Things I didn't know about Sacajawea. [View all]

[BlueIris]

Last edited Mon Apr 9, 2012, 12:50 AM - Edit history (1)

(For starters, we have different ways of spelling her name; Sacagawea is also common.)

This is taken from the broadcast of Garrison Keillor's show, A Writer's Almanac, for April 6 of this year.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2012/04/06

"It's the birthday of the Shoshone woman Sacajawea, born in Idaho (sometime around 1789). She was kidnapped at age 10 by the Hidatsa tribe, sold into slavery, and bought by a French-Canadian trapper who made her one of his two wives. When Lewis and Clark hired the trapper to guide them to the Pacific, Sacajawea — a teenager with her two-month-old baby on her back — was part of the package. She accompanied the party to the Pacific Ocean and back, acting as their interpreter. She could speak half a dozen Indian languages, she told them which plants were edible, and, William Clark said, tribes were inclined to believe that their party was friendly when they saw Sacajawea because a war party would never travel with a woman, especially one with a baby.

When the trip was over, Sacajawea's husband got $500 and 320 acres of land. She died on December 1812, of a "fever," at the age of 23. Clark legally adopted her two children — the boy who had been a baby on the expedition, Jean Baptiste, and an infant daughter, Lisette."

Here's some more info from Native American Encyclopedia:

http://nativeamericanencyclopedia.com/sacagawea/

"...Her main duties were as a translator, and this worked in a very circuitous way. For example, with the Shoshone, she would translate into Hidatsa to her husband Charbonneau, who would then translate into French (he knew little English, but several others in the party knew French). The value of having Sacagawea as a Shoshone translator was proved when they reached her old village, and she was reunited with her brother, Cameahwait, who had by that time become a tribal leader. This smoothed the way in the negotiation to obtain much-needed horses from the Shoshone."

I think part of the great purpose of this group is to study the under-recognized or misrepresented aspects of the lives of notable women. I can't believe Sacajawea died so young! None of this was covered in any of my history books. You learn something new every day.