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It’s the greatest adventure story ever told, Lewis and Clark’s daring pursuit to cross thousands of miles of rugged terrain, to explore the rest of the continent, to finally reach the Pacific Ocean, gaze out over its vast expanse, with their faithful guide by their side of course, Sacagawea. You know Sacagawea, she’s the most famous American woman of all time. I’m not kidding. She’s the only one with her face on a coin, with more statues than any other woman in American history. It’s safe to say her story absolutely captivated Americans. I mean, truly, what is not to love about a young mother fearlessly guiding white men through the wilderness with a baby strapped to her back? But did you know, she didn’t actually serve as a guide for most of the expedition? That’s not even why they brought her along. And did you know that, despite having her face on a coin and all of those statues, we know very little at all about the real Sacagawea? We’re not even sure how to properly say her name. Let’s fix that.

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Sacagawea is not exactly lesser known history, I mean the story of Lewis and Clark is practically shouted from the rooftops in the US but, despite all of that fanfare over their expedition, you may be surprised by just how much you don’t know about her, or them. Actually the whole thing, the whole giant story was basically forgotten about for 100 years. Yeah, the expedition happened 1804 to 1806 and they wrote all these journals and they returned as heroes at the time but then, the journals were never officially published, they collected dust for a century in the archives. They were not rediscovered and published until 1904 and in the meantime, America basically forgot about Lewis and Clark. In Henry Adam’s nine volume History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, they are barely mentioned. And when they are, he’s dismissing them as unimportant to the history of the time period. But once their journals are published at the turn of the next century, people could not get enough. This was an incredible story. And it truly is but before we dig in, real quick. This is your last week to buy a History Fix t-shirt. You have one week. Actually 6 days cause I think it closes on Saturday. The link is in the description, tap it, snag one. If you were hoping to get one, this is it, don’t forget.

So let’s start with Sacagawea. We’ll come back to Lewis and Clark. Or, they’ll make their way to us rather. There is some debate over whether her name should be pronounced Sacagawea or Sacajawea and it’s not just because the English alphabet makes no sense it’s because we don’t actually know for sure what language her name is. It’s also spelled a bunch of different ways in the journals of the expedition members so that doesn’t help. But there’s basically two competing theories. One is that her name is from the Hidatsa language where sacaga means bird and wea means woman. So, if that’s true, it would be pronounced Sacagawea because they don’t have a soft g “j” sound in their language. But, the Shoshone people firmly maintain that her name is actually from their language meaning boat launcher in which case it would be pronounced Sacajawea, which is how I’ve always said it. So, I mean, seems pretty easy to figure out, right? Was she Hidatsa or was she Shoshone? Who named her? But that’s actually kind of hard to answer. She was born in, we think, 1788 in what is now the state of Idaho as part of the Lemhi Shoshone tribe. But when she was around 12 years old, she was captured by an enemy tribe, the Hidatsa, and taken to their village near present day Bismarck, North Dakota. So is the name Sagagawea, Sacajawea Hidatsa or Shoshone. We aren’t actually sure. I’m going to keep saying Sacajawea which is the Shoshone version of the name because those were her real people.

At some point after arriving in the Hidatsa village in North Dakota, when she was still very much a child, Sacagawea caught the attention of a French-Canadian trader named Toussaint Charbonneau who was living there amongst the Hidatsa. He sees her. He’s like “hey she’s a 14 year old kidnapped child, I’ll take her,” and he claims Sacagawea as his wife. One of his wives, because he’s already married to another indigenous woman named Otter Woman. Actually he had at least 5 young indigenous wives that we know of and he married all of them when they were 16 years old or younger. When he married Sacagawea she was probably 14 or 15 and he was like 45. He was a solid 30 years older than her. So we’re in like 1803, Charbonneau marries Sacagawea, his child bride, at the Hidatsa village where she was taken after she was kidnapped. 1803.

