Page 28 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

In my dark sleep the moon hair is split and the rain falls. Days find the lowest point

of the channel and move slowly, not wise, and the world is wicked.

All day they have been collecting

animals.

Sacajewea names the days not in white man's terms, using the Gregorian calendar, but in the

traditional way, by the moon and the seasons: Strawberry Moon, Corn Planting Moon, Moon of the

Strong Cold. In her journal, even the tribal names are abandoned; instead, she creates strange new

names that speak of her alienation: Day of Not One Knows My Name, Day of the Crying Animals.

Under each date is an entry, which contains only a few sentences. The effect is to sense how careful

and quiet, even dangerous, is her watch, not filled with duties, though she must have had many, but

judgments and her registering of horror. One can almost hear her whispering to herself: They act

wickedly. They are wicked because they have been collecting animals for their specimens. She sees

them killing things without eating them, without proper regard.

Day of the Crying Animals

Last night the wind creaked through the trees and [spent] spat the last breath of Indians. The only

thing I look forward to seeing is the red light that lines the meadows, the brassy light of kettle fire,

sleep.

Kidnapped by the Hidatsa when she was just a girl, forced to travel east hundreds of miles across the

plains far from her home, and then sold to what many have speculated was a brutal man, Sacajewea

had already suffered trauma by the time Lewis and Clark arrived in her Hidatsa village on the banks of

the Missouri river in 1804. One can imagine her fear and confusion as she watched them—as many

other native people there must have watched them—as they prepared to build a fort at which to spend