Fort Mandan to the Pacific

Sacagawea · 1804 CE – 1806 CE · Earth

Fort Mandan to the Pacific — Sacagawea · 1804 CE – 1806 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Carry the expedition west as interpreter to the Shoshone, so that horses could be bought for the crossing of the Rocky Mountains.

Historical context

The Corps of Discovery, sent by the United States under Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find a way to the Pacific, reached the Mandan and Hidatsa towns on the upper Missouri in October 1804. Beyond the plains lay the Rocky Mountains, and the captains expected to buy the horses for the crossing from the Shoshone, a people no one in the party could speak to. Sacagawea was hired in the person of her husband, the trader Toussaint Charbonneau, who spoke Hidatsa: Clark wrote that he was to take one of his two Shoshone wives to interpret. She spent the winter at Fort Mandan, gave birth there in February, and left in April with a son not yet two months old. The captains hired her as an interpreter, not a guide; she recognised the country of her childhood, and her presence with a baby, Clark wrote, told the nations along the rivers that the party was not a war party.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Winter at Fort Mandan

    1804 CE

    A captive of about sixteen is hired, with her husband, because she speaks Shoshone.

  2. The white pirogue, 14 May

    14 May 1805

    A squall lays the boat over, the man at the helm loses his head, and she catches what floats out.

  3. The Great Falls portage

    1805 CE

    A month is lost hauling canoes twenty-eight kilometres round five waterfalls.

  4. Three Forks

    1805 CE

    She recognises the place where she was taken captive, five years earlier by Lewis’s reckoning.

  5. Camp Fortunate

    1805 CE

    Among the Shoshone waiting at the forks, the chief proves to be her own brother.

  6. Over the divide

    1805 CE

    Shoshone women carry the baggage over the divide, and horses and an old guide are bought for the mountains beyond.

  7. Down from the Lolo trail

    1805 CE

    A starving party comes out of the Bitterroots onto the Weippe prairie and is fed.

  8. Fort Clatsop and the whale

    1806 CE

    A wet winter among the Clatsop, and an argument about who is allowed to see the ocean.

Outcome

The horses were bought from her brother Cameahwait’s band, at Camp Fortunate and beyond the divide; the party reached the Pacific in November 1805; she wintered at Fort Clatsop, returned east in 1806 and was left with her husband and son at the Mandan villages on 17 August 1806.

Sacagawea

Lemhi Shoshone woman who travelled from the Mandan villages to the Pacific and back with the Corps of Discovery as its Shoshone interpreter, carrying an infant son, and whose language and presence helped the party buy horses and pass as peaceful.

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Sources

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