I'm a history nut and I love teaching others about history, so here's some of my favorite and the most important/famous people in history, although some of these are lesser known.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Basic Info: Explorer Lemi Shoshone Born- May of 1788 Died- December 20, 1812 Husband- Toussaint Charbonneau Father- Smoked Lodge Mother- Otter Woman
Early Years: She was born in 1788 (although some historians say 1789) into the Lemhi band of the Shoshone tribe of Native Americans.
The Shoshone were enemies of the Hidasta tribe, who kidnapped Sacagawea in 1800 while they were hunting buffalo. Her captors brought her to a settlement in what is now Bismarck, North Dakota.
Sometime in 1803 or 1804, through either gambling, purchase, or a trade, Sacagawea became the property of Toussaint Charbonneau. He was a French Canadian fur trader and was more than twenty years older than her. He'd loved with Native Americans so long that he'd adopted some of their traditions and ways, including polygamy. Sacagawea became one of his two wives. Soon after, she became pregnant.
Meeting Lewis and Clark: Thomas Jefferson was president at this time and he'd recently made the Louisiana purchase from France in 1803, and it added 828,000 square miles of land to the United States. He bought it in hopes of finding the Northwest Passage (waterway that would connect the Atlantic and pacific). However, this area was almost completely unexplored, so he hired Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Following a year of planning and travel, Lewis and Clark arrived at the Hidatsa-Mandan settlement on November 2, 1804. Sacagawea was six months pregnant at this time. Lewis and Clark recognized the potential in Sacagawea and her husband. They were bilingual. Sacagawea spoke Hidatsa and Shoshone, and Charbonneau spoke French and Hidatsa. Lewis and Clark realized how these communication skills would be useful on their trip because they would need to buy horses from the Shoshone.
Sacagawea gave birth to her son, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, on February 11, 1805, and on April 7, the family headed west with 31 other Corps of Discovery members.
Corps of Discovery and the Journey: Within a month, tragedy struck. A boat that Sacagawea was on nearly capsized during a storm, and Charbonneau (who was navigating the boat), started to panic. Sacagawea managed to gather everything useful and necessary, like books and navigating instruments, and made sure hat her newborn son was safe.
Lewis and Clark were so grateful that they named part of the Missouri after her. They called it "Bird Woman's River." Clark developed a particularly close friendship with her. She and the baby would often join him on walks to check for hazardous object in the river that might damage the boat. Clark also named Pompey's Tower/Pillar after her son. He often fondly called the boy "little dancing boy, Pomp."
Sacagawea did as promised, and five days after they crossed the Continental Divide at the Lemhi pass, she spoke with the Shoshone and told them that Lewis and Clark wished to purchase horses.
It was there that Sacagawea was reunited with her Shoshone brother, who was now chief of the tribe. The two of them had a happy reunion.
During her time with the Corps, she helped to identify different edible and medicinal plants she also helped to navigate the corps through the territory. Her presence there also helped to ease tensions between the corps and tribes of Native Americans that they met along the way.
They eventually arrived at the pacific coast, after having survived so many hardships to get there. She was able to speak up and tell everyone where she thought it best to spend the winter. She also requested to be allowed to visit the beach, where a whale had been washed up on shore.
Sacagawea wasn't exactly a guide as she is portrayed now, however she was very important in the journey. She worked as a translator, recognized landmarks, and found food and medicinal herbs.
The group returned to their starting point on August 14, 1806 and Sacagawea was given no money for her work. However, he husband was given 320 acres of land and between $400-$500. Clark wanted to do more to help the family, so he got Charbonneau a job as an interpreter. The family left for St. Louis in 1809 in order to baptize their baby and then left him in Clark's care, because he man had offered to get the boy an education. He'd also offered to give them a plot of land to start a farm. Clark basically became Baptiste's godfather.
The farming didn't work out well, so Sacagawea and her husband were forced to leave and head back north to rejoin the fur trading business in April of 1811.
Death: Sacagawea gave birth to a baby girl, called Lisette, in August of 1812. It was then that her health began to decline and it only got worse. She died on December 25 of 1812 in Fort Manuel, near present day Mobridge, South Dakota. Clark was named legal guardian of the children
Some liked to tell stories of how it was the other wife who died in childbirth, and that Sacagawea survived and went to live with the Comanches until she could rejoin her original Shoshone tribe and didn't really die until April 9 of 1884. However, there's no evidence to support this.
Little is known of what happened to Lisette and her life, but Baptiste traveled in Europe and had many different jobs before he died in 1866. Charbonneau died in 1843.
In 2001, Bill Clinton made Sacagawea an honorary sergeant in the regular army and granted her a posthumous decoration.
In Movies and More: She makes an appearance in Night at the Museum and a movie called The Far Horizons was made about her expedition in 1955. There's a lot of books about her as well.
Cool Facts: • she was known for being highly skilled at finding and gathering food, using sharp sticks to dig up wood licorice or prairie turnips that had been buried by mice for the winter • the name we know her by is actually a Hidasta name. "Sacaga" means bird in their language and "wea" means woman. However, many Shoshone argue that her name is their language and that it means boat pusher. The Lewis and Clark journals support the Hidatsa version.
