Carolyn Gage
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  • Blog

The True Story of Sacagawea

2/5/2019

32 Comments

 
This was originally published as "Sermon on Stories" in Sermons for a Hot Kitchen From the Lesbian Tent Revival.
Picture
Stories are great things. Stories can be maps. They can be templates. They can be guidebooks. They can be cautionary tales. They can be mirrors. They can be latitude and longitude. They can be spiritual vitamins. They can be precious heritage. Lesbian poet Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” That sounds kind of poetic until you look hard at what we call reality, at quantum physics. Then it’s actually pretty scientific.  And here’s poet Maya Angelou: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Which brings me back to that great quotation from the Gospel of St. Thomas, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” 
 
Now you can bring forth that “thing that is in you” in poetry, or painting, or dance, or theatre, or music, or story. And if you bring it forth as story, it may be a story that only you can interpret, and that’s okay.
 
But stories can also be propaganda. That’s why we’re going to synapse around the whole thing of “story” today. Because the propaganda stories can get us thinking along lines that will cause us to betray our own best interests… and often, in scrubbing off the layers of falsehood in popular myths, like fairy tales or folklore or patriotic myths, we can recognize some life-saving truths that underlie the distortion or the appropriation. Kinda like when you find a masterpiece underneath that painting of dogs playing cards.
 
So that’s what we’re doing today.

PictureFrom Three Forks, Montana to Stanton, North Dakota... but this route is "as the crow flies." Sacagawea, child prisoner, probably walked twice this distance.
We’re going to look at a very popular story in the colonization of America. We’re going to look at the story of Sacagawea. Most of us will remember that she was the Native American woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition in their efforts to locate a route across the western half of the continent, to the Pacific Ocean. She’s a big heroine in American history, and her image—or some artist’s idea of her image—is on a dollar coin, and she’s been on a postage stamp, and folks love to tell the traditional story about her, because it’s about a strong woman on a bold adventure, and it’s also about interracial harmony.
 
Now, those aren’t bad reasons for telling stories… except that in the case of Sacagawea, they aren’t the whole truth. And the parts of the truth that they are hiding are really, really important parts of the story. And there is also a story underneath that is not being told.
 
So, let’s get out those tools for scraping off those layers of cultural whitewash and mansplainery,  and see a little bit more of what’s really going on in this story.
 
Sacagawea was born into the Shoshone tribe in Idaho around 1788, and when she was eleven or twelve years old, she was in a Shoshone hunting camp near what today is Three Forks, Montana, that was attacked by the Hidatsa, a Siouan tribe of Native Americans. In this raid, four Shoshone men and four Shoshone women, and several boys were killed. Sacagawea was taken captive and enslaved. Remember, she’s eleven or twelve years old. And these Hidatsa force her to walk with them back to where they live in North Dakota, which is about five hundred miles away, as the crow flies. So here’s this eleven or twelve-year-old child who has survived a massacre of family and friends, and she’s now enslaved, and she’s having to march for hundreds of miles back into North Dakota from Montana, and when she gets there, she is—you know—she’s still an enslaved child.

PictureTriveni Acharya with children in India she rescued from child trafficking. There were no rescuers for trafficked indigenous girls in the 19th century.
And then, one night, there is this French trapper who shows up in the village, and he plays some kind of gambling game with the Hidatsa, and he wins. And to pay off their debt, the Hidatsa give him Sacagawea. Who is twelve by now, or possibly thirteen. So now she’s his slave. He already has bought another Shoshone captive girl, “Otter Woman,” from the Hidatsa. He calls these enslaved children his “wives.” It is a formalized child-rape arrangement brokered by adults.  And, sisters, remember, every single time you read or hear something about Sacagawea’s French trapper husband and you do not raise hell, you are actually participating in legitimizing this child-rape arrangement. He was her owner, her captor, and her rapist. Period.
 
