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Sakakawea was a Shoshone Indian girl, captured by a war party of Hidatsa Indians, who were at that time living in threeearthlodge villages on the Knife River in what is now North Dakota. According to the Expedition journals of Lewis and Clark, Sakakawea was captured in 1800, and it is believed that she was about 12 years old. She was married to French-Canadian trader Pierre Charbonneau when Lewis and Clark hired him to accompany the expedition in the fall of 1804. Sakakawea became a valuable member of the Corps of Discovery, providing translation and contacts with the Shoshone living west of the Mandan and Hidatsa.
Sakakawea is mentioned frequently in the Lewis and Clark Expedition journals. She was well acquainted with sources of food found along the route and on April 9, 1805, gathered native wild beans and artichokes for the exploring party. On May 14, 1805, Sakakawea rescued packets of paper, instruments, books and medicine which were being washed out of one of the boats that almost capsized during a violent storm. One of her most important services was acknowledged by Clark in his journal entry of October 13, 1805: "The wife of Shabono (Charbonneau) our interpreter we find reconsiles all the Indians as to our friendly intentions a woman with a party of men is a token of peace."
She played a key role in helping the expedition establish friendly relations with the Shoshones, from whom the group needed horses to travel from the headwaters of the Missouri to the tributaries of the Snake and Columbia rivers. A Shoshone band led by an older brother of Sakakawea named Cameahwait provided the party with horses and supplies for their long journey.
On the return of the expedition to present-day North Dakota in August 1806, Sakakawea and her husband and infant son left to return to live at the Mandan and Hidatsa villages. Clark wrote a letter dated August 20, 1806 to Charbