The gambling in Red Arrow’s lodge had gone on all night, as it often did when the men of the Hidatsa village gathered around the fire to play hide the bone. Otter Woman and I had fallen asleep to the sound of their singing, the rhythmic slapping of hands, the rise and fall of bets. When we awoke in the morning, the players were still at it, and among them sat the white man, Toussaint Charbonneau, playing directly against our captor. We sat up, sleepy-eyed, paying them little mind at first.

But then I saw the white man sign to Red Arrow: “You say you have nothing left to bet. You have several things. Your spotted buffalo runner is a good horse. My black runner is faster.

I will bet my black against your spotted horse. ”

Red Arrow thought it over a long while. “No,” he answered. “That horse is my meat getter.

If I lose him, my women and children will go hungry. ”

“You’ve been losing all night,” the white man argued. “It is time for you to begin winning. ”

Red Arrow frowned at the fire, rubbing his hands together, his forehead deeply wrinkled.

Then he straightened and signed, “No. I will not risk my children’s food in this game. ”

The white man laughed. “I will bet my fast buffalo horse against your two Snake captives.

”

“Yes,” Red Arrow signed. “No, no! ” I screamed, and Otter Woman screamed too. “Oh, Red Arrow, great chief, good chief, do not gamble us off.

We will work for you so hard. ”

But he would not even look at us. He took up the two bones, the white one and the black one, and began to juggle them as the gambling song rose around him. He shifted them from hand to hand, behind his back, nodding in time to the singing.

At last he held his two closed fists before his shoulders, and the song stopped. The white man looked long at the two hands, stared into Red Arrow’s eyes, then pointed to his left hand. Red Arrow opened it and showed the black bone. Otter Woman and I began to cry.

Red Arrow’s women cried out and scolded him, for they had come to love us. Red Arrow himself sat as one who had lost his mind. Then he straightened and signed, “I will bet my spotted fast runner, and all fourteen of my horses, against the two girls. ”

The white man shook his head.

“No. I have won them, and I shall keep them. ”

There was nothing for us to do but obey. As we followed Charbonneau out of the lodge, crying harder than ever, we left Red Arrow sitting bowed and humped over, his women furiously scolding him.

That is how I came to belong to the white man. But to tell you how I came to be a captive in that village at all, I must begin much earlier, with my people, the Snakes. It is not because they are cowards that my people are poor, that they hide in hunger in the mountain forests. It is because they cannot hold their own against the plains tribes, especially the Blackfeet.

Whenever the Snakes went out upon the plains after buffalo, they were driven back by enemies who far outnumbered them. At last, in a summer of little rain, when few salmon ascended the rivers and there were but few roots, the chiefs of the Snakes, the Flatheads, and the Pend d’Oreilles counciled together. Said the Snake chief: “It seems to me that we have not had good sense. We have been going out upon the plains to hunt, each tribe in a different place.

That is where we have made our mistake. Let us band together. We will then number so many warriors that I doubt the Blackfeet or our other enemies will even attempt to drive us from the plains. Their plains, say I.

Why, they are our plains too. Come, let us make plenty of arrows and go out and kill all that we want. ”

The other chiefs agreed. When they had made all the arrows they could need, the three tribes crossed the mountains and camped just above the Great Falls of the Missouri, in the midst of countless herds of buffalo.

The people were happy. They feasted, the women dried great quantities of meat and tanned hides for robes and lodge skins. Day after day, scouts watched in all directions for enemies. One morning, enemies were discovered coming from the north, about two hundred men on foot.

When the chiefs heard this, they laughed. “We are more than six hundred men. This day we shall teach the enemy something they will never forget. We shall kill all of them except two or three, who shall go home and tell their people that we are now united and too powerful to be driven from the plains.

”

All the warriors mounted their best horses, slung their bull hide shields, and rode out gladly. The enemy, out on the open plain, did not halt when they saw them coming. They raised their war song and kept right on. Our chiefs said, “They are crazy, crazily brave.

