Sacagawea

Interpreter

  • Born: c. 1788
  • Birthplace: Central Idaho
  • Died: December 20, 1812
  • Place of death: Fort Manuel, Dakota Territory (now in South Dakota)

Native American explorer

Sacagawea was the only woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition in its exploration of the territory acquired through the Louisiana Purchase, but as the expedition’s primary guide and interpreter, she played a major role in its success.

Area of achievement Exploration

Early Life

Sacagawea (sahk-ah-jah-WEE-ah) was born into a band of northern Shoshone Indians, whose base was the Lemhi Valley of central Idaho. Her name translates as “Bird Woman” (Hidatsa) or “Boat Pusher” (Shoshonean). The northern Shoshone, sometimes referred to as Snake Indians (a name given them by the French because of the use of painted snakes on sticks to frighten their enemies), were a wandering people, living by hunting, gathering, and fishing. As a child, Sacagawea traveled through the mountains and valleys of Idaho, northwest Wyoming, and western Montana. In 1800, at about age twelve, Sacagawea and her kin were encamped during a hunting foray at the Three Forks of the Missouri (between modern Butte and Bozeman, Montana) when they were attacked by a war party of Hidatsas (also called Minnetarees), a Siouan tribe; about ten Shoshone were killed, and Sacagawea and several other children were made captives. Sacagawea was taken to reside with the Hidatsas at the village of Metaharta near the junction of the Knife and Missouri Rivers (in modern North Dakota).

Shortly after her capture, Sacagawea was sold as a wife to fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. A French-Canadian who had developed skills as an interpreter, Charbonneau had been living with the Hidatsas for five years. At the time that Sacagawea became his squaw, Charbonneau had one or two other Indian wives.

All that is known of Sacagawea for certain is found in the journals and letters of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and several other participants in the expedition of the Corps of Discovery, 1804-1806, along with meager references in other sources. The Lewis and Clark party, commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to find a route to the Pacific and to make scientific observations along the way, traveled on the first leg of their journey up the Missouri River to the mouth of the Knife River, near which they established Fort Mandan (near modern Bismarck, North Dakota) as their winter headquarters. The site was in the vicinity of Mandan and Hidasta villages. Here the expedition’s leaders made preparations for the next leg of their journey and collected information on the Indians and topography of the far West.

Life’s Work

Sacagawea’s association with the Lewis and Clark expedition began on November 4, 1804, when she accompanied her husband to Fort Mandan. She presented the officers with four buffalo robes. Charbonneau was willing to serve as interpreter, but only on condition that Sacagawea be permitted to go along on the journey. After agreeing to those terms, Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau. At Fort Mandan on February 11, 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau. Thus, along with the some thirty men, the “squaw woman” and baby became members of the exploring group.

The expedition set out from Fort Mandan on April 7, 1805. Charbonneau and Sacagawea at different times were referred to in the journals as “interpreter and interpretess.” Sacagawea’s knowledge of Hidatsa and Shoshonean proved of great aid in communicating with the two tribes with which the expedition primarily had contact. Later, when the expedition made contact with Pacific coast Indians, Sacagawea managed to assist in communicating with those peoples even though she did not speak their language. Her services as a guide were helpful only when the expedition sought out Shoshone Indians in the region of the Continental Divide in order to find direction and assistance in leaving the mountains westward. Carrying her baby on her back in cord netting, Sacagawea stayed with one or several of the main groups of explorers, never venturing out scouting on her own. Little Baptiste enlivened the camp circles, and Clark, unlike Lewis, became fond of both baby and mother.

Several times on the westward journey Sacagawea was seriously ill, and once she and Charbonneau were nearly swept away in a flash flood. In May of 1805, Sacagawea demonstrated her resourcefulness by retrieving many valuable articles that had washed out of a canoe during a rainstorm. Lewis and Clark named a stream “Sâh-câ-ger we-âh” (Sah ca gah we a), or “bird woman’s River,” which at a later time was renamed Crooked Creek. Not the least of Sacagawea’s contributions was finding sustenance in the forests, identifying flora that Indians considered edible. She helped to gather berries, wild onions, beans, artichokes, and roots. She cooked and mended clothes.