Sacagawea conceived around the age of fourteen, and the reason we know this is because she was pregnant in the winter of 1804-5, when Lewis and Clark showed up in the Hidatsa village and started negotiating with Sacagawea’s perpetrator for his services as a guide. Lewis and Clark were the two men leading this expedition commissioned by the US government. They were leading twenty-nine white men and one African American man, who was enslaved. Sacagawea’s perpetrator told Lewis and Clark that the pregnant child was his wife, and he negotiated a fee for her services as a Shoshone translator—a fee that would be paid to him, of course. As her captor’s so-called wife, Sacagawea never received a dime for her services—or any form of compensation—for the work that she did.

PictureThe Bozeman Pass auto/train route today.
So here we are, with this fourteen-year-old, pregnant girl, in the company of thirty-two men, most of whom speak a language she can’t understand. She is the only Native American among them, and the only female. She gave birth en route, and, according to Lewis, who attended the birth, it was a very painful and violent delivery. Afterwards, she became desperately ill with what, from Lewis’ journal notes, appears to have been a severe pelvic inflammatory infection, possibly due to her enslaver’s continual postpartum rape of her. In his journal, Lewis expressed a suspicion that she was a victim of a transmitted venereal disease. She came very close to dying, but she managed to recover. She spent the rest of the trip with her baby strapped to her back.
 
Sacagawea trekked on this expedition for two years, four months, and ten days. Sisters, she walked eight thousand miles with these white men and the African American enslaved man… with a baby on her back. She forded rivers and climbed steep mountains and crossed deserts and swamps in snow and rain and sweltering sun. She translated for the men, she foraged for them, she cooked for them, and she did the sewing, mending, and cleaning of their clothes… you know, the “women’s work.”
 
There have been whitewashing and mansplaining efforts to downplay her work as a guide, but the truth is, she was responsible for pointing out the pass they should take through the Rockies and the pass they should take into the Yellowstone basin… the Bozeman Pass. Kind of a big deal, locating these passes.

PictureStatue of Lewis and Clark reaching the Pacific.
Oh, and by the way, the only reason we have the record of this expedition is because Sacagawea had the foresight and agility to rescue Lewis’s journals when they were tumbling out of a capsized boat. For her pains, she had a river named after her. But no pay.
 
One of the greatest services that Sacagawea provided was protection. By this time, Native American tribes had come to assume, and assume rightly, that any group of white men traveling into their territory probably constituted some kind of war party. They had learned that it was better to attack first and then try to figure out who they were later. But the fact that this group included a Native American woman with a baby was taken as evidence that these men came in peace. In other words, Sacagawea saved all their lives and probably many times over.
 
So, eventually, the expedition gets to the western part of Oregon, to the coast. And they set up a camp and start sending parties down to the beach to see the actual ocean. And these parties are reporting that some kind of “great fish” has washed up on the beach—possibly a whale. And, unbelievably, these men were not going to allow Sacagawea to leave the camp to go see it. Unbelievable. She had to beg and plead with them, and this was so unusual on her part, that Lewis wrote about it in his journal. And it really pisses me off that she did all this enormous work, as a child, with a newborn, involuntarily, and then when they finally reach their goal—the Pacific Ocean—where there’s this magical, giant fish, this eighth wonder of the world, they make Sacagawea beg and plead just to be able to see it. If there is ever any historical doubt about her degree of autonomy on this expedition, that should lay it to rest finally and forever. She had none.

Picture
Sacagawea was dead by the age of twenty-five. Still with her rapist/captor, she was living at a fur trading post in Montana at the time of her death. She was very sick and wanted to go home to her people. She reportedly died of typhus, a disease transmitted by a human body louse—a disease associated with conditions of poor hygiene and sanitation. But, if Lewis was correct in suspecting that Sacagawea had been infected with a venereal disease by her rapist, she may have died from a fever associated with that. We know that she left behind an infant girl, and the typhus or the venereal disease may have taken hold during postpartum weakness. The daughter appears not to have survived. The son was taken in by Meriwether Lewis, who paid for his schooling.
 