”

As our warriors rode closer, the chiefs cautioned them not to shoot until they were close enough to see the enemy’s eyes. But before they could ride that near, the enemy halted. Some raised what appeared to be shining sticks and pointed them. Suddenly there burst from the ends of the sticks fire and smoke and booms of thunder.

Riders and horses fell as though struck by lightning. Five riders and three horses went down. The rest of the more than six hundred riders turned and fled back to camp. They gathered their women and children and what property they could carry, and away they went up the trail to the mountains, to hide from their plains enemies and starve in the forests of the west slope.

Never again, they said, could they venture out after buffalo. Their enemies had been favored by the gods, given thunder and lightning. It was useless to fight men who carried the weapons of the sky gods. There followed winters and summers of hunger.

The three tribes hid deep in the forest, catching a few salmon, killing a little game, eating what roots they could find. Summer after summer, the plains war men sought them, raiding their horse herds and killing many with the thunder and lightning weapons. At last, it was learned that these weapons were not god-made. A party of Snakes wandering far south met white men who carried the same weapons and said they were not medicine.

The white men made the weapons themselves, along with the black powder and round balls that fed them. They would not give nor sell the Snakes even one, so the war party stole one and hurried north. Knowing that the weapons were man-made, the Snakes became less timid and at times ventured out upon the plains, generally in the late fall when the war parties of the plains tribes had ceased roaming. Thus it was when I was born, when I was growing up in the camp of my people.

Many, oh many times I fled from sudden attacks by the Blackfeet, the Minnetarees, and other plains enemies. From the going of the snow until it came again, the moons were moons of terror for us all. As I grew older, deer and elk became scarcer in our mountain country. In the spring of my tenth summer, food became so scarce that we had to cross the mountains to hunt buffalo or starve.

We made our way down to the fork of our big river, which my white chiefs would later name the Snake River. We could not wait there for the summer run of salmon, so we broke camp and moved east to the west side of the pass at the head of the Missouri River. Some hunters went through the pass and down the east slope, returning with what meat they could pack. They reported the buffalo were far below the forks, too far to hunt from where we were.

Our chiefs decided we should cross the pass and camp near the forks. Better, they said, to die with full bellies than to starve where we were. We crossed and camped on the west fork of the Big River, the Jefferson, not far above its meeting with the middle fork, the Gallatin. The hunters went down the valley every day and returned with buffalo meat and hides.

For the first time in many moons, we had enough to eat. The women dried meat from sunrise to sunset. Yet all of us ate and worked with fear in our hearts, always watching for a war party. We dared not sleep in our camp.

As soon as the sun set and we finished our evening meal, we scattered out, a family here, a family there, to sleep in the thick brush or up on the mountainside. One morning soon after the hunters had gone down the valley, one of them came back as fast as his horse could carry him, shouting that the enemy was coming. Right on his heels came other hunters to run in our horses, while others, among them my father, tried to hold the enemy back until we were on our way. The camp was thrown into confusion.

Women and children ran about crying, paying no attention to the old men begging them to wait for the horses. Some ran for the brush with their children. Only a few heeded the old men. I had been playing with three or four girls a little way above the camp when the trouble began.

I ran down as fast as I could, calling and calling for my mother, running first to our lodge, then to other places. I could not find her. I tried to stop people and ask, but they paid no attention. Hardly knowing what I was about, I turned and ran from camp into the timber, making my way up the valley.

Soon I heard the boom of guns and the shouts of the fighters. I ran faster, tearing through the brush, stumbling and falling. Now and then I saw women and children and hurried toward them, but my mother was not with them. I was a good runner, strong of body, but all too soon I began to tire.

To my right I heard my people calling to one another as they fled for the pass. I worked my way to the trail just as the last party was passing, and I cried out for help, for a horse, but they were so frightened they never looked toward me. I stumbled on after them a little way, then turned back into the brush. At last the timber gave out.

