Tent of Many Voices: 08170402T

to you our next speaker uh Miss beev Hines of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation she is going to talk to us today about Chicago web so please join me and help me helping welcome be to the stage today I guess we're all here and ready to go and we hope we don't have too much traffic on the interstate and too many of them running Jake breaks I don't want to break your hearts but I'm going to uh cut down some of the myths of saga Saka sakaka Saga and twice Clark called her Janie those of us in Iowa learned sakaa years and years ago the north dakotans say sakaka but not the Mandan Hada tribes some of you had your exposure to Sago waya from Waldo's novel one of my friends said oh it was such a beautiful story about her that big thick book and I said the only part that was accurate was the start of each chapter where she quoted from the journals s way I didn't speak English s way I didn't have an affair with Captain Clark I'm taking all the fun it aren't I let Legends and myths Die Hard and some of the myths have been that there was a second Saga that lived until she was close to 100 and then died and is buried on the Wind River Reservation but those of us who are Lewis and Clark people think differently this one could almost start like a fairy tale once upon a time there lived some stories in history should always start that way as far as I'm concerned but Saga was quite a young woman the only thing now is that the M Dan and the Shoni still don't agree on how to pronounce her name you're more apt from the Mandan Villages and amasa to hear Saga the shones will sometimes say Saga she may not even have been named when she grew up in the Shi tribe regardless of spellings or pronunciation she's quite a remarkable young woman she has more statues 23 than I'm aware of that have been made her than any woman in American history she's got all kinds of paintings she's got mountains she's got Rivers she's got just about anything you can think of named in her honor many books about her and most of them aren't accurate kind of hard to go back and get into the Indian history and and have the history come up with what she want according to the journal she was Lioni one of the snake tribe the salmon eaters her people were a semi nomadic tribe they were called the aaduki centered around today's Continental Divide through the area of Idaho the lmh High River Val she was probably born in what's now the tendoy area what we know is documented about where she was taken in Lewis's journals for July um August of 1805 and Lewis wrote that when she was about 12 years of age approximately 1800 she was taken prisoner near the Three Forks Montana area by the Hada Indians they were a raing part the shonis did not have guns they had great horses but they didn't have guns and the minaries would come in adasa minari group would come in the men would be off Hunting they would not take women they would not take old men they would not take the young boys they took the young women to be their slave early life as a child had been like well they were semi-nomadic as I said in the summer they went to the mountain rivers to fish for salmon in the fall they crossed the mountains to the Eastern PLS to hunt for buffalo in the spring they went to their C planes for the C rout she learned as soon as she could walk to take her little digging stick so by the time she was three she had a little digging stick and she learned how to dig for rots she learned which berries were edible which of the ground vegetables that they could find were edible she learned how to set up a tear down a t she learned how to pack for whenever they would travel to hunt or anything have to remember the men did the hunting and the killing and then they left the cutting up and all the rest of the work to the women small pox had already been through the area of the shies they were a weakened tribe they got their horses from the southwest from the Spanish and as I said they had marvelous horses just no guns the pl's Indians really made the raids and took their toll on them when she was taken she was taken back to the m then area Village the area they headed east but they did did not go by the way that Lewis and Clark came West later they took the southerly route they went in along following the Yellowstone until a Yellowstone f up with the Missour so one thing I'm going to tell you is she was not a guide she was not a guide she was not a guide she did not know where she was going she did not point out to them take this route she wasn't a guide her role key role was As an interpreter for the shonis a woman with a baby meant usually that it was not a war party and she helped them find food but when you see Sago way pointing no she did not know where she was going hate to tell you that imagine being a 12-year-old being taken by a tribe going across several hundred miles and going to live in another tribe where you didn't know the language if they asked you your name you couldn't even tell them your name because you didn't know what they asked so we don't know if Sako was her name in the shonis or not the shonis frequently did not give their children a name until there had been some major occurrence in their life so she may not have been had a name so today the Shon and the Man Dan still argue does saga mean bird woman or does it mean b boat launcher did she have a name back then but she went with this tribe to become a slave now being nomadic and going there not knowing the language and going into a tribe that planted pumpkins corn tobacco she had to learn to farm this is a totally alien world to this young woman they raised sunflowers beans corn squash and so the digging stick that she had learned to dig for things with became a digging stick like they used to plant things Amy moss and I had a long two hours in the airport one time and she said oh we didn't take slaves hello yes you did the Indian tribes