Mural in the Montana State House by Edgar Paxson depicting Sacagawea and the Corps of Discovery in Montana. Sacagawea's actual appearance, of course, is known only by description, but Paxon was a Montana artist particularly noted for his attention to close detail. Having said that, she was just a teenager at this time and likely appeared younger than the female figure in this depiction.
Wyoming has an association with Sacagawea, sort of.
But not quite as close as we sometimes like to claim.
Route of the Corps of Discovery. It wholly avoided Wyoming.
Sacagawea, the Corps of Discovery's justifiably famous guide, or pilot, or interpreter, has a real world close connection with our state in that she was a Shoshone. Having said that, she was a Lemhi Shoshone. a name they would not have recognized. To her band, and her times, she was a Akaitikka meaning "Salmon Eater".* At the time of her birth in 1788 the Shoshone were widely spread throughout Wyoming, Montana and Idaho and, if you consider that their split with the Comanche had already occurred, but that the Comanche are an extension of the Shoshone people, they were widely spread indeed.**
She was born in Idaho what is now near the Idaho-Montana border. No such border existed at the time, of course, and the Shoshone, including the Lemhi, ranged over wide territories. Her band most likely ranged into northwest Wyoming, with it being certain of course that other Shoshone bands inhabited the area.
In 1800, at age 12, she was taken in a Hidatsa raid. The Hidatsa are a Siouan people who are closely related to another Siouan people, the Crows. Some consider the tribes to be the same, with the Hidatsa the parent tribe to the Crows. It's important to note, however, that when the Sioux are referred to, its typically the Lakota and Dakota, and related groups that are meant. Indeed the Sioux and the Crows would be bitter enemies in the 19th Century, as would the Sioux and the Shoshone for that matter.
The Hidatsa were wide ranging and she was taken to a location that today is near Washburn, North Dakota. This means that the raiders had effectively traversed what is now Montana, an impressive feat for a raiding party. The taking of captives in this manner was not unusual, and while this undoubtedly meant that the very young Shoshone girls life had taken a disastrous turn, her captivity by the Hidatsa, while real, was probably not terribly harsh. In other words, she was a captive, but a captive with domestic duties that were likely not far removed from that of Hidatsa girls of the same age.
Histories have sometimes addressed this in various ways, including using such terms as "non consensual wife", but there is no such thing. Indeed, it's remarkable that even though the circumstances of her initial union with Charbonneau are well known, she's still usually routinely referred to as Charbonneau's "wife." Effectively she was purchased as a slave, and if the niceties are stripped off of it, she was kept as a involuntary concubine at first, basically, or if you really want to strip the niceties off of it, as sort of sex slave with domestic duties, at first. She was Charbonneau's second such slave, the first being the equally juvenile Otter Woman who was probably also a Shoshone captive of the Hidatsa.***
Edgar Paxon's depiction of Toussaint Charbonneau, notable perhaps in that its a flattering illustration. In reality, of course, we have no period depiction for Charbonneau and his reputation has never been what can be called flattering.
In 1804 the Corps of Discovery visited Hidatsa villages in the fall in anticipation of their press across the the upper West to the Pacific the next Spring. They were in search of guides, and in that context hoped to find somebody who knew the territory. They were visited by Charbonneau, who was a French Canadian fur trapper.**** William Clark noted in his journal:
french man by Name Chabonah, who Speaks the Big Belley language visit us, he wished to hire & informed us his 2 Squars (squaws) were Snake Indians, we engau (engaged) him to go on with us and take one of his wives to interpret the Snake language.…
Spelling obviously had yet to be standardized and Clark puzzled out Charbonneau's last name. He also used a lot of colloquialisms for the names of Indian bands. The Snakes referred to the Shoshone, which is of course not what they call themselves (like most Indian bands, they call themselves "The People").
It's of note, fwiw, and noteworthy without trying to be "woke", that the commanders of the Corps of Discovery did not appear bothered that about Charbonneau's irregular situation with the two teenaged Indian girls.***** They also didn't claim, as other writers have, that either of his girls were his "wives". They only claimed that they were his "Squars", meaning his Indian women. Polygamy was of course illegal in the United States, and Louisiana, the vast newly acquired territory, was within the United States, but there's no good evidence in this early entry that they regarded Sacagawea or Otter Women as wives, but rather simply his held women. And of course Lewis and Clark were both fully acclimated to slavery, something they did not regard as abnormal nor wrong, and they had a slave with them of their own, York, who belonged to Clark and who was Clark's lifelong body servant.******
On that date in 1804 Charbonneau was contracted to be a guide that following spring and to bring one of his teenage women along with him as an interpreter. They had no apparent early preference which one that would be.
