Sacagawea also put her naturalist’s knowledge to use for the Corps. Sacagawea was surprised and happy to recognize the Shoshone’s leader, Chief Cameahwait, as her brother, and they had an emotional reunion. On April 7, Sacagawea, the baby and Charbonneau headed west with the 31 other Corps members.įive days after the first members of the Corps crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass, Sacagawea did, as planned, translate the captains’ desire to purchase horses to the Shoshone they encountered. Sacagawea delivered her son Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau (known as Baptiste) on February 11, 1805. And they couldn’t procure horses earlier, because they’d be traveling by water until they reached the Rockies’ edge. Without horses, they wouldn’t be able to transport their supplies over the Bitterroot Mountains (a section of the Rockies) and continue toward the Pacific. Through this translation chain, communications with the Shoshone would be possible, and Lewis and Clark recognized that as crucial: the Shoshone had horses they would need to purchase. Charbonneau spoke French and Hidatsa Sacagawea spoke Hidatsa and Shoshone (two very different languages). Most of the Corps members spoke only English, but one, Francois Labiche, spoke French as well. They recognized the potential value of Sacagawea and Charbonneau’s combined language skills. Lewis, 29, chose his friend and former military superior, 33-year-old William Clark, as his co-captain.Īfter more than a year of planning and initial travel, Lewis and Clark and their men reached the Hidatsa-Mandan settlement-about 60 miles northwest of present-day Bismarck, North Dakota–on November 2, 1804, when Sacagawea was about six months pregnant. He turned to his secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to head the Corps of Discovery. But Jefferson wanted more from the explorers who would search for the passage: He charged them with surveying the natural landscape, learning about the varied Native American tribes and making maps. Within this vast wilderness he hoped would lie the rumored Northwest Passage (a waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans). Meanwhile, President Thomas Jefferson had made the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803-828,000 square miles of almost completely unexplored territory.
Sacagawea became one of his two wives and was soon pregnant.
Charbonneau had lived among Native Americans for so long he had adopted some of their traditions, including polygamy. In 1803 or 1804, through a trade, gambling payoff or purchase, Sacagawea became the property of French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, born no later than 1767 and well over two decades her senior. Born in 1788 or 1789, a member of the Lemhi band of the Native American Shoshone tribe, Sacagawea grew up surrounded by the Rocky Mountains in the Salmon River region of what is now Idaho. Possibly the most memorialized woman in the United States with statues and monuments, Sacagawea lived a short but legendarily eventful life in the American West. Remarkably, Sacagawea did it all while caring for the son she bore just two months before departing.
Perhaps most significant was her calming presence on both the expeditioners and the Native Americans they encountered, who might have otherwise been hostile to the strangers. Her skills as a translator were invaluable, as was her intimate knowledge of some difficult terrain. 1788 – 1812) accompanied the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery expedition in 1805-06 from the northern plains through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean and back. The bilingual Shoshone woman Sacagawea (c.