Jan showed Brigitte the records of the oral histories then, and it was hard to know where to start, there were so many of them. But the librarian knew her resources well. They pored through them all afternoon until they closed. But nothing about Wachiwi had turned up, or even anything about a chief going to the French court, although Brigitte knew now that several had, and the librarian said she had read of it too, mostly in books about eighteenth-century France. She had even seen drawings of Sioux chiefs in a combination of native and French court garb.

Brigitte was discouraged when she drove back to the motel in Sioux Falls. She had hoped to find something, anything that led Wachiwi from the mists of the distant past. She called her mother and told her they had found nothing so far, and Brigitte dreamed of Wachiwi that night. She was a beautiful young girl.

They found nothing on the second day either, and on the third day, Brigitte was about to give up, when they came across a series of histories that had been taken from old Sioux men of the Dakota tribe. The accounts had been recorded in 1812, and in one case were recollections an old chief had from when he was a boy. He had spoken of a Dakota chief named Matoskah, White Bear, who had had five brave sons from his first wife who died. His second wife had been a beautiful young girl, who also died when their infant girl was born. The child became the song of her father’s soul. She grew up protected by her brothers and father and refused to marry until she was older than the other girls in the village. Chief Matoskah thought no brave was worthy of her, and he and his daughter refused all the suitors who came for her hand. The man who had given the oral history said she was a proud, beautiful girl. And then he talked of their wars with the Crow, the many braves who had died fighting to protect the village, the war parties, the raids, and then he mentioned the girl again. He said that on one of their raids, the Crow had killed two of her brothers who were trying to protect her, and a young boy, and the Crow had taken her to give to their chief as a slave. The Sioux braves tried to bring her back but never could, and her father, the great chief Matoskah, had died of a broken heart later that year. The man giving the history said when the girl left, her father’s spirit left with her. He had been young himself then, but he remembered it well. He said they heard stories of her later, that she had been given to the Crow chief, and she had killed him and run away. They never found her, and she was never seen again. She never came back to her father’s tribe. A French trapper said he had seen her once, traveling with a white man, but trappers were known for their lies to Indians, so no one believed him. The girl was gone. The man telling the story said he didn’t know. Maybe she had been taken by a great spirit for killing the chief of the Crow. He said her name was Wachiwi, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and her father, Chief Matoskah, had been the wisest chief he’d ever known.

There she was, Brigitte thought to herself, as he moved on to another story of his youth and the buffalo hunts on the Great Plains. Wachiwi. She had been taken from her tribe, and given to a Crow chief. They said she killed him, and ran away. Who was the white man the trapper said he saw with her? Brigitte had the feeling that she was following a ghost. Elusive, beautiful, mysterious, brave. She wondered if this was the same Wachiwi who had turned up in France. It was hard to know. More than two hundred years later, the trail was cold. And maybe it didn’t matter. They knew enough. But Brigitte was like a dog with a bone. She couldn’t let go.

For the next week, she and Jan, the librarian, combed the oral histories of the Crow, who were part of the Sioux nation too, even though frequently at war with the Dakota Sioux. At lunchtime, Brigitte and Jan went to a nearby restaurant, and they talked endlessly of the collections of histories that Brigitte was discovering day by day. The stories were totally absorbing and Brigitte was falling in love with the people she was reading about. Talking to Jan about it brought it more and more to life. It was like traveling back in time.

They found nothing for days, and then finally, there she was again, and the earlier story was confirmed.

The man telling this story sang the praises of the Crow chief Napayshni, whom he had known as a boy. He said the chief had two wives and was given a beautiful girl they had taken from the Sioux. He called her a bad spirit and said she had bewitched their chief, lured him into the woods, and killed him. They never found her again. He thought she might have been taken by another tribe, and a trapper said she had been taken by a Frenchman, but she was long gone. The man telling the story was convinced that she was a spirit and not a girl, and she had simply vanished after killing their chief. As she read it, Brigitte knew it was Wachiwi, and she was mesmerized by the mention of the Frenchman. Brigitte knew in her bones that someone had saved this girl. And whatever had happened, she had clearly been very brave, to kill her captor and run away. She knew in her gut that it was the same Wachiwi who had gone to France, and whoever the Frenchman was in the second story, somehow he had taken her home. The rest of the story might never be told. But it was enough. Brigitte knew what she needed to of Wachiwi, the young Indian girl who had been adored by her father and brothers, taken by the Crow in a war raid, and given to their chief; she had killed him to escape, and then a mysterious Frenchman had found her and took her back to France. She must have been a beguiling woman. The second narrator had called her bewitching. But she was no witch, she sounded like a beautiful, fiercely brave young girl, and from there she became a marquise in Brittany. It was an extraordinary story, and a remarkable history to share.

