Interpreters with Lewis and Clark: The Story of Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau

CHAPTER EIGHT Father and Son

76 On January 20, 1820, William Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis, paid $16.37 and one-half cents to J. E. Welch, a Baptist minister and school teacher, to cover tuition, ink, and firewood for two quarters for Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.1 Clark was making good on his offer to educate the “butifull promising Child” he had grown fond of during their two-year expedition to the Pacific Ocean.2 More payments by Clark for Baptiste’s education are recorded throughout 1820. On March 31, there is a payment to L. T. Honore’ for boarding, lodging, and washing the boy during the first quarter of the year. On April 1, storekeepers J. and G. H. Kennerly are paid $1.50 each for a Roman history, a dictionary and a lesson book, another $1.50 for two dozen sheets of paper and a supply of quill pens, $1.00 for a ciphering book, and sixty-two cents for a slate and pencils. They also were paid $17.75 for shoes, socks, a hat, and four yards of cloth. Welch, who boarded Indian and half-Indian boys, was paid CHAPTER EIGHT Father and Son Father and Son 77 another $8.37 and one-half cents for an additional quarter’s tuition, including fuel and ink. The Reverend Francis Neil, a Roman CatholicpriestwhoconductedaboardingschoolthatlaterbecameSt .Louis University, was paid twelve dollars on May 17 for one quarter’s tuitionforahalf -IndianboyidentifiedasToussaintCharbonneau.This might have been the mysterious other son, but it is more likely that the father’s name was used by mistake instead of the child’s. On June 30 and again on October 1, Honore received forty-five dollars for board, lodging, and washing of Baptiste, in each case for three months. These expenditures were listed in official papers as “expenditures by Capt. W. Clark as superintendent of Indian affairs” at St., Louis, raising the unanswered question of whether he was paying out of his own pocket or the government was footing the bill.3 Baptiste apparently spent school vacations at the elder Charbonneau’s home among the Mandans. A white trader reported seeing him there at the age of eleven or twelve, speaking fluent French, and told a perhaps apocryphal tale of the boy’s gift horse being gambled away by his father.4 By this time, Toussaint Charbonneau was a government interpreter based at Council Bluffs but ranging widely throughout the Missouri River country. From 1819 until 1839, he was employed by every United States Indian agent and sub-agent for the Mandan and Upper Missouri tribes. His salaries ranged from $200 to $400 a year. Even the lower figure was equal to the amount generally paid a sub-agent. Sometimes, Toussaint earned extra money for running errands. InAugust, 1825, he delivered presents to the Hidatsas at Metaharta and carried blankets and other goods to a government agent. For each trip, he was paid ten dollars. The agent, in one of the more unusual of the many phonetic spellings of Toussaint’s name, made out a receipt for “Tusan Shabbonow” to sign with his “X.”5 Toussaint must have picked up at least a smattering of English from theAmerican traders he dealt with. None of them mentioned Chapter Eight 78 the kind of complicated translation chain that plagued Lewis and Clark. He also apparently broadened his knowledge of Indian languages . Fur trader David Meriwether, who employed him as an interpreter, said he “spoke the language, I believe, of every Indian tribe on the Missouri from the Rocky Mountains to its mouth.”6 In 1819 and 1820, Toussaint was an interpreter for army engineer Stephen Harriman Long’s expedition to the Rocky Mountains , which yielded valuable topographical information about the West. As often was the case, the interpreter was sometimes more conciliatory to the Indians than were others on the expedition . Once, a Pawnee backed up by several members of the tribe was seen carrying off a package of pounded meat. One of the officers wrestled the meat away from the Indians, and there was talk of punishment. But the Pawnees were permitted to keep the meat after Toussaint said it was his and he had given it to them.7 Toussaint was also interpreting in the summer of 1823 when Colonel Henry Leavenworth of Fort Atkinson, north of present Omaha, made a rash foray up the Missouri to punish theArikaras for a series of raids that had...