4:Salmon Eater to Sakakawea State Icon

4:IN SEARCH OF SILENCE:

SALMON EATER TO SAKAKAWEA A STATE ICON

“I stayed here to cultivate the land, I buried my family here. This is a sacred land, land we revere, the wind’s strength is powerful, more powerful than our history or language. It brings the rain, it grows the grasses where the buffalo graze. It brings the blanket of the winter so the land can rest and be reborn with the ice and snow melt and give their strength back to the earth.

The water is pure. The land cannot give its strength back until it has rested.”

Life as the woman who would become the Icon for Independent Women, for the Suffragette Movement, the symbol of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery.

It all began when she was kidnapped at the age of ten by men who were all missing the little finger on their left hand.

May 5, 2017

The three-hour drive from Fargo to Bismarck: brutal, monotonous, mind numbing. Three words that Alma repeated as she distracted herself by turning on the heat, air conditioning, radio. I-94 stretched across several states. According to the NYPD, it was the “I-94 Strip” because so many young women on the streets of NYC were from those rural areas, predominantly Native and some naïve farm girls.

“Is this really going to make a difference?” Alma wondered. The meeting for the North Dakota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics started at 7 am. The conference on Child Abuse was set up in the afternoon by Protect Child Abuse of North Dakota, they had a million dollar grant and hadn’t figured out how to use any of the money yet, so this was an opportunity for them.

Alma parked her Prius in the still empty parking lot in front of the low lying dark brown building of the Department of Health and Human Services. The meeting was set to be broadcast statewide through conference call and Webinar.

“I asked our Senator to attend, she has a strong relationship with the Tribes, she will want to be there.” She explained to the Vice President of the Chapter. Alma had already flown to DC to discuss the budget, the uninsured and trafficking concerns for children.

The Tribal Council of the fourteen nations held a meeting the summer before. The legislators tabled the issues raised there. They conflicted with the money from the Dakota Access Pipeline. Sympathy for the tribes by the citizens of North Dakota was low. No pipeline meant poverty for the farmers, less money for the government budget. 

As the room filled with representatives from the tribes, social workers and the occasional physician, it became clear that legislators were not there. Those who could change the law regarding children, were conspicuously absent.

Six hours later Alma spent about 2 hours writing thank you notes to all the presenters, and hoped to keep up the good will in that effort. Once that was done she got back into her car.  

It was that time of day when the sun turned the hills and fields into a molten gold, so intense, it poured its hope into Alma. The intensity of it increased when the road directed her West. She wondered if the Western Gold Rush had been based on what she saw, certainly there wasn’t enough actual gold in the Western Hills.

Her GPS directed her North to the State Icon’s namesake: Sakakawea, a lake created when Garrison Dam flooded the most fertile valley of the agricultural Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Tribes. To recognize their loss of two of their towns, the state government created New Town, named the lake after the Lewis and Clark guide.

Alma shook her head as she recalled the history explained by her local Sierra Club members. “The Garrison dam was created to bring water to the white landowners. Now that the lake was created, the surrounding land became part of Navigable Property and the government could sell the surrounding as Lake Shore Property.”

Spring, 1798

“You are ready,” her Mother, also Otter Woman, announced the year before.

She did not want to be ready, that meant she couldn’t play with her brother, she would be limited to hearth and food preparation.

“But I want to hunt and fish with my brother.”

“It does no good to hunt and fish, if you are starving.”

“Can I still go out, can I ride my pony?”

“To live you must be able to prepare the food.”

“Take your best friend, I will return in one week.”

“Without you?”

“You have lived through ten summers, it is time.”

“But, as long as my best friend is here.” She mumbled to her mother.

“You already have many secrets, you know the ways of the Shoshone, the Salmon Eaters, when I come back that will be your earned name.”

A year later she and her best friend saw a pile of poles and the deer hides they worked on all winter.

“There it is.” Salmon Girl and her best friend Otter Woman had walked away from their Shoshone Village, walked away from the noon day sun, carrying nothing.