Brigitte hated to leave, but she had accomplished what she had come to South Dakota to do. She had found the traces of Wachiwi she needed to confirm what she believed. She thanked Jan profusely when she left, and felt as though she had made a friend. After saying goodbye, she drove back to Sioux Falls, and caught a flight that would connect her to Boston. She felt at peace, as though a missing part of her had slipped into place. Wachiwi. The dancer. Brigitte wondered what more she could discover about her if she delved deeper into her family history in France. A girl as remarkable as that would have been talked about there too—a young Indian girl of the Dakota Sioux, who captured the heart of a marquis, and spent the rest of her days in France. Surely someone would have written of her there. It had become Brigitte’s mission to follow her trail.


Chapter 5


Brigitte had a lot to think about on the flights from South Dakota to Boston. She had only been gone for ten days, but she felt as though her life had been changed forever by one Dakota Sioux Indian woman. Wachiwi was all she had thought about for days, while she tried to find her in the oral histories. There were still so many mysteries about her. How had she come to leave the Crows who had kidnapped her? Was she the same girl as the Wachiwi who had married the marquis in Brittany? Was she really the one who had killed the Crow chief and disappeared? Had someone rescued her? Who was the white man with her that one of the oral histories talked about? And the Frenchman with her in another? And how had she gotten from South Dakota to France? Brigitte was convinced it was the same girl, and it was frustrating beyond belief not to have all the pieces of the story and all the missing links. She felt like one of Ted’s fellow archaeologists finding bone fragments and trying to build an entire dinosaur out of them, to discover everything about him, including where he lived, how he died, who his enemies were, and what he ate. But sooner or later, most of the time, the pieces came together. And she hoped they would about Wachiwi too. It had been such an exciting time for her. She was so glad her mother had convinced her to go to Salt Lake. She had picked up the trail where her mother left off, and had discovered something entirely new. Wachiwi. Brigitte thought she was more interesting than all the rest of their relatives put together, except maybe the marquis.

As exciting as the trip had been, because it had taken her mind off all her problems and failures, coming home to her apartment in Boston sank her into a depression that took her breath away. The apartment looked dark and dusty. It hadn’t been cleaned in two weeks, or more since she’d been depressed when she left. The first thing she saw when she looked at the bookcase was a shelf of Ted’s books that she had forgotten to return and he had forgotten to reclaim. It reminded her that he was gone forever, that she didn’t have a boyfriend—or a job. There was not a single response by mail, or e-mail, to all the résumés she had sent out. No one had offered her a job, or even wanted to see her for an interview. And she didn’t have a man in her life. And if she wanted one, she had to start to date again. How was she supposed to do that? Computer dating? Blind dates through friends? Pick-ups in bars? None of those solutions appealed to her, and the thought of starting to date after six years sank her spirits to rock bottom.

When she checked her messages, she found that Ted had called to say goodbye. He hadn’t called her cell phone where he knew he would almost surely get her, he had called her at her apartment, at an hour when he’d been almost sure that she was out, so he wouldn’t have to talk to her. It was a cowardly thing to do. He didn’t want to talk to her, and his voice on the message said he was leaving for Egypt the next day. When she had been flying in from South Dakota, he was flying out. He was gone. Forever. Following his dream. And what was hers? Another job in a college admissions office, checking applications? Finishing a deadly boring book about women’s voting that no one would ever read? For ten days she had been totally excited about what she was doing. And hours later, if that, she felt dead again. As dead as her life. But she couldn’t spend the rest of her days chasing Wachiwi either. She had lived more than two centuries ago, and many of the mysteries about her would never be solved, the questions never answered. Brigitte had to go back to trying to finish a book she no longer cared about, find a job she didn’t want, and look for a replacement for a man she no longer thought she really loved and who hadn’t loved her. What was she doing with her life? And what had she been doing for the last ten years? Damned if she knew. And she knew even less what she wanted to do now. It was a miserable place to be in. And finally, not knowing what else to do, she went to bed.