On reaching the Three Forks of the Missouri, Sacagawea recognized landmarks and rightly conjectured where the Shoshone might be during the hunting season. A band of these Indians was found along the Lemhi River. Sacagawea began “to dance and show every mark of the most extravagant joy… sucking her fingers at the same time to indicate that they were of her native tribe.” The tribe’s leader, Cameahwait, turned out to be Sacagawea’s brother (or possibly cousin). Lewis and Clark established a cordial relationship with Sacagawea’s kinsmen and were able to obtain twenty-nine horses and an Indian guide through the rest of the mountains.

As it came down from the mountains, the exploring party made dugout canoes at the forks of the Clearwater River, and then followed an all-water route along that stream, the Snake River, and the Columbia River to the Pacific coast. At the mouth of the Columbia River, just below present Astoria, Oregon, the adventurers built Fort Clatsop, where they spent the winter. Sacagawea was an important asset as the expedition covered the final phase of the journey. “The wife of Shabono our interpreter,” wrote William Clark on October 13, 1805, “reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions a woman with a party of men is a token of peace.”

Besides her recognition of topography that aided in finding the Shoshones, Sacagawea’s other contribution as guide occurred on the return trip. During the crossing of the eastern Rockies by Clark’s party (Lewis took a more northerly route), Sacagawea showed the way from Three Forks through the mountains by way of the Bozeman Pass to the Yellowstone River. Lewis and Clark reunited near the junction of the Missouri and the Yellowstone. Sacagawea, Charbonneau, and infant Baptiste accompanied the expedition down the Missouri River only as far as the Hidatsa villages at the mouth of the Knife River. On April 17, 1806, they “took leave” of the exploring group. Clark offered to take Sacagawea’s baby, whom Clark called “Pomp,” with him to St. Louis to be reared and educated as his adopted son. Sacagawea, who consented to the proposal, insisted that the infant, then nineteen months old, be weaned first.

With the conclusion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, details about Sacagawea’s life become sketchy. In the fall of 1809, the Charbonneau family visited St. Louis. Charbonneau purchased a small farm on the Missouri River just north of St. Louis from Clark, who had been named Indian superintendent for the Louisiana Territory. In 1811, Charbonneau sold back the tract to Clark. Sacagawea yearned to return to her homeland. Charbonneau enlisted in a fur trading expedition conducted by Manuel Lisa. In April of 1811, Sacagawea and Charbonneau headed up river in one of Lisa’s boats. One observer on board at the time commented that Sacagawea appeared sickly.

Sacagawea left Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau with Clark in St. Louis. On August 11, 1813, an orphan’s court appointed Clark as the child’s guardian. Sacagawea’s son went on to have a far-ranging career. At the age of eighteen, he joined a western tour of the young Prince Paul Wilhelm of Württemberg, and afterward went to Europe, where he resided with the prince for six years. The two men returned to America in 1829, and again explored the western country. Jean-Baptiste thereafter was employed as a fur trapper for fifteen years by the American Fur Company. He later served as an army guide during the Mexican War. Joining the gold rush of 1849, Jean-Baptiste set up residence in Placer County, California. Traveling through Montana in May of 1866, he died of pneumonia.

There once was a lively controversy over the correct determination of the date and place of Sacagawea’s death. Grace Raymond Hebard, a professor at the University of Wyoming, published the biography Sacajawea in 1933, in which she went to great lengths to prove that Sacagawea died on April 9, 1884. Hebard traced the alleged wanderings of the “Bird Woman” to the time that she settled down on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Hebard made a substantial case, based on oral testimony of persons who had known the “Bird Woman”; the hearsay related to known details of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Hebard also relied upon ethnological authorities.

At the heart of the controversy is a journal entry of John Luttig, resident fur company clerk at Fort Manuel. On December 20, 1812, he recorded: “this Evening the Wife of Charbonneau, a Snake Squaw died of a putrid fever she was a good and the best Women in the fort, aged abt 25 years she left an infant girl.” It is known that Sacagawea had given birth to a daughter, Lizette. The Luttig journal was not published until 1920. Hebard claimed that the death notice referred to Charbonneau’s other Shoshone wife, Otter Woman. The issue, however, seems put to rest by the discovery in 1955 of a document in William Clark’s journal dated to the years 1825 to 1828. Clark’s list of the status of members of his expedition states: “Se car ja we au Dead.” Nevertheless, the notion that Sacagawea lived until the 1880’s continues to have support.

