Shoshone Tribe - Chiefs and Leaders

Sacagawea

Sacagawea (also Sakakawea, Sacajawea; (c. 1788 – December 20, 1812) 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.

Sacagawea was born into an Agaidika (Salmon Eater) tribe of Lemhi Shoshone between Kenney Creek and Agency Creek about twenty minutes away from present-day Salmon in Lemhi County, Idaho. In 1800, when she was about twelve, 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 present-day Washburn, North Dakota.

At about thirteen years of age, Sacagawea was taken as a wife by Toussaint Charbonneau, a Quebecer trapper living in the village. He had also taken another young Shoshone named Otter Woman as a wife. Charbonneau reportedly either to have purchased both wives from the Hidatsa, or won Sacagawea while gambling (the gambling is the more reliable of reports).

Sacagawea was pregnant with her first child when the Corps of Discovery arrived near the Hidatsa villages to spend the winter of 1805-1806. 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"

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.

After the expedition, Charbonneau and Sacagawea spent three years among the Hidatsa before accepting William Clark's invitation to settle in St. Louis, Missouri in 1809. They entrusted Jean-Baptiste's education to Clark, who enrolled the young man in the Saint Louis Academy boarding school.

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. She was said to have returned to the Shoshone in Wyoming, where she died in 1884.