Sacagawea was in agony. The pain was so severe that the men who had crossed a continent with her wrote that she had gone out of her senses. She was only a few months into the Lewis and Clark expedition, carrying her infant son on her back, and she was dying. Captain William Clark, who had grown fond of her, was convinced of the cause.
If she died, he wrote, it would be the fault of her husband. She had been born in 1788 in the mountainous country along the border of modern Montana and Idaho, into the Shoshone people. Her childhood ended when she was about twelve. A war party of Hidatsa attacked her village, and Sacagawea watched as people she knew were killed.
She was taken captive and carried north to Hidatsa lands. For three years, according to some accounts, she was treated as little more than a servant. When she was sixteen, her captors sold her to a French Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. Other versions of the story say he won her in a gamble.
Either way, she had no say in the matter. Charbonneau was roughly thirty years older than she was, already had another Shoshone wife, and had a reputation for brutality toward women. By some accounts, he made money selling women into slavery. In November 1804, the expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived at the Hidatsa villages.
The captains were mapping the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, and they needed interpreters who could speak the languages of the tribes they would meet. Charbonneau spoke Hidatsa and French, and one of his wives spoke Shoshone. That wife was Sacagawea. The captains thought little of Charbonneau, whom they regarded as a man of no particular merit, but they wanted his wife to come with them.
Shortly before the journey began, Sacagawea gave birth to her first child, a boy named Jean Baptiste. She was only a teenager. According to some accounts, she ate crushed rattlesnake rattles during labor to speed the delivery. Weeks later, in April 1805, she set out with the expedition, the baby strapped to her back.
Her value to the expedition was immediate and practical. She foraged for edible plants, prepared medicine from native herbs, and kept camp running. She interpreted between the explorers and the Shoshone and other tribes they encountered. Her presence carried a deeper meaning as well.
A war party would not travel with a woman and a newborn, so her presence signaled to other tribes that the expedition came in peace. Clark took a particular liking to the infant, whom he nicknamed Little Pomp. The journey nearly ended on May 14, 1805. Charbonneau was steering one of the boats when a sudden gust of wind caught the sail.
He panicked, lost control, and nearly capsized the vessel. As he sat frozen, valuable papers and essential equipment spilled overboard. Sacagawea, despite carrying her baby, calmly retrieved the items from the water. Lewis later wrote that Charbonneau was the most timid waterman in the world.
A month later, she fell dangerously ill. Historians now believe she had contracted gonorrhea from her husband. Clark was blunt in his journal, writing that if she died, it would be her husband’s fault. She recovered, and the expedition pushed on toward the Rocky Mountains.
Then they reached Shoshone territory, ground Sacagawea had not seen since her abduction. The last time she had recognized a place from her past, she had shown no emotion. This time, her composure broke. She sang and danced with joy, startling the other travelers.
When she was brought before the Shoshone chief, she found herself staring at her own brother, Cameahwait. Clark wrote that she danced for the joyful sight, and that all present were moved. She threw her blanket over her brother and wept. She learned that the girl who had been captured with her had escaped and returned home, and she heard about the life she might have had.
She also met the man her family had promised her to in marriage when she was a child. Her own marriage continued to be a source of misery. Clark’s journals record at least one instance in which Charbonneau beat her so badly that the explorers intervened and reproved him severely for his brutality. The expedition had become the only protection she had.
By autumn 1805, the travelers were crossing terrain so barren that even Sacagawea, who could find food in almost any environment, came back empty-handed. The men were reduced to eating tallow to survive. Despite the hardship, Lewis and Clark repeatedly described her in glowing terms. They called her plucky, determined, intelligent, cheerful, resourceful, tireless, and faithful.
Clark said she inspired them. When the expedition finally reached the Pacific coast, Sacagawea made one of her few requests of the entire journey. She had heard that a beached whale had washed ashore and insisted on going to see it. She stood before the massive animal and the ocean, a moment that would be among her last happy ones.
The return journey was largely uneventful except for one crisis. Her son fell dangerously ill for weeks, and the entire expedition helped nurse him back to health. By late 1806, the journey was over, and Sacagawea returned with Charbonneau to the Hidatsa villages. Clark had become so attached to her son that he offered to adopt the boy.
For three years, Sacagawea and Charbonneau lived with the Hidatsa. Then they accepted Clark’s invitation to visit him in St. Louis. The family settled in the city, but neither Sacagawea nor Charbonneau was suited to settled life.
Before they left, Sacagawea made a devastating decision. She knew that Clark, with his wealth, his standing, and his genuine affection for the boy, could give her son opportunities she never could. In 1809, she and Charbonneau left Jean Baptiste with Clark in St. Louis.
The boy attended school and eventually became an explorer himself, following the path his mother had walked. At the time, Sacagawea was pregnant with her second child. The pregnancy was difficult, and she was extremely ill and weak. Still, in 1812, she gave birth to a daughter named Lisette.
She would not live to see the girl grow up. In December of that year, she fell gravely ill, struck by what historians now believe was a putrid fever or typhus. She died on December 20, 1812, at about twenty-four years old. Some later accounts claimed she had survived until 1884 and died in Wyoming, but most historians have concluded that this was a different woman, now known as the Wind River Sacagawea.
After her death, Charbonneau accepted Clark’s offer to formally adopt Lisette, then returned to his old life as a fur trader. He married at least five times, his last marriage taking place when he was seventy and his bride was fourteen. Lisette’s fate is unknown, but she likely died in childhood. Sacagawea left no written records of her own.
Everything known about her comes from the journals of the men who traveled with her. Her name, depending on the translation, means boat launcher or bird woman. She became an American and Shoshone icon. Her face appeared on United States currency, and the river where she saved the expedition’s papers from the water now bears her name.
Stories of a secret romance with Clark have persisted in books and films, but most historians do not believe the two were lovers. They cared for each other deeply, but nothing in the record supports more than that. Long after her death, the woman who crossed a continent with a baby on her back became a symbol of endurance, resourcefulness, and the quiet strength that held the expedition together.