Glenna Jean

Sacagawea (Sakakawea, Sacajawea, Sacajewea; see below) (c. more...

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1787 – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884) was a Shoshone woman who accompanied the Corps of Discovery with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in their exploration of the Western United States, traveling thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806. Clark wrote of her to her husband: “your woman who accompanied you that long dangerous and fatigueing rout to the Pacific Ocian and back diserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that rout than we had in our power to give her.� (sic) She was nicknamed Janey by some members of the expedition.

Early life

Sacagawea was born to the Agaidika ("Salmon Eater") tribe of Shoshone between Kenney Creek and Agency Creek, near what is now the city of Tendoy in Lemhi County, Idaho. However, in 1800, when she was about 11 or 12, she was kidnapped by a group of Hidatsa in a battle that resulted in the death of four Shoshone men, four women and several boys. She was then taken to their village near the present Washburn, North Dakota. She therefore grew up culturally affiliated with this tribe. Some believe her name is taken from the Hidatsa phrase for "bird woman", which may have been an adaptation or translation of her Shoshone birth name. The origins and proper pronunciation of her name has become a great point of controversy and contention among interested historians and her brother Cameahwait's descendants (Sacagawea has no known direct descendants).

At the age of about fifteen, Sacagawea was taken as a wife by the French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, who had also taken another young Shoshone woman as a wife. Two different accounts survive of Charbonneau's acquisition of Sacagawea: he either purchased both wives from the Hidatsa, or he won Sacagawea while gambling.

Sacagawea was pregnant with her first child when the Corps of Discovery arrived near the Hidatsa villages to spend the winter of 1804-1805. Lewis and Clark built Fort Mandan and interviewed several trappers who might be able to translate or guide the expedition further up the river. They agreed to hire Charbonneau as an interpreter when they discovered his wife spoke Shoshone, as they knew they would need the help of the Shoshone tribes at the headwaters of the Missouri River.

Lewis recorded in his journal on November 4th, 1804:

"a french man by Name Chabonah, who speaks the Big Belly (Gros Ventre) language visit us, he wished to hire and informed us his 2 squars were snake (Shoshone) Indians, we enga(ge) him to go on with us and take one his wives to interpret the Snake language…"

Charbonneau and Sacagawea moved into the fort a week later. Lewis himself assisted at the birth of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau on February 11, 1805, administering crushed rattlesnake rattles to speed the delivery. The boy was called "Pomp" or "Pompy", meaning first-born, by Clark and others in the expedition.

Read more at Wikipedia.org