Ahead was a long open bottom, but across the river the timber continued. I looked for a place to cross and waded in, but the water was deep and swift. I went far up the bottom before I found a shallow ford. As I started to cross, I saw four riders coming and thought they were my people.

I stopped on the shore, intending to ask them to let me ride behind one of them. Then, all too late, I saw they were enemies. I ran into the river, stooping low, hoping the bank would hide me. I did not look back.

I was no more than halfway across when I heard a horse splash into the water behind me, then others. A rider seized my arm and yanked me up onto his horse in front of him. I whirled and tried to bite and scratch his face, but he just laughed and clasped me with his left arm so I could not hurt him. He turned his horse, and down the trail we went, they talking and laughing in their language.

I was so frightened I could not cry, not even when we passed a boy and a girl, two of my playmates, lying dead beside the trail. On the way to their camp we were joined by others of the enemy, some with captured horses, two with girl captives of my own age. When we arrived, we found a gathering of more than a hundred. Some held a great band of Snake horses, others guarded boy and girl prisoners, and the rest went through our camp, taking what pleased them and setting fire to the lodges, hides, saddles, everything that would burn.

We were nine prisoners, four boys and five girls. One of the girls, named Otter Woman, was my close friend. She ran to me as soon as my captor let me down, and we cried together. She told me she had been captured by the same man who took me, and that he had left her with companions while he went on in pursuit of our people.

While the camp burned, our captor cut out horses for Otter Woman and me and saddled them. The other prisoners were given saddled horses too, and we were all ordered to mount and ride. Down the trail we went, passing here and there our people, dead and scalped. The boys and girls cried afresh at each one, all but Otter Woman and me.

We felt as badly as the others, worse perhaps, but we could not cry. We made camp at sunset beside the river. We prisoners were ordered to build a fire and were given fat buffalo meat to roast. We cooked it but could no more than taste it.

All around us the war party gathered about little fires, talking, laughing, roasting meat. A full moon shone so bright we could see the great band of horses out on the flats, with four or five men riding around them to keep them together. After a time, the man who had captured Otter Woman and me came and sat near us and said in signs: “You two are mine. I shall take you to my big lodge, and there you will have plenty to eat and good clothing, and you will help my women in their work.

You will be the same to me as my own children. Do not be afraid, but do not try to escape. If you do, I shall have to kill you, for I cannot be bothered chasing you and bringing you back. ”

We made no answer.

He went on: “How is it? Do you understand? ” We signed that we did. He was a man of about fifty years, with a kind face and a soft, laughing voice.

But oh, how we feared him that first evening. He signed to us to lie down and sleep, and we did, closely side by side. We did not intend to sleep. We watched our captors, hoping to escape when they lay down.

But they left three men on guard, who came and sat near us. At midnight three others took the watch. At that, afraid though we were, we slept, so tired we could not keep awake. At daylight we were awakened, taken to the river to wash, given meat, and told to hurry.

We were hungry and much less frightened, so we did eat. Then the horses were brought, and we were on our way again. We rode until noon, rested, and rode until night. On that long day we became somewhat used to our captivity, less afraid that our captors meant worse than to make slaves of us.

But we did not intend to be slaves. That evening we made plans to escape, to return to the mountains and find our people hiding in the forests of the west side. But as fast as we made plans, we saw they were not good. How could we escape when a guard watched us all night?

We cried and fell asleep. On the fourth evening we came to just above the falls of the river, the farthest we had ever come out upon the plains. The next day we traveled across a high waterless plain, then struck the river again and made camp. For two days we crossed a great plain, and on the evening of the second day we camped at the west end of some mountains, the Bear Paw Mountains of the Blackfeet country, as I afterward learned.