Charbonneau apparently did, as that following week he'd bring Sacagawea into the Corps of Discovery camp and they took up residence there. He did not bring Otter Woman.******* Prior to the Spring she'd give birth to their son, who was named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, who'd live into his sixties and whom would have an adventuresome life and be the subject of his own Wyoming myth. We'll get to that one later.
Otter Woman disappeared from history. She was left with the Hidatsa and while there are oral history references to her, the story grows thin and her fate is unknown. She likely merged into the tribe that captured her and lived the rest of her life as part of the Hidatsa, but its of note that her story does not resume when Charbonneau returned to the Hidatsa for a time after completing his role with the Corps of Discovery.
Charles Russell's painting of the Corps of Discovery arriving at the camp of her native band, which was then lead by her brother. This reunion occurred, in real terms, only a few years after she had been kidnapped by the Hidatsa. Note that Russel, who was keen on detail, depicts one of the Shoshone as already being armed with a rifle, which was no doubt correct.
Everyone is of course familiar with the yeoman role that Sacagawea performed for the Corps of Discovery and therefore we'll omit it here. Suffice it to say, she became the star critical guide, and a sort of diplomatic delegate for the expedition, outshining Charbonneau who seems to have been widely disliked, although the full degree to which he was disliked can be at least questioned as he'd retrain an occasional guiding role for the US Army into the 1830s, that coming to an end when Clark died. Prior to that, he and Sacagawea would briefly live on a farm in Missouri, where she gave birth to a second child by him, named Lizette. The invitation to live in Missouri came from Clark. About Lizette little is known, and she's believed to have died in childhood.
Russell painting depicting the Corps of Discovery on the lower Columbia, with Sacagawea with arms outstretched. One of the impacts of her presence on the trip was the effect it had on Indian bands they encountered, which convinced them that their intent was not hostile.
Following the experiment with farming, the couple, which by that time they seem to have been, returned to the Hidatsa. Sacagawea died of what was described as "putrid fever" in 1812.^ At the time, it seems that she left the security of Fort Manual Lisa, where they were living, to return to the Hidatsa in what would have been sort of a premonition of death. It also seems that she had a daughter with her at the time, who may have been Lizette, or who may have been a subsequent child about whom nothing else was known. Jean Baptiste was left in Missouri at a boarding school which had been arranged for by Clark.
And with Sacagawea's death in 1812, the myth starts to kick in.
Truth be known, in the 18th and early 19th Centuries deaths in the United States were not well tracked in general and they certainly weren't in the West. Birth Certificates and Death Certificates were not issued. Nobody made really strenuous efforts, moreover, to keep track of the deaths of Indians up until the Reservation period, which was far in the future in 1812. That we know as much as we do with the post 1804 life of Sacagawea is testimony to how important in the Corps of Discovery, and hence notable, she really was. Period recollections on her fate can be regarded as beyond question.
None of which has kept people from questioning it.
Grace Raymond Hebard, educator, suffragist, feminist, and mythologist.
In the early 20th Century the remarkable University of Wyoming political economy professor, Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, took an interest in Sacagawea and, with scanty evidence, concluded that she had not died in 1812 but rather had traveled to the Southwest and married into the Comanche tribe, and then came to Wyoming after her husband was killed. These claims surrounded a woman who was known by various names, including "Chief Woman", or Porivo.
The woman in question seems to have come on to the reservation in advanced old age and to have arrived with an adult son. White figures on the Reservation at the time, including a prominent Episcopal missionary, became fascinated with the elderly woman.^^ Of note, resident Shoshone had a difficult time speaking to her, which was a clue to her actual probable origin. Be that as it may, her advanced aged and presence with an adult son lead the European American figures on the reservation to believe that she must be the famous female "pilot", Sacagawea, and the adult son, must be Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, apparently not aware that Jean Baptiste's life was very well recorded, including his travels abroad and ultimate death in his early 60s. No matter on any of that, those in question wanted to believe that the figures must be Sacagawea and Jean Baptiste.
In reality, they were almost certainly surviving Sheep Eater Indians.
