DISCOVERY CORPS: IN SEARCH OF SILENCE 3

It turns out that this writing has brought me through many issues, a trauma I suffered as a child, where I "lost my mother, or at least my mother as I knew her" and it was during a terrible car accident the family had when I was a child. Now, for this course, my writing is about a mother losing her child, and then that same child, losing her son. Although it is the story of a legend of North Dakota, Sakakawea, it has immersed me in a way that wasn't clear at first. As I read the documentation of those times 1788 through 1810 or so, I found a kind of depth of information that might explain why a young Shoshone/Mandan child bride/sister wife might give her toddler to a White Explorer.

My personal life is evolving as I explore the depths of nuanced relationships in my professional and family life, where I might also be giving up a cherished way of existing in the Universe to enter into a phase of Self Determination. The difficult decisions made 207 years ago by a teenager, make mine seem much easier. Herstory.....is untold, while the stories of York, Lewis and Clark have become great literature, Sakakawea's story is told by Disney and in children's books...Oh My!!

IN SEARCH OF SILENCE: CORPS OF DISCOVERY ASSIGNMENT 3

May 13, 2017

“Here let me show you.” Alma stood on the intentionally contoured path overlooking the end of McLusky Canal.

Bob stopped. “We’re at mile 100, let’s take a picture.”

“It’s the canal Bob, it’s on the divide, and we’re not at mile 100.”

“So?”

“Watch this.” Alma took two small willow branches and placed them on the flowing water into the outflow of the Sheyenne Lake, one followed a small exit north, the other south to the Missouri River.

“Uh huh, look I have the camera all set up.” One end of his Iphone dangled off a branch.

“Camera?”

“Time for a selfie, we’re at 100 miles! Come on!”

“Hmm, Bob, we’re not at 100 miles AND that’s not going to work.”

“Great, you stand here.”  Bob worked his way back to the camera and set the timer.

As he ran around to stand next to Alma, the countdown neared the end. “We’re at 98 miles.” Alma voiced between clamped teeth.

“Hey, the camera’s slipped!”

“Okay, 100 miles, but look, how the water flows!”

“But.”

“Fine, the selfie, but I’ll make sure the camera doesn’t move.”

The willows continued their separate way down and up the river, as the countdown began.

                                             ****

November 4, 1804

Sakakawea closed her eyes, hands rested on her soft deer hide dress that stretched with her belly’s gradual swelling. The story of her new family, the Mandan, whispered in her memory as she saw the river,  known as the Pekitanoui to the Mandan and as the Missouri to all that visited her village. The river swelled and receded between two worlds.

The First Creator ruled south of the river that crossed in front of her. Rich with hills and valleys, the great bison, the willows and cottonwoods, the antelope and the snakes. Behind her Lone Man domesticated the animals, birds, fish and humans. Some humans climbed from underground under a lake, others climbed a grapevine to the surface and saw the two worlds divided by the river.

Her unborn kicked and she told the story: “you will have four souls, a shooting star, a meadowlark, a lodge spirit that will stay forever and finally the travelling spirit, the one that brought me here.”

The soft steps of Otter Woman approached. “Sakakawea, the boys are starting the race.”

Warm tears flowed down her face. “Not again.”

“It’s not for us.” Said Otter Woman.

“I want to go, but I want my child to have a lodge Spirit, I will wait.”

“It’s not so bad here, all the final souls teach us farming and hunting.”

“But what good does it do, if we remain in the lodge all the time?” Sakakawea gestured to the two rows of circular lodges that stood on the bank overlooking the river.

Each lodge housed a corral for a few ponies, several sleeping areas, a central fire that allowed the smoke to escape. “Please don’t go back to the Shoshone yet.”

She prayed in a soft song to her unborn child that found its way across the river:

“Let you be born a woman,

A woman can move in and out of the village,

She has nothing to prove,

She has nothing that can be taken.”

“My friend, I cannot watch the young men prove themselves with that torture, the Okipa ceremony is not right.”

“But it is their tradition.”