The plains terrified us. As far as we could see to the north and east they ran to the edge of the world without a break. If we escaped without horses or water, we should die of thirst before we could ever recross them. That night, for the first time, our captors left no guard over the camp, and the horse herd was out of sight behind a ridge.

As soon as we were sure, we whispered that we should one by one crawl out into the dark pine forest and run for our lives. But one of the boys asked: “Where shall we run? We do not want to go east. We cannot go west across the waterless plain.

This is not the time. We must wait. Seeing that we are quiet, our captors will cease watching us, and when the right time comes, we shall get away. ”

We agreed and went to sleep.

The next morning we came to a small stream running in a wide low valley. We were sure it came from our great mountains. It was the stream my white chiefs would later name the Milk River. We said to one another that if we could escape, we could follow it up to our mountains, then turn south along them to the big river and through the pass to our people.

We agreed to try that night. That day the great herds astonished us. Buffalo and antelope covered the valley and plain. In every grove were elk, white-tail deer, and mule deer.

Late in the afternoon, as we passed a point of timber, we came upon a big bear going into the timber with an antelope fawn hanging from its mouth. It dropped the fawn, sat up, looked at us, and with loud roars came charging straight at us. A bear charging more than a hundred riders driving several hundred horses. It had no fear of the thunder of hooves.

With long swift leaps it came, and we all scattered and rode for our lives. It almost overtook one girl on a small slow horse. It followed us a long way before giving up. That evening, when we made camp by the river below a large grove, our captors for the first time ordered us to gather wood for the fires.

We were afraid to go into the timber, thinking another great bear might be in it. But one of the men turned on us so fiercely that we ran for the timber, more afraid of him than of bears. After all, we said, there may not be a bear in that grove. We went in a step or two at a time, farther and farther, until we were out of sight of our captors.

“Come, let us run,” one of the boys proposed. “Let us hide in the thick willows, and when night falls, head up this valley for our mountains. ”

“We should never reach them,” said a girl. “The big bears would kill us all.

” All the other girls agreed. Another boy said: “I have been thinking hard. Even if we escaped the enemies and the bears, without a bow and arrows to kill meat, we should starve to death on the long trail. ” What he said was true enough.

There were no roots in this country. The berries were not ripe. We had seen only a few small fish in the river. Then the first boy, who was older and wiser, said: “Let us hurry and gather a lot of wood.

Although our hearts are low, let us talk and laugh around our fire. So shall we make our captors think we no longer want to escape. They will cease watching us. There will come a time when we can steal bows and arrows, maybe even a gun.

”

As he proposed, we did. We surprised our captors with our talk and laughter that evening. We could see them watching us, agreeing that we were forgetting our people. Day after day we rode down that valley.

On the evening of the fifth day we camped at its junction with a wide river of dirty water, the big river we had left not far from our mountains. Its valley was wide, and its groves of cottonwoods and willows were long and broad. If we could escape into one of them, we believed our captors would never find us. That evening we did not wait to be told to gather firewood.

We began bringing it from a great heap of dry drift lodged on a sandbar just below the mouth of the little river. There were several logs in it that could easily be rolled into the stream. The boy who had become our leader, whose name was Elkhorn, looked at them a long time. He walked around them, stood at one end and then another, and pushed against them with the back of his legs.

We were providing wood for six fires every evening. That evening he told us to make our fire at the edge of the circle nearest the river. We did, and no one ordered us to move it. None of our captors paid us any attention beyond laying beside us plenty of meat from a fat buffalo cow they had killed while we made camp.

After we had eaten, Elkhorn said: “Now I am going to tell you something. While I tell it little by little, do not look at me. Look at one another, say a few words, do some laughing. If I can steal a bow and arrows or a gun after our captors fall asleep, we shall try to escape.

”

He paused, and we talked and laughed about nothing, though it was hard because we were so anxious. “At the edge of the drift are two dry logs we can roll into the water. If I get a weapon without awakening anyone, we shall one by one crawl down the bank of the river to the drift. We shall roll the logs in so they float.

