en made much of her. And when, in
February, a tiny boy arrived to her and Toussaint, there was much
delight.
A baby in the camp helped to break the long dull spell of
forty-below-zero weather, when two suns shone feebly through the
ice-crystaled air.
A thousand miles it was, yet, to the Rocky or Shining Mountains, by the
river trail. In the Mandan towns, and in the American camp, Sacagawea
was the only person who ever had been as far as those mountains. They
were the home of her people, but nearly three years had passed since
she had been taken captive by the Minnetarees.
Could she still speak the Snake tongue? Certainly! Did she remember
the trail to the country of the Snakes? Yes! Was there a way across
the mountains? Yes! Beyond some great falls in the Missouri there was
a gate, by which the Shoshonis came out of the mountains to hunt the
buffalo on the plains. It was there that she had been captured by the
Minnetarees. Would the Snakes be friendly to the white men? Yes,
unless they were frightened by the white men. Would she like to go
back to her own people? Yes! Yes!
That was great luck for Sacagawea, but it was greater luck for the two
captains. In the spring they broke camp, and taking Chaboneau as
interpreter in case that the hostile Minnetarees were met, and little
Sacagawea to spy out the land of the Snakes, and littlest Toussaint,
the baby, as a peace sign to all tribes, with a picked party of
thirty-one the two captains started on, up the swollen Missouri.
They made no mistake, in the Bird-woman. Of course she was used to
roughing it; that was the life of an Indian woman--to do the hard work
for the men, in camp and on the trail. But Sacagawea early showed
great good sense.
Her husband Chaboneau almost capsized their canoe, by his clumsiness.
She neither shrieked nor jumped; but calmly reaching out from it, with
her baby tightly held, she gathered in the floating articles. She
saved stuff of much value, and the captains praised her.
"She's a better man than her husband," asserted the admiring soldiers.
After hard travel, fighting the swift current, the strong winds, storms
of rain and sleet, and monster grizzly bears, the expedition arrived at
the Great Falls, as the Bird-woman had promised.
She had ridden and waded and trudged, like the rest. She had carried
her baby on her back, and had built the fires for her husband, and
cooked his meals, and kept right along with
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