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Sacagawea
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Sacagawea (also Sakakawea, Sacajawea; see below) (c. 1788 – December 20, 1812; see below for other theories about her death) was a Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, in their exploration of the Western United States. She traveled thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806. She was nicknamed Janey by Clark.
Reliable historical information about Sacagawea is extremely limited, but she has become an important part of the Lewis and Clark mythology in the American public imagination. The National American Woman Suffrage Association of the early twentieth century adopted her as a symbol of women's worth and independence, erecting several statues and plaques in her memory, and doing much to spread the story of her accomplishments.
The Sacagawea dollar coin issued by the United States Mint depicts Sacagawea and her son, Jean Baptiste.
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Sacagawea (also Sakakawea, Sacajawea; see below) (c. 1788 – December 20, 1812; see below for other theories about her death) was a Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, in their exploration of the Western United States. She traveled thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806. She was nicknamed Janey by Clark.
Reliable historical information about Sacagawea is extremely limited, but she has become an important part of the Lewis and Clark mythology in the American public imagination. The National American Woman Suffrage Association of the early twentieth century adopted her as a symbol of women's worth and independence, erecting several statues and plaques in her memory, and doing much to spread the story of her accomplishments.
The Sacagawea dollar coin issued by the United States Mint depicts Sacagawea and her son, Jean Baptiste. The face on the coin was modeled on a modern Shoshone-Bannock woman named Randy'L He-dow Teton; no contemporary image of Sacagawea exists.
BiographyEarly lifeSacagawea was born into an Agaidika ("Salmon Eater") tribe of Lemhi Shoshone between Kenney Creek and Agency Creek, near what is now the town of Tendoy in Lemhi County, Idaho. Her exact birth year is unknown. When she was somewhere between ten and twelve years old, she and several other girls were kidnapped by a group of Hidatsa (also known as Minnetarees) in a battle that resulted in the death of four Shoshone men, four women and several boys. She was then taken to a Hidatsa village near the present-day Washburn, North Dakota.
At about thirteen years of age, Sacagawea was taken as a wife by Toussaint Charbonneau, a French trapper living in the village, who had also taken another young Shoshone named Otter Woman as a wife. Charbonneau is said to have either purchased both wives from the Hidatsa, or to have won Sacagawea while gambling.
The Lewis and Clark expeditionsSacagawea was pregnant with her first child when the Corps of Discovery arrived near the Hidatsa villages to spend the winter of 1804-1805. Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark built Fort Mandan and interviewed several trappers who might be able to translate or guide the expedition further up the Missouri River in the springtime. They agreed to hire Charbonneau as an interpreter when they discovered his wife spoke the Shoshone language, as they knew they would need the help of the Shoshone tribes at the headwaters of the Missouri.
Lewis recorded in his journal on November 4, 1804:
- "a French man by Name Chabonah, who speaks the Big Belly language visit us, he wished to hire and informed us his 2 squars were snake Indians, we engage him to go on with us and take one his wives to interpret the Snake language…" [sic]
Charbonneau and Sacagawea moved into the fort a week later. Lewis recorded the birth of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau on February 11, 1805, noting that another of the party's interpreters administered crushed rattlesnake rattles from Lewis' specimen collection to speed the delivery. The boy was called "Little Pomp" or "Pompy" by Clark and others in the expedition.
In April, the expedition left Fort Mandan and headed up the Missouri River in pirogues, which had to be poled and sometimes pulled from the riverbanks. On May 14, 1805, Sacagawea rescued items that had fallen out of a capsized boat, including the journals and records of Lewis and Clark. The corps commanders, who praised her quick action on this occasion, would name the Sacagawea River in her honor on May 20.
By August 1805 the corps had located a Shoshone tribe and was 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.
Lewis recorded the reunion in his journal:
- "Shortly after Capt. Clark arrived with the Interpreter Charbono, and the Indian woman, who proved to be a sister of the Chief Cameahwait. The meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Sah cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian woman, who had been taken prisoner at the same time with her, and who had afterwards escaped from the Minnetares and rejoined her nation."
And Clark in his:
- "The Intertrepeter & Squar who were before me at Some distance danced for the joyful Sight, and She made signs to me that they were her nation"
The Shoshone agreed to barter horses to the group, and to provide guides to lead them over the treacherously cold and barren Rocky Mountains, where they were reduced to eating tallow candles to survive. When they descended into the more temperate regions on the other side, Sacagawea helped to find and cook camas roots to help them regain their strength.