The first of the boys ran in front of them, with wood skewers through his face and chest and weights pulling them down. Sakakawea turned away her face in her hands. All the men in the village who had participates in the ceremony were missing their left little fingers.

“At least our husband has all of his fingers.”

“Because he is French, not Mandan.”

Sakakawea stood at the edge of the Pekitanoui  river.  a dozen domed lodges behind her, lined up in two rows. A large shadow moved slowly along the river, as it drew closer she started to count.  The men that filed the boats and walked along the bank. Her dress supple deer hide dress protected her from the cold along with her leggings and her moccasins. The river had partially frozen but the forty men were did not slow down. When they saw the domed huts they shouted out, she understood their language, but remained still and turned away to her home and warmth. She felt the baby stir within her and started to hum a song of this tribes story.

February 1805

Lewis and Clark huddled over their maps in the candle light of the small rooms of the Mandan Fort.

“It is 40 below zero.” Lewis wrote in his journal.

“Is there anything else you need?” X adjusted the location of the candles.

“There is no map West of here.”

“Jefferson wants the Discovery Corps to find a water way to the Pacific Ocean.”

“You must pass here,” Sakakawea, “this is where my original people, the Shoshone live, I know it well.” She pointed to the center of the map.

“For now we must stay in this Fort.”

Sakakawea said, “my boy will be stronger by then.”

Clark admired the strength of the willowy woman, no more than 16 years old.

“Charbonneau, you speak the Hidatsa language correct?”

“Moi? I speak a real language, French, and I have learned a few words from you English speakers, but that language makes no sense to me, their songs and sounds are chaotic and repetitive and are only grunts, not to be understood by someone like me, a strong French man. You bought this Louisiana land from the French, but you will never own it, unless you win it in a bet from the Hidatsa tribe, like I did these two squaws.”

“You must have spent a lot of time instructing the Bird Woman, Janey, how to speak French and English.”

“She? The mother of that child? Iz like a monkey, she just repeats, she does not understand you.”

Clark nodded to Lewis, and Lewis shook his head. “I would like her along on this trip.”

“Hmmmmm, she will do you no good, she is only an Indian, a property of mine, I will come along and help you, she can tag along, but I assure you she will not be helpful.”

“If you bring her, we will make sure President Jefferson rewards you well with land and gold.”

“Fine then, make it worth my while.”

“I will leave her here with you while I attend to the other, her playmate, do not expect anything. The boy stays with her.”

“Pomp?” Lewis and Clark said in unison.

At the sound of their voices the little infant turned his head and repeated “po-po-po”

Sakakawea smiled and held him close, snuggled her face into his, “my beautiful baby boy.” She said in English.

Charbonneau opened the door to the great room in the quickly constructed fort, “see? Just babbling like a baby, you will not get anything out of her. I however, will be very helpful.”

Sakakawea stood still in the room and looked around at the formal uniforms the men had carried with them, nothing for the winters in the land of the Hidatsa. The walls constructed of poles chinked together, nothing like the hearth she lived in with her sister-wife and child. This was a square box, thin walls, no heat except a fireplace in one wall. “These white men are very strange, no skins to protect them from the wind and cold dampness of the ice and snow, and a house that a Buffalo could easily push over.” She shook her head as she looked around.

She remained silent however until Clark spoke to her. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, then she spoke in the Hidatsa language, “do you understand me?”

“What do you say?” Said Clark. “I want to understand.”

“I said what you said to me.”

Clark and Lewis looked at each other, and a loud cracking laugh came out of both of them.

The infants eyes opened and he shook and cried. “You frightened him, we are a quiet people, you only need smile or nod your head at my witticism, laughter is unnecessary, it will frighten any of us.”

“Why aren’t you frightened?”

“You remember, I was given to a white man, who cares nothing for me except my womaness, I am nothing to him except property or a means to an end.”

Clark said, “We will be more careful to respect your ways, will you instruct us?”

“Of course, if I don’t you won’t last the Winter, much less the long journey over the mountains.”

“We will pay you well.”

“Charbonneau will take your money, I cannot accept it.”

“There must be something we can do?”

“We will see after your journey. First, let me see your clothing.”