Sacagawea

Sacagawea

Sacagawea was an adventurous and courageous woman. During her life she traveled with Lewis and Clark. She will be remembered for being and interpreter on the expedition to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean.

Sacagawea was born in 1790, in a Shoshone Indian village in what is now Montana. Her father was the Indian chief. The Shoshones were known as the Snake Nation and settled around the Rocky Mountains. They were very good horsemen, buffalo hunters, and fearless warriors. Their enemies were the Blackfeet, Atsinas and the Hidatsas. The Shoshone had luscious plains in a little valley. The family lived in a tepee.

The only known sibling of Sacagawea was her brother, Cameahwait, who later became the chief of the tribe. She had a very special relationship with him. Later, he helped the expedition by the supplying them with horses they badly needed to cross the Rocky Mountains.

When Sacagawea was eleven years old she was taken into captivity by the Hidatsas as a slave. One night when her master was playing a game, he had to her to a man named Toussaint Charbonneau in payment of him winning. When Sacagawea was fifteen she married Charbonneau, who was a French-Canadian fur trader.

As a very small girl, she worshiped many spirits as did most Indians. Shortly after turning thirteen years old she became a Christian. Charbonneau had taught her about Jesus.

She had two children, one named Jean Baptiste, which means John the Baptist (he was usually called Pompey) and another named Lisette that died when she was only two ears old. After Sacagawea died Captain William Clark adopted her two children. Soon after Jean Baptiste was eighteen years old, he traveled to Germany. There Pompey met Duke Paul Wilhelm, then for five years lived in the duke's palace and a couple of years even traveled the world with the duke.

Along with Charbonneau, Sacagawea was an interpreter