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The other men were Good Thunder, Flat Iron, Yellow Breast, and Broken Arm, from Pine Ridge. Without permission from their agents they traveled west into Wyoming, to talk with the Arapahos and Shoshonis at the Fort Washakie reservation. Some Cheyenne delegates from the Tongue River reservation in Montana were there also, seeking information. The Arapahos and Shoshonis said that the word was true.
All the buffalo would act this way, in the happy time to come. The day of buffalo herds on the plains was past; but the party asserted that they did find a herd, and killed one buffalo and he sprang up, from the hoofs and tail and head, just as the Messiah had promised. The Cheyennes, the Shoshonis, the Arapahos, the Kiowas, the Utes, the Pai-Utes, were dancing the Ghost Dance.
The Shining Mountains were in sight; the land of the Shoshonis lay yonder, to the southwest. All right. The captains chose what seemed to be the best route by water, and headed on, to the southwest. Sacagawea gazed anxiously, right, left, and before. Her heart was troubled. She not only much desired to find her people, for herself, but she desired to help the great captains.
Beyond some great falls in the Missouri there was a gate, by which the Shoshonis came out of the mountains to hunt the buffalo on the plains. It was there that she had been captured by the Minnetarees. Would the Snakes be friendly to the white men? Yes, unless they were frightened by the white men. Would she like to go back to her own people? Yes! Yes!
Old Chief Red Cloud, Young-man-whose-horses-are-feared and other head men of the Pine Ridge reservation called a council, to choose delegates who should travel into the west and find out if the Arapahos and Shoshonis of Wyoming were telling the truth. Kicking Bear from the Cheyenne River reservation and Short Bull from the Rosebud reservation, were the leaders selected.
Crude as such shelters may seem, they were the best that could be constructed by people who dwelt where there was no vegetation except little bushes, and where the soil was for the most part sandy or so salty that it could not easily be made into adobe bricks. The food of these Utes and Shoshonis was no better than their shelters.
Life among the white people had proved too much for the gentle Sacagawea. She had tried hard to live their way, but their way did not agree with her. She had sickened, and she longed for the lodges of the Shoshonis. Chaboneau, too, had become weary of a civilized life. Sacagawea at last returned to her "home folks" the Snakes. No doubt Chaboneau went with her.
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