I know. It’s a horrible story, isn’t it? Sacagawea was obviously heroically strong, but she was a victim throughout her short life. From age eleven, she was separated from her people and enslaved. She was a victim of ongoing rape from puberty and subjected to involuntary pregnancies. 
 
It’s a story of endurance, but it’s not the story of multi-cultural diversity in the early years of the US. Sacagawea is not the poster woman for biracial marriage.  She was obviously powerful, but she was not empowered. If there is any multi-cultural story to be told here, it is a shameful story of the collusion of powerful men—French, Hidatsa, and Anglo American—in the exploitation of an enslaved, female child. It’s a disgusting tale of adult males bonding through the bartering for forced labor and victimization of a Shoshone girl. However divergent their cultures, these men were all in agreement in their misogyny. They all colluded in characterizing the formalized child-rape arrangement as a legalized marriage.

PictureThere are no photographs of Sacagawea. Here is a photo of an unidentified Native American teenaged girl from 1890.
But, there is another story… one that is very important. It’s actually found between the lines in Lewis’ journal.  Let’s take a look… Bear with me, because we’re going to have to backtrack a little bit in the story before we get to it…
 
So at one point in their travels, the expedition ended up camping at the very place where Sacagawea was captured and abducted by the Hidatsa as a little girl. This was the place where she lost her tribe, her family, her history, her culture, her freedom... and, sadly, her childhood. This was the place from which she was forced to undertake a journey of a thousand miles with her enemy.
 
So, when the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at this former Shoshone hunting camp, Sacagawea told them the story of the massacre and here is what Lewis wrote in his journal: “I cannot discover that she shews any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or of joy in being again restored to her native country; if she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear I believe she would be perfectly content anywhere.” 
 
He seems to be describing her as someone who is kind of shallow or emotionally under-developed… “primitive” in the sense of being in some early stage of evolution or history. He appears to be comparing her affect to that which he believes he might experience, had he been in her shoes… which is as ridiculous as it is unfair. As a white, male colonizer, he has absolutely no context for understanding the trauma of her past, or the context of her ongoing rape and enslavement. He does not appear to understand that he is complicit in enabling her ongoing enslavement.

Picture
It sounds to me like Sacagawea was experiencing very severe post-traumatic stress syndromes. She sounds numb, possibly experiencing dissociation from her situation, or maybe even depersonalization… which is a post-traumatic syndrome where your own thoughts and feelings seem unreal, or like they don’t belong to you.

Depersonalization is a kind of complete loss of identity, which makes sense when you consider that her trauma was far from over. And when we consider that this is what Lewis wrote in his journal, it’s a description of Sacagawea that lets him off the hook.  Since she doesn’t seem to register any kind of emotional response to this terrible massacre and abduction… he doesn’t have to feel bad about not paying her, or pretending she’s a married woman, when he knows damn well she’s a slave. It’s kind of convenient for him to see her as someone who doesn’t feel any pain…  It’s like the way they tell you that lobsters don’t feel it when you drop them in the boiling water. What they mean is we don’t have to feel it.
 
This part of the story tells a sad truth about much of human nature. We are incentivized to see and hear what will benefit us. That is a fact. Which is why we, should spend  time working to reprogram our brains so that we can make a primary commitment to the truth. We do that reprogramming by learning to incentivize ourselves against the grain of a culture that will punish us for knowing or speaking the truth. We do this because any time the truth is not a primary commitment, we are greatly at risk of not seeing it, of deluding ourselves… because this is patriarchy, and knowing the truth, our truth, women’s truth… well, that can get you killed.