As the expedition approached the mouth of the Columbia River, Sacagawea gave up her beaded belt in order to allow the captains to trade for a fur robe they wished to return to President Jefferson. The journal entry for November 20, 1805 reads:
- "one of the Indians had on a roab made of 2 Sea Otter Skins the fur of them were more butifull than any fur I had ever Seen both Capt. Lewis & my Self endeavored to purchase the roab with differant articles at length we precured it for a belt of blue beeds which the Squar—wife of our interpreter Shabono wore around her waste...."
When the corps reached the Pacific Ocean at last, all members of the expedition—including Sacagawea and Clark's black manservant York—were allowed to participate in a November 24 vote on the location where they would build their fort for the winter. In January, when a whale's carcass washed up onto the beach south of Fort Clatsop, she insisted upon her right to go see this "monstrous fish".
On the return trip, they approached the Rocky Mountains in July of 1806. On July 6, Clark recorded "The Indian woman informed me that she had been in this plain frequently and knew it well.... She said we would discover a gap in the mountains in our direction..." which is now Gibbons Pass. A week later, on July 13, Sacagawea advised Clark to cross into the Yellowstone River basin at what is now known as Bozeman Pass, later chosen as the optimal route for the Northern Pacific Railway to cross the continental divide.
While Sacagawea often appears in romantic depictions as a guide for the expedition, she provided direction in only a few instances. Her translation efforts also helped the party to negotiate with the Shoshone. However, her greatest value to the mission may have been simply her presence, which indicated their peaceful intent. While traveling through what is now Franklin County, Washington, Clark noted "The Indian woman confirmed those people of our friendly intentions, as no woman ever accompanies a war party of Indians in this quarter" and "the wife of Shabono our interpetr we find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our freindly intentions a woman with a party of men is a token of peace."
As he traveled down the river from Fort Mandan at the end of the journey, Clark wrote a letter to Charbonneau:
- "You have been a long time with me and conducted your Self in Such a manner as to gain my friendship, 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 at the Mandans. As to your little Son (my boy Pomp) you well know my fondness of him and my anxiety to take him and raise him as my own child...If you are desposed to accept either of my offers to you and will bring down you Son your famn [femme, woman] Janey had best come along with you to take care of the boy untill I get him....Wishing you and your family great suckcess & with anxious expectations of seeing my little danceing boy Baptiest I shall remain your Friend, William Clark"
An 1884 death?Some Native American oral traditions relate that rather than dying in 1812, Sacagawea left her husband Charbonneau, crossed the Great Plains and married into a Comanche tribe, then returned to the Shoshone in Wyoming where she died in 1884.
In 1925, Dr. Charles Eastman, a Dakota Sioux physician, was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to locate Sacagawea's remains. Eastman visited many different Native American tribes to interview elderly individuals that might have known or heard of Sacagawea, and learned of a Shoshone woman at the Wind River Reservation with the Comanche name Porivo or "chief woman". Some of the people he interviewed said that she spoke of a long journey where she had helped white men, and that she had a silver Jefferson peace medal of the type carried by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He found a Comanche woman called Tacutine who said that Porivo was her grandmother, and that she had married into a Comanche tribe and had a number of children including Tacutine's father Ticannaf. Porivo then left the tribe after her husband Jerk-Meat was killed.
According to these narratives, Porivo then lived for some time at Fort Bridger in Wyoming with her sons Bazil and Baptiste, who each knew several languages including English and French. Eventually she found her way back to the Lemhi Shoshone at the Wind River Indian Reservation, where she was recorded as "Bazil's mother". This woman died on April 9, 1884, and a Reverend John Roberts officiated at her funeral.
It was Eastman's conclusion that Porivo was Sacagawea. In 1963 a monument to "Sacajawea of the Shoshonis" was erected at Fort Washakie on the Wind River reservation near Lander, Wyoming on the basis of this claim.
The belief that Sacagawea lived to old age was widely disseminated in the United States by the 1933 novel Sacagawea by Grace Hebard. This notion was also explored fifty years later in the 1984 novel Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo; in this case the author was well aware of the historical research supporting an 1812 death, but chose to explore the oral tradition instead.
