Bride joins Lewis and Clark expedition
She was 15 and pregnant by the man who had bought her from her
kidnappers when she stepped into an almost mythic place in American
history.
Sacagawea, the daughter of a Shoshone chief, was abducted by a
raiding band of Hidatsa Indians when she was 10. They took her to
their home hundreds of miles to the east. There, in present-day
North Dakota, she entered Hidatsa society. Sacagawea was held for
four years until she attracted the attention of a French-Canadian
trapper who bought her.
Bride joins Lewis and Clark expedition
She was 15 and pregnant by the man who had bought her from her kidnappers when she stepped into an almost mythic place in American history.
Sacagawea, the daughter of a Shoshone chief, was abducted by a raiding band of Hidatsa Indians when she was 10. They took her to their home hundreds of miles to the east. There, in present-day North Dakota, she entered Hidatsa society. Sacagawea was held for four years until she attracted the attention of a French-Canadian trapper who bought her.
Her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, signed up in November of 1804 as an interpreter for the Corps of Discovery headed by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. They were blazing a trail across the continent and paving the way for the explorers and traders to follow.
President Thomas Jefferson was fascinated with extending the boundaries of the young nation, and the Louisiana Purchase gave him the opportunity to do so. He also told Lewis and Clark to ascertain existence of the Northwest Passage, what many believed was a series of waterways leading to the Pacific.
While Fort Mandan on the Missouri River was under construction for winter quarters, Charbonneau approached Lewis and Clark for a job. They hired him when they learned his wife spoke Shoshone. They also reasoned that her presence would allay fears that they were a war party.
Most Indians they encountered had never seen a white man before and none knew what to make of York, Clark’s slave, except that the newcomers had powerful medicine.
Sacagawea, whose name means Bird Woman, was not a guide but was valuable in many ways, one especially that enabled them to cross the Rocky Mountains.
On Feb. 11, 1805, her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was born in Fort Mandan, and she carried him in a cradleboard through thousands of miles. When a pirogue bearing the expedition’s journals nearly capsized, Sacagawea snatched them from the raging river.
Translation into Shoshone was a four-step process. Lewis or Clark spoke to a French-speaking soldier who relayed the message to Charbonneau (he spoke no English) who told Sacagawea in Hidatsa, and she delivered it in Shoshone.
By mid-August, the expedition had not found a way through the Rockies by water (the Northwest Passage myth persisted for years), and Lewis confided in his journal that unless horses were obtained he despaired of completing the mission. Then, in one of the most astonishing coincidences in American history, a Shoshone chief who rode up to meet them turned out to be Sacagawea’s brother. After their joyful reunion he found enough horses for them to continue.
They wintered near the Pacific and began the trip back that spring. Charbonneau and Sacagawea left them in August.
On Sept. 23, 1806, 200 years ago this week, the expedition ended its epic journey in St. Louis long after its members had been given up for dead. Their accomplishment inspired a dream as vast and bright as the inviting new land that could accommodate it.
