Lewis and Clark with their Corps of Discovery may not have starved as they ventured up the Missouri River and then down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean in 1805, but they could have suffered from scurvy without the food plants gathered and prepared by Sacajawea, the Lemhi Shoshone woman who traveled with them.
This young woman, a new mother carrying her baby, was in her teens and joined the expedition with her French-Canadian husband Toussaint Charbonneau.
In the early spring of 1805, they departed from the fort where they wintered near the Mandan and Hidatsa village, upstream from present Bismarck, North Dakota. They would follow the Missouri River to its source and then find a passage that would take them to the far reaches of the Louisiana Purchase territory – and beyond to the Pacific Ocean.
Traveling with Lewis and Clark Sacajawea pointed out key landmarks, gathered wild food, and even saved important documents and equipment when one of the boats they used swamped in the Missouri River. Her contributions to the expedition ensured success for President Thomas Jefferson’s vision of exploration and expansion of the nation.
The aid and translation services Sacajawea provided almost certainly helped the American military expedition succeed in reaching the Oregon country. This venture would spawn the American fur trade and ultimately fuel the western expansion that forced tribal nations into conflict and in most cases out of their homelands.
Language was the Key
Having been captured by the Hidatsa tribe as a child, Sacajawea spoke that language as well as her native tongue. Using Hidatsa she could communicate with Charbonneau, who in turn spoke French. In order to communicate with Lewis and Clark, the chain continued to Francois Labiche or George Drouillard who spoke both French and English. The two captains both spoke English.
Drouillard also knew sign language common to the Indians for times when a spoken language was not possible. This blend of languages would have been common in the lodge they all shared and just their proximity would have made it easy for Sacajawea to pick up a smattering of both French and English words as well.
Lewis and Clark needed Sacajawea for her ability to communicate and for her Shoshone heritage, which would make it easier to trade for the horses they knew they would need to cross the mountains.
It took little time for Sacajawea to demonstrate her additional value to the Corps of Discovery. Having great understanding of the land and the bounty it naturally provided, she busied herself searching for food to supplement their rations.
At a dinner break she took a sharp digging stick, poking it into the earth around some driftwood, finding wild artichokes, which mice had collected and deposited in large caches. The roots she found were oval shaped and white, from one to three inches long and about the size of a man’s finger, Lewis wrote in his journal. This was food for the men, just one of many sources of naturally growing vegetables Sacajawea would provide to the camp as they traveled.
Travel was slow as the boatmen maneuvered up the river. The wind was blowing and fog blanketed the river when the group set out from their overnight camp on May 14.
That day the hunters killed several deer, antelope, and a buffalo. Six of the men encountered a large brown bear, shooting it multiple times, which only caused the grizzly to become more and more enraged. It chased the men, causing two of them to dive off a bank into the river with the bear charging right after them where it was shot one final time, this time fatally.
Sacajawea Saves the Papers
That same evening as the boats made their way up the river, Charbonneau was at the helm of the white pirogue, even though, as Lewis put it, he could not swim and was “Perhaps the most timid waterman in the world.” Both Lewis and Clark were on shore at the time, a situation which rarely happened as they usually took turns staying with the boats.
In the white pirogue besides Charbonneau were Sacajawea and her infant Jean Baptiste. The boat also held the company’s papers, books, scientific instruments, medicine, trade goods, “in short almost every article indispensibly necessary to further the view, or insure the success” of their expedition.
A sudden squall hit the sail on the pirogue broadside, spinning the large boat, forcing the vessel to tip and almost swamp completely, lying on her side before the crewmen gathered their wits to pull the sail in and right the boat.
Charbonneau cried out for mercy from God while Pierre Cruzatte, with far more experience, yelled at Charbonneau and threatened to shoot him if he did not immediately take hold of the rudder and control the boat.
Lewis dropped his gun and started stripping off his coat to dive into the river and go to their aid when he realized such an attempt would be pure folly given the high wind and turbulence of the river.
On the boat, Sacajawea showed amazing calm, reaching into the water and gathering up as many of the papers and supplies as she could, pulling them back into the boat, proving her value to Lewis.
Lost into the river were garden seeds, gunpowder, and cooking items. The company medicine supply was harmed with some items destroyed by the water and others damaged but salvaged once they dried. Lewis credited Sacajawea with averting true disaster.