That same year, a world away, Thomas Jefferson is president of the United States, the third president. He’s been president for a couple years already but in 1803 he sends a secret letter to Congress asking them for $2,500 to send an officer and a dozen soldiers to explore the Missouri River. We have this letter in the archives or whatever. He wants to explore the Missouri River which starts in Missouri on the border of Missouri and Illinois, actually it starts at the Mississippi river and goes sort of northwest from there through Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana. It’s actually the longest river in the US which blew my mind because I really thought the Mississippi was the longest but no, it’s the Missouri. Definitely missed that one in trivia once. So anyway, Jefferson wants to send someone to explore this river in order to expand the fur trade, make diplomatic contact with indigenous people, and honestly just to see what the heck’s out there. He really wants to find the fabled Northwest Passage which is a hypothetical water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. So the Missouri River connects to the Mississippi and the Mississippi connects to the Gulf of Mexico which connects to the Atlantic, he’s thinking if the Missouri also connects to the Pacific Ocean on the other side than that’s it, we’ve got it. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t. But a man can dream. So he wants to do all that stuff and it’s a secret, of course, because that land does not belong to the United States. It actually belongs to various indigenous groups if we want to split hairs but it’s been claimed by the French and the Spanish and they don’t exactly want Americans galavanting about staking claims on stuff.

But then a huge chunk of that land actually falls into Jefferson’s lap with the Louisiana Purchase when the US bought 828,000 square miles from France for $27 million dollars. So now Jeffeson’s like “well, okay, now we have to go check it out. Let’s go see what we just bought already.” And he puts his personal secretary Merriwether Lewis in charge of the expedition. I don’t know why. A secretary seems like a weird choice to lead a wilderness expedition but Jefferson is like “you’ll do, go get um.” But he gets some basic training first of course. He’s sent to Philadelphia where he learns about botany, celestial navigation, medicine, and zoology. He also buys a Newfoundland dog for $20 that he names Seaman who will accompany him on this adventure. And that’s Seaman like S-E-A-M-A-N. Like a man of the sea. Not to be confused with the other word that sounds exactly the same. That would be the weirdest dog name. So throughout this whole story, you can go ahead and picture a big fluffy black dog with them which just makes it all so much better.

Lewis gets some guns, he gets some boats, and he gets a partner. He selects William Clark as his co-commander. Clark had been his military superior during some government battles with Native Americans in the 1790s so I guess he’s just like, “who’s the toughest guy I know? Well there was that one guy in the military, that Clark guy, he’ll work.” And he asks Clark to be his co-commander. Except then the government was like “nope. We didn’t authorize two commanders, we’re not paying for two commanders,.” And so Clark was never an actual legitimate commander of the expedition. But Lewis and Clark hid that from the other men by calling each other captain as if Clark were a legit commander too. As far as the other expedition members knew, he and Lewis were of equal rank. But they really weren’t.

So this expedition was called the Corps of Discovery and they set out from St. Louis Missouri in May of 1804 for an adventure that would last 2 and a half years and cover roughly 8,000 miles. This included just under 50 men who covered around 10 to 20 miles a day traveling up the Missouri River by boat. One of their missions per President Jefferson was to take detailed notes of the plants and animals they encountered. And I don’t like the word discovered because these plants and animals were certainly already known to the indigenous people but they did record 178 plants and 122 animals that were new to European science. That included grizzly bears, prairie dogs, and pronghorn antelope. Another mission was to establish diplomatic relations with the indigenous groups. And they were actually pretty good at this, depending on how you look at it. According to Encyclopedia Britannica quote “The expedition held councils with Indians, in which the corps had military parades, handed out peace medals, flags, and gifts, delivered speeches, promised trade, and requested intertribal peace. There also was something of a magic show (magnets, compasses, and Lewis’s air gun) and an invitation for Indian representatives to travel to Washington, D.C.,” end quote. But Daniel Leonard puts a slightly different spin on it in his article for Grunge saying quote “According to the University of Virginia, Lewis and Clark would offer gifts to the tribes — from knives to peace medals — and encourage the Native people to obey their new "Great Father" in the East (a patronizing reference to President Jefferson). But the Corps of Discovery also demonstrated the steep price of disobeying the United States: In front of each tribe, they would fire off their guns in a display of military power,” end quote. Despite these obvious attempts at intimidation, they promised peace and respect under the US government which were, of course, empty promises. But it’s hard to say whether Lewis and Clark knew that or not at the time. And they were received quite well by the indigenous groups they put on this little song and dance for. They were welcomed for the most part.