Half of us clinging to one, half to the other, we shall push out and swim to the other shore. We shall drift downstream a long way. But once we get into the timber on the other side, we shall be safe. Our captors will hunt a long time up this side and never think we crossed.

In the shelter of the timber we can travel in the daytime and kill what meat we need. So if the bears do not get any of us, we shall all be with our people by the end of another moon. ”

We all thought his plan good. One by one we told him we should do as he said.

Oh, how fast our hearts beat. Otter Woman, lying by my side, almost at once went to sleep. I nudged her, pinched her, whispered that she must keep awake. She promised she would and went right back to sleep.

I soon knew from their breathing that all the others except Elkhorn were asleep. He lay on the opposite side of the fire, on his stomach, his head toward the enemy. Two men remained up, talking and smoking long after the others slept. Their fire died to red coals, and they livened it with handfuls of dry twigs.

Watching them, I found myself getting sleepy. Two or three times I caught myself falling asleep. After the two men found no more twigs and lay down by their dying fire, it was still harder to keep awake. Toward the last I cast off my robe and even bit my wrists now and then.

I was the only one who saw Elkhorn when he began to wriggle like a snake toward the nearest sleeping group. In the bright moonlight I could see him plainly. He went so slowly he did not seem to move at all. As he neared the sleeping men, he often raised up and looked at them for a long time.

My whole body trembled with eagerness. Then I saw him, after crawling close to the nearest sleeper, begin to back away. I thought he was giving up. But no, he circled to the right of the sleepers and crawled straight to the outer one.

More slowly than ever, he paused by that one’s side, then backed away and turned toward us. I almost cried out when I saw he was shuffling along with something gripped in his right hand. As he neared, I made out it was a bow and arrow case. It was time for me to wake the others.

But right at the start I made a great mistake. I should have begun with my best friend Otter Woman at my side. Instead, I awakened the girl nearest me on my right, then one by one the girls beyond her, then the boys. I put my hand upon the mouth of each and whispered, “Awake.

It is time to go. ” They sat up, saw Elkhorn coming, and began crawling toward the riverbank. I went back to Otter Woman, put my hand over her mouth, and whispered to her to awake. She never moved.

I shook her gently, whispering again and again, but all she would do was breathe more heavily. I dared not pinch her or do anything that would make her wake suddenly and cry out. All that time our companions were going. I looked around and saw that all but one of them, the first girl I had awakened, had gone out of sight down the slope to the riverbank.

That girl had gone back to sleep. Oh, how angry I was at those two girls. I was minded to leave them. I did start to do so, but my love for Otter Woman drew me back.

Again and again I rolled her head and whispered, still without effect. Finally, after a look at the sleeping men, I stood up, took hold of her hands, and began to pull her to her feet. At that she suddenly awoke, shrieking as loudly as she could: “No, no, don’t kill me! ”

As one man, our captors awoke and sprang to their feet, calling to one another and rushing to us.

Some seized Otter Woman, me, and the other girl, Leaping Fish Woman, while others ran in all directions seeking the missing. Scared as I was, I noticed that those who ran to the bank looked down and out at the drift pile, then turned and ran into the timber. We were soon left with but one man guarding us: the man who had captured Otter Woman and me at the three forks of the Big River, the man who owned us. He was not angry at us for attempting to escape.

He just laughed and signed to us to go with him to the timber and gather wood, so we could build a fire and roast meat. As we went, I heard, surely heard, a splash in the water behind us. We all heard it and looked at one another and at our captor, but he paid it no attention. A dweller on this big river, he was used to its banks being cut and swept away by currents.

It was not until I returned to my people with my white chiefs that I learned that splash was the splash of a log from the drift pile. Those boys and girls had hidden behind the pile, and when all became still, they got a log into the stream and drifted far down to the other shore. From there, after almost two moons of travel, they entered our west side country and found our people. Elkhorn had no trouble killing meat with the bow and arrows he had taken from the sleeping enemy, nor in making fire with a bow drill, nor did those boys and girls see any enemies on that long trail.