almost all of them took slaves I haven't been able to ask any of our our uh deep historians who get into genealogy and lineage and stuff if this was a good way to bring in fresh blood to a tribe so that you didn't have a lot of inbreeding you would steal from another tribe and bring them in and eventually you took them into their family and then married she was with them about 3 to four years before shano came along sharino had come to the Hada Villages as a Trapper and trater he spoke French he spoke Hada some say he won her in a card game the captains tell us in a in a journal that he purchased her now when you look at purchasing do you think as we do with some other tribes in the country and in the world a bride price he already had one Shoni wife with a small child he was probably close to three times her age thing I like about sharino is he kept marrying very young Indian women even when he was 80 he took another 15year old but he took her as his bride he worked As an interpreter when LS and Clark came he was an interpreter for them we're told he was short dark loud rough and was always it seemed like in trouble and kind of chickening out on things during the Expedition what they said was a French man by name Shabana who speaks the big Bell the gr language visits us he wanted to hire and informed us his two SARS were snake shy Indians we engage him to go with us and take one of his wives to interpret the snake language no one says it in the journals nor in much of what I have read over the years as to why they picked Sak waya my own feeling is if wife number one had a 2-year-old and you're going to take a Shon wife to interpret you're going to take the one that's got a baby in a cradle board not a 2-year-old that's going to run around Camp when you look at how they had to interpret and the way that language is very interesting private leish who was half Onan and half French spoke French and did a lot of the interpreting so the captains would speak to him in English he would speak in French to shano shano would speak Hada Justa then when he got out to the show you had to add one more layer so trying to interpret and go back and forth could be an all day thing that winter at the camp at Fort Mandan they moved sharo and Sago waya into the fort itself so Sago waya was away from any of her women friends and the women who would help her with her pregnancy and on February 11th we are told that she was in labor with the baby painful violent and one of the Frenchman by the name of your said he had heard if you took a rattlesnake rattle and crushed it and put it in water and gave it to the woman she would deliver quickly well I've had three kids and I think if you threaten me with rattlesnake rattle I might deliver quickly also Clark had the rattlesnake rattle just s gave it to her they say in the journal she delivered 10 minutes later Captain Lewis was enough of a scientist to say he would have to see that many more times before he would believe in the efficacy of it so my nursing background said okay what is in rattlesnake rattle is there something like kosin like we use today to induce labor uh-uh my medical friends say oh B keratin the same stuff that's in your fingernails it's what's in a rattle snake rattle I thought okay placebo effect you tell somebody long enough strong enough that this is going to work maybe it does she delivered on April 11th or February 11th of 1805 and on April 7th of 1805 the kbo went back Downstream 30 men of the Expedition chano Saga and the baby started West 55 days old baby in a cradle board a nursing mother 16 years 17 years old with the original disposable diapers a piece of leather filled with Cattail fluff or Marsh Grass at least it was by greatable the first time that they mention in the journals after leaving on the 7 that she did something for them was she was walking on shore on April 11th she found a pile of wood and she knew that the mice would hide things under the wood so she dug in under there and lo and behold wild are the chokes food for dinner they walked a lot on the shore not always in the boats and she would find The Rook vegetables the things that they could eat she gathered R and all the rest of the way with them now squa was not a derogatory word back then squa when used in context meant the wife of another man back East the Algonquin called the white men's wives squa and it didn't have a derogatory connotation it just meant you were the wife of another man on May 14th the white perose starts to tip they're in the water of the Missour the wind comes up it starts to swamp sh no panics he doesn't do a thinging the captains were walking on Shore cruzat blind in one eye and not seeing any the other the good River Boatman was at the runner he threatened shano to straighten things up help write the boat sh froze in the meantime Sago waya with the baby on her back is reaching in into the water picking up journals picking up boxes picking up papers and things as they float out everything they needed that was washing overboard she got most of it back cruzat got them to safety he threatened to shoot Charo if he didn't Shape Up mistake was he didn't do it LS wrote in the journal that she had the equal fortitude and resolution with any person on board at the time of the accident he praised her June 10th they are now in a camp near the Great Falls they have camped because they are trying to figure out where Falls what's going with the river they're trying to get the celestial navigation find out what they're doing and Saga becomes very ill high fever intestinal pains Medicine of the time one of the things you did was to bleed a patient patient you know they gave you an a medic to make you vomit they gave you a diuretic to make the urine flow they gave you a perg up to clean out the bowels and then they would bleed you and in this case Clark bed her for 4 days she got worse Clark BL her again what the men say in the journals he BL