NameA long-running controversy has surrounded the correct spelling, pronunciation, and etymology of the woman's name.
SacagaweaSacagawea is the most widely used spelling of her name, and is pronounced with a hard "g" sound, rather than a soft "g" or "j" sound. Lewis and Clark's original journals mention Sacagawea by name seventeen times, spelled eight different ways, each time with a "g". Clark used Sahkahgarwea, Sahcahgagwea, Sarcargahwea and Sahcahgahweah, while Lewis used Sahcahgahwea, Sahcahgarweah, Sahcargarweah and Sahcahgar Wea.
The spelling Sacagawea was established in 1910 as the proper usage in government documents by the United States Bureau of American Ethnology, and is the spelling adopted by the United States Mint for use with the dollar coin, as well as the United States Board on Geographic Names and the U.S. National Park Service. The spelling is used by a large number of historical scholars.
SakakaweaSakakawea is the next most widely adopted spelling, and the most often accepted among specialists. Proponents say the name comes from the Hidatsa language tsakáka wía, "bird woman". Charbonneau told expedition members that his wife's name meant "Bird Woman", and in May 1805 Lewis used the Hidatsa meaning in his journal:
- "a handsome river of about fifty yards in width discharged itself into the shell river...this stream we called Sah-ca-gah-we-ah or bird woman’s River, after our interpreter the Snake woman."
Sakakawea is the official spelling of her name according to the Three Affiliated Tribes, which include the Hidatsa, and is widely used throughout North Dakota (where she is considered a state heroine), notably in the naming of Lake Sakakawea.
The North Dakota State Historical Society quotes Russell Reid's book Sakakawea: The Bird Woman:
- Her Hidatsa name, which Charbonneau stated meant "Bird Woman," should be spelled "Tsakakawias" according to the foremost Hidatsa language authority, Dr. Washington Matthews. When this name is anglicized for easy pronunciation, it becomes Sakakawea, "Sakaka" meaning "bird" and "wea" meaning "woman." This is the spelling adopted by North Dakota. The spelling authorized for the use of Federal agencies by the United States Geographic Board is Sacagawea. Although not closely following Hidatsa spelling, the pronunciation is quite similar and the Geographic Board acknowledged the name to be a Hidatsa word meaning "Bird Woman."
However, Irving W. Anderson, president of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, argued:
- ...the Sakakawea spelling similarly is not found in the Lewis and Clark journals. To the contrary, this spelling traces its origin neither through a personal connection with her nor in any primary literature of the expedition. It has been independently constructed from two Hidatsa Indian words found in a dictionary titled Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians, published by the Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1877. Compiled by a United States Army surgeon, Dr. Washington Matthews, 65 years following Sacagawea's death, the words appear verbatim in the dictionary as "tsa-ka-ka, noun; a bird," and "mia [wia, bia], noun; a woman.
SacajaweaSacajawea or Sacajewea , in contrast to the Hidatsa etymology, is said to be derived from words in the Shoshone language words "Saca-tzaw-meah" meaning "boat puller" or "boat launcher". It is the preferred spelling used by the Lemhi Shoshone people, some of whom claim that her Hidatsa captors merely reinterpreted her existing Shoshone name in their own language, and pronounced it in their own dialect -- they heard a name that approximated "tsakaka" and "wia", and interpreted it as "bird woman", substituting the hard "g/k" pronunciation for the softer "tz/j" sound that did not exist in the Hidatsa language.
The usage of this spelling almost certainly originated from the use of the "j" spelling by Nicholas Biddle, who annotated the Lewis and Clark Expedition's journals for publication in 1814. This usage became more widespread with the publication of the 1902 novel, The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark, written by Eva Emery Dye. 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).
Rozina George, great-great-great-great-grandaughter of Cameahwait, says the Agaidika tribe of Lemhi Shoshone do not recognize the spelling or pronunciation Sacagawea, and schools and other memorials erected in the area surrounding her birthplace use the spelling Sacajawea.
