Sacagawea

Sacagawea (pronounced SAK-ə-jə-WEE-ə or sə-KAH-gə-WAY-ə; also written as Sakakawea or Sacajawea; born around May 1788, died December 20, 1812) was a young woman from the Lemhi Shoshone or Hidatsa people who aided the Lewis and Clark Expedition in its mission to explore the Louisiana Territory. She journeyed with the group for thousands of miles, from what is now North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, facilitating interactions with Native nations and expanding the expedition's understanding of regional natural history. In the early 1900s, the National American Woman Suffrage Association promoted her as a symbol of female capability and independence, commissioning statues and plaques and widely publicizing her achievements.

**Early life**

Very little reliable historical information exists about Sacagawea’s early years. According to her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, she was born around 1788 into the Agaidika (or Lemhi Shoshone) tribe near present-day Salmon, Idaho, close to the continental divide at the modern Idaho-Montana border. Around 1800, when she was about twelve, she and several other children were captured by a Hidatsa raiding party that killed several Shoshone—four men, four women, and several boys. She was taken to a Hidatsa village near today’s Washburn, North Dakota, and later told Lewis and other expedition members that four Shoshone men and some boys had died in the attack, while she and other women and boys were taken captive by people she called “Gos Vauntos Indians,” whom historians often identify as Hidatsa.

An alternative theory, presented in the 2021 book *Our Story of Eagle Woman* by the Sacagawea Project Board, suggests she was born into the Hidatsa tribe and may have been abducted by the Shoshone before returning to her own people. The authors rely on a 1923 oral history from a man claiming to be her grandson, Bulls Eye, supported by contemporary tribal elders, and cite DNA testing that they say shows a genetic link between Hidatsa descendants of a woman named Cedar Woman—reportedly Sacagawea’s daughter, born after her supposed 1812 death—and French Canadians with the surname Charbonneau.

At about age thirteen, she entered a non-consensual marriage, following Native custom of the time, to Charbonneau, a Quebecois trapper. He was also associated with another young Shoshone woman called Otter Woman as a wife. Accounts differ on whether Charbonneau bought both girls from the Hidatsa or won Sacagawea in a gambling game.

**Lewis and Clark Expedition**

In 1804, the Corps of Discovery arrived at a Mandan village, where Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark built Fort Mandan to spend the winter of 1804–05. They interviewed trappers who might serve as interpreters or guides up the Missouri River in the spring. Knowing they would need to communicate with tribes at the river’s headwaters, they hired Toussaint Charbonneau in early winter 1804, as he claimed fluency in several Native languages, and one of his wives, who spoke Shoshone. Sacagawea was then pregnant with her first child.

On November 4, 1804, Clark wrote in his journal that a Frenchman named Chabonah, who spoke the Big Belley language, visited them, wished to be hired, and told them his two squaws were Snake Indians; they engaged him to go with them and take one of his wives to interpret the Snake language. A week later, Charbonneau and Sacagawea moved into the fort. Clark later nicknamed her “Janey.” Lewis recorded her activities as part of his ethnographic notes on Native peoples. She and her family mostly traveled with the co-captains, ate near or with them, and shared their tent. Lewis noted the birth of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau on February 11, 1805, mentioning that another interpreter gave her crushed rattlesnake rattles in water to speed the painful delivery. Clark and other Corps members called the boy “Pomp” or “Pompy.”

In April 1805, the expedition left Fort Mandan and headed up the Missouri River in pirogues, with Sacagawea carrying young Jean Baptiste on her back in an Indian cradleboard. The boats had to be poled against the current or pulled by crew along the banks. On May 14, 1805, she rescued items from a capsized boat, including the expedition’s journals and records. The commanders praised her quick action and named the Sacagawea River in her honor on May 20, 1805. By August 1805, the Corps had found a Shoshone tribe and was trying to trade for horses to cross the Rocky Mountains. Sacagawea interpreted, and they learned that the tribe’s leader, Cameahwait, was her brother—though in Shoshoni, the words for cousin and brother are the same.

Lewis wrote in his journal that shortly after Clark arrived with the interpreter Charbono and the Indian woman, who proved to be a sister of Chief Cameahwait, the meeting was deeply affecting, especially between Sah-cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian woman who had been captured with her and later escaped from the Minnetares to rejoin her nation. Clark recorded that the interpreter and squaw, who were ahead of him at some distance, danced for joy, and she made signs that these were her people. The Shoshone agreed to trade horses and provide guides over the Rocky Mountains. The crossing took longer than expected, and food supplies ran low. When they descended into milder regions, Sacagawea’s role continued, though the source text cuts off there.