The Tukudeka, or Sheep Eaters, are a Shoshone band who ranged in the mountainous regions of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Like the Lemhi, they were named by outsiders for their principal foods source, which in their case was Mountain Sheep.
The Sheep Easters are the Shoshone band about which the least is known. They always lived in what European Americans regarded as remote areas. They were highly adapted to their lifestyle and remains of their sheep traps and other high mountain artifacts are fairly common, but encounters with them were actually very rare. They did not routinely share their existence with other, lower altitude, Shoshones. Their encounters with European Americans were fairly rare, and they didn't have hostile encounters with them until very late in the Indian War period. The Sheep Eater War of 1879 was the last major Indian War in the Pacific Northwest for that reason.
Sheep Eaters were a presence on the Wind River Reservation as early as 1870, when the Federal Government acknowledged them as a band entitled to the Shoshone allotment, and Shoshone Chief Washakie accepted them as a Shoshone group, but they had no high incentive to come onto the reservation voluntarily and generally only did very late, as the era of Indian free ranging was drawing down. In spite of their enormous success in their environment, they were not numerous and generally melted into the Reservation populations when they came in, but they were different at first. Included in their uniqueness was a linguistic one. Their language varied from other Shoshones to an extent.
Most likely the elderly woman and her son who came in onto the Reservation and were noted by the Episcopal and Reservation figures were Sheep Eaters. Their language was different and they just showed up. By the time that they did, the Sheep Easter era was drawing very much to a close. Most likely the adult man and his elderly mother decided that they couldn't make it as a solitary two. Or some variant of that, as in the son deciding that caring for his mother in the mountains had become too burdensome.
The figures noted very much took to them, although conversing with them proved difficult. The degree to which they adopted their view of what she was saying to fit their romantic conclusion of the rediscovery of Sacagawea or that the elderly woman. Whomever she was, she passed away in 1884. If she was Sacagawea, which she was not, she would have been 96 years old, certainly not an impossibly old age, but certainly an old one, both then and now.
Dr. Charles Eastman.
By 1919 the myths regarding Chief Woman had spread sufficiently that they were referenced in a 1919 account on the Corps of Discovery in a second hand way, noting that that a sculptor looking for a model of Sacagawea had learned of her 1884 death on the Wind River Reservation and her supposed status as Sacagawea. In 1925 Dr. Charles Eastman, a Sioux physician, was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to locate Sacagawea's remains. He also learned of Porivo's 1884 death and conducted interviews at Wind River. Those interviews, conducted nearly forty years after her death, included recollections that she had spoken of a long journey in which she's assisted white men and, further, that she had a sliver Jefferson Peace Medal such as the type carried by the Corps of Discovery. He also located a Comanche woman who claimed Porivo was her grandmother. He claimed that Porivo had lived at Fort Bridger, Wyoming for sometime with sons Bazil and Baptiste and that ultimately that woman had come to Fort Washakie, where she was recorded as "Bazil's mother" It was his conclusion that Porivo was Sacagawea.
Not all of Porivo's reputed accounts, if taken fully at face value, are fully easy to discount at first, but by and large they become so if fully examined. Long journeys are in the context of the teller, and peace medals were much more common than might be supposed. None the less, the retold story was picked up by Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard who massively romanticized it. Hebard's historical research has been discredited, but her 1933 book caused a widespread belief to exist that Sacagawea didn't die in her late 20s but rather in her 90s, and not in North Dakota, but in Wyoming. That suited Hebard's Wyoming centric boosting of her adopted state, and her feminist portrayal of an Indian heroine. It provides a massive cautionary tale about the reinterpretation of history in the context of ones own time and to suit a preconceived notion of how the past ought to be a perfect prologue for hte future.
It is, however, simply, if unknowingly, false.
And the falsity of it gives Wyoming a claim on Sacagawea that it frankly doesn't merit. One that lead to monuments in the state to Sacagawea, to include a tombstone or over Porivo's grave that identified her as Sacagawea, which is a sort of tourist attraction.
Indeed, there's no actual indication that Sacagawea ever set foot in Wyoming. She may have, as a young girl, as the Lemhi Shoshone ranged over the mountainous regions of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Be that as it may, the Lemhi Valley of Idaho is named after them for a reason. They're not one of the Shoshone bands that distinctly associated with the state prior to the Reservation era. Be that as it may, during the known established period of her life, we can place her in Idaho, Montana and North Dakota, in terms of regional states, but not Wyoming. . . at any time.
