Little might be known about Sacagawea, the Shoshone ‘bird woman’, but her impact as one of the definitive women of 19th century United States is unmistakable.
Born circa 1788 as part of the Agaidika (Salmon Eater) tribe of Lemhi Shoshone Native Americans, Sacagawea was only 12 years old when her people’s village in Idaho was attacked by their enemies, the Hidatsa. Several people died in the assault, which saw a group of young girls, including Sacagawea, stolen from their homes and taken to present-day North Dakota.
The following year, she became the property of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader who lived amongst the Native Americans. She would become one of his two wives, and fell pregnant in 1804.
In the winter of that same year, the Corps of Discovery arrived at the village. This band of soldiers had been commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to trek the continent’s western territory and establish an American presence before European powers like the British or Spanish had a chance. To do so, they would need the support of Native Americans who knew the land and could entreat with other tribes they encountered along the journey up the Missouri River.
Charbonneau was hired as an interpreter, in part because the corps’ leaders, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, discovered that Sacagawea could speak Shoshone, and they needed Shoshone horses to transport their supplies.
The pair moved into the expedition’s fort soon after, where Clark came to nickname her Janey.
In February of 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. He would travel with the party all the way to the Pacific Ocean; his presence a symbol to native tribes that the expedition came with peaceful intentions.
The corps began its journey in April, heading up the Missouri River in small boats called pirogues. Less than a month passed before Sacagawea proved her worth. As they travelled the turbid waters, a squall hit, and threatened to sink the boat. While ensuring her baby’s safety, she gathered crucial items – captain’s papers, navigational instruments, and medicines – before departing the struggling vessel. In thanks, Lewis and Clark named a branch of the Missouri Sacagawea River in her honour.
After crossing the continental divide in August, the group came across a Shoshone tribe, and began bartering for horses. Sacagawea went to talk with the chief, Cameahwait, only to realise that he was her brother. “The meeting of those people was really affecting,” Lewis would write about the emotional reunion.
This would be the last moment of happiness for some time. The crossing of the Rocky Mountains proved arduous, and not even Sacagawea’s exceptional gathering skills could provide the party with sufficient food. Instead, they were forced to consume candles made of rendered animal fat.
Eventually, they arrived at their destination, and established a fort to prepare for the coming winter. Arriving in November, the corps would not set course for home until July, 1806. Sacagawea went with them, even with her Shoshone family so close by.
On the return journey, Sacagawea advised the party to travel the Yellowstone River basin. The path she etched would later be reused as the optimal route for the Northern Pacific Railway to cross the continental divide.
They arrived back at their starting point, Fort Mandan, on August 14, 1806. Charbonneau received 320 acres of land and $500.33 for his service. Sacagawea received nothing.
However, Clark had become close to the couple, and made a proposition: he would provide the family with farming land in St. Louis if Sacagawea was willing to let Clark educate their son. They agreed in the fall of 1809, when Jean Baptiste was four years old.
Clark was given custody of Jean Baptiste, who enrolled him at the Saint Louis Academy boarding school. The following year, Sacagawea gave birth to a daughter, Lizette.
The farming did not work out, and Sacagawea eventually fell ill. Desiring to see her native country, she began to make the journey back to Hidatsa land. The family arrived at Fort Manuel in December, 1812, where Sacagawea soon died of “putrid fever”, or typhoid.
Almost a century later, novelist Eva Emery Dye wrote Conquest: The True Story of Lewis & Clark, which romanticised Sacagawea as a “genuine Indian princess”.
The book, like many of its kind, failed to do justice to Sacagawea’s true accomplishments, but these did not go unnoticed. In the early 20th century, she was adopted as a symbol of women’s worth by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. They erected several statues in her memory, and today remains one of the most memorialised individuals in US history, with a range of statues, ships, and geographic locations across the nation named for her.