PictureTwo enslaved people of color, one of them a female child (depicted here as an adult), with their enslavers-- at least one of whom is a child-raper.
But let’s get back to the truth about Sacagawea, who is most often depicted as a grown woman making her own choices about helping these heroic white pathfinders, blazing a trail that will “civilize” the West… We, as a nation, are not much incentivized to adjust that soft-focus lens to bring into sharp definition the fourteen-year-old slave child on a mission that will spell defeat for her people. And one of the reasons why we love that grown-woman-in-charge-of-her-own-life narrative is because it tells us she is choosing—sisters, choosing—to help men. There are no other women anywhere in sight for most of those eight thousand miles. A Native woman choosing to help the white men… and even though she has a baby, she takes total, complete responsibility for him. Straps that baby on her back and never skips a beat while she does all the domestic work of caring for these thirty-three grown-ass men. And then she turns her paycheck over to her “husband!” What a fine example. Look at what she did!  Now, surely women today, with all the conveniences of modern civilization, can take those three days of maternity leave and turn their kid over to day care and get right back to work. Be like Sacagawea! Don’t be thinking of motherhood as a second job or a sacred responsibility! Don’t be missing your women friends! Don’t be hoarding that paycheck! Don’t be complaining and comparing! Do it all and don’t take any credit for it!  Be like Sacagawea!
 
Story is everything. It’s the web of synapses we weave to make meaning. As astrologist Caroline Casey says, “Imagination lays the track for the reality train.” It surely does, sisters. And a story is like a line on a railroad… like the Long Island Rail Road or the Staten Island Railway. The story is a route with a destination. We take these stories in when we hear them. We pass them along. We put them in our toolkits for how to live our lives. Story is everything. We have to think critically about the stories we are given. Who is doing the giving and for what purpose? Who is going to benefit from them? We have never had so many stories. Not just books… but Hulu and Netflix and Youtube and cable and movies and podcasts. So many stories…  But how many of them tell our truths?  Women’s truths? Lesbian truths? 

African American author and activist Toni Cade Bambara wrote an essay titled, “The Issue is Salvation,” and in it she says, “I work to produce stories that save our lives.” That’s what we should all be doing.  And if we can’t write them, then we can go into uncovering the truth about the ones they hand us.

Picture
And that’s exactly what we are going to do now. We are going to go digging for that story that is hidden between the lines of Lewis’ journal. And keep in mind that Meriwether Lewis’ journal… the one that Sacagawea dove into the water to rescue, is five thousand pages long. That’s a lot of pages. But the part that we are are digging for is just two sentences. Two sentences out of five thousand pages. Kind of like a needle in a haystack. But, sisters, if you know what you are needing to hear, if you have a pretty good idea of what these patriarchs are trying to hide… you can find that needle. It’s going to be like a magnetized needle… a compass needle, pointing us to the truth.

So here they are… Here are those precious sentences from Meriwether Lewis’ journal… the needle in the haystack…  This was on August 15, 1805. Lewis is talking about when the expedition came to the camp where Sacagawea’s people lived… where her tribe was—her family—before that massacre and abduction when she was eleven. And keep in mind, she’s been enslaved this whole time. She’s never been back to her people. This is the first time she’s seeing them in four years.

“We soon drew near to the [Shoshone] camp, and just as we approached it a woman made her way through the crowd towards Sacagawea, and recognizing each other, they embraced with the most tender affection. The meeting of these two young women had in it something peculiarly touching, not only in the ardent manner in which their feelings were expressed, but from the real interest of their situation…”

PictureTwo Native American (tribe unknown) girls pose near a tepee - Poley - 1890/1915
I like that Meriwether Lewis is noticing the “real interest of their situation.” And I like that, after describing Sacagawea as pretty emotionless and shallow, he is now going back on that completely and describing a scene that is ardent… which means passionate, and tender, touching and overflowing with affection. Obviously, Sacagawea had been keeping her emotional life sacred… for another female and a woman of her tribe.
 
So who is this other fifteen-year-old Shoshone girl who is embracing Sacagawea so ardently?  Well, her name was Pop-pank. She and Sacagawea grew up together, and they were at that hunting camp together when the massacre happened and Sacagawea was taken prisoner. Pop-pank had jumped into the river and, leaping like a fish, had managed to get to the other side and escape capture.
 
