don't see why you have to make this harder than it

really is."

"I think we'd all better settle down," Mr. Red Clay

said, closing the doors behind him as he entered

the little schoolhouse. "Before someone mentions

something I'm not meant to hear."

Daisy giggled unrepentantly.

How school works in Nettlebush is that Mr. Red

Clay teaches grades one through twelve all at the

same time; and when he reviews with you later on,

he adjusts the complexity of the topic depending on

how old you are. Talk about multitasking. To this

day, though, I've never met anyone with a brain

like his. The guy's a walking encyclopedia.

"Let's start the new school year off with a favorite

topic of mine." Mr. Red Clay wound through the

tables and bookshelves and over to the

chalkboard. At once, he started to lecture in both

English and sign language. "Let's talk about

Sacajawea."

Rafael opened his notebook at his side. He nudged

me with a meaningful look. I hated taking notes. I

grinned shamelessly.

"Sacajawea is possibly the most famous Shoshone

of all time. Very few Americans know the names

Pocatello, Washakie, and Cameahwait, but almost

everyone knows Sacajawea. Of course," Mr. Red

Clay went on, hiding a smile, "the Shoshone did

not actually
call
her Sacajawea. Can anyone tell

me her real name?"

Hands shot into the air.

"Mr. Calling Owl?"

"Lost Woman," said an eleventh grader.

"Lost Woman. We called her Lost Woman. Or, in

Shoshone, 'Wadze Wa'ippu.' And why did we call

her Lost Woman?"

More hands.

"Mr. Takes Flight?"

"Because the Hidatsa tribe kidnapped her," Aubrey

said, in one quick breath. "When she was a little

girl."

"That's correct. See, a Shoshone in those days had

many different given names over the course of his

or her lifetime. They were self-named, too,

meaning that each name was sacred, representing a

different stage in that person's life. As a little girl,

Lost Woman identified with the name her parents

liked to call her. 'Po'i Naipi'--'Little Grass Girl.'

"Now let's look at the Hidatsa tribe for a second.

They were--are, I should say--a Plains tribe, like

us. The Hidatsa and the Eastern Shoshone crossed

paths countless times while we were sharing the

Plains. I'm sorry to say the Hidatsa never liked us

very much. More than that, the Hidatsa had some

bizarre customs involving children. If a Hidatsa

child died, the parents didn't mourn the death.

They went out and kidnapped a child from an

enemy tribe to take the deceased child's place."

Well, I thought, way to kick grief in the pants.

"So the Hidatsa tribe kidnapped Little Grass Girl

when she was nine, maybe ten years old, and took

her far north to live on Knife River. And she grew

up there with the Hidatsa--albeit she was very

unhappy about the arrangement. She tried to

escape many times, never succeeding--"

I swallowed, thinking about Danny.

"--and by the time Little Grass Girl was fourteen,

she was such a nuisance to her abductors that they

sold her to a French settler, Toussaint

Charbonneau, who married her on the spot."

Mr. Red Clay wrote a couple of names on the

blackboard, connecting them by arrows. I finally

relented and opened my notebook.

"At this point in her life, Little Grass Girl left

behind her childhood name and started calling

herself 'Carries a Burden.' Can anyone tell me

how to say 'Carries a Burden' in Shoshone?"

Immaculata raised her hand. "Tsaikka Tsa Wea,"

she replied, when Mr. Red Clay pointed at her.

"Right. I'm sure you can see how 'Tsaikka Tsa

Wea' got corrupted over time to sound like

'Sacajawea.' In any case. Why did she call herself

'Carries a Burden'? Let's look at that for a second.

Marriage to Toussaint Charbonneau was a

nightmare. History paints Charbonneau as a

flagrant drunkard and a domestic abuser. The man

drank like a fish and talked through his fists. Life

for the young Sacajawea was a living hell.

"Until two years later, when she met a pair of

young men from Virginia. Who can tell me their

names?"

I grinned. Everyone's hands shot up in the air.

Mr. Red Clay bit back a smile. "Mr. Nabako?" he

said, gesturing to a second grader.

"Lewis and Clark!" Jack Nabako screamed.

Mr. Red Clay winced. "Just in case any of you

were sleeping back there. Correct. Meriwether

Lewis and William Clark. The United States gave

these two men a very specific task: Explore the

unknown west and find out what it looked like.

Because the western half of America comprised a

majority of Shoshone territories, like the Badwater

Basin, and the Death Valley, Lewis and Clark

needed to find a translator who spoke Shoshone.

