SACAJAWEA
History can help us untangle the most painful chapters of our past. Reinterpretation of long held beliefs of historians as new data becomes available has always brought fresh insights to bare. The real story of any historic event can often be viewed differently from different perspectives. The depiction of the The 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition can be viewed through many different lenses.
There have been many books written and films made about the expedition and the teenage mother named Sacajawea, and now a 2019 Portland Center Stage Commissioned play by Mary Kathryn Nagle called, “Crossing Minosa. “ It weaves together a tapestry of events to illustrate the influential contributions of the 16 year old, Shoshone mother, who accompanied “The Corps of Volunteers for North Western Discovery” on that long arduous journey to the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean near what is now called Astoria, Oregon. The play moves between the events of 1806 and 2016 by drawing awareness to the present day fight of the Dakota and Lakota nation descendants trying to defend their ancestral burial grounds from destruction from an oil pipeline. It sheds light on the deep fracturing that is still going on in this country due to colonialism and forced sovereignty on indigenous people.
Sacajawea’s story is fascinating to many because it is so unusual to deconstruct the contribution of a child to such a well known historical event. A short Native American documentary “The Spirit of Sacajawea,” 2007, 2010, sheds new light on the 16 year old Shoshone girl who accompanied 30 some odd men on an 8000 mile trek to and from the Pacific Ocean with a baby on her back.
The journals from the expedition to find a “Northwest Passage” or river trade route, to the Pacific Ocean tell a racist but authentic story of early people on the North American continent. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase, a swath of 825,000 square miles in the center of the continent from France. France needed more financial resources at the time due to an ongoing war with England.
Jefferson was determined to expand the US and had tried to send previous scouts West but they had been unsuccessful. Ships had been docking and trading with native Americans on the west coast for centuries but at that time little was known about the large expanse of land to the west of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Stories were told in the first person and in journals and newspapers throughout the fledgling nation and in Europe of French Canadian Fir Trappers who traveled between Canada and these mostly undocumented Native American lands.
Jefferson was an adherent to the scientific method and asked Congress for funds to man a team of explorers to traverse the newly acquired lands with the intent to enforce sovereignty over any people living therein. He wanted drawings and thorough descriptions of the people and any new species of animals and fauna. He required maps of the rivers and topography of area to expand the nation.
Jefferson hired his trusted 29 year old Secretary Meriwether Lewis to Captain the expedition. He in turn, requested the accompaniment of his friend and past military commander who was 4 years older, the red haired, William Clark an avid outdoorsman to co-captain the team. As an aside, the military actually refused to identify Clark as a co-captain. He received a lesser rank and compensation for his efforts than Lewis but they were both granted 1600 acres of land in the newly acquired territory in the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis may have known that if anything had happened to him on the journey, Clark’s presumed rank would have kept the chain of command intact to lead the hired men on and subsequently home.
In 1803 Congress appropriated $2,500 dollars for “The Corps of Volunteers for North Western Discovery” coined the “Corps of Discovery “ in the 1807 journal by Sergeant Patrick Gass the expeditions head carpenter. Lewis and Clark put together a crew of hearty explorers, interpreters and military men who could follow orders and meet the challenge of all manner of skills including hunting, trapping, boat and structure building. Thirty men including York, Clark’s childhood slave and manservant and Lewis’s huge Newfoundland dog named Seaman, headed up the Missouri River in the fall of 1804 to the farthest point of recorded terrain.
They wintered there, near a friendly Hidatsa tribe and built Fort Mandan. Lewis had bought and loaded up pounds of trinkets like mirrors, glass beads, cloth, guns and knives in a keel boat to trade with tribes along their journey. They also built canoes and flat bottom pirogues (canoes hollowed out of tree trunks with axes) over the winter.
The Corps hired more men as they sent a keel boat back to St. Louis filled with journals and trade goods from the tribes and furs from trappers in the area. One of these fur trappers a 40 or 50 year old French Canadian named Touessaint Charbonneau was hired as an interpreter. He was living nearby the village with his two young Shoshone wives Sacajawea and Otter Woman who had been kidnapped as children in a raid on their people from Shoshone lands 4 years earlier. Lewis knew they might have to trade for horses at some point and thought a fluent speaker from around the Snake River could come in handy and asked Charbonneau to bring one of them along.