And here she was when the Lewis and Clark expedition showed up to try to buy some horses on their way to the Pacific. And here she was seeing again her beloved girlhood friend, Sacagawea… now with a baby and enslaved. And this is what Lewis recorded: the reunion of these two girls—and they were both still girls—embracing each other, tender and passionate at the same time.

PicturePhoto by Matika Wilbur, who grew up on the Swinomish reservation in Washington state.
We can hold onto that story as tightly as Sacagawea held onto Pop-pank. It is a story of an authenticity that resists colonization, of a memory that resists the distortions and erasures of trauma, of a bond that defies appropriation in the colonial narrative.
 
Let us not be fooled by the fact it only warrants two sentences in the journal of Lewis, or that it was only a few stationary minutes out of a journey of hundreds of days and thousands of miles. It is a glimpse into reality, into eternity. It shows up the colonial, patriarchal, misogynist pageant for what it is: an utter sham.
 
I think of something that 19th century feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman said… She said, “Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.” And every now and then we can part the curtain and catch that glimpse. Maybe only a glimpse, but it contains all that we need.
 
Sisters, let us hold close those two sentences that Meriwether Lewis wrote, not understanding even as he wrote them, because they illuminate the pages of history more than all the rest of the words in his journal.
 

32 Comments
sue emmert
2/13/2019 02:38:37 pm

Thank you for this truth telling. I am so grateful for it.

Reply
Ivy
5/3/2021 01:19:52 pm

Whoa, I wished she lived longer.

Reply
Monty
4/28/2022 03:43:50 pm

tbh, I don't. She wouldn't have been free, she would've been in pain and stuck with her rapist even longer. Remember, back then, and even now, people saw indigenous people as primitive and women as objects. To them, she was nothing more than a toy to release pent up feelings on. She was a child sex slave and was held captive from 11 until her death at 25. I'm glad she's resting, she no longer has to deal with her captor. Unfortunately, she'll be forever remembered as the willing adult woman who guided innocent white men instead of the enslaved child who fell victim to rape and forced labor.

Brooklyn link
4/9/2022 08:25:28 pm

I never knew this, Charbonu(husband) should have treat her right one of her kids kids etc could have been apart or life today and may be!

Reply
Izzy link
5/18/2022 01:28:26 pm

you hiiii

Kat
9/29/2019 05:19:52 pm

Thank you for this.

All of these facts about her are ones I share every time Sacagawea is brought up. She was absolutely a child sex slave. This "story" is the one I have taught my daughters.

Reply
MARY MULHERIN
10/14/2019 07:03:16 pm

On this Indigenous People's Day 2019 I applaud you for sharing the truth with us, Carolyn. I had no idea before I read this what the truth was being taught about Sacagawea so many years ago.

Reply
Rebecca Stockwell
4/29/2020 06:05:55 pm

Thank you so much for writing this. This is the truth,not the fairy tales that are taught in school. These are the stories that need to be told. Again, thank you.

Reply
Midrash
7/18/2020 01:27:40 pm

Thank you for telling the truth about the reality of her capture and journey! Such truth must be told for the future of humanity. Truth gives us the tools we need to work with.

Reply
Mok
11/13/2020 09:51:55 am

Every time I heard the story of her, it never sat right in my heart or gut. It’s refreshing to actually read her story...HER story. Not a story that someone else wrote for her or want her to have.

Reply
L A Floyd
2/21/2021 02:47:11 am

Please clarify Sacagawea‘s life span. The photo of the grave marker says she died in 1884. The text says she was 25 at her death. TY.

