Sacagawea led Lewis and Clark to Safety
In the journals kept by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during the voyage of the Corps of Discovery, Sacagawea is mentioned frequently as being a helpful presence on the journey. She is not described as either a guide or as the savior of the expedition.
Sacagawea was one of two “wives” of a French-Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, purchased or bartered for by him from the Mandan Indians. Charbonneau was recruited by the expedition to serve as a guide and interpreter during its wintering over the period at Fort Mandan in 1804-05. Charbonneau requested that his wives accompany the journey. Before the Corps departed in the spring, Sacagawea gave birth to a son.
During the remainder of the Corps’ epic journey, Sacagawea and her child accompanied them, occasionally serving as an interpreter. She neither saved the Corps from starvation nor guided them to safety. As they neared the lands of her native Shoshone people, they encountered relatives from her extended family, and this fact allowed for trading for food and horses at favorable terms, Sacagawea occasionally interpreting.
Lewis’s mentions of Sacagawea in his journals are dismissive at best, while Clark’s are more sympathetic, but neither, nor do the subsequent reminiscences of any of the participants assigned to her the qualities which legend has handed down. Both leaders typically refer to her in their journals as a “squar” (squaw) with little to distinguish her from the others who joined and left the journey at intervals.
Her legend was born near the turn of the 19th century during the drive by suffragette associations to obtain for women the right to vote. A woman named Eva Dye, who served as the chair for an Oregon suffragette association, published The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark, describing the feats of Sacagawea in saving the Corps of Discovery from certain extinction. Soon others picked up the story, and Sacagawea assumed great beauty to add to her courage, character, perseverance, and other desirable feminine attributes of the day. Later this was picked up in children’s literature, motion pictures (where she was portrayed by Donna Reed among others), and television. Sacagawea’s myth is now enshrined in statues, coins, and other icons, a far cry from her portrayal in the journals of the eyewitnesses who knew her.