That does not mean, of course, that she's not an admirable and important figure. Nor does it mean that she was not an important Shoshone figure, and the Shoshone are an important people in Wyoming's history. Its almost certainly the case that relatives of her, but not descendants, live on the Reservation today, although that claim would be even better for the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. Through her son, Jean Baptiste, she likely has living descendants today, although not ones who would identify as Shoshone.
But giving people a long and romantic life rather than a short and tragic one doesn't do them or history any favors. In reality, Sacagawea's life was heroic, tragic and short. She was just a girl when she was kidnapped from her family, and still just a girl when she was sold to a man a good twenty years older than she was and of an alien culture to be a type of domestic slave, kept along with another similarly youthful domestic slave he already held. In that capacity she went across half the continent and back with an infant, and did come to be hugely admired by the members of the Corps of Discovery. It was that respect that lead, in part, to the post expedition opportunities afford to her and Toussaint Charbonneau, who seems to have evolved into her actual husband over time. That also lead to the education of her son at the behest of William Clark. It didn't save her, however, form a 19th Century death, still in her twenties.
She was a remarkable young woman by all accounts, and deserves to be remembered as such, and accurately.
*Lemhi comes from Fort Lemhi, which was a Mormon mission to the Akaitikka.
**Comanche is a Shoshone word meaning "Arguer" The argument was over the adoption of horses, and the argument took place in southeastern Wyoming at the time that the Shoshones first encountered horses. The Comanches were the early adopters of horses.
***The details regarding Otter Woman are extremely obscure. It's known that she was in an identical status to that of Sacagawea in 1804 and the best evidence is that she was a captive Shoshone. There are other claims for her tribal origin, however and additional assertions as to her fate. Like Sacajawea, her history suffers from an unfortunate association with the work of Dr. Grace Raymond Hebert who places Otter Woman in the Corps of Discovery camp in the winter of 1804 and who even has her remaining in domestic union with Charbonneau in later years, along with Sacajawea. In reality, she seems to have simply been abandoned in 1804 or 1805. Charbonneau's reasoning for this isn't clear, but Sacajawea was pregnant at the time that Charbonneau was hired by the Corps of Discovery. It is clear that the Corps desired that one of Charbonneau's wives accompany them to act as interpreter, and he may have chose her due to her pregnancy, not wishing to abandon her in that condition.
Of course, if Otter Woman was in fact not Shoshone, but Mandan or some other tribe as has been claimed, that would also explain why she was not chosen.
What occurred to her is not realistically capable of being known.
****Toussaint Charbonneau was probably born in 1767 and was from a town that is near Montreal. His first name means "All Saints Day" or "All Saints". He had been a fur trapper for an extended period of time by 1804. His reputation has never been particularly good and for good reason. One of the earliest records regarding him, prior to his time as a trapper, notes him being stabbed by a woman in defense of her daughter whom Charbonneau was attempting to rape.
Charbonneau appears to be almost uniformly disliked by people who associated with him over the course of his long life. He appears to have been temperamental. He also seems to have a predilection for young women as he had four or five Indian "wives" during his lifetime, all of whom were teenagers at the time of their "marriages". This includes one who was a teen at the time of his death , which is notable as he was in his 76 at the time, assuming the 1767 birth year is correct (if it isn't, he would have been 84, which seems unlikely). The name of at least one of his wives is unknown (the name of another was Corn Woman, leaving at least one, or perhaps, unknown as to name). It's known that two of the four or five where Shoshone, if Otter Woman was Shoshone, and one was Assiniboine.
His estate was settled by his son Jean Baptiste, which is interesting in that it would indicate that he was in some sort of contact with his son at the time of his death in about 1843, at which time he was back in North Dakota. It's also interesting in that it would suggest that Jean Baptiste may have been his only survivor. The existing information confirms that he had at least two children, both by Sacagawea, and may have had a third by her. Only Jean Baptiste is known to have survived but the information about the possible third is very limited. This is notable as his having four or five native women in domestic arrangements, with only one bearing children, would seem to be unlikely.
Charbonneau's long life is testament to his lifestyle in the wild being of a generally healthy nature.