Reply
Carolyn Gage link
2/21/2021 08:22:38 am

From Wikipedia: The question of Sacagawea's burial place caught the attention of national suffragists seeking voting rights for women, according to author Raymond Wilson.[23] Wilson argues that Sacagawea became a role model whom suffragists pointed to "with pride." She received even more attention in the 1930s, after publication of a history novel about her.[23]

Wilson notes:[23]

Interest in Sacajawea peaked and controversy intensified when Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, professor of political economy at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and an active supporter of the Nineteenth Amendment, campaigned for federal legislation to erect an edifice honoring Sacajawea's death in 1884.

Marker of Sacajawea's assumed grave, Fort Washakie, Wyoming

An account of the expedition published in May 1919 noted that "A sculptor, Mr. Bruno Zimm, seeking a model for a statue of Sacagawea that was later erected at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, discovered a record of the pilot-woman's death in 1884 (when ninety-five years old) on the Shoshone Reservation, Wyoming, and her wind-swept grave."[24]

In 1925, Dr. Charles Eastman, a Dakota Sioux physician, was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to locate Sacagawea's remains.[25] Eastman visited various Native American tribes to interview elders who might have known or heard of Sacagawea. He learned of a Shoshone woman at the Wind River Reservation with the Comanche name Porivo ('chief woman'). Some of those he interviewed said that she spoke of a long journey wherein she had helped white men, and that she had a silver Jefferson peace medal of the type carried by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He found a Comanche woman named Tacutine who said that Porivo was her grandmother. According to Tacutine, Porivo had married into a Comanche tribe and had a number of children, including Tacutine's father, Ticannaf. Porivo left the tribe after her husband, Jerk-Meat, was killed.[25]

According to these narratives, Porivo lived for some time at Fort Bridger in Wyoming with her sons Bazil and Baptiste, who each knew several languages, including English and French. Eventually, she returned to the Lemhi Shoshone at the Wind River Reservation, where she was recorded as "Bazil's mother."[25] This woman, Porivo, is believed to have died on April 9, 1884.[26]

Eastman concluded that Porivo was Sacagawea.[27] In 1963, a monument to "Sacajawea of the Shoshonis" was erected at Fort Washakie on the Wind River reservation near Lander, Wyoming, on the basis of this claim.[28]

The belief that Sacagawea lived to old age and died in Wyoming was widely disseminated in the United States through Sacajawea (1933), a biography written by historian Grace Raymond Hebard, a University of Wyoming professor, based on her 30 years of research.[29]

Mickelson recounts the findings of Thomas H. Johnson, who argues in his Also Called Sacajawea: Chief Woman's Stolen Identity (2007) that Hebard identified the wrong woman when she relied upon oral history that an old woman who died and is buried on the Wyoming Wind River Reservation was Sacajawea.</ref> Critics have also questioned Hebard's work[29] because she portrayed Sacajawea in a manner described as "undeniably long on romance and short on hard evidence, suffering from a sentimentalization of Indian culture."[30]

Reply
. link
5/27/2021 10:25:55 am

......

Sarvinder Naberhaus
5/25/2021 08:42:36 am

I think you should edit and clarify that Triveni Acharya is rescuing Indian children in Mumbai and is not in any way related to "American Indians" but is a totally different race. This makes it seem like these are related.

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Carolyn Gage link
5/25/2021 03:19:24 pm

Point taken! I have edited the caption for that photo.

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Crystal Bell
6/16/2021 07:20:43 pm

Thank you so much for this missing piece to the story! This brought tears to my eyes and this is the only story that I will teach my native cubs! #MMIW
#NativePride

Reply
Frank
7/19/2021 12:46:07 pm

"Sacagawea died before the invention of photography"?

Ummm ... no.

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Carolyn Gage link
7/19/2021 12:57:11 pm

Hi Frank... Thanks. Changed the caption to read, "There are no photographs of Sacagawea." Thank you for the correction.