They did have two narrow escapes from the great bears of the Big River valley. We three were sad-hearted girls and sat by the fire we built for our captor. He offered us meat, but we refused it. Even the sight of it sickened us.

As he ate, he often broke out laughing and finally signed: “My friends up there in the timber are like birds running in all directions in search of their little ones. Myself, I have my little ones. Here you are right with me. I wish you could see your faces, so sad and old-looking, as if you were about to die.

No, my little ones, you are not about to die. You will soon be living in a good lodge, eating plenty of food, wearing good gowns. Come now, wipe away your tears. ”

Otter Woman and I just sat and stared.

The other girl was different. Even then, young as she was, she would get quickly, fearlessly angry. She darted her head forward like a snake and spat at him. The man laughed harder and signed: “Now, that is what I like to see, a brave heart.

Women of the brave heart make good wives. When you grow up, you shall surely be my wife. ” Leaping Fish Woman again spat at him and signed, “I hate you. ”

After a long time the men came straggling back from their search.

A few caught horses and rode away to look again. The rest of us lay down to sleep. Our captor made Otter Woman and me lie down close to him, and Leaping Fish Woman’s captor signed her to lie beside us. We could not sleep, so great was our sorrow that we had not gotten away with our companions.

When morning came we were on the trail again, so tired we could barely sit our horses. Day after day we continued down the valley of the Big River, through great groves of cottonwoods and across wide, grassy bottoms covered with buffalo, antelope, deer, and elk, so tame they would only get out of the trail ahead of us. Each evening our captors killed a number of fat buffalo cows and took only the choice parts, leaving great quantities of meat to the wolves. We had never seen waste like that, and we expected the gods to punish them for it.

At last we arrived at the village of our captors, this village in which I now stand. We stared at the great sloping, earth-roofed round lodges, all enclosed with a fence of cottonwood logs set upright in the ground. The people stared at us, especially the women and girls, some in gowns of strange, soft red or blue material we would soon learn was trade cloth. Our captors entered the village singing their war song and waving the scalps they had taken, and were loudly greeted and praised.

The man who had captured Otter Woman and me led us into his lodge. We were surprised at its size and comfort. The coldest weather of winter could never be felt there. Soft beds of buffalo robes lined the walls, curtained with brightly painted leather.

Two women, the wives of our captor, and their children came in with us. He signed that we were to mind them and do all they told us. One woman, the head wife, gave us a couch and soon brought us large earthen dishes full of food from the pots around the fire. It was strange food, corn boiled with meat, but it tasted so good we ate it all.

So life began for us in this village of the Minnetarees, as you call these people, the neighbors of the Mandans. In their language they call themselves Hidatsa. That first evening we got our greatest surprise when three white men came into the lodge to visit our captor. They were traders from a post of the Northwest Company, somewhere north of the Assiniboine River.

Two were young men, smooth-faced and blue-eyed, with sun-colored hair. We thought them the most handsome men we had ever seen, and we were not afraid of them. The other man, much older, had dark hair growing long upon his cheeks and under his nose, and his appearance was so horrible, so sickening, that after one quick look we could not look again. They asked us many questions in sign language about our people and our country, and we answered as well as we could.

The next day our captor’s women, for his name was Red Arrow, set us to work tanning buffalo leather. Later we were taught many kinds of work. What we liked most was working in the field of corn and other plants. It was pleasant to watch the plants grow and flower, and the flowers turn into fruit good to eat.

We soon had a helper, for Red Arrow bought Leaping Fish Woman from her captor, paying four horses and a gun. It was his pleasure to tease her every evening, and sad-hearted as we were, Otter Woman and I could not help but laugh at the way she would suddenly anger at him, spit, and sign all the mean taunting things she could think of. At first we three were always talking of escaping. But as time passed, Otter Woman and I became less eager, thinking of the great dangers of the long trail.