her twice leis was on a side trip Clark wrote every day about her illness and she kept getting worse and she ran a high fever and this is the one place something happened in the trip that might have made a difference had she died on June 14th Clark wrote her case somewhat dangerous he had her swallow some bark Peruvian the powdered Peruvian bark came from the syona tree gave us our quinine but it was also the aspirin of the B so he gave her a dose of that by mouth and and he also put a pus of it on her abdomen she became worse he wrote she got into a depression somewhat dangerous June 15th she refused to take her medicine and so they Clark said to shano I want you to help me I don't think shano really cared and Clark wrote that finally got her to take some but he wasn't concerned about her health Clark said if she Di it will be the fall of her husband as I am now convinced leis F away he came back and by the time he came back to Camp her arms and her hands were twitching her pulse was very weak leis wrote found the Indian woman extremely ill and much reduced by her indisposition pulse weak and irregular he gave her two doses of farts and he finally gave her some Lum opium mixed with alcohol or water now that will make change in your pulse and it did help there is a sulver spring not far from there it's called Sago waya Springs and Le sent the men for some of the sulfur water and he had her continue to drink the sulfur water for a number of days we don't know if there was an electrolyte imbalance but they tested the water today and they say no there's nothing in it that really would have cured her but a nursing mother what would have happened if she died good question 4month old baby would the men have chewed food and then spit it back out for the baby to eat you have to look at this and you think that could have been a catastrophe it could have been a catastrophe captains recorded every day of her condition took about 10 days for her to get better now what did they think that she had today the doctors say possibly post cartum pelvic inflam atory disease she probably had had diarrhea because theal diseases were among ands we look at that and we'd say okay do we want to tap it up to a child bed fever the Sago waya that the ls and Clark believe was the true Sago waya died in 1812 at Fort Emanuel 4 months after giving birth to a girl lazette and the fort settler whose name was wrote that the wife of shano who went with ls and Clark died today of putrid fever very much what she had 4 months after giving birth to baby pm to John Baptist they did the journey around the falls it took them three plus weeks to get around the falls and then on the 29th of June there is a flash FL there is this heavy rain Clark sharo sag Lea and the baby are in kind of a valley a gully and this flood comes running through now here's where sharo panics again he scrambling to get up to get to High Ground trying not too hard to pull her Clark is below trying to shove her up before the water gets more than waste deep on him they managed to get to the top shelf of this area before anything happened to all of them but they lost the Cradle board they lost all of the baby's clothes sharino lost his gun that rainstorm was so heavy and so bad that they had hail Stones between 1 in and 7 in in diameter were told in the journals that the men were beaten and blooded by those hail stones 24th of July now they're seeing the Rocky Mountains I love the captains one of those things that you realize that at the time they thought that the country was balanced there's Appalachians on the East Coast not too high you're going to get to the West Coast you're going to find something that matches I would love to have been a little mouse because I'm told the captains would not have use Square words but I want to know what they said when they started seeing the Rockies and then when they got out to the shies and all they saw was row after row after Row the Indians had told them they would see shining mountains snow on them but they didn't tell them how much and I would love to have heard what they said we are now to the area where Sago waya is beginning to recognize landmarks getting out near the Three Forks area this is the land of my people and on August 14th shano hit Sago a and Clark reprimanded him for it now this is one of the thing that Shon tribes and her great great great grand niece Rosanne ninon says please always talk about the violence because there was frequently physical violence in these families Clark sto The Cho I know August 17th they are in the area of the shonis now and Sago waya sees a woman in the distance she said through sharo and such that she and a friend were captured by enemy Warriors her friend escaped and made her way home and the woman that she met was the friend her fingers in her mouth and she dances she is overjoyed to see this young woman when it came time for the meeting with the chieftain a woman is not normally an Indian woman is not normally in a circle with The Chieftains and when you are meeting with strangers if Saga was brought in to interpret she would come in with her head down she would keep her head down until she was to speak and this is where you go English to French to Vasa to show Shy and back and this is when Hollywood couldn't have done it any better Chief kwe was her brother now we're not sure if it was blood brother or Clan brother but it was her brother and it made it much easier to go and get the horses now the custom of the show time was that she had been promised to a young man when she was a child they asked her to stay with the shies this young man though did not want her for now he had two wives and children and she had another husband and she had a child by him so he didn't want her so there was no reason for her to stay with him one of the things that came up was on the 25th of August kight's people had been starving the members of the Expedition hadn't had a lot to