And this was good for them because they needed the support of indigenous groups for this expedition to work. As they neared their first winter in late 1804, they knew they needed a good place to hunker down where they would have food and shelter and warmth. And they found that at the site of the Mandan and Hidatsa villages near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota. And if that sounds familiar, it should, this Hidatsa village is where our girl Sacagawea is living with her old man French husband slash captor. They set up Fort Mandan near these indigenous villages and just sort of hunker down for the winter. In the spring, they send some of their crew back to Jefferson with papers, maps, mineral and plant samples, as well as live magpies which are birds and a prairie dog in a box. With those folks heading back east, the corps is down to just 31 people now who are preparing to continue the trek to the Pacific. But they pick up two new members at the neighboring Hidatsa village, Toussaint Charbonneau and his very pregnant sixteen year old wife Sacagawea.

Charbonneau had suggested to Lewis and Clark that they hire him as a guide and interpreter. He had some knowledge of the area as a trader plus he could speak some Hidatsa and was familiar with the sign language used by many of the river tribes to communicate with each other. He also signed Sacagawea up. She was Shoshone originally and could speak that language. And they knew they were going to need someone who spoke Shoshone. Because the Shoshone people had horses and they were going to need them. They’d been in boats on the river for now but they knew at some point they were going to have to continue on foot over very rough terrain and horses would make that a whole lot easier. The Shoshone had horses and Sacagawea spoke Shoshone so they brought her along as well. I’m sure she had absolutely no say in the matter. They did, at the very least, wait for her to give birth before setting out with a newborn strapped to her back. Can you even imagine? Anyone who has had a newborn is quaking in their boots at the thought of that. A National Park Service article poses quote “When Sacagawea was sixteen years old, she had a baby during a cold North Dakota winter, and her husband, who was thirty years older than she, signed her up to travel across the continent. Did she miss the company of women from her Hidatsa village, or from her Shoshone village, who could have helped her with the difficult first year of motherhood?” end quote. I imagine she did quite a bit. But she stoically set out with this crew as the only woman and the youngest member of the expedition. Her husband, at 46 years old, was the oldest member. Oh, they named the baby Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau after his paternal grandfather but he was lovingly nicknamed Pomp or Pompey by Clark which means first born in Shoshone. So Pomp was born in February and they set out in April of 1805.

I think most people think that Sacagawea was like the official guide of the expedition, that she was brought along to guide everyone the whole time and that is not the case at all. She did act as a guide during one small part in Idaho when they were trying to locate her people, the Shoshone, but other than that she served way different purposes. She helped translate. This was actually a pretty complicated chain of translation. Like an actual game of telephone. According to the National Park Service quote “As interpreters, Charbonneau and Sacagawea acted as critical links in a translation chain. Charbonneau did not speak English. But he could speak in French with George Drouillard, as well as with the French and Métis boatmen. Sacagawea did not speak French or English, but she could speak Hidatsa with Charbonneau. A chain formed in which, during meetings with Shoshone people, Sacagawea would translate from Shoshone to Hidatsa. Charbonneau then translated from Hidatsa to French for Drouillard. He would then translate to English, so Lewis and Clark could understand,” end quote. Drouillard who was part of the expedition had a French father and a Shawnee mother which is why he could speak French. So Shoshone to Hidatsa to French to English. Pretty crazy. Sacagawea also helped with her knowledge of edible plants. She was able to help supplement their diet quite a bit by just knowing what was safe to eat. But honestly, they ate pretty well some of the time. Encyclopedia Britannica says quote “The expedition encountered immense animal herds and ate well, consuming one buffalo, two elk, or four deer per day, supplemented by roots, berries, and fish,” end quote. It’s also a lesser known fact that they ate dogs. Yeah. But not Seaman of course. According to Anthony Brandt writing for National Geographic quote “the Indians ate dogs and so did the members of the expedition when nothing else was available. In the dry areas of what is now eastern Washington, in fact, where there was little if any game and the only other choice was dried salmon, usually impregnated with sand, the men came to prefer dog. Their favorite foods were always elk, beaver tail, and buffalo, and when they were struggling up the Missouri the men ate prodigious amounts of it, up to nine pounds of meat per man per day. But dogs would do if dogs were all that they could get. Only Clark abstained. He couldn't bring himself to eat dog meat,” end quote. 9 pounds of meat per man per day is crazy. But according to Daniel Leonard, they didn’t just eat dog meat when nothing else was available. He writes in that Grunge article quote “Some of the men actually began to like the taste of dog and continued to trade for dog meat with the Natives along the Columbia River — ignoring the fact that the Columbia teemed with salmon,” end quote.

