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Sacagawea was a Shoshone woman captured by the Hidatsa tribe and sold to French trapper Toussaint Charbonneu. She helped Lewis and Clark on their expedition as an interpreter and guide. She reunited with her long-lost brother and later moved to St. Louis with her family. Her life is shrouded in mystery and many traditions have arisen to fill in the gaps.
Sacagawea, sometimes spelled Sacajawea or Sakakawea, was born in 1788 or 1789, to the Shoshone tribe in the western Rocky Mountains. When he was about 10 or 11 years old, his tribe was attacked by the Hidatsa tribe, who killed many Shoshone, including Sacagawea’s mother. Sacagawea attempted to flee, but was captured by the Hidatsa and taken hundreds of miles away to their village.
Sacagawea spent the next few years living with the Hidatsa near the Missouri River. She was sold by the tribe to Toussaint Charbonneu, a French trapper and trader, or else Charbnneu won her gambling. He already had a Shoshone wife and took Sacajawea as his second.
During the same period, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark further explored the Missouri River. Along with their “Corps of Discovery,” which consisted of about 40 soldiers, boatmen, and frontiersmen, they were asked to learn about the plants, animals, and Native Americans that lived in the West. In 1804, the Corps encountered Native American tribes including the Sioux and Arikara and arrived in the village of Hidatsa where Sacagawea lived.
Lewis and Clark decided to build a fort near the Hidatsa tribe and spend the winter there. Charbonneau offered to help the scouts, as he could communicate with neighboring tribes more easily than Lewis and Clark could. He was hired as an interpreter, bringing Sacagawea with him to speak to people in Shoshone country.
Sacagawea didn’t fully guide Lewis and Clark on their entire journey. She offered guidance on their journey when they were in areas familiar to her from her childhood. She also helped Lewis and Clark say which plants could be used for food or medicine and translated into Shoshone. Sacagawea’s unofficial role was as a goodwill ambassador, as any tribe fearing for their safety would know the party was peaceful once they saw a Native American woman with a small child.
After rescuing documents that Lewis and Clark had carried from an overturned boat, the explorers named the Sacagawea River after him. In the late summer of 1805, the expedition found a Shoshone tribe with whom they were trying to trade. When Sacagawea came to translate, he discovered that the chief of the tribe was his long lost brother.
Sacagawea was gradually accepted as more than a peer on the expedition, even gaining a vow where they would spend the winter. When he returned east, he advised the expedition to cross the Rocky Mountains at what is now known as Bozeman Pass in the Yellowstone River Basin. This is where the Northern Pacific Railway would later cross the Continental Divide.
After the expedition, Sacagawea and her husband spent three years with the Hidatsas. Finally, in 1809, they accepted Clark’s invitation to live in St. Louis, Missouri. Their son went to a boarding school and soon after they had a daughter. Sacagawea is thought to have died three years later in 1812, although some oral traditions hold that instead of dying, she left her husband in 1812 and married into a Comanche tribe.
May stories and traditions have arisen around Sacagawea, in part because there are very few reliable sources about his life, and these do not go into detail. As a woman and a Native American, she would not have been considered important enough to have detailed records of her life. Many ideas and traditions have been expressed in literature or oral history, trying to fill in the blanks of her life.
