"Aw right!" said Sacajawea, in paleface idiom. "Him stay--me go!"
Meriwether Lewis pondered for a time on what fashion of speech he must employ to make her understand.
"Bird Woman," said he at length, "you are a good girl. It would pain my heart to see you unhappy. But if you came with me to my villages, women would say, 'Who is that woman there? She has no lodge; she does not belong to any man.' They must not say that of Sacajawea--she is a good woman. Those are not the things your ears should hear. Now I shall tell the Great Father that, but for Sacajawea we should all have been lost; that we should never have come back again. His heart will be open to those words. He will send gifts to you. Sometime, I believe, the Great Father's sons will build a picture of you in iron, out yonder at the parting of the rivers. It will show you pointing on ahead to show the way to the white men. Sacajawea must never die--she has done too much to be forgotten. Some day the children of the Great Father will take your baby, if you wish, and bring him up in the way of the white men. What we can do for you we will do. Are my words good in your ears?"
"Your words are good," said Sacajawea. "But I go, too! No want to stay here now. No can stay!"
"But here is your village, Sacajawea--this is your home, where you must live. You will be happier here. See now, when I sleep safe at night, I shall say, 'It was Sacajawea showed me the way. We did not go astray--we went straight.' We will not forget who led us."
"But," she still expostulated, looking up at him, "how can you cook? How can you make the lodge? One woman--she must help all time."
A spasm of pain crossed Lewis's face.
"Sacajawea," said he, "I told you that I had made medicine--that I had promised my dream never to have a lodge of my own. Always I shall live upon the trail--no lodge fire in any village shall be the place for me. And I told you I had made a vow to my dream that no woman should light the lodge fire for me. You are a princess--the daughter of a chief, the sister of a chief, a great person; you know about a warrior's medicine. Surely, then, you know that no one is allowed to ask about the vows of a chief!
"By and by," he added gently, "a great many white men will come here, Sacajawea. They will find you here. They will bring you gifts. You will live here long, and your baby will grow to be a man, and his children will live here long. But now I must go to my people."