*****Nor were they apparently bothered by the fact that the enlisted men of the Corps of Discovery indulged themselves with the favors of Indian women, making treatment for venereal disease a medical necessity for the expedition. This was at least in part due to the fact that some Indian tribes of the period offered Indian women as favors to visitors, although I'm not noting that in regard to the Shoshone but rather to other bands the Corps encountered early in its trip across the western half of the continent. This is significant here only in noting that while Clark in particular came to really respect if not outright adore Sacagawea, the overall view of the men of the Corps was of a rather isolated and not egalitarian nature.
******York had been a slave in the Clark household and had grown up with Clark. His post Corps of Discovery fate is poorly documented but it seems that Clark likely freed York at some point, probably a decade or so after the expedition, and due to repeated York requests that he be set free. During the expedition he became a fairly participating member and his slave status, therefore, would have started to wear off. He seems to have entered the freighting business upon being freed, and it further seems that Clark had granted him a status approach freedom sometime prior to actually freeing him. York died at approximately age 60, apparently from cholera. His death in his sixties came a few years prior to Clark's in his sixties.
*******Hebard says that Otter Woman spent the winter of 1804/05 win camp with Sacagawea and Charbonneau and was reunited with them upon the Corps of Discovery's return. She has Otter Woman going to Missouri with them and then returning to North Dakota with Lizette.
In short, it seems that Hebard disliked abandonment and death, and who likes them? She was an important Wyoming figure and educator, and a suffragist. Never married, a person is tempted to see in some of this a large element of projection of a period feminist sort in which not only is Sacagawea an important figure in the Corps of Discovery, but a feminist herself, with Otter Woman as an unconventional companion, associate and friend.
The reality of it was much more harsh. Charbonneau abandoned Otter Woman upon obtaining employment with the Corps of Discovery, which at least left the pregnant Sacagawea with support. As noted above, her pregnancy may explain why she was chosen over Otter Woman. At least some oral histories indicate that Otter Woman later married an Indian man, and irrespective of their accuracy this is likely. Given her slave status, Charbonneau's abandonment of her may have been a better fate for her in real terms.
^There's always a temptation to speculate about what a disease like "putrid fever" is, but in the context of the times its impossible to know. While in a year like this one its easier to understand than others, even routine diseases could be lethal at the time and a disease like influenza was a real killer.
On an unrelated topic that fits in to this period, it might be worth noting that the actual story of Sacagawea, like that of several other 18th and 19th Century Indian women heroines, was uncomfortable for their European American contemporaries as well as for later generations, and therefore its continually recast. Sacagawea is, like Pocahontas or Kateri Tekakwitha, an uncomfortable example of a Native American who was acculturated to more than one culture. This was much more common among Indians than modern Americans would like to believe.
In her case, she had spent the first twelve years of her life about as isolated from the European Americans culture for an Indian as would have been possible south of the 48th Parallel and perhaps about as much as possible outside of far northern North America. This would have changed once she was with the Hidatsa, particularly upon her enslavement to Charbonneau. It would have changed even more upon her accompaniment with the Corps of Discovery and its notable that at the time of her reunion with the Lemhi she made no apparent effort, nor did they, to rejoin them. By that time, of course, she had a child and in the reality of the 19th Century her die may have been caste, if not by her own will. Indeed, her fate was was at that point similar to that of the Sabean women who plead for their attackers after becoming pregnant by them in legend.
But only a few years later she was found in Missouri, a farmer's wife, with the farmer being Charbonneau. She felt sufficiently comfortable with European American society to surrender Jean Baptiste to Clark before returning to North Dakota. Her going back and forth between the Indian world and the European world is not seamless, but its not absent either. This is true of many other period Native Americans including some very well known ones.
^^The Episcopal connection is what caused this thread to be written, although we'd debated doing it for years. On one of our companion blogs, Churches of the West, a recent comment was posted about the Episcopal church in Atlantic City, with it being noted that the church had been moved from another location and that "Sacagawea" had been baptized there.
It's perfectly possible that the church had been moved from the Wind River Indian Reservation or some other locality in Fremont County, but Sacagawea wasn't baptized there. Porivo may very well have been, given her close connection with the resident Episcopal missionary at the time. It isn't known if Sacagawea was ever baptized, but if she was, and its quite possible that in fact this occurred, she would have been baptized as a Catholic. Charbonneau had been baptized as a Catholic in his infancy. It's additionally clear that Charbonneau, in spite of his lifestyle, gave his children distinctly French Catholic names and that a known descendant of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was baptized as a Catholic.
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