So anyway, Sacagawea served as an interpreter, helped identify edible plants to supplement their diet of ridiculous amounts of meat, but she also served an even more important role. She was a young mother with a baby on her back in the company of armed men. Teresa Potter and Mariana Brandman write for the National Women’s History Museum quote “Sacagawea was valuable to the expedition because her presence signified peace and trustworthiness. A group of men traveling with a woman and her baby appeared less menacing than an all-male group, which could be mistaken for a war party,” end quote. The National Park Service agrees, writing quote “Sacagawea and her infant often served as a “white flag” of peace for the expedition. The Corps of Discovery entered potentially hostile territory well-armed but undermanned compared to the Native American tribes they met. Because no war party was ever accompanied by a woman and infant, the response of the Native Americans was curiosity, not aggression. They talked first, and Sacagawea often served as the translator. Not a single member of the party was lost to hostile action, and the Corps’ journals make several mentions of encounters with tribal communities in which the presence of a woman and her child signaled the peaceful nature of their mission. On October 19, 1805, Captain Clark documented one such meeting, when a group of men from the Expedition encountered the Umatilla while walking along the banks of the Columbia River ahead of the party’s canoes. The men found the people of the village hiding in fear. But this small group of men were quickly followed by the Expedition’s canoes, inside one of which rode Sacagawea and her child. Clark recounts, “as Soon as they Saw the … wife of the interperters … they pointed to her and informed those [still indoors, who] imediately all came out and appeared to assume new life, the sight of This Indian woman … confirmed those people of our friendly intentions, as no woman ever accompanies a war party of Indians in this quarter.” end quote.

And that really is probably the most important role she played and the reason why they had so few violent encounters with indigenous people. Out of the whole 2 and a half year trip, there were only 2 encounters that did not go smoothly. One was with the Lakota. After having a meal together, initiating trade, and telling them about their new Great Father and firing the guns and whatnot, some of the Lakota started to get a little wary. Smart. They already had some trade established with the British and they were wary of the Americans. Some of the men grabbed the rope of a docked boat and demanded more goods. Clark did the completely wrong thing and drew his sword which just escalated the tension. He ordered his men to point their guns at the Lakota. But then, the chief Black Buffalo intervened, reprimanding the Americans and ordering the Lakota to fall back. He’s like “no, no, no, no y’all all chill.” This encounter would prompt Clark to later refer to the Lakota as quote “the vilest miscreants of the savage race,” end quote. And I’m like, dude who’s the one who pulled out the swords and guns and who was the peaceful one? Mmhmm, who’s the vilest miscreant then? Yeah, that’s what I thought. And then this has me thinking about what happened to the Lakota in South Dakota 70, 80, 90 years later with the taking of the Black Hills region and all of the violence and massacres and Mt. Rushmore and I wonder if that reputation Clark helped give them “the vilest miscreants of the savage race,” played a role in any of that, in forming American opinions about the Lakota that somehow helped them justify some of that. Just a thought.

The only other violent encounter of the expedition was with the Blackfeet tribe on their return trip. Lewis had taken a small group to camp near Blackfeet territory while surveying land. The Blackfeet were known for their military dominance in that area. So this is a rather confident move on Lewis’ part. Leonard writes quote “According to PBS, Lewis' crew encountered eight Blackfeet men, who — after initial suspicion subsided — decided to camp with them for the night. But things went awry when Lewis informed the Blackfeet that some of their rival tribes, the Shoshone and Nez Perce (nay per-say), had already agreed to ally with the United States and would be receiving supplies and weaponry in return. The Blackfeet felt threatened by the news that the power balance in the area was rapidly shifting. So, that night, the Blackfeet reportedly attempted to steal the Corps' guns. In the fight that ensued, Lewis reports that one of his men stabbed a Blackfeet warrior, while he personally shot another who was attempting to run off with the crew's horses. After the fight, two men were dead at the hands of the Corps of Discovery. According to Indian Country Today, "the Blackfeet closed off their territory to whites for the next 80 years,” end quote. This was followed by Lewis’ group fleeing that area on their horses, not stopping or slowing down for 24 hours straight.