Sacagawea was all of around 16 years old and about eight months pregnant at the time which Charbonneau did not disclose and he also tried to negotiate for more money. This fact got him fired before the expedition even set off. But, in February 1805 Lewis was called in as a last ditch effort to help Sacajawea, who was laboring intensely nearby. He recorded in his journal that he witnessed a Corps member assist her by having her drink a mixture with a rattlesnake rattle in water. The medicinal properties may have helped her deliver her son Jean Baptist forthwith.
Most of what we now know about Sacajawea is gleamed from Corps members journal entries, court documents and an interview Clark gave to a reporter shortly after the expedition ended in 1806. It is widely believed that Sacajawea was kidnapped a few years earlier with other young girls from her Shoshone band living along the Snake River in what we now call Idaho, by a marauding Hidatsa tribe and taken as a slave 800 miles east to their lands in North Dakota. It is unclear how she became the nonconsensual wife of Charbonneau but it is speculated that she was either traded or won in a gambling match. What must she have thought about the opportunity to retrace her steps back to her native homeland with her first child?
When the expedition set out in April, Charbonneau, his wife and infant son, Jean Baptiste, nicknamed Pompey, were included in the crew. Sacajawea’s contribution to the expedition can not be underscored. Her knowledge of medicinal and edible plants and production of pemmican or wasna a highly nutritious jerky like mixture of dried meat, berries and or nuts and bone marrow bound together with fat and her ability to locate camas root, a highly nutritious tuber, saved the crew from starvation on a few different occasions.
The mere presence of a young woman and child also gave the crew a peaceful appearance to any bands of native people along the journey. At the time warring parties would never travel with women and children and therefore diplomacy and interest in trade with the odd group of travelers prevailed. She even suggested more traversable routes through mountain passes near her native homelands that became used by future travelers and the railroad to cross the Continental Divide years later.
The unusual composition of the Corps of Discovery including York, Clark’s childhood man servant and black slave became the subject of why this crew was successful when others had failed. When camping and offering trade goods to native bands they met along the way it was York who garnered quite a bit of attention because of his, novel dark African skin color and large stature. Some bands even mistook him for a god or powerful totem and he was the favorite of children when he danced around the night fire to fiddle music and acted like a wild bear to scare and delight them. He was also put upon to care for the lone casualty of the expedition when a young crew member took ill and died a painful death from what now could be deemed a ruptured appendix.
It is fair to say that the inclusion of baby “Pomp”, his mother Sacajawea, York and even the large Newfound Seaman, who was stolen by a band of Flatheads on one occasion and later retrieved, had a very positive effect on morale of the whole Corps and anyone they met along the journey. Even though the journal passages about these Corps members are rare it is fun to extrapolate and shine a light on their under appreciated contributions to the expedition.
To further illustrate Sacajawea’s contribution to the expedition, a story was told early on in journal entries about how a squall came up on a river and Charbonneau, in his fear or inexperience tipped over one of the pirogues. With much commotion the men, some of whom couldn’t swim, thrashed around trying to right the boat but Sacajawea intuitively began retrieving the dumped supplies including journals and boxes of food and much needed medical supplies. One report even indicates that she dove into the river with Pomp on her back to retrieve the precious supplies as the boat tipped. Her level headedness was not lost on the Corps captains.
The most difficult passage for the Corps was that over the Bitterroot Mountains. By this point the men were accustomed to eating huge amounts of bison to sustain them, but food became scarce on more than one occasion over this second winter. Sacajawea traveling with pemmican high in nutrients and gathering and cooking of camas root helped them regain their strength and stay alive when they descended the mountains.
As the Corps traveled away from the Rocky Mountains and along the plains near present day Idaho, Sacajawea recognized a flat topped plateau in the distance that she remembered as a landmark from her childhood as her nomadic bands summer territory. As they traveled along the Snake river scouts were sent to explore the area and try to make contact with the Shoshone people to acquire horses. Sacajawea unbelievably reconnected with a childhood friend near a river and led back to camp. In the negotiating process she was overcome with joy and tears to discover that the Chief Camalwait was her brother. They embraced and were very emotional as she introduced him to her child and he informed her that her parents had died which must have been heartbreaking.
Over the few days of negotiating and trading goods the Corps acquired the necessary horses they needed to continue the journey along the Snake river to the Columbia. They floated down the Columbia and came across various tribes engaged in fishing and drying salmon and finally reached the end of the journey setting up camp on the cliffs near the Pacific Ocean. Scouts were sent over the dunes to the beach where they encountered a beached whale carcass. Sacagawea was adamant about being allowed to leave camp and witness the sight of the “monstrous fish” which it is recorded she did.
