Sacagawea
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-->Sacagawea (Sakakawea, Sacajawea, Sacajewea; see below) (c. 1787 – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884) was a Shoshone woman who accompanied the Corps of Discovery with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Birth
Sacagawea was born to a tribe of Shoshone between Kenney Creek and Agency Creek, near Tendoy, Idaho near what is now Lemhi County, Idaho [link]. However, in 1800, when she was about 11 or 12, she was kidnapped by a group of Hidatsa, and 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." She was named so because when she was born, a flock of white birds flew overhead. 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).Family
At the age of about sixteen, Sacagawea married a French trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau, who was also currently married to another Shoshone woman. Two accounts survive of Charbonneau's acquirement of Sacagawea: (1) He purchased both from the Hidatsa as wives. (2) He won Sacagawea while gambling.Sacagawea was pregnant with their first child, Jean Baptiste (nicknamed "Pomp" or "Pompy", meaning first-born), when the Corps of Discovery arrived in the area to spend the winter of 1804-1805.
Sacagawea also gave birth to a daughter, Lisette, shortly before her death from a fever. The child is not believed to have survived infancy.
Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark met Sacagawea when she was fifteen. Needing someone to interpret the Hidatsa language, Lewis and Clark interviewed Charbonneau for the job. Although they were not exactly impressed with him, the deal was sealed when they discovered that Sacagawea spoke Shoshone, a great advantage. She would become valuable in her role as interpreter. Today many monuments are dedicated to Sacagawea. Also, several programs such as musicals are about Sacagawea's journey with Lewis and Clark.Contrary to a common romantic view, Sacagawea did not "guide Lewis and Clark across the continent." She did offer some geographic guidance and confirmation in the Three Forks area where she had lived as a child, for instance, advising Clark to cross Bozeman Pass on his separate return journey. Sacagawea also instructed Lewis on which plants were edible/useful to the party, translated when they met the Shoshone (the original purpose for which she was brought along), and served as a passive goodwill ambassador. The presence of a woman and child with the group served as a signal that the expedition, while armed, was an essentially peaceful undertaking.
In one noted act in 1805 as the expedition moved up the Missouri River, Sacagawea rescued items that had fallen out of a capsized boat, including the notes and records that Lewis and Clark were keeping. The corps commanders, who praised her quick action on this occasion, would name a river in her honor.
By August 17, 1805 the corps had located a Shoshone tribe and were attempting to trade for horses to cross the Rocky Mountains. Sacagawea was brought in to translate, and it was discovered the tribe's chief was her brother Cameahwait.
Myths and legends
Reliable historical information about Sacagawea is extremely limited and no contemporary portraits of her exist. Her role in the expedition and this lack of records have led to a number of myths surrounding the girl, most notably that she was romantically involved with Lewis or Clark during their expedition. While the journals show that she was friendly with Clark and would often do favors for him[[Citing sources citation needed]], the idea of a liaison is believed to have been created by novelists who wrote about the expedition much later[[Citing sources citation needed]].
In the late 19th Century, a Shoshone woman claimed to be Sacagawea[[Citing sources citation needed]]. She died at the Wind River Band reservation in Wyoming on April 9 1884, and in 1963 a monument was erected near Lander, Wyoming on the basis of this claim[[Citing sources citation needed]].
However, according to Bonnie "Spirit Wind-Walker" Butterfield, historical documents suggest she died much earlier:
- An 1811 journal entry made by Henry Brackenridge, a fur dealer at Fort Manual Lisa Trading Post on the Missouri River, stated that both Sacagawea and Charbonneau were living at the fort. He recorded that Sacagawea "...had become sickly and longed to reviste her native country." The following year, John Luttig, a clerk at Fort Manuel Lisa recorded in his journal on December 20, 1812, that "...the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake Squaw [the common term used to denote Shoshone Indians], died of putrid fever." He went on to say that she was "aged about 25 years. She left a fine infant girl" (Drumm, 1920). Documents held by Clark show that her son Baptiste had already been entrusted by Charbonneau into Clark's care for a boarding school education, at Clark's insistence (Jackson, 1962). [link]
- In February 1813, two months after Luttig's journal entry, Fort Manual Lisa, located along the Missouri River where many tribes made their home, was attacked by hostile Indians killing 15 men (Anderson, 1973). The survivors included John Luttig and Sacagawea's infant daughter. Charbonneau was presumed dead (Drumm, 1920).
