Why is Sacajawea?

Answer 1

Sacajawea (or Sacagawea) was born c. 1788. in an Agaidiku tribe of the Lemhi Shoshone in Idaho. In 1800, when she was about twelve, she and several other girls were kidnapped by a group of Hidatsa warriors during a battle. At about thirteen years of age, Sacagawea was taken as a wife by Toussaint Charbonneau, a French trapper living in the village, who had also taken another young Shoshone named Otter Woman as a wife. Lewis and Clark would winter at the present site of Bismarck, North Dakota, where they met her. Sacagawea was 16 or 17 when she and her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, joined the Lewis and Clark party on November 4, 1804. She 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. She would give birth during the expedition to Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau on February 11, 1805, whom Clark later raised and educated. She also quieted the fears of other Native Americans, for no war party traveled with a woman and a small baby. She was with the Corps of Discovery until they arrived back in St. Louis on September 23, 1806. She was with the Corps of Discovery until they arrived back in St. Louis on September 23, 1806. After the expedition, William Clark offered Toussaint and Sacajawea a place in St. Louis and a proper education for Jean-Baptiste (at a time where there was no opportunity for Native Americans to receive an education). Toussaint then took a job with the Missouri Fur Company, and stayed at Fort Manuel Lisa in present-day North Dakota. Evidence suggests that Sacagawea died at the fort in 1812. Some Native American oral traditions relate that rather than dying in 1812, Sacagawea left her husband Toussaint Charbonneau, crossed the Great Plains and married into a Comanche tribe, then returned to the Shoshone in Wyoming where she died in 1884. After her death, Toussaint signed over complete custody of his son Jean-Baptiste and his daughter Lisette over to William Clark.