em--I
have learned some of their tongue from Sacajawea. These are her
people. We are safe!"

Sixty warriors met them, all mounted, all gorgeously clad. Again the
great peace pipe, again the spread blanket inviting the council. The
Shoshones showed no signs of hostility--the few words of their tongue
which Lewis was able to speak gave them assurance.

"McNeal," said Lewis, "go back now across the range, and tell Captain
Clark to bring up the men."

William Clark, given one night's sleep, was his energetic self again,
and not in mind to lie in camp. He had already ordered camp broken,
more of the heavier articles cached, the canoes concealed here and
there along the stream and had pushed on after Lewis. He met McNeal
coming down, bearing the tidings. Sacajawea ran on ahead in glee.

"My people! My people!" she cried.

They were indeed safe now. Sacajawea found her brother, the chief of
this band of Shoshones, and was made welcome. She found many friends
of her girlhood, who had long mourned her as dead. The girls and
younger women laughed and wept in turn as they welcomed her and her
baby. She was a great person. Never had such news as this come among
the Shoshones.[5]

[Footnote 5: Cam-e-ah-wit was the name of Sacajawea's brother, the
Shoshone chief. The country where Lewis met him is remote from any
large city today. Pass through the Gate of the Mountains, not far from
Helena, Montana, and ascend the upper valley of the Missouri, as it
sweeps west of what is now the Yellowstone Park, and one may follow
with a certain degree of comfort the trail of the early explorers. If
one should then follow the Jefferson Fork of the great river up to its
last narrowing, one would reach the country of Cam-e-ah-wit. Here is
the crest of the Continental Divide, where it sweeps up from the
south, after walling in, as if in a vast cup, the three main sources
of the great river. Much of that valley country is in fertile farms
today. Lewis and Clark passed within twelve miles of Alder Gulch,
which wrote roaring history in the early sixties--the wild placer days
of gold-mining in Montana.

As for Sacajawea, she has a monument--a very poor and inadequate
one--in the city of Portland, Oregon. The crest of the Great Divide,
where she met her brother, would have been a better place. It was
here, in effect, that she ended that extraordinary guidance--some call
it nothing less than providential--which brought the white men through
in saf