Who was Sacagawea?

By Kaleem Omar

May 21 marked the 200th anniversary of the start of the Lewis and Clark expedition, a seminal event in American history that opened up a way to the West – a route hundreds of thousands of settlers were to later follow. The expedition’s bicentennial is being commemorated at special events and ceremonies across the United States.

The Lewis and Clark expedition was the first US overland exploration of the American West and Pacific Northwest, beginning in May 1804 and ending in September 1806. The expedition was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. It was led by army officers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

The expedition took over two years and covered a total of about 8,000 miles, from a camp outside St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back. Like other scholars of his time, Jefferson believed in the existence of a Northwest Passage, or some kind of water connection between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The principal goal of the expedition was to discover such a route and survey its potential as a waterway for American westward expansion. Lewis and Clark didn’t find any such route, of course, because there wasn’t one, but they did succeed in making contacts with many Red Indian tribes and in uncovering a wealth of knowledge about the peoples, plants and animals of what eventually became the western United States.

Unlike the white settlers who followed them and soldiers of the US army who massacred thousands of Red Indians and drove whole tribes from their lands on the orders of the government (one of the most shameful episodes in American history), Lewis and Clark’s contact with the Red Indians was entirely peaceful in nature.

The account that follows is based on Lewis and Clark’s journals, Jefferson’s writings and on articles and books about the expedition by various American historians and scholars.

Historians tell us that although Jefferson had long been interested in the American West, it was not until 1802 that he began to plan an expedition to the Pacific. After reading “Voyages from Montreal” by Canadian explorer and fur trader Sir Alexander Mackenzie in the summer of 1802, the president began to make preparations for an American expedition aimed at countering Mackenzie’s plans to make the West and Pacific Northwest part of the British Empire.

Jefferson envisaged an official expedition that combined diplomatic, scientific and commercial goals. He believed that the nation that dominated a water passage through the continent could control the destiny of all North America.

In hindsight, it’s just as well that no such fabled Northwest Passage was found, otherwise the world today might have been facing the spectre of George W. Bush as president of the whole of North America, instead of only of the United States – a chilling thought.

Jefferson was also convinced that the West would be a paradise for American farmers. That conviction turned out to be right, as the vast agricultural wealth of such western states as California and Oregon show.
Jefferson turned to his young private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, an army officer and experienced naturalist, for leadership in this enterprise. But the demands of the expedition were enormous, and Lewis soon turned to William Clark, a friend from his army days in China, to act as co-commander. Despite the fact that Clark was officially a lieutenant, and therefore of lower rank than Lewis, a captain, Jefferson and Lewis considered Clark an equal leader of the party.

In June 1803 Jefferson completed his demanding exploration instructions after receiving advice from several leading American scientists of the day and the noted surveyor, Andrew Ellicott.

In a detailed letter now recognised as a classic exploration document, Jefferson itemised more than a dozen areas of inquiry for the expedition, ranging broadly from astronomy and botany to linguistics and zoology. He sought information about plants, animals, rivers, mountains and native culture, which Lewis and Clark recorded in journals during the expedition.

The Corps of Discovery, as the expedition party was properly known, demanded more people than Jefferson first envisaged. Before reaching their base camp at Wood River outside the town of St. Louis, Lewis and Clark recruited a sizeable number of civilian hunters, army soldiers and French boatmen. While not all made the entire journey to the Pacific, some 48 men were part of the team when it left St. Louis, heading up the Missouri River on a large keelboat (a riverboat used for carrying freight) and several smaller boats.
The Corps of Discovery’s route across the continent was dictated by Jefferson’s notions of American geography. He believed that the most practical passage across the continent followed the Missouri River to its headquarters in the Rocky Mountains. Once over the mountains by a presumably short and easy portage, Jefferson was sure that his explorers would find another river leading directly to the ocean. However, the president’s assumptions about geography did not match ground realities.

As commanding officers for the expedition, Lewis and Clark divided leadership responsibilities: Lewis became the party’s naturalist, and Clark served as the mapmaker and negotiator. The expedition set out on May 21, 1804. In its first season of travel, the expedition made its way up the Missouri, built Fort Madison in present-day North Dakota, and spent the winter among the Mandan and Hidatsa peoples.

The second travel season (April to December 1805) proved far more challenging as the expedition moved into country unknown to the non-natives. The Corps of Discovery now counted 33 members in the permanent party, including a Red Indian woman, Sacagawea, her husband, French Canadian interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau and their infant son Jean Baptiste, all of whom joined the group at Fort Madison.
Sacagawea, a Shoshone who had been captured by the Hidatsa tribe and then sold to Charbonneau, helped the party as an interpreter and peacemaker. She proved instrumental in negotiating for horses and supplies along the way.

The expedition struggled around the Great Falls of the Missouri, searched for a pass over the North American continental divide, and was stunned not to find a water passage direct from present-day Idaho to the ocean. Instead, the party laboured in deep snow over the Lolo Trail, crossing the border of present-day Montana into Idaho, where they encountered the Red Indian tribe known as the Nez Perce.

The Nez Perce taught them how to eat camas roots and assured them that the rivers ahead were navigable. The explorers then traveled on the Snake River into present-day Washington State before finally reaching the Columbia River. By the time Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805 and built Fort Clatsop, their winter residence near present-day Astoria, Oregon, they had a much clearer sense of the continent’s geographical complexity.

The return journey from Fort Clatsop to St. Louis (March to September 1806) held its own unique dangers and accomplishments. With several important tasks still ahead, Lewis and Clark divided the Corps of Discovery into two parties. Clark led one group on a reconnaissance of the Yellowstone River. Meanwhile, Lewis took a small detachment into present-day north central Montana, thinking that the course of the Marias River might provide an American claim to fur-rich country in what is now the Canadian province of Alberta.

On August 12th 1806, the groups reunited on the Missouri River, near the present-day headquarters of the Mandan, Hidasta and Arikarn Nation. The expedition traveled on to the Knife River Hidatsa and Mandan villages, where they bid farewell to their interpreter Sacagawea and her husband. Before leaving the Mandan villages, they persuaded one tribal leader, White Coyote, to return with them to meet President Jefferson. On August 20th, 1806 the expedition left what is now North Dakota.

In August 2006, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota will observe the return of the Corps of Discovery to their homelands, the reunion of Sacagawea with her people at Awatixa, her Hidatsa home, and the journey of White Coyote to the nation’s capital.