How did Sacagawea help Lewis and Clark on their trip?

Answer 1

Sacajawea became invaluable as a guide in the region of her birth, near the Three Forks of the Missouri, and as a interpreter between the expedition and her tribe when the expedition reached that area. After she gave birth during the expedition to Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau on February 11, 1805, she also quieted the fears of other Native Americans, for no war party traveled with a woman and a small baby. She was able to translate when they met up with Shoshone-speaking Indians. She told them about some of the geography and any various animals and plants that she was familiar with. She had been kidnapped from her own tribe and spent many years as a slave or prisoner of another Indian tribe. Once she travelled back to her own native tribal lands with Lewis and Clark, she was able to see her family for the first time in many years. It is important to remember that the entire expedition improvised practically everything as they went along, and Sacajawea and her recruitment for translating were no exception. They were (other than Sacajawea) going into the unknown, and so were entirely unprepared for many things they tried to do. Other Indians were helpful also, for instance when the expedition first overwintered in Dakota Territory, they nearly starved because the Americans didn't understand what they would need to do to store enough food for the winter. At a frontier Dakota fort, by heating and pounding broken cast iron from an abandoned stove into crude hatchets they were able to barter for enough corn to barely get through the winter. Next spring, when they walked hundreds of miles westward, they found the Indians had already traded those very tools out as far as Wyoming. Late next winter, when they were coming out of the mountains in the Nez Perce tribe territory of Idaho, they were cold, poorly clothed, and nearly starved again. The Nez Perce could easily have overwhelmed them in a massacre and stolen their rifles and gunpowder to use for protection against other Indian tribes. But, the Nez Perce held a council and decided to let the white men live and help nourish them back to health. Other tribes were hostile, and Lewis and Clark had many close calls with them. But, the generosity of the Nez Perce was the foundation for a great enduring friendship.