This expedition was rare in that a woman and a slave were deemed important enough to have a say on where the Corps would set up camp and build Fort Clatsop for this final winter before returning East. In the journal entries we learn how wet that second winter was in the great Northwest and how happy the crew was to leave come the spring of 1806.
It is merely speculation what truly became of some of these colorful Corps members upon return but sources tell us that the expedition returned Charbonneau, Sacajawea and Pomp to the mouth of the Missouri. Clark wrote to Charbonneau a few years upon return inviting him to bring his family to St. Louis to live so Pomp could be formally educated. A daughter Lizette followed a few years later after Sacajawea’s presumed death from putrid fever after they had returned to the frontier. Clark legally adopted both children and Pomp grew up and spent much of his adult life in France and Europe possibly reunited with Charbonneau’s family before returning to America later in his life.
Sadly, York returned East but was so dismayed by not being set free after his contribution to the Corps of Discovery that Clark, in an attempt to put him back in his place and regain control over him, sold him to another Master. Such a betrayal must have angered York. There is some speculation that he was returned to Clark at some point and freed and then went West to become a Trapper and live among the tribes who respected him.
Captain Lewis was accidentally shot in the backside near the end of the expedition but recovered only to die a few years later at age 35 on a trip to Washington D.C. to demand reimbursement from The War Department for expenses incurred as the new Governor of the Upper Louisiana Purchase. He had written a new will before leaving his home in St. Louis and was also carrying his completed journal entries from the Expedition to his publisher in hopes to save his family from ruinous debt if the War Department refused to reimburse him. The long held belief that he committed suicide in a Tennessee roadside tavern cabin in Grinders Stand on a treacherous route called the Natchez Trace has come under scrutiny and it is more likely he was murdered and his death was made to look like a robbery. His sister fought to have his body exhumed and examined years later to prove the murder hypothesis but it remained inconclusive.
One present day epidemiologist believes Lewis was not only bankrupt but suffering from dementia and paralysis due to late stage syphillis. It is known that at least eight other members of the expedition contracted the disease. Native women, possibly the kidnapped ones, were occasionally offered in trade as sexual partners on the expedition and in one of Lewis”s journal entries he inquires of Charbonneau and Sacajawea if the Shoshone tribes women have “the venereal disease.” The treatment for the disease at that time was by mercury a highly toxic substance which also may have caused Lewis to act erratically and try to take his own life in despair. Both the disease and mercury would be present in the remains to prove this hypothesis but, the National Parks Service land where he is now buried forbids exhumation of remains.
Some reports claim Sacajawea died of fever a few years after she gave birth to her daughter and the adoption filing supports this theory, but other stories claim she returned to her homeland and Shoshone people and lived into old age sharing oral history of the journey she made in her youth as a young mother who witnessed the Pacific Ocean. It is unknown if this woman who died after a long life was Sacajawea. No mention is made about what happened to Otter Woman or if she may have been the mother of Lizette. The rich tradition of oral history could also have been shared by another Shoshone woman who learned of the journey firsthand to pass down to future generations.
Ironically in the end, the Corps didn’t actually find the river trade route or famed Northwest Passage Jefferson commissioned them to but, exactly one hundred years later, in 1905 Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen made the first successful complete east to west Arctic river crossing. The Arctic pack ice has prevented regular shipping through the passage for centuries but more recent sea ice decline has now rendered it navigable for ships. Jefferson may have known it was there by stories of fir trappers and past explorers journal notes.
We may never know the truth about what became of these colorful characters in a time of colonialism and decimation of native peoples but what knowledge we do have paints an amazing picture of perseverance and grit. To revere these brave souls and keep honoring them in books, films and plays helps us honor true American history in our new ways.
Deconstructing historical events and the people who actually made this heroic journey can shed light on the fact that indigenous peoples were often quite welcoming to explorers and others and actually helped the Corps succeed in their endeavor. It truthfully shows different reactions of different first peoples to what would become an out and out invasion of sorts and theft of their nomadic lands and decimation of their people due to disease and corruption built upon the idea of manifest destiny. We can learn from the past that history is a nuanced living breathing thing and it has a lot to teach us in the 21st century.