Leaping Fish Woman was different, braver than we. She never ceased planning to escape and often told us that if we would not go with her, she would go alone. We did not believe she meant it. The summer passed and the long winter, and by spring we had all three learned to speak the language of our captors.

As soon as the new grass began to grow, Leaping Fish Woman talked more and more of going back to our people. At last one evening she told us she would try to escape all by herself that very night. Fear of the long trail, the terrible bears, and the Blackfeet men was something we could not get over, and we still believed she would not go without us. When we awoke the next morning, she had gone.

All the men of the village turned out to help Red Arrow search, but they found not even a footprint. We missed her terribly for a long time. Then twice that summer war parties returned with Snake scalps and Snake horses taken in raids across the mountains. Their rejoicing hurt us, and we were unhappy enough.

With the coming of winter, a white man who was married to a Minnetaree woman and lived in the village below moved up to this village and bought a lodge. He had been a Nor’wester but was now a free man. He trapped and hunted part of the time and traded with the Cheyennes and other tribes. This man, Toussaint Charbonneau, was often a visitor in Red Arrow’s lodge, coming to gamble at hide the bone for horses, guns, knives, and all kinds of property.

He could not understand the language of the tribe, although he had long had a Minnetaree wife, so he conversed in sign language. It was on one such morning, after a night of gambling, that the game was played that changed my life. When Charbonneau won Otter Woman and me, Red Arrow offered his spotted runner and all fourteen horses to get us back, but the white man refused. We followed him to his lodge, crying harder than ever.

His Minnetaree wife was gentle-hearted and kind to us, and we soon learned to love her. She was not strong, so we took on her work. It was not long before we were doing all of it: the lodge work, the garden work, the tanning of skins, the bringing in of wood and water. We talked less and less of escape.

After a winter or two we never mentioned it, except when a war party returned with Snake scalps and Snake horses. At such times we were unhappy, but otherwise we were contented, quite happy. The white man, old enough to have been our father, was sometimes cross but generally good to us. His anger went as quickly as it came.

So, working hard and playing not at all, we grew up to be young women. There came a time when I felt so badly I could not talk about it. I cried and cried and was near jumping into the river to end it all. A young Mandan named White Grass, who often visited the Minnetaree village, looked at me, and I at him, for he was good to look at, slim and tall, fine of face and long-haired.

In time we came to saying a few words as we met and passed. One day when Otter Woman and I were tending our garden of growing corn, he came and told me he loved me. I was not ashamed. I told him I had long been hoping he would say that.

We sat down at the edge of the corn, and while Otter Woman worked, he told me we should have a lodge of our own in the village of his people. They would build it and furnish it. We should have our own garden and raise plenty of good food, and he would hunt and bring in plenty of meat. To all that he said, I answered, “Yes, that would be the way of it.

”

Then Otter Woman said: “Don’t be crazy. Don’t be making plans until you know what our white man owner will say to this. ”

“He will say yes, of course,” my young sweetheart cried. “I will give him ten horses for you.

He cannot refuse ten good big horses. ”

I laughed happily and said the white man would never refuse that many for me, more than I was worth. But Otter Woman shook her head. “He will not sell you for twenty, no, not for all the Mandan horses.

”

White Grass sprang to his feet and pulled me up beside him. “I will prove you wrong. We will go to the white man now, and I shall give him the horses. ” Away we went across the flats and into the village.

We paused at the entrance to the lodge and looked at one another, for the first time afraid all might not come out as we wanted. Then White Grass straightened up and led the way. Oh, how handsome he was, how fearless, as he stopped before the fireplace and said to the white man sitting on his couch: “White man, great chief, this girl, your slave, I love and she loves me. Ten horses, ten good big horses, I give you for her.