But, I mean that’s pretty good. Only 2 violent encounters and 2 deaths in 2 and a half years and 8,000 miles of directly interacting with indigenous groups. And that’s thanks in huge part to the role Sacagawea played as the quote “white flag” of the expedition. But outside of being a woman with a baby, she was valuable to the expedition in her own right. She was super brave and very calm, cool, and collected during times of crisis. More so than the men at certain points. And we know this because of one particular incident that happened on May 14, 1805. Potter and Brandman write quote “Charbonneau was steering a boat through choppy waters when a sudden gust of wind caused the boat to tip sideways and fill with water. The expedition’s valuable supplies fell into the water and Charbonneau froze. Sacagawea stayed calm and rescued instruments, books, gunpowder, medicines, and clothing from the water. Without these supplies, the expedition would have been in serious trouble,” end quote. Which, I mean I get it, she had a 3 month old baby in May of 1805. Girl is motivated. She’s not just going to let all their supplies float off. She’s like “nope, we are not dying out here. Not an option.” Meanwhile Charbonneau is just sitting there shaking in his boots like a dumb dumb.

She did serve as a guide for one small part of the expedition though and that was when they were nearing the Shoshone territory in Montana and Idaho which is where she was raised. The Shoshone had horses and Lewis and Clark needed the horses to carry them over the mountains now. They were running out of river. The National Park Service writes quote “Sacagawea’s relationship with her Shoshone relatives was critical to the party being able to trade for these valuable animals. Without her, there was less of a chance that anyone would spare a horse for these strangers. They would have had to leave most of the equipment, from clothes to items of value that they could trade with Indigenous people on the Columbia River,” end quote. And they need her to even find the Shoshone people. She’s familiar with this area where she grew up. Lewis wrote in his journal on August 8, 1805 quote ““the Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west.  This hill she says her nation calls the beaver’s head from a conceived resemblance of its figure to the head of that animal. she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of it’s source; which from its present size cannot be very distant,” end quote. And of course Sacagawea is right. They soon find the Shoshone, her relatives. The National Park service article even wonders if maybe Sacagawea knew going on this journey meant seeing her people again. Maybe she did go willingly. Maybe she even persuaded her husband to bring her along with him. We’ll never know.

But, and I love this part of the story. She does reunite with her family once they reach the Shoshone summer village. Here’s what the National Parks Service writes of this moment quote “In August 1805, a few Shoshone people traveling… came across a group of visitors, one of whom was Meriwether Lewis. This group of Shoshone people had recently been attacked, and lost twenty friends and family members, most of their homes, and many horses. And yet, they kindly welcomed these newcomers and assisted them on their journey. The Shoshone people communicated to the visitors using the sign language that was common among Indigenous communities and non-Native traders across North America, which one of the visitors knew.

Cameahwait, the leader of the Shoshone group, led the way in inviting the visitors to smoke and take off their shoes, which signified friendship. They gave the visitors serviceberry and chokecherry cakes, salmon, and antelope. They danced and sang with them into the evening. The visitors wanted to know what lay on the other side of the mountains. Cameahwait told them that the river leading down to the big river below was difficult to travel—full of rocks and rapids—and that it passed through barren land where few trees grew. The visitors seemed disappointed by this news. The visitors asked Cameahwait to trade horses. He agreed. And then, a few days after the visitors arrived, others came to meet them. And to the surprise of Cameahwait, he knew one of them. It was his sister, Sacagawea, who had lived far away for years. And now she held a tiny baby in her arms. They jumped and danced, hugged and cried, overcome with this reunion that they might never have expected. Sacagawea saw others who she grew up with and tearfully embraced them, as well. She motioned to the visitors who she had been traveling with that she knew these people. They were her family,” end quote. How just beautiful is that? And of course they give them the horses they need to get over the mountains because Sacagawea is with them.

