“The Indian woman who went with Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the Columbia River,” replied Sahwah with that tone of animation in her voice which was always present when she spoke of someone whom she admired greatly.  “Her husband was the interpreter whom Lewis and Clark took along to talk to the Indians for them, and Sacajawea went with the expedition too, to act as guide, because she knew the Shoshone country.  She traveled the whole five thousand miles with them and carried her baby on her back all the while.  Lewis and Clark both said afterwards that if it hadn’t been for her they wouldn’t have been able to make the journey.  When there wasn’t any meat to eat she knew enough to dig in the prairie dogs’ holes for the artichokes which they’d stored up for the winter; and she knew which herbs and berries were fit for food.  And on one occasion she saved the most valuable part of the supplies they were carrying, when her stupid husband had managed to upset the boat they were being carried in.  While he stood wringing his hands and calling on heaven for help she set to work fishing out the papers and instruments and medicines that had gone overboard, and without which the expedition could not have proceeded.  She tramped for hundreds of miles, over hills and through valleys, finding the narrow trails that only the Indians knew, undergoing all the hardships that the men did and never complaining or growing discouraged.  On the contrary, she cheered up the men when they got discouraged.  Now, do you say that a woman can’t go exploring as well as a man?”

Sahwah’s eyes were sparkling, her cheeks glowed red under their coat of tan, and she was all excitement.  The blood of the explorer flowed in her veins; her inheritance from hardy ancestors who had hewn their way through trackless forests to found a new home in the wilderness; and the very mention of exploring set her pulses to leaping wildly.  Far back in Sahwah’s ancestry there was a strain of Indian blood, which, although it had not been apparent in many of the descendents, had seemed to come into its own in this twentieth century daughter of the Brewsters.  Not in looks especially, for Sahwah’s hair was brown and not black, and fine and soft as silk, and her features were delicately modeled; yet there was something about her different from the other girls of her acquaintance, something elusive and puzzling, which, for a better name her intimates had called her “Laughing Water” expression.  Then, too, there was her passionate love for the woods and for all wild creatures, and the almost uncanny way in which birds and chipmunks would come to her even though they fled in terror at the approach of the other Winnebagos.  Was it any wonder that Robert Allison, seeing her for the first time, should have exclaimed involuntarily, “Minnehaha, Laughing Water”?

Thus Sahwah was in her element paddling up this lonely river winding through unfamiliar forests, and in her vivid imagination she was Sacajawea, accompanying Lewis and Clark on their famous exploring expedition; and the gentle Onawanda turned into the mighty rolling Columbia, and the friendly pine woods with its border of willows became the trackless forest of the unknown northwest.