Sacajawea Read Free Page A

pounded grass seed, he wondered if living and keeping a tribe together was as simple a thing as he had thought. Once or twice in the past he had suspected that his people would not of themselves survive, but there was some mysterious force, something from the Great Spirit that allied itself with them to conquer their fear of the weather, or starvation and sickness, and even the great mystery of death.
    “How do you like it?” asked his woman, handing him another biscuit made from the grass-seed flour, water, and bear grease.
    “It is crisp and good to the taste and deserves a gift in return.” He pulled something from inside the waist-string of his trousers, hoping to distract her profound thoughts with something gay. “A smooth blue stone. I have been keeping it for some special time, for this day. I took it from a Blackfoot after he and a companionskulked around our best ponies at sundown during the Month of No Rain. His companion will be getting back to his camp about now—if he went all the distance on foot as I last saw him.”
    “My Chief, the color is like the spring sky, cool and fresh! Pound a small hole here so that I can put a thin thong through and wear it around my neck.”
    “A woman requires things of beauty as a man requires food,” mumbled the chief, not daring to look at his woman’s radiant face. He was not afraid of the emotion deep inside his belly; he wished only to keep it under control in front of his children. “Uuuugh.” He cleared his throat and watched the four youngsters emerge from the tepee ready for their first meal of the day.
    Fragrant Herbs hid her feelings only in the presence of strangers. “Each sunrise my feeling for you grows. This feeling is greater now than when you first came to my mother’s tepee.”
    “Is it not strange,” asked the chief, “that the birds and animals decorate their bucks, while we decorate our squaws?”
    “Would you have me decorate you with quills and shells and bright flowers in your hair?” Her eyes snapped.
    “Would you have the men laugh behind my back and the women giggle behind their hands?”
    “I feel like a young girl in love, beautiful,” she smiled.
    Chief No Retreat coughed and turned to see his boys scuffle over a smooth stick. Grass Child spotted the whiteness of it. ‘That is mine,” she cried shrilly. “I have gathered yellow grass to make a tunic and wide sash for the stick. It is to be my papoose.”
    Rain Girl ran between the boys. “Give the baby her stick-papoose. You can make another with a cutting stone. Give it to her so she won’t scream.”
    Fragrant Herbs quickly pushed tightly woven willow bowls into the hands of each child. “Eat, and enjoy the fall air,” she said gently. “Perhaps your father will take the boys hunting before we strike camp. Rain Girl and Grass Child, try to finish your sewing before we break camp in three suns.”
    Rain Girl took a bowl of meat broth to Old Grand-mother inside the tepee. “We want to sew today,” she said. “In three days we leave.”
    Old Grandmother’s eyes were as bright as wet black stones. Her hair was sparse and matted in the back, with a few black wisps showing over her forehead. Her brown face was like a shriveled, dried plum. She had taught both her granddaughters to sew, to tan hides, and to make pemmican. While she taught with her hands, she sang songs for happiness, songs for sadness, and songs of praise to the Great Spirit. Her songs used a range of only five notes, but they were from the depth of her soul’s memory. They were songs from the memory of her own grandmother. Near the end of each winter, she retold the legend of the origin of the Shoshoni to her grandchildren.
    “Once,” Old Grandmother would say, “a great flood covered the land. A water bird swam about the surface with tufts of grass in its bill. The Great Spirit breathed life into the tufts, which became people, white as the fresh-fallen snow. After several children were born to