”

Charbonneau was slow to understand, and the youth had to repeat it in signs. Then he understood. He sprang to his feet, enraged, and howled in French: “Dog Mandan! Go away from here.

Go, go, go. Never enter this lodge again. Outside in the village, in the gardens, in the timber, wherever you see this Snake girl, go away around and never speak to her. Hurry, get out of here.

”

White Grass made no answer. He stared at the shouting, arm-waving white man and slowly turned to go. As he passed, he said to me: “Take courage, sweetheart. I go, but I shall return.

I go to make a name for myself, to take horses and still more horses from the enemy, and scalps too. When I come again, he will not dare refuse to give you to me. ”

I turned to go back to the corn, nearly blinded with tears. The white man thundered to me to stop and told his Minnetaree woman to go with me, to watch me, and to see that the young Mandan never came near.

The poor, sick woman did as she was told, and thereafter, wherever Otter Woman and I went, she was obliged to go with us. But her heart was not with her white man. It was with us. The next day, when we were in the corn, she watched the village while White Grass circled in from the hills and had a last talk with me.

Otter Woman sat by my side while he told me again and again how much he loved me, and I promised him that no matter how long I had to wait, I would be his woman. He would leave the next day, he said, with a party going to war against the Pawnees and would no doubt take plenty of horses. That would be the beginning of his work to gather so many horses the white man could not refuse to trade me for them. He then kissed me four times, the sacred number, mounted his horse, and rode away down the flats.

That was the last I ever saw of my Mandan sweetheart. He had not been gone a moon before word came that on their way to the Pawnee country, the war party had been ambushed by the Arikaras, and all but two had been killed. The two survivors told that my sweetheart had fought bravely to the last and had killed a great Arikara warrior before he fell. The white man laughed when the news came, laughed long and loud, and looked at me.

Although I felt my heart going out from me, I would not let even one tear fall before him. I kept my face calm and told my almost sister to talk with me, to say anything to keep us talking. She understood and asked me if I thought the buffalo would become well furred early in the winter. But oh, how I cried and mourned for my lost sweetheart when off in the corn or the timber, away from the white man.

Working hard, Otter Woman and I harvested the corn and stored it away, then brought in load after load of firewood for the winter. Day by day, moon by moon, the white man’s Minnetaree woman grew thinner and weaker. With the first snow of winter, she took to her couch and soon died. The white man did not seem to care.

He ordered us to help her relatives put up a scaffold out on the flats and lash her body upon it. When we returned to the lodge, he said to me: “Now that the old woman is gone, you two shall be my wives. You shall be my head wife. Your place is here beside me on this couch.

Your friend there shall have that couch. As head wife, I look to you to keep this lodge in good shape. Yours will be the blame if there is not always garden food in the pots and plenty of wood on hand. What time you are not otherwise busy, you will tan the hides I bring in.

Now, do you understand all that I have said? ”

For moons back I had seen this coming and dreaded it. Now that it had come, I was so scared of him I could not answer, not even nod my head. I was more scared than when I had been seized in the river by the Minnetaree warrior.

I felt I had not the power to move even a finger. Otter Woman was crying. The white man fell silent, and I could hear him breathing hard as he did when angry. Soon I heard him spring from his couch.

He seized me and lifted me and threw me upon his couch, crying out: “I’ll teach you to mind me. Now stay there, right there where you belong. ”

So it was that I became the head wife of Charbonneau. The story does not go into detail about what happened after that.

But we know that when Lewis and Clark met a pregnant teenage girl in a Mandan village in November of 1804, she was no more than sixteen years old, and the child she carried was Charbonneau’s. On February 11, 1805, she gave birth to a son. That young Shoshone woman, who had been torn from her people as a child, gambled away by one master to another, and made a wife against her will, was Sacagawea.

She would go on to carry that infant across the continent with the Corps of Discovery, and history would remember her as the expedition’s guide.