“The Indian woman to whom I ascribe equal fortitude and resolution, with any person onboard at the time of the accedent, caught and preserved most of the light articles which were washed overboard,” Lewis noted.
A few days later, some five miles above where the Musselshell River flowed into the Missouri, the expedition came across another stream that was itself a tributary of the Musselshell. Lewis and Clark named the new stream “sah-ca-gar me-ah or bird woman’s River, after our interpreter the Snake Woman.” This river named for Sacajawea was about fifty yards wide, just half the size of the Musselshell and only a quarter as large as the Missouri. But the naming may have come in honor of her contribution in saving their important papers and other items earlier in the week.
Return to Her Country
Two months later, On 22 July, Sacajawea, who had not seen this region for perhaps four or more years, told Lewis she knew the landscape.
“The Indian woman recognizes the country and assures us that this is the river on which her relations live, and that the three forks are at no great distance,” he wrote, “This peice of information has cheered the sperits of the party who now begin to console themselves with the anticipation of shortly seeing the head of the missouri yet unknown to the civilized world.”
It is not surprising that Sacajawea recognized the area where the Missouri River split into three main branches. This was where her tribe had been camped before she was captured five or so years earlier.
The Shoshones were hunting when enemy tribesmen came into the area. The Shoshones saw these intruders and wanting to avoid conflict they retreated four miles up the southwest fork of the river. The raiders pursued, attacking and killing several women and men before capturing four boys and some of the Indian women and girls, including Sacajawea and her friends Otter Woman and Leaping Fish Woman.
Sergeant John Ordway recorded in his journal, “we dined at a Camp where the Snake Indians had been camped 4 years [earlier], and was aatacted by the Gross Vauntars. 2 or three of the Snake nation was killed, and Several Squaws taken prisoners our Intrepters wife was one of them. She tells us that she was taken in the middle of the River as She was crossing at a Shole (shallow) place to make hir ascape.”
As it had been when she was last here with her family, Sacajawea knew that Three Forks of the Missouri was a good place to stop traveling and rest for a bit. She probably looked for plants that would be useful as food, or for medicines or other uses.
Her ability to forage while traveling provided the men of the expedition a provision of fresh fruits and natural vegetables like the Jerusalem artichokes, and this was a significant factor in improving their diet, which otherwise consisted of meat including deer, elk, bison, and occasionally some fish.
Once the Corps of Discovery left their respite camp at Three Forks and continued upstream along one branch of the Missouri, Sacajawea was in country she had traveled as a young girl and she recognized the landmarks along the way.
One large rocky outcrop described by Clark as being 150 feet tall, she said was one that her people called the beaver’s head. She knew exactly where she was since this rock was such a significant landmark for her tribe.
Her certainty about the location reassured Lewis for now he had no doubt that they were in Shoshone country and he had every expectation that soon they would encounter some of Sacajawea’s tribe thereby giving them the opportunity to trade for horses.
Lewis and a couple of other men would travel ahead of the main expedition, reaching the headwaters of the Missouri River on 12 August where one of the men “exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this little rivulet and thanked his god that he had lived to bestride the mighty & heretofore deemed endless Missouri.”
The next day Lewis and his men encountered a small party of Indians. When they tried to engage them in conversation, the actions of the expedition men frightened the tribal members, so they had no direct contact with them.
But being in Shoshone country, they soon encountered additional tribal members, and this time managed to communicate adequately that they were not a threat but wanted to do some trading.
It was not until Clark with the larger expedition force plus Sacajawea and Charbonneau reunited with Lewis that any real negotiation took place.
Tearful Reunions
Upon meeting the tribal party, Sacajawea’s joy could not be contained as she quickly recognized a friend who had been taken captive along with her some five years earlier but had escaped. This woman may have been Leaping Fish Woman, who was also called Naya Nuki.
Another reunion was in the wings, however., as Lewis and Clark quickly prepared for a council to negotiate for horses with the Shoshones.
Sacajawea wore her buckskin dress and moccasins and had a blanket around her shoulders when she joined the Shoshone council and Lewis and Clark. Upon entering the council area, like any Shoshone woman she would have kept her eyes downcast and she would have lithely settled to the ground. But when she started to interpret, she looked up at the lead chief and recognized the Shoshone leader Cameahwait.