On November 15th, they finally reached the Pacific Ocean. This was Sacagawea’s first time seeing an ocean. Clark wrote that she was quote “very impatient to be permitted to go with me, and was therefore indulged; She observed that She had traveled a long way with us to See the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be Seen, She thought it verry hard that She Could not be permitted to See either (She had never yet been to the Ocian),” end quote. And the monstrous fish he mentions was a whale carcass that had washed up on the beach. So they made it to the Pacific but now it’s November and winter is fast approaching. They cannot cross back over those mountains during the winter. They would not survive. So they have to set up a winter camp and wait for spring to start heading back. But first they have to figure out where to set up that camp. Where’s the best place to hunker down for the winter? And to figure that out, they do something really remarkable. On November 24th, they all vote. All of them. Lewis and Clark asked each member of the expedition to vote on a location for the winter camp and this is remarkable because they let everyone vote, including Sacagawea, including York, a black man who was enslaved by Clark, including George Drouillard, Francios LaPage and Pierre Cruzatte who were all half Native American. That sort of inclusivity was unheard of at the time. Women would not gain the right to vote in the US for another one hundred and fourteen years. Black Americans were 65 years out from the right to vote, technically but it would be another hundred years before that amendment was actually honored properly. And Native Americans would not gain the right to vote for one hundred fifty seven more years. And so to say that this vote was ahead of its time is an understatement. It was groundbreaking and it was a major inspiration for women during the suffrage movement, especially after the expedidtion journals were published in 1904.

They cast their votes and Lewis and Clark actually listened to them. They listened to a woman and a black man and four Native Americans. And they set up Fort Clatsop near present day Astoria, Oregon where they endured a miserable, wet, cold winter. They were halfway hoping they’d see some ships pass by in the Pacific that would take them home but, seeing none, they were forced to head back the way they came once the ice melted. On the way back, they split into two groups, one led by Lewis and one led by Clark so they could cover more land for exploration purposes. Sacagawea was in Clark’s group. She recommended they take a route through the Rocky Mountains that’s now known as Bozeman pass. Clark wrote in his journal on July 13, 1806 quote “The Indian woman has been of great service to me as a pilot through this country.” The Indian woman, like, can we at least use her name please Clark?

In mid August, the two groups reunited and reached the Hidatsa village in North Dakota where they left Charbonneau and Sacagawea. But not before Clark offered to take their son Pomp back to St. Louis with him where he would raise him as his own and see that he got a good education. And this seems absurd to me. Like dude, she just carried this child thousands of miles through the wilderness on her back. She's not just going to hand him over to you. That’s crazy. And she doesn’t, at first. They think he’s too young but they do agree to send him to Clark in St. Louis when he’s older. Which they do. When Pomp was 5 years old, Charbonneau and Sacagawea brought him to St. Louis as promised and left him with Clark to oversee his education. I don’t know, I guess that’s a thing. They thought he would have a better life there. I have a 5 year old boy and I can tell you right now there’s no WAY I’d be down for this plan but whatever.

Anyway, backtrack, August 1806, they drop Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Pomp whose like one and a half now off at the Hidatsa village and head back to St. Louis where they are met with a grand reception on September 23rd. Lewis and Clark each receive 1,600 acres of land. The other men each get 320 acres. Lewis is also made governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the total cost of the expedition was $38,000 which has to be in 1806 money. Today that’s something like $980,000. And, and this is pretty incredible considering the dangers they faced, they only lost one man during the entire 2 and a half year adventure. And this guy, Charles Floyd, just got sick and died during the first few months of the expedition, historians believe of a burst appendix. He didn’t like starve or get attacked by a grizzly bear or fall down a ravine or anything. Just sort of a random health related death. That was the only one. A lot of people got sick though, for sure, mostly dysentery, but they also suffered from boils, tick bites, injuries from prickly pear cactus, and a lot of STDs. That’s right. And you may be thinking, well this is a group of almost entirely all men and one married woman, how are they getting STDs. Well, wife sharing was culturally acceptable among many of the indigenous groups they visited with and so the expedition members were sleeping around quite a bit. Not with Sacagawea whose husband was French but with pretty much everybody else’s wives and daughters. According to Anthony Brandt writing for National Geographic quote “Plains Indians believed that spiritual power passed between people during the sex act. By sharing their wives, they could appropriate the power of the other person. Nobody seemed to have more power than a white man, with his guns, his ability to work metal, his technological prowess. One young member of the Corps of Discovery was offered four Mandan women in a single night. Clark's black slave, York, was even more magical to them. The Indians Lewis and Clark encountered had never seen a black man. York made out like a bandit,” end quote. But of course this comes with consequences. Many of these women had previously been with French and British traders who gave them venereal diseases like syphilis which was incurable at the time. The contemporary treatment for syphilis which didn’t work and actually caused more harm than good was mercury pills. So the men were sleeping around with native women, getting syphilis, and then taking mercury pills to try to treat it which usually made them even sicker than they were before. According to Smithsonian Magazine, historians have been able to track the route of Lewis and Clark’s expedition by looking for mercury deposits left behind in their poop. Like, wherever they pooped 200 some years ago, there are still high mercury levels in the soil there. Pretty cool and weird and kind of gross. Of course this wife and daughter sharing would have had other consequences as well. While there’s nothing confirmed that I could find, these encounters would have almost certainly produced children. According to Brandt, quote Old Indian traditions claim that the expedition left children behind as well. In the 1870s a blue-eyed, blond-haired Nez Perce (nay per-say) told the Western photographer William H. Jackson that he was William Clark's son,” end quote.