Significance

Sacagawea had a fourfold impact on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Though she viewed much of the country the group traversed for the first time, her geographical knowledge was most important in locating the Shoshones in the Rocky Mountains and directing Clark’s party through the Bozeman Pass. At crucial instances her services as a translator were essential, and she served as a contact agent. Perhaps, most of all, as an Indian mother with a young baby, she dispelled many of the fears of the Indians encountered on the journey, particularly the fear that the expedition might harm them.

Sacagawea may be credited as a primary factor in ensuring the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Sacagawea also contributed to the uplifting of morale. Throughout the venture she exhibited courage, resourcefulness, coolness, and congeniality. The presence of mother and baby encouraged a certain civilized restraint among the members of the party. Henry Brackenridge, who met Sacagawea in April of 1811, said that she was “a good creature, of a mild and gentle disposition.” Clark expressed regrets at the end of the expedition that no special reward could be given to Sacagawea. In many ways she was more valuable to the expedition than her husband, who ultimately received compensation for their efforts.

Sacagawea’s place in history was long neglected. Interest in her life, however, gained momentum with the centenary celebrations of the Lewis and Clark expedition during the early twentieth century and especially with the rise of the suffrage movement, which saw in Sacagawea a person of womanly virtues and independence. Eva Emery Dye’s novel, The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark (1902), did much during the course of its ten editions to popularize an exaggerated role of Sacagawea on the famous journey of discovery.

Sacagawea attracted new attention in 2000, when the U.S. Mint began issuing a new dollar coin with her image on the front. Images of American Indians had been used on many earlier coins—such as the “Indian head” penny and the “buffalo” nickel—but new Sacagawea dollar was the first coin to feature the image of a specific Indian person.

Bibliography

Anderson, Irving. “A Charbonneau Family Portrait.” American West 17 (Spring, 1980): 4-13, 58-64. Written for a popular audience, this article provides a thorough and reliable account of the lives of Sacagawea, her husband Toussaint, and her son Jean-Baptiste.

Chuinard, E. G. “The Actual Role of the Bird Woman.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 26 (Summer, 1976): 18-29. Emphasizes the role of Sacagawea as a guide and contact agent and challenges the exaggeration of her actual accomplishments.

Clark, Ella E., and Margot Edmonds. Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Includes discussion of Sacagawea’s life and the efforts made to popularize her legend. Although they provide a relatively accurate account, the authors choose to accept the discredited theory that Sacagawea lived until 1884.

Howard, Harold P. Sacajawea. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971. A balanced biography aimed at a general audience, this work attempts to sort out fact from legend in the life of Sacagawea.

Hunsaker, Joyce Badgley. Sacagawea Speaks: Beyond the Shining Mountains with Lewis and Clark. Guilford, Conn.: Two Dot Books, 2001. Sacagawea recounts her experiences with the Corps of Discovery. Hunsaker uses oral tradition, scholarly research, anecdotes, and other materials to compile Sacagawea’s first-person narrative.

Jackson, Donald, ed. Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783-1854. 2d ed. 2 vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. Contains a variety of letters, journal entries, and other papers relevant to the activities of the expedition. Sheds some light on the contribution of the Charbonneau family.

Nelson, W. Dale. Interpreters with Lewis and Clark: The Story of Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2003. Examines the contributions of Toussaint and Sacagawea to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Nelson seeks to rehabilitate Toussaint’s character and reputation.

Perdue, Theda, ed. Sifters: Native American Women’s Lives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Chapter 4 in this collection of biographies focuses on the myth and reality of Sacagawea’s life.

Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark Among the Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. This scholarly study examines the contact made between the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Indians. Provides insights into Sacagawea’s contributions to the success of the expedition. Includes an appendix that evaluates various books and articles about Sacagawea.

May 14, 1804-September 23, 1806: Lewis and Clark Expedition; July 15, 1806-July 1, 1807: Pike Explores the American Southwest; June 15, 1846: United States Acquires Oregon Territory.