eat beforehand and though he had promised horses Kam was going to take his people to go on a buffalo hunt because they were starving and here is where shano is in trouble again because Saga overhears her brother saying that they are going to go on a buffalo hunt which wouldn't let no horses for LS and Clark she tells shano and shano does not tell Captain Lewis at first not till later in the day the captains did though hold Choate to his promise of horses so on the 29th of August they got their horses and their mules even got a horse for Chicago whale through the bitter Roots starving I've often wondered how a nursing mother managed with the food supply that they had to keep enough milk for a young child but she apparently was given enough and managed to do that this is an area where they were Clark recognized her usefulness the wife of shano interpreter we find reconciles all the Indians as to our friendly intentions a woman with a party of men is a token of peace they recognized that through the mountains out to the coast there were a couple of times during the Expedition I would love to have been with them I would love to have watched all these men carting water to pour down a hole to get a prairie dog the other thing I would love to have seen when you read the journals is when the men do the Rapids of the Snake River and the Indians are watching and I'm wondering if the Indians are thinking those crazy white men do they know what they're going to do but they got to the coast November 24th they are going going to take a vote for where to over winter York got a vote he voted for Overlook like 11 of the other men so that they could see what was going sakado WEA first woman to vote the Native American voted kotas and in the journals this is one of the places that CL called her Janie Janie voted poas root V vegetabl WAP where there is food has to be the practicality of a woman on the 30th of November Sago way had been hoarding flour to bake something for young pong she had gotten wet and it had started to sour so she baked bread and gave some to Captain Clark he said it was had not had bread for months so it was a treat and I say okay did she start the sourdough bread thing because that was Sour Dough Bread by the time she used the wet sour flour when they had the camp at Fort pla was the first time that cicago waya sharo and the baby had a room of their own all the journey traveling west they had used the large leather tent stayed with Captain leis Captain Clark George Jer the other interpreter shanoa and baby pal they had shared T all out one of the interesting things on this was from November 4th to March 23rd there were only 12 days it did not rain on the Oregon coast and only six of those days did the sunshine kind of a wet miserable winter Captain Clark's note that they did Christmas gift exchanges on December 25th you know there's nothing like a Christmas dinner of rotted elk meat they exchanged some handkerchiefs one of the men made a pair of moccasins for clar but Sak waya gave Captain Clark 24 weasel Tales how do you know what weasel Tales are when they turn white Herman she had brought them from the Shon when she was there with her Tri now I'm not saying she didn't think a great deal of it because I think she did and he probably treated her better than Captain Lewis did but she gave him 24 white weasel taals that made marvelous decorations this woman had the captains take her belt of blue beads away from her to buy otter skin cake the Indians on the were ferocious Traders they've been trading with all the sailors for years and the other people coming through and they would hold you up for highway robbery and the captains in their journals did not speak too highly sometimes of them but she had lost her belt of blue beads for trade for that on January 6th they hear about the huge quailes over on the beach and sag waya wants to go see it she has come all way with the men she's done everything the men have done and she wants to go see the big fish and what I would love to know is how did she make known through sharbono without stamping her feet to the captains that she wanted to go see that big fish she got to go it was a 3-day trip carting the baby in his in the Cradle Now by then he's about 10 months old had to climb this one area to get over to where this big fish was and by the time they got there it was bones most of the glubber and meat had been taken but she was allowed to go she had gotten she wanted to see the ocean and she wanted to see the big fish they started back in March by the time in April the expedition was forced to pay very high prices for horses sharo took two of her leather dresses away from her to trade for a horse he also gave up one of his shirts but it wasn't like taking her dresses again didn't ask just took it in May baby pom became very ill high fever slowen at the back of his head and his neck those of us with gray hair probably remember the words of mastoid and the infections that we used to get before the days of antibiotics they said that he was cutting teeth and he had the LAX that means he's cutting teeth and he's got Di so what did they give him laxative he was the only one in the whole trip who got an enema and then the white man had the audacity to write but the child felt better they used a pus of hot onions as hot as he could stand they used a pus of beeswax pie and Pitch as warm as could be applied he did survive it it's amazing when you look back at this and think of all things that happened to the men and everybody else we don't have immune systems like that today no way they had them they put up with the bad water the half rotted meat of course then when they got disent they got Dr Rush's Thunderbolts to clean them out and I think sometimes that may have been a help instead of all that the one time coming home that she was a guide the men had split Clark was going to go to the yellow store leis was going to go up here what