Their search for a translator brought them to North

Dakota, and in the winter of 1804, they met

Sacajawea.

"Sacajawea was desperate to escape her husband.

She signed up for the Lewis and Clark Expedition

in a heartbeat. Unfortunately for her, Charbonneau

insisted on tagging along.

"Now," Mr. Red Clay said. "Something very

peculiar happened on this trip. First of all,

Sacajawea was heavily pregnant. Heavily

pregnant, and accompanying two strange men

across the Continental US by foot. That's a

little...brow-raising, to say the least. More

peculiar is this: By all accounts, as these three

came to know each other, they also came to love

each other. Can you believe that? Two white men

from Virginia and one Indian woman, and they

loved each other. This was at the height of the

Indian Wars, you understand. This was a time

when whites and Indians absolutely deplored one

other. This was a time when white men didn't

even believe women had souls. Sacajawea

embodied everything Lewis and Clark ought to

have disdained. Yet Lewis and Clark loved

Sacajawea so much that they deferred to her

instead of her husband. In the 1800s! Not only

was this unprecedented; it was unthinkable!

Charbonneau didn't take so well to being snubbed.

One night, when he and his pregnant wife were

alone in their tent together, he began to beat her.

He had beaten her many times in the past, and

unfortunately Sacajawea was accustomed to

closing her mouth and taking the abuse. What was

she really supposed to do about it? There existed

a certain...attitude, in those days, among white

men, that they were entitled to treat their wives

however they wanted. Not among Lewis and

Clark, however. They had heard Charbonneau's

drunken rambling. They ran into the tent and

pulled him off of Sacajawea. And you know what

Clark said to Charbonneau?"

Nobody seemed to know.

"He said, 'You came with us from North Dakota.

You hit her again, and you won't go back.' "

I don't think I can describe how incredible I

thought that was.

"Long after the expedition was over, Sacajawea

and Lewis and Clark remained friends. Sacajawea

gave birth to a little boy named Jean Baptiste.

Clark was so worried about the both of them that

he asked Sacajawea if he could step in and help

her raise her son. She accepted. She moved to

Missouri to live with Lewis and Clark, and with

Sacajawea's consent, Clark adopted her son,

legally replacing Charbonneau as the little boy's

father. Charbonneau went back to North Dakota to

live on his own."

Serves him right, I thought.

"Still," Mr. Red Clay went on. "There was a hole

in Sacajawea's heart. She loved her two friends,

and she loved her son, but she longed for her

home, the great valleys and the plains. She longed

for her family. She wanted to see her hunting

grounds again, and her playful older brother. She

wanted to reunite with her childhood friends. She

wanted to hear her language spoken one last time.

"Lewis died unfortunately young," Mr. Red Clay

said. "Clark died in his sixties. Once her friends

had passed away, once her son was all grown up,

Sacajawea embarked on a journey of her own.

She walked, and she walked. She traveled the

Great Plains with little more than her instincts and

her memories. She was a very old woman when

she found the Plains Shoshone living on Wind

River. She gazed around at the incredible sight of

the tipis on the riverbank. Her eyes filled with

tears. Chief Washakie came running from his tipi

once his advisors informed him of her arrival.

And when he greeted her, he said, 'Welcome home,

Lost Woman.' "

The classroom started to applaud.

Mr. Red Clay raised an eyebrow. "I'm glad you

enjoyed that," he said. "I hope you enjoy reading

just as much. Open your history books, please."

After school I went with my friends out to the

grotto,

Zeke

already

complaining

about

homework. That had to be a new record. I sat by

the creek, watching in vain for any signs of Balto.

Annie read out loud from
A Comprehensive

History of the First People
. Rafael sat reading a

different book altogether. I glimpsed the cover and

read its incredibly long title:
The Anatomy and

Physiology of the Mammalian Larynx.

I tapped Annie's arm once she took a pause.

"Yes, Skylar?"

What do you want to do once you're finished with

school?

She considered it. "I'd like to help military

families," she said. "You know, it's so hard for

military personnel to adjust to civilian life once

the fighting's over. Mom always said as much.

That's why the Navajo have the Enemy Way

ceremony, of course, to help ease their veterans'

hearts. Did you know Native Americans are the

largest ethnic group in the US military? There are

about 200,000 Native American soldiers right

now. That's almost 20% of the entire army."

I tossed my notebook at Aubrey to get his attention.