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Christy McKinney
8/1/2021 11:32:00 am

The ongoing thread stating Sacagawea was 14 during the expedition of Lewis and Clark seems flawed. If she was born in 1788 and as stated there was documentation from the winter of 1804-5, that would have made her 16 that winter not 14. I think it needs to be recognized that in that time, women were often considered fully grown and many were married at 16. Not that what she went through wasn't horrible and wrong, but the continued implication that she was a child during her time with Lewis and Clark is overstated. I don't think they would have seen her as a child.

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Lorraine
9/12/2021 03:40:36 pm

They may not have seen her as a child, but that doesn't mean she wasn't one. Just because men viewed 16 year old girls as "fully grown" and therefore marriageable, doesn't mean that they were. It just means they wanted to have sex with 16 year old girls and therefore justified and legitimized the practice.

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GG
1/26/2022 06:59:23 pm

I agree at age 12, 14, 16 thinking of having sexual relationships was not nature
Any cultural thriving child, female is learning...I would assume
But
Consider children, female in any tribe is promised to another only after she has reached what their customs would deem achievement in wisdom, knowledge, skills from other women in set tribes
Any child taken, stolen, captive in an interchange of war
Is by no means ready for what is ahead when Agendas are put first by greed of any kind.
She struggled and at this point of her life was not internally developed nor emotionally engaged to respond but
Survival kicked in...
Grown men took advantage of a situation and her cruel predator was a “ trapper “ and saw her as an animal below himself he stripped her of dignity, respect, life!
She was not the Only one for the sake of the Crown, governments and expansion persons raped the land of ITS people and Stole what was not theirs....
As it continues today!

lili link
3/15/2022 07:50:33 pm

first off this app talk to much....JUST GET TO THE STORY!!! but so far good

Reply
DE
3/16/2022 10:14:12 pm

Thank you for this. I noticed you mention a journey of 8000 miles. Several sources I've read previously state 8000 KM, or 5000 miles. Still a heck of a journey for one so young.

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Joanie Lawrence
5/8/2022 03:17:56 pm

The 800 page paperback story of Sacajawea is my most favorite book ever. Carolyn Gage’s true story of Sacagewea is one I return to every couple of years to keep my North Star intact.

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joehir Swaringen
5/16/2022 03:47:08 pm

Wow, this is interesting thank you!!!!!!!

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Christina White
7/1/2022 01:21:57 pm

Great article.

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Angleeceia Sorrentino Telp
7/6/2022 01:25:03 pm

I had to tell my daughter about this when we watching a cartoon today. They looked at me I told them this isn’t true she was a slave the story acts as though she was a friend and there by choice. My great grand mother and other older people in my family have been telling us the truth for years

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Dean
9/30/2022 11:09:14 am

An eye opener for me! I also read the paperback book and believed it to be accurate.

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Claire
10/11/2022 10:25:58 pm

She most likely was introduced as his wife. Her and York would have been told to make the meals he had no freewill either.

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deb clegg
2/22/2023 08:14:41 pm

I wonder what her life would’ve been like in the captive tribe she probably would’ve been a wife there, too -not by choice if not, picked up by white/ euro husband /owner. I Imagine her life would’ve been much the same as she was defined as a slave to the captive tribe. Women were expendable - I also read in a different source that the expedition men were offered Native American women for sec in hopes of a pregnancy to gain the power of the white men by their tribes. I doubt that that was something the woman agreed to either.

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Donna Wilkins
3/3/2023 03:34:48 pm

Thank you for this...Toussaint Charbonneau is a very distant relative on my great-grandmother's side. The story of him being on the L & C expedition and "marrying" Sacagawea has been passed down along with the fact that he was abusive. I have traced the lineage and am reluctant to admit he's in my ancestry. From now on when I mention my lineage, I will refer to him as a rapist...so sad for Sacagawea.

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Gerard Carlo
3/20/2023 11:29:44 am

I have always been interested in natural history expeditions but this story makes you think about the time and place of the thing. This poor girl was in shock. I wonder of her husbands attitude towards her or of the others around her. How tragic and sad this is the human condition. We have come to a better place but still have a long way to go. God bless you all.

Reply



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