is now cut back Montana area and she told Clark through interpreter that there was a pass in the mountains that her people took and if he went that particular way it would shorten his trip he could make it through there easier today we know it as Boseman pass and it is the one time in the journal that he calls her my pilot that is the one time yes she knew where she could tell them to go I don't know if she pointed there but most of the time no she wasn't a guy on August 17th 1806 sharino and the family left the Expedition sho got $533 he got the tent he got a horse one what's K again Sil Sil no pay Clark expected I think to make it up to her later because the ricra village on August 21st he did write a letter back to sharino saying that he did not have it in his power at that time to reward her as she should be Clark asked to take the baby back to St Louis with him and educated not live with him but educate him and Saka said no he was not weaned yet he was 19 months old later Sago waya visit through this area down to Missour was in 1810 and she and Cho went to St Louis Cho tried to be a farmer he was given some land sold it back to to Clark went back up the River in 1811 racken Ridge and his journal had written that in 1811 shano and his Indian wife who had gone with ls at Clark to the coast were there on the boat that was going back up the river and that she liked the flight which made me think she was trying to dress as the white people did but her she was in ill health and they on their way back December 12th of 1812 Fort Manuel letting WR this evening the wife of sharino a snake squa died of a future feater she was a good and the best woman of the fort age about 25 years she left a fine infant girl lazette what sagaa did was fantastic feat accompanying the man doing everything that they did except the hunting but she was looking for Soldier food to coast and back it's like that old saying you know Fred St was a marvelous dancer The Ginger Rogers did everything he did only backwards and then high heels and long dress well Sago waya did it in her moccasins and with a baby on her back a nursing mother Louis said she was happy to Lucky Clark called her uncomplaining and such a trait wouldn't have been gotten such a compliment if it weren't true ly took baby Lizette and another young boy down to St Louis arrived in 1813 applied to the court in August for appointment as a guardian for lazette as well as for a Tucson a boy about 10 years old in the court records his name has been crossed out and William Clark's name has been sub ited so William Clark did the educating of John Baptist sharino and loette the children were educated in St Louis I love the things that John Baptiste we don't know what happened to lazette we know that lazette there was a lazette carono at 24 there was a marriage license but we have not been able to follow anything beyond that we know that John Baptist could speak English French and hadassa was sent to school learn Greek and Latin went to Germany what is now Germany with Duke Paul of whartonberg can you see them with this young Indian warrior throwing a tomahawk in the Palaces of Europe for a few years and learned to speak German Italian and some Spanish and then came back to this country and over educated indan who then went to lead groups out into the West Clark's ledgers were found in 1936 he had in the 1820s started keeping track of who was alive and who was dead of the Expedition between 1825 and 1828 the woman who wrote about the Saga waya the one pero the one who never said she was sagaa died before these were published but in his Ledger he had written 182 s dead and then below it SE way off dead when you look at the ways that the name was spelled in the journals about 23 different ways all total and D when he did the journals put in a j because he couldn't read their G's so you have sakaia Saka s and you keep going on and I still like Jamie whatever you end up calling her she was a marvelous young woman a feet I don't know that any of the girls today would walk across the country in their moccasins with a baby on their back and do the things that they did whatever you do she's a marvelous young woman she was not a guy but we are very proud and recognized that Lewis and Clark would not have survived or made the journey without the help of the Indians that they discovered along the way that they met up with from the Odo Missoura who gave them watermelons when they met down near what is now Fort Atkinson to the man B van where they exchanged metal and blacksmithing for corn sexual favors of veneral disease too to the show shies that gave them horses to the N Pur who rescued them after the Bitters and W said do not kill them this aged woman he said I have been rescued by white men and brought to my people do them no harm they never would have made it without the na of Americans and wouldn't have made it without this young woman Saka the Shon young woman interpret interpret thank you I'll take questions if you have any about five minutes left we can take questions any questions there are a few very good books out there's a couple on Sago there's a little pamphlet The sharo Family Portrait and Irving Anderson wrote that it's ailable at our interpreter Center one of the ones I really like is um Chicago way up by Frank tasma and then Harold P Howard did both versions at the very end of the book he wrote the second one I have up here on the table there's a book list of good accurate lisis and Clark books starting with inexpensive paperbacks and going on to more expensive ones and then there's a sheet that says happy birthday captains Lewis and Clark it tells about their birthdays August 1st was Clark's birthday August 18th was Lewis's they had their best birthdays of all three years when they were along this stretch of the river so pick one of those up read how they celebrated here and read what happened the other two years on the trail and thank you