?—?They wouldn’t come with her. They’re afraid of us. Haven’t seen our kind before?—?‘red hairs on the face.’ Seems that’s what they call us. Red Beards.
None of us has shaved in many weeks, so are all looking bushy. Amongst us, only Pruitt has true red hair, but compared to the near-black shade universal among the Indians and the mostly bare faces of their men, our appearances must be unexpected.
We dragged the boat away from the river’s edge. Nat’aaggi gathered her belongings. She offered to carry some of our supplies in her own pack, but we explained that our stores are so diminished that we need no help
As we once again began our day’s walk, we asked Nat’aaggi about her journey. How had she survived when the ice washed out of the canyon? Where has she been these many days?
Samuelson translated as she described how she had left us in the night, hid until dawn, then walked downriver until she could reach the dog. She knew the ice would soon break. She continued until she came to a wall of the canyon where she thought there were footholds enough?—?narrow ledges, spindly spruce trees sprouted from the rocks?—?where she could perhaps climb out of the canyon. She did not believe the dog would be able to follow, however, so she retraced our entire way back down the canyon.
How did she travel over the weakening ice?
?—?She says she is lighter & can run faster than we giant Red Beards with clumsy feet, Samuelson said.
Below the canyon, she & the dog were able to climb the hillside where the Old Man had sent down the avalanche upon our camp. As she traveled up the valley, she heard the river ice come washing down in a great roar.
I asked how the travel went in the high country.
?—?Not easy, Colonel. The toughest land she’s ever passed through she says.
According to Samuelson, she & the dog had to cross several fingers of a glacier, jumping over great crevasses. In other places, she had to navigate steep, rocky creeks. When she tried to climb higher into the mountains, she ran into snowstorms & ice fog.
Boyd spoke up then.
?—?She ever seen any sign of my wife up there? When she was traveling through that mountain fog, did she cross paths with a woman?
Nat’aaggi shook her head.
?—?Why did she back come up here with us at all? Why didn’t she just go home?
Pruitt’s tone was blunt, even insolent, but I shared his interest.
?—?I do not want home, she said. —?I want to see.
It was unexpected. Not just to hear her speak English, haltingly but with clarity all the same, but also the sentiment she expressed.
?—?If that is all she wants, she could go just as easily on her own, Pruitt said.
?—?If you believe that, you are a fool, Samuelson said.
An Indian traveling alone through another tribe’s territory is likely to be taken as a slave. For a woman, the danger is all the more certain. Her best chance is to remain with us. It likely explains why she waited until she was in our sight before she approached the Midnooskies with the baidarra.
?—?What then of all her skills & bravery, of which you speak so highly? Pruitt asked Samuelson with some condescension.
?—?She’d last longer than most, Lieutenant, I’ll tell you that.
May 3
We subsist on very little each day. When we are fortunate enough to come across game, we eat every morsel down to bone, so that we are like a plague of locusts on this lean land. Tillman shot a porcupine yesterday, for which we were most grateful.
& salt! Any one of us would trade our boots for a teaspoon of salt. One takes it for granted at the table back home. Now that we have been without it for many days, we thirst for it as if for water.
Boyd’s health, remarkably, has improved. He remains thin, but seems to grow stronger from the walking. Lieut. Pruitt, on the other hand, is low in spirits, weak of energy.
I am hopeful to reach the mouth of the Trail River drainage in the next day or two.
With Tillman questioning & Samuelson translating, we learn more of Nat’aaggi’s life. Her mother was a Midnoosky from the lower Wolverine River, her father a Russian–Eyak creole. They were both dead before she was old enough to talk, though she did not say if their deaths were related. She was taken in by her uncle’s family, who treated her as a servant. Many times she ran away, often surviving for entire seasons on her own along the Wolverine River, though she had never come so far north as the canyon. Each time she was found by someone in the family, she was brought back, beaten, & misused.
?—?No selnaw, she said. I am no slave.
This explains why she fled with the stranger who came for her. She yet contends that he was an otter man, that it is his fur she wears across her shoulders.
It puzzles me that she can be so self-assured & clever, yet hold to such absurdity.
Sophie Forrester
Vancouver Barracks
April 26, 1885