How Sacagawea came to the Corps.
According to Google Maps, I could have reached Jackson 20 minutes or half an hour sooner had I made a non-stop drive and stayed on I-80 West to Rock Springs before turning north onto U S 191. But, as I stated at the outset, for me, travel is rarely about simply getting from point A to point B because even from small detours can we reap large rewards. Thus, it was with some determination that I set out to Fort Washakie on the Wind River Reservation – home to the Northern Arapaho and, more importantly for my visit, the Eastern Shoshone tribal people.
(At 2,200,000 acres, nearly the same size as Yellowstone National Park, Wind River is one of the country’s largest Indian reservations. It’s also the only reservation in the country where two separate tribes, the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone, not only share power equally, but try to coexist with each having their own customs, tribal governments, and political agendas. And if this wasn’t difficult enough, the tribes are not old allies but instead share a fractious past marred by sustained periods of animosity.
So, although this reservation is a sparsely populated place of open spaces, there’s reportedly a pervasive tension and edginess that runs like a low-grade fever heating the territory. This is exacerbated by the rather anguished relationship both tribes have with the federal government, a relationship marred by the same long history of distrust, abuse, and neglect found on many reservations.
I don’t intend to delve into the history of this reservation or the relationship between the government and Native Americans but, as the satellite view above shows and, as was typically the case, the lands ceded to the Indians {outlined in red} and established by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty were hardly the most fruitful. So deeply did the settlement constrict the traditional way of life that it wasn’t until May of 2017 that the Native Americans saw the birth of a bison on their land – the first such birth in 130 years. If you’d like to read more about Wind River’s history from a source that seems to have some nuance, I’d suggest this site.)
When I left Calgary many days ago on the way to Billings, I stopped in Great Falls to see the world’s shortest river but also made an unplanned stop at that city’s Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center hoping to learn more about Sacagawea.
As is often the case when we examine history, there’s much we know and much we don’t know about the people, places, and events of the past. Even when we think they’ve been well studied and well documented, there’s always more to uncover and Sacagawea’s story is yet another of those histories.
This statue of Sacagawea
[Photo from Wikipedia – By Leonard Crunelle (1872-1944) sculptor, photographer Hans Andersen – Own work for the photo., CC BY-SA 3.0].
stands on the grounds of the State Capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota. For me, one of the fascinating elements of Sacagawea’s story is that most Americans, if asked to name any member of the Corps of Discovery other than Captain Meriwether Lewis or Lieutenant William Clark, would probably name Sacagawea. Yet, if you read Wikipedia’s entry about that expedition, the brief section on that site seems to minimize her role:
Though she has been discussed in literature frequently, much of the information is exaggeration or fiction. Scholars say she did notice some geographical features, but “Sacagawea … was not the guide for the Expedition, she was important to them as an interpreter and in other ways.”[101] The sight of a woman and her infant son would have been reassuring to some indigenous nations, and she played an important role in diplomatic relations by talking to chiefs, easing tensions, and giving the impression of a peaceful mission.
In my mind, I wonder why then, if her role was indeed so minor, why have the threads of her story been woven so deeply into the tapestry Americans visualize when they think of that expedition? Was it her mere presence as a woman and a Native American? This question alone is sufficient to compel me to try to unravel it – at least a little.
Sacagawea was the daughter of a Shoshone chief and in 1800, when she was 10 or 12 years old, following a battle between the Hidatsa and Shoshone tribes, she and several other girls were taken as prisoners to a village somewhere in present day North Dakota likely near the Missouri River where the Hidatsa had lived since sometime in the 13th century. Eventually, she and another captive girl were purchased and married to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian trapper who would later be hired as a translator by the Corps of Discovery.
When the Expedition set out in May 1804, Sacagawea was or was about to become pregnant. So, while Clark allowed Charbonneau to travel with his Indian bride because, as he wrote in his journal, “a woman with a party of men is a token of peace,” for a similar reason he hoped the tribes they’d encounter would view the infant, named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau but called Pomp or Pompey by Clark, as an additional peaceful token.
Some six or so months later, when the expedition had reached the navigable limits of the Missouri, Lewis set out to contact a Shoshone band, from whom he hoped to obtain horses for their trek across the mountains. In a rather astonishing coincidence once Sacagawea arrived to serve as interpreter, she found the band was led by her older brother, Cameahwait, who had become chief on their father’s death. Sacagawea might have taken advantage of this moment to return to her people, but instead she helped the explorers secure the horses they needed and journeyed on with them and her husband to the Pacific. One could reasonably suspect that Clark, had he been overly concerned with the perceptions of the native people, would have willingly let her remain had she expressed the desire to do so.
We’ll follow the rest of Sacagawea’s journey in the next post.