Sacajawea

SACAJAWEA (c.1786-1884?)

Sacajawea is a fascinating figure in American history, honored with more commemorative markers and statues than any other woman in the United States. Hers is a story of triumph over adversity, yet her life itself is still somewhat shrouded in mystery. Three states claim her as their own, there are disputes over the spelling and meaning of her name, she has two distinctly diffferent versions of her life after the Lewis & Clark expedition was over, and gravesites in two different states.

Sacajawea’s name is often spelled in different ways. Sakakawea (‘Bird Woman’) is the Hidatsa spelling, that of the tribe she lived with. Sacajawea (‘Boat Launcher’) is the Shoshone spelling, the tribe she was born into. At least ten other spellings also sometimes appear, which is not at all unusual in an America where literacy was rare, and spelling thus unimportant, until almost the 20th century.Sacajawea was captured from her Shoshone tribe as a child by the Minitaree during a skirmish. Sold to the Hidatsa Indians, she was taken to a Mandan village on the Missouri River, where she was sold to Toussaint Charbonneau, a

French trapper, who kept her as a kind of wife.
The Lewis & Clark expedition built Fort Mandan to live in over the winter of 1804-05, on the east bank of the Missouri river in what is now North Dakota. Here they hired Charbonneau as a translator, who insisted on bringing Sacajawea. In 1804 Sacajawea was sixteen years old, and pregnant. She gave birth at Fort Mandan in February of 1805; the expedition left on April 7th, traveling over 3,000 miles to the Pacific Ocean in 1805 and returning in 1806.

As the expedition reached the western portion of Montana, Sacajawea began to recognize the landmarks, since her tribe lived in these lands. The expedition eventually met and stayed with her tribe, now headed by her brother, her only surviving relative. The Lewis & Clark Memorial, a life-sized bronze statue of Lewis, Clark, Sacajawea, and her son Jean Baptiste, commemorates their trip in this region. This statue, Montana’s official state memorial of the expedition, stands in Fort Benton.

The expedition traveled overland by canoe, on horseback, and by foot. The expedition camped at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers in 1805 and again on their way back in 1806, where today the city of Lewiston, Idaho, stands, and a memorial to Sacajawea lies here. Sacajawea State Park in Pasco, Washington, marks the spot at which the Lewis & Clark expedition first saw the Columbia River, on the final leg of their journey west. The park is dedicated to Sacajawea's role on the expedition, and to the culture of the native people they encountered in this area. Nearby Lake Sacajawea is also named for her. The expedition first sighted the Pacific Ocean on November 15, 1805.

After they came down the Columbia river and arrived at the Pacific near present-day Astoria, Oregon, the group built Fort Clatsop, which they named for the local Indian tribe, and the 33-member group wintered over during the winter of 1805-06. They began their trip back east in March of 1806. The expedition split up for the return trip, and William Clark along with six men, Sacajawea, and her son Jean Baptiste (who was nicknamed Little Pomp, a Shoshoni word for chief), reached present-day Livingston, Montana, on July 15, 1806. Asked by Clark to select the best way through the mountains, Sacajawea picked an old buffalo track used by several tribes. Today this route is called the Bozeman Pass.

The Clark group took the southerly route, along the Yellowstone River. On July 25, 1806, they encountered a huge sandstone butte by the river, and Clark wrote in his journal, "This rock which I shall call Pompey's Tower [after Sacajawea's son] is 200 feet high and 400 paces in secumpherance...The natives have ingraved on the face...the figures of animals and near which I marked my name and the day of the month & year." His signature is the only physical evidence of the expedition. Today Pompey's Pillar is a national historic landmark.

After the expedition ended, there are two different versions of Sacajawea's life. Toussaint Charbonneau became an interpreter at Fort Mandan, a trading post established on the Missouri river in northern South Dakota. Sacajawea gave birth to their daughter Lizette in August of 1812. Notes in the Fort Manuel log say that on December 20, 1812, “This evening the Wife of Charbonneau a Snake Squaw died of a putrid fever....aged abt 25 years she left a fine infant girl.” This version also relies on a note in William Clark’s 1830 diary which notes “dead” next to her name. A commemorative statue erected to mark her lost gravesite, built in 1929 with the pennies donated by school children, lies in Dakota National Park, west of Mobridge, South Dakota. A historical marker also commemorates “Sakakawea” at nearby Sitting Bull’s grave.

It is true that there is no written historical record of Sacajawea having lived after 1806. But she was technically not a member of the Snake tribe, Charbonneau was known to have more than one wife, and the Shoshones claim she lived a long and full life.

According to the Shoshones, Sacajawea stayed with her husband among the Mandan Indians for some time. Some sources say she stayed another 30 years, until his death. Others say she left him soon after the expedition, because he took another wife. After she left the European settlements she married a Comanche man named Jerk Meat. After his death she returned to her own people at the Wind River reservation, where her son Jean Baptiste and adopted son Bazil were living. There are several stories of a woman named Porivo (the name means “chief”) who lived here at that time, who wore a Jefferson medal, knew French, and knew details of the expedition. Those around her believed her to be Sacajawea. When she died in 1884 at the age of nearly 100, she was the last survivor of the expedition. The Grave of Sacajawea is located in the Shoshone Cemetery at Fort Washakie, Wyoming, and next to it is a monument to her first son Jean Baptiste.

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