- "The Lemhi Shoshone call her Sacajawea. It is derived from the Shoshone word for her name, Saca tzah we yaa. In his Cash Book, William Clark spells Sacajawea with a “J”. Also, William Clark and Private George Shannon explained to Nicholas Biddle (Published the first Lewis and Clark Journals in 1814) about the pronunciation of her name and how the tz sounds more like a “j”. What better authority on the pronunciation of her name than Clark and Shannon who traveled with her and constantly heard the pronunciation of her name? We do not believe it is a Minnetaree (Hidatsa) word for her name. Sacajawea was a Lemhi Shoshone not a Hidatsa."
Idaho native John Rees explored the "boat launcher" etymology in a long letter to the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs written in the 1920s; it was republished in 1970 by The Lemhi County Historical Society as a pamphlet titled "Madame Charbonneau" and contains many of the arguments in favor of the Shoshone derivation of the name.
The spelling Sacajawea, though widely taught until the late 20th century, is generally considered incorrect in modern academia. Linguistics professor Dr. Sven Liljeblad from the Idaho State University in Pocatello has concluded that "it is unlikely that Sacajawea is a Shoshoni word.... The term for 'boat' in Shoshoni is saiki, but the rest of the alleged compound would be incomprehensible to a native speaker of Shoshoni." The spelling has subsided from general use, although the corresponding "soft j" pronunciation persists in American culture.
FictionTwo early twentieth-century novels shaped much of the public perception of Sacagawea. The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark, was written by American suffragist Eva Emery Dye and published in 1902 in anticipation of the expedition's centennial. The National American Woman Suffrage Association embraced her as a female hero, and numerous stories and essays about her appeared in ladies' journals. A few decades later, Sacagawea (1933) by Grace Hebard was published to even greater success. Sacagawea has since become a popular figure in historical and young adult novels, including the long 1984 novel Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo.
Some fictionalizations of the expedition speculate that Sacagawea 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, the idea of a liaison was created by novelists who wrote about the expedition much later. This fiction was perpetuated in the 1955 Western film The Far Horizons.
MusicSacagewea is referenced in the Stevie Wonder song "Black Man", from the album Songs in the Key of Life. The componist Philip Glass wrote his "Piano Concerto No. 2 after Lewis & Clark". Sacagawea is referenced is the second movement, also called "Sacagawea".
Memorials
The Sacajawea ParkA 71-acre park dedicated to Sacagawea is located in Salmon, Idaho by the rivers and mountains of Sacajawea’s homeland.
In sculpture- Cheney, Washington, by Harold Balazs: A statue of Sacagawea is displayed in the rose garden in front of the President’s House at Eastern Washington University.
- Bismarck, North Dakota, by Leonard Crunelle: A statue of Sacagawea and baby Pomp 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, 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, by Harry Weber sculptor: A statue of Sacagawea with her baby in a cradle board is included in the diorama of the Lewis & Clark expedition that is on display in the lobby of the St. Louis Drury Plaza Hotel, located in the historical International Fur Exchange building.
- Portland, Oregon, by Alice Cooper: A statue of Sacagawea and Jean-Baptiste was unveiled July 6, 1905 and moved to Washington Park, April 6, 1906
- Godfrey, Illinois, by Glenna Goodacre: At Lewis and Clark Community College; by the same artist who designed the image on the Sacagawea dollar.
- Charlottesville, Virginia, by Charles Keck: A statue of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and Sacagawea was sculpted in 1919.
- Boise, Idaho: Installed in front of the Idaho History Museum in July 2003.
- Lewiston, Idaho: Multiple statues, including one along the main approach to the city.
- Great Falls, Montana, by Robert Scriver: Bronze 3/4 scale statue of Sacagawea, her baby Jean-Baptise, Lewis, Clark, and the Newfoundland dog Seaman, at the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center in Great Falls, Montana.
- Fort Benton, Montana, by Robert Scriver: A sculpture of Sacagawea and her baby, and Captains Lewis and Clark, in the river side sculpture park.
- Astoria, Oregon, at Netul Landing in Lewis and Clark National Historical Park: Bronze statue of Sacagawea and Jean-Baptiste. The statue was stolen on January 26 or 27, 2008. According to the police the statue is worth an estimated $20,000, and was cut up and sold for about $200 to a scrap metal dealer in Bend, Oregon.
- Longview, Washington, a statue of Sacagawea and Jean-Baptiste was placed in Lake Sacajawea Park near the Hemlock St. footbridge in 2005.
- Located in the historic area of downtown Gloucester, Virginia, is a statue of Sacagawea
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