UNITED STATESYour 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.
—WILLIAM CLARK, IN A LETTER TO SACAGAWEA’S HUSBAND
There was confusion everywhere. One of the boats was about to capsize! A few men began to bail buckets of water. Another struggled with the rudder, while two men hauled in the sail. They were all in a state of panic. In the midst of this chaos, only one member of the party stayed calm. Sixteen-year-old Sacagawea, with her newborn baby son strapped to her back, quietly balanced herself in the heaving boat.
To the horror of the entire party, some of their precious supplies spilled out into the river and began to float away. They could see food, valuable instruments—and the journals! The only records of their amazing adventure, written by their leaders, Lewis and Clark, were drifting away in the raging waters. Calm and poised, Sacagawea knew what she had to do. The men in the boat were shocked as they saw the young girl dive overboard with her baby still strapped on her back. Sacagawea rescued almost everything, including the irreplaceable journals.
For the entire journey—thousands of grueling miles over mountains and even down waterfalls—Sacagawea carried the infant Pomp in a cradleboard strapped to her back.
That day, Sacagawea prevented the loss of crucial cargo, but this was just the beginning of the journey. The young Shoshone girl would continue to prove herself invaluable to the Lewis and Clark expedition as an interpreter, guide, and sign of peace.
Around 1789 Sacagawea was born to a Shoshone tribe in the area that is now Idaho. When she was about eleven years old, she and another Shoshone girl were kidnapped by the Hidatsa Indians, who took Sacagawea hundreds of miles east to North Dakota. There she lived in a Mandan Indian village as a slave. After a few years, she was won by a French Canadian fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau, who made Sacagawea his wife. When she was only sixteen, she gave birth to their son, whom she named Jean Baptiste but usually called Pomp, which means “leader of men” in the Shoshone language.
In 1804 a team of explorers called the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, arrived in the Mandan villages. President Jefferson had commissioned them to explore the land west of the Mississippi, and they needed guides and an interpreter for the native peoples they would meet. Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau for the expedition, primarily because Lewis wanted him to bring one of his native wives to help translate for them. The sixteen-year-old Sacagawea packed up her newborn son and prepared to leave the village where she had been kept as a slave. She was heading out west, toward her homeland.
On the long, hard trip, Sacagawea taught the men how to find and cook edible plants so they wouldn’t starve when their food supplies ran out, which happened several times. She guided the Corps through Montana and served as the interpreter with the Mandan and Shoshone tribes. Everywhere they went, Sacagawea and Pomp were a sign of peace to the native peoples of the West.
In August 1805 the explorers were desperate to find horses so they could continue their journey. They decided to try to locate Sacagawea’s people, the Shoshones, for help. Sacagawea’s childhood memories were all they had to guide them. Lewis wrote in his journal:
The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west. . . . She assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of it’s source . . . it is now all important with us to meet with those people as soon as possible.
They did indeed find the Shoshones a few days later. The Shoshone chief, Cameahwait, welcomed the explorers, and in the midst of the festivities, one of the Shoshone women recognized Sacagawea. She had escaped capture on the day, years ago, when Sacagawea had been kidnapped by the Hidatsas! The two women cried and hugged each other in an emotional reunion.
Legend has it that the Nez Perce tribe planned to kill the entire Lewis and Clark expedition, but Sacagawea persuaded them that the expedition was peaceful. If they had been a war party, she pointed out, they would not have taken along a girl and her baby.
That afternoon, Lewis called a meeting between the captains of the exploration party and the chiefs of the tribe. Sacagawea was to translate to Chief Cameahwait. No sooner had they started the meeting than Sacagawea jumped to her feet and ran to embrace the chief, who had seemed very familiar to her. Chief Cameahwait was Sacagawea’s brother!
The expedition party stayed as guests of the Shoshones for a month, and when they left, Chief Cameahwait gave them food, horses, and detailed instructions for their passage across the Rocky Mountains. The group successfully reached the Pacific Ocean, and the end of their exploration, in November 1805. They weathered a rainy winter in hastily built cabins before they began their return trip back to St. Louis in late March 1806.
Sacagawea, Charbonneau, and Pomp started back with the expedition but went their own way before the group arrived in St. Louis. Little is known of what happened to Sacagawea after this. Some accounts say that in her early twenties she had a daughter, Lizette, and probably died in 1812, soon after the birth. Other accounts, however, claim that Sacagawea returned west to join the Shoshones and lived to be almost one hundred years old.
Sacagawea’s bravery has been immortalized by numerous memorials and historical markers across America. Lakes, mountains, rivers, state parks, and Girl Scout camps have been named after her. She’s even featured on one-dollar gold coins! Her life has become a legend of courage and adventure.