Across the Endless River Read Online Free

the Mandan and Hidatsa lodges. Anxious to return to St. Louis and to get news of the expedition’s successful conclusion to President Jefferson, the captains assured the Mandan of their support. They convinced the Mandan chief Sheheke to accompany them downriver and then continue to Washington to visit the Great Father, the better to make known his people’s grievances against the Arikara and the Sioux.
    Two days later the captains said their goodbyes and prepared to leave. Charbonneau and Sacagawea had decided to remain with Pompy in the Mandan villages, promising to journey to St. Louis when river travel was safer. Lewis was ailing and gave a feeble handshake from the makeshift litter on which he lay. As the last of the canoes was being loaded, Clark drew the couple and their son to one side at the river’s edge.
    â€œDo not forget, Toussaint Charbonneau, my pledge to you: bring your darling boy to me in St. Louis and I will raise him as my own and see to his proper education.” He shook Charbonneau’s hand and turned to Sacagawea, who held Pompy close. During their sixteen months together on the trail, Clark had formed a strong attachment to the baby. “Let him learn the white man’s ways,” he said to her, pleading with his eyes. His hand reached out and stroked the boy’s hair lightly, then he strode away quickly and the boats shoved off.

T WO
    D ECEMBER 28, 1809
    I n the following months Clark sent several letters to Charbonneau in which he repeated his offer to look after Pompy in St. Louis, entrusting his mail to fur traders headed north to the Mandan villages. Soon, however, the Sioux and Arikara closed the river, attacking any who dared to cross their territory. Even Sheheke could not return to his people for many months after his arrival in St. Louis on the way back from Washington. Only after several armed expeditions and extended negotiations did a relative peace return, and the Mandan chief was escorted to his village in September of 1809 .
    Finally, three years after their voyage with the Corps of Discovery, the little family headed to St. Louis in the fall, before the river froze. Just after Christmas Charbonneau had his son baptized by a French priest. Lewis had died in October of that year, and Clark was in Washington on government business, but Auguste Chouteau, cofounder of St. Louis and its preeminent citizen, served as godfather. The boy’s Christian name was Jean-Baptiste. He was almost five, and of the ceremony he would remember nothing but the clean smell of the priest’s starched white vestment as he splashed water on his head, and the vision of his godfather, patient and encouraging, kneeling at his side and holding his right hand as he showed him how to make the sign of the cross.
    S PRING 1810
    When the ice broke up the following spring Charbonneau prepared to head north with Sacagawea, leaving Pompy in Clark’s care. The captain had married two years before, and he and his young wife now had a one-year-old son, Meriwether Lewis Clark. Charbonneau promised to return soon so that Pompy could spend some part of each year with his Mandan cousins, but meanwhile he was to attend school in St. Louis and live as Clark’s ward.
    Before they went down to the landing where the keelboat was being loaded, Sacagawea took the boy into the small garden behind the boarding house where they had lived for the winter months. The apple trees were beginning to leaf and a bright green mantle of grass surrounded the newly turned rows where kitchen vegetables would soon be planted. Together they stood looking at the simple plot, silent and watchful, until a small gray bird appeared and hopped about the clumps of upturned soil. Sacagawea lowered herself fluidly so that she was crouching at Pompy’s side. She placed in his hand a small figure of a bird made of polished black stone and closed his fist upon it. Still holding his hand in her own, she looked in his eyes