But, like I said earlier, despite their grand reception in St. Louis and despite the really incredible things the Corps of Discovery accomplished on this expedition, the fanfare pretty quickly faded away and Lewis and Clark were almost forgotten for around a hundred years. And part of the reason that happened is because of Lewis’ untimely death by suicide at the age of 35 just three years after returning from the expedition. Despite getting 1,600 acres of land and being made governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, Lewis was in debt financially. He was also deeply depressed and had been for some time. Based on contemporary accounts, he suffered from some mental illness, probably bipolar disorder that ran in his family. Thomas Jefferson wrote quote “Governor Lewis had from early life been subject to hypocondriac [sic] affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family of his name, it was more immediately inherited by him from his father...While he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind, but knowing their constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in the family,” end quote. Clark also reported bouts of euphoria and depression prior to Lewis’ death. He also reported that Lewis was deeply in dept, drank heavily, and used opium. Modern historians believe his mental illness may have been exacerbated by neurosyphilis and even possibly malaria. So when on an October evening in 1809, Lewis was found at an inn with a gunshot wound to the head and another to the chest, neither Jefferson nor Clark were all that surprised. It was assumed pretty much immediately that he had committed suicide. Although some had their doubts. Some thought it could be murder, maybe a robbery gone awry. There were a lot of bandits in the area. But, I don’t know, I’m pretty sure it was suicide. He had a failed attempt to take his own life just a few days before this on a boat ride south and the innkeepers wife had even witnessed the suicide, sort of. She heard the gunshots and saw Lewis crawling around prior to his death with no one else present. So that explains why his journals sort of went nowhere.

Clark on the other hand lived out a full for the time life dying in 1838 at the age of 68. His funeral was one of the largest in St. Louis history. Good for him. He did not, however, afford such a lovely life to York, the Black man he enslaved who came along with him on the expedition. Everyone who went on the expedition, including Charbonneau received monthly pay and 320 acres of land (Lewis and Clark, of course got 1,600 acres) except for two people: Sacagawea and York. Like Sacagawea, York was forced to join the Corps of Discovery expedition. He had no say in the matter. Clark wanted to bring him along and he was enslaved by Clark so he went. And he was not treated very well. While the indigenous women admired him, the white men he traveled with did not treat him as an equal. According to Smithsonian magazine, one of the men threw sand in his face, causing him to almost lose an eye. But York most likely hoped to get something out of it, not pay, not land, but freedom. Enslaved people who went above and beyond were sometimes freed by their enslavers and there’s a good chance York clung to this hope during the expedition. Unfortunately, Clark wasn’t having it. Leonard writes quote “But when the mission concluded, William Clark refused to free York. In fact, York's request to be freed enraged Clark, who threatened to sell him to a more severe master in the South,” end quote. When York asked to be hired out to work on a farm in Louisville where his wife was enslaved, Clark also denied that request. So Clark’s a jerk, basically. He did eventually grant York his freedom sometime before the 1830s but quote “continued to claim that York preferred life as a slave,” end quote. Barf. Won’t eat a dog but sees nothing at all wrong with enslaving a man.

So what about Charbonneau and Sacagawea? The last we heard of them, they had brought their son Jean-Baptiste AKA Pomp to live with Clark the jerk in St. Louis. After that, they went back to the upper Missouri River area where they worked for a Missouri Fur Company trader. We think Sacagawea had a baby girl in 1812 named Lisette and historians believe that she died later that year because of an entry in the journal of a fur trader named John Luttig that reads quote “the wife of Charbonneau died of a putrid fever” on December 20, 1812. But, but, remember Charbonneau had several wives. This does not definitively mean that the wife who died on December 20th was Sacagawea. It could have been. She would have been 25 years old. But there is a chance it wasn’t. Leonard writes quote “Native American oral tradition says that Sacagawea left her husband and moved out west, eventually returning to the Shoshone Tribe in Wyoming, where she remained until her death in 1884. If this is true, then Sacagawea would have been in her nineties when she died — a happy ending for the most beloved member of the Corps of Discovery,” end quote. But the Shoshone themselves believe that Sacagawea died young, and side with the 1812 journal entry. Rozina George who claims to be related to Sacagawea through her brother Cameahwait writes quote “Grace Raymond Hebard, a non-Indian professor of political science at the University of Wyoming, was partly responsible for this particular error. Her 1933 treatise, Sacajawea was both inaccurate and poorly researched, but it became the most available library reference on the topic. It was Hebard, not Wind River Shoshone, who created the story of an aged Sacajawea living out her life in Wyoming,” end quote. We believe Lisette, the baby girl, joined her brother Pomp in Clark’s care in St. Louis but most likely died young. Pomp lived to be 61. He got an education, traveled to Europe, and participated in military expeditions in the western states, you know, just, regular white man stuff.

So what of all this? Why is this important? Well, on the one hand, it’s a pretty remarkable story in general, a daring, successful adventure story. An expedition that somewhat amazingly established peaceful relationships between indigenous and white Americans, an expedition that overlooked gender and race when casting votes. It’s kind of a beautiful thing in a lot of ways and I can see why Americans have clung to it. But on the other hand, there were certainly negative consequences of this expedition. Lewis and Clark seemed to believe that the US government would do this thing the right way, that they would move in and treat the native people with respect, honor them. That’s what they preached anyway. But of course that’s not what happened at all. And the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Corps of Discovery really is what set off westward expansion in earnest. It inspired more and more Americans to head west, using the information the Corps had gathered, the maps they had made and over the next century or so, this spark led to the dispossession of almost all indigenous lands by the government, the decimation of their populations, and the all out destruction of their culture and way of life. Did Lewis and Clark know that was going to happen? I don’t know. Probably not. Can we blame them for it? I don’t know. That’s a deeply philosophical question. And what of Sacagawea? Can we blame her? Do her people blame her? She reminds me a little of La Malinche, the indigenous woman who served as a translator for Hernan Cortez as he destroyed the Aztec empire. I talked about this in episode 22, Tenochtitlan. La Malinche has come to be despised by many native Mexicans as a traitor, the quote “perpetrator of Mexico's original sin and… a cultural metaphor for all that is wrong with Mexico,” according to the New York Times. But Sacagawea does not appear to be viewed that way among Native Americans. Maybe it’s because Lewis and Clark weren’t directly conquering the people they encountered. Maybe they recognize that she had no say in the matter, that she was forced to come along. Maybe it’s that she was so young, so pure, a mother with a baby on her back, still na white flag. Her descendant, Rozina George writes quote “the nation and world have accepted Sacajawea as the symbol of unity and harmony because she was an individual who was willing to share her culture and knowledge to perpetuate peace. A universal Native American teaching is to help others who are in need, and that is what she did on the expedition,” end quote. Help others in need. That is what a mother does after all. And so in some ways, she is all of our mothers and we are that baby strapped to her back, the future, uncertain but precious and worth protecting.

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.

Information used in this episode was sourced from the National Women's History Museum, the National Park Service, Encyclopedia Britannica, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, the New York Times, the Lewis and Clark Rediscovery Project, the State Historical Society of North Dakota, and Grunge. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.

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