- An historical court document demonstrates that Sacagawea was already dead. An adoption document made in the Orphans Court Records in St. Louis, Missouri states that "On August 11, 1813, William Clark became the guardian of "Tousant Charbonneau, a boy about ten years, and Lizette Charbonneau, a girl about one year old." For a Missouri State Court at the time, to designate a child as orphaned and to allow an adoption, both parents had to be confirmed dead in court papers.
- The last recorded document citing Sacagawea's existence appears in William Clark's original notes written between 1825-1826. He lists the names of each of the expedition members and their last known whereabouts. For Sacagawea he writes: "Se car ja we au- Dead" (Jackson, 1962). [link]
Name
Sacagawea is the most widely used spelling of her name. Up until the latter part of the 20th century, however, schools mostly taught her name as being Sacajawea or Sacajewea /ˈsækəʤəˈwiə/. The confusion here almost certainly originated from the use of the "j" spelling by Nicholas Biddle, who annotated the expedition's journals in 1814. The error was compounded with the publication of the novel, The Conquest, written by Eva Emery Dye in 1902, in anticipation of the expedition's centennial. It is likely Dye used Biddle's secondary source for the spelling, and her highly popular book made it ubiquitous throughout the United States (previously most non-scholars had never even heard of Sacagawea). Conversely, the journals themselves mention Sacagawea by name seventeen times, each time with the "g" spelling. While the spelling Sacajawea has subsided from general use, the corresponding pronunciation persists in American culture. Sacagawea is the spelling adopted by the United States Mint for use with the dollar coin. (See Sacagawea Dollar.)
Sakakawea is the next most widely adopted spelling , and is the official spelling of her name according to the Three Affiliated Tribes, which include the Hidatsa. This spelling is widely used throughout North Dakota (where she is considered a State heroine), notably in the naming of Lake Sakakawea, and is usually pronoumced as: "sah-kah-cha-WAY-ah.". However, some historians and linguists discount this version, alleging its development was based on faulty research that went into an 1877 US Government Printing Office Publication, Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians, which transliterated "bird" as "tsa-ka-ka," and "woman" as "mia," "wia" or "bia." Some advocates of this version prefer it because it approximates the generally accepted pronunciation but avoids the g/j confusion, however critics also point out that her name could also be the one she was given as a girl by the Shoshone, merely pronoumced differently by the Hidatsa. Since there are, in fact, several different words or phrases in Shoshone which could be the actual root for her name, it is likely that a definitive answer to this question will never be found. It is generally agreed however, that the common pronunciation of: "SACK-ah-jah-wee-ah" is completely erroneous.
The Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural, and Educational Center
A 71-acre park dedicated to Sacajawea is located in Salmon Idaho by the rivers and mountains of Sacajawea’s homeland [link].In sculpture
- Cheney, Washington: A Harold Balazs statue of Sacajawea is displayed in the rose garden in front of the President’s House at Eastern Washington University.
- Bismarck, North Dakota:A statue of Sakakawea and baby Pomp by Leonard Crunelle appears on the grounds of the North Dakota State Capitol, and a replica of it represents North Dakota in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. Interestingly enough, a North Dakota law, on the books for over a century, prohibits any statuary whatsoever on State-owned grounds, so a special law had to be passed in order to permit the display on the Capitol grounds, where it occupies a place of prestige on the lawn in front of the capitol building.
- St Louis, Missouri: A statue of Sacagawea with her baby in a cradle board is included in the [Harry Weber] diorama of the Lewis & Clark expedition ["Late May 1805"], that is on display in the lobby of the St. Louis Drury Plaza Hotel, located in the historical International Fur Exchange building.
- Portland, Oregon: A statue of Sacagawea and Jean-Baptiste was unveiled July 6, 1905 and moved to Washington Park, April 6, 1906 [Sculpted by Alice Cooper]
- Godfrey, Illinois: At Lewis and Clark Community College. By sculptor Glenna Goodacre, who also designed the image on the Sacagawea dollar.
- Charlottesville, Virginia The statue of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and Sacagawea was sculpted by Charles Keck in 1919.
- Boise, Idaho Installed in front of the Idaho History Museum in July 2003.
Theater
- Sacagawea is a 2002 play by playwright Eric Coble
Popular Culture
Lisa Simpson portrayed her in a segment of The Simpsons episode "Margical History Tour".In the Coda episode of , Captain Kathryn Janeway was on the shuttlecraft Sacajawea, which became caught in a magnetic storm and crashed on a planet in a binary system in the Delta Quadrant.
External links
- [Biography and photo of statue] in National Statuary Hall.
- [Sacajawea Center]
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