“She instantly jumped up, and ran and embraced him, throwing over him her blanket and weeping profusely,” Nicholas Biddle would later write when he took on the task of writing a two-volume account of the expedition using the official journal records made by Lewis and Clark, plus the journals of Sergeants John Ordway and Patrick Gass, among other sources.
Sacajawea and Cameahwait instantly recognized each other. They may, or may not have been blood-related, but certainly in the context of tribal kinship they were of the same family and therefore considered each other brother and sister.
After the emotional reunion, Sacajawea had to settle her emotions so she could interpret for the Corps of Discovery, but as she did so, “her new situation seemed to overpower her, and she was frequently interrupted by her tears."
With her ability to speak with the Shoshones, and her family connections, Sacajawea took part in the negotiations that resulted in a trade for horses for the Corps of Discovery. This almost certainly contributed to the eventual success of the mission.
On Friday, August 30, after two weeks with the Shoshones, sharing food including deer and trout, and bartering for horses, the Corps of Discovery separated from the tribe and set off on their continued journey toward the Columbia River Basin.
Sacajawea Casts Her Vote
It took until late fall to reach the Pacific Ocean, and when the Corps of Discovery took a vote about where to spend the winter, all members of the expedition, including Clark’s slave York and Sacajawea were allowed to vote. Her choice was south of the mouth of the Columbia River, at a location that became Fort Clatsop. She cast her ballot not for aesthetic reasons.
The vote tally, kept by Clark in the Expedition journal said she was “in favour of a place where there is plenty of Potas.” Her knowledge of the area where the ground roots grew had likely been learned from women of the local tribes. Having such a food source certainly supplemented the winter diet of elk and fish.
The following spring the Lewis and Clark Expedition departed Fort Clatsop and headed east. They were going home.
Coming though Nez Perce lands Sacajawea always gathered plants while traveling. This came in handy when the men complained of headaches and “colic” – a stomachache caused by excess gas. She had gathered fennel roots, “Which we find very paliatiable and nurushing food," Clark wrote. Lewis added: “The flavor of this root is not unlike annis seed, and they dispell the wind which the roots called Cows [cous] and quawmash [camas] are apt to create particularly the latter.”
Sacajawea and her Shoshone relatives called the fennel “Year-pah.” Clark noted the “roots are very paliatiable either fresh rosted boiled or dried and are generally between the Size of a quill and that of a mans fingar and about the length of the latter.”
Once the expedition crossed the Bitterroot Range and was back into present Montana, they split forces. Lewis would take a northerly route while Clark would travel farther south, eventually traveling by canoe on the Yellowstone River. Sacajawea, Charbonneau, and their year-old son went with Clark. During this travel, she became a guide.
Guiding Clark Across Shoshone Lands
“The indian woman who has been of great Service to me as a pilot through this Country recommends a gap in the mountain more South which I shall cross,” Clark wrote. The country was filled with game including herds of elk and deer. The streams had beaver and otters and they saw antelope, wolves, eagles, and wild geese.
Completely at home in this most familiar landscape, Sacajawea gathered an edible root that resembled a carrot “in form and Size and Something of its colour, being of a pailer yellow than that of our Carrot, the Stem and leaf is much like the Common Carrot, and the taste not unlike. it is a native of moist land.”
The plants and roots Sacajawea gathered, certainly improved their diet. Although during the long journey she, her baby, and many of the men in the expedition dealt with sickness, all but one of those who had departed the Mandan village in the spring of 1805, returned there by fall in 1806, none the worse for their many months of travel.
The man who did not return was the hunter John Colter, who had been released from the Corps of Discovery farther upstream, so he could travel back into the West – and eventually into Wyoming and the area that would become Yellowstone National Park.
At the Mandan village, after Clark paid Charbonneau for his work on behalf of the Corps of Discovery, the co-leader of the expedition offered to take Baptiste Charbonneau, the seventeen-month-old son of Toussaint and Sacajawea and raise him as his own.
In a letter written on August 20, 1806, Clark complimented the translator and specifically acknowledged Sacajawea’s contributions to the success of their journey:
“Your woman who accompanied you that long dangerous and fatigueing rout to the Pacific Ocian and back diserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that rout than we had in our power to give her at the Mandans.”
That letter was the only credit Sacajawea received for her service to the Corps of Discovery.
Candy Moulton is the author of Sacajawea: Mystery, Myth and Legend. She can be reached at Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