Salmon Girl looked for the secret entry to “the cove.” Spring grass pressed to the earth at the entry. She put her finger to her lips and gestured to her best friend, Otter Woman, to stop. With eyes closed to sharpen the sounds, she searched for an answer. The sparrow was silent, the drum of the pheasant absent, poplar leaves rustled as the breeze moved across the Western Plains of the Shoshone peoples, her people. The land of her mother, her Chieftan father, brother In another half moon the Shoshone tribes across the mountains and land of trees and lakes and hills, and this, her secret cove. “The Cove” was part of schooling. She and Otter Woman dragged the tent poles her mother left at the entrance.

“Seven days seems so long.” Said Otter Woman.

“But we are near the great river, we will not die of thirst.” Said Salmon Girl.

“Easy for you to say Fish Girl!” Said Otter Woman.

“You can swim with your friends, Otter Girl.”

The first afternoon they tied the ends together and raised the poles. Even though the poles were twice as tall as the small girls, once they were in the air, they could easily reach the top.

“Why do they have to call me Salmon Eater, makes me hungry just thinking about it.”

“Ha, maybe because you are so quick to move around.”

“Maybe because I always get caught.”

“Wait, there’s a cloud, and the wind is picking up.”

“Over there, the white bark is peeling!”  They tore the white bark off the trees and used strips of it to connect the hides they dragged in with the poles.  

It didn’t rain the first night, nor any night after hey put their home together.

They gathered the pine nuts from the fallen cones, and blueberries from a sunny patch and grubs from rotted trees.

It took the second day to make their first fire. Hours of pounding a pointed piece of chert, against a silica rock, until it sparked. “We must keep that coal alive.” Every hour they blew on the coal and first up another wisp of bark.

With the white ashes from ground pine nuts, and blue color from the crushed berries, on the third day they painted the hides.

“We’ll put the story of the cove here, for our children and our children’s children,” said Salmon Girl.

The stick figure drawings showed a flame, a fallen tree, a fish in a willow snare and a triangular shaped home and two young girls.

The yellow and black patterned Meadowlark flew from the branches of the Cottonwood  to perch on the poles of the new home.

“Where did that come from?” said Otter Woman.

“That is a Mandan bird, a grasslands creature, must be lost.”

On the seventh morning she cut a small willow branch in the shape of a doll, to let her mother know she was ready and placed it at the base of an ancient cottonwood. The girls ran swiftly to return to the cove.

“Look, the grass is flat there!” said Salmon Girl.

Otter Woman gasped, “We take gentler steps than that.”

“Do you hear anything?” whispered Salmon Girl.

“Maybe it is your mother.” Said Otter Woman.

“Let’s take our time to enter.” Whispering, the girls entered the area that was surrounded by trees and flowering lilacs that richly scented space.

“Do you smell that?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s the smell of horses.”

“Maybe your brother is here.” The Shoshone tamed the horses they traded for from the Spanish.

“He would not try to hide, he doesn’t joke, he will be a chief someday, a protector.”

As they entered their secret space, they only saw the trees they had seen before, the flowering lilacs they had seen before.

“Maybe your mother is hiding in our home!” Otter Woman ran to their hearth and screamed.

Tall men appeared. Faces distorted with scars on the sides of their faces, chests with thickened scars, all with the same pattern.  They spoke in low voices, one young man stepped forward with one of their deer hides in his left hand, he seemed to asking something.

Salmon Girl gasped as she saw blood from his hand stain the hide, it dripped from a missing little finger. She backed away as she saw all the men were missing their little finger.

“Mandan! Run!” She grabbed her friend’s hand, but the men pulled her back.

Salmon girl kept running until she was out of the cove.

“Salmon Girl, don’t leave me!”

She stopped, the words grabbed her heart and tightened and she closed her eyes. When she took her next breath she stood taller, and marched back into the cove. “Take me, and leave my friend.” She pointed to her chest and gestured to them to drop Otter Woman.

The muttering between the men continued. They ripped the hides off the poles and pushed the girls onto them and wrapped them tightly.

Salmon Girl shook, her fear was for her friend. She felt her body being lifted up and tossed onto the shoulder of a man. The sound of horses whinnying approached. The Mandan owned no horses: her Shoshone tribe would not give them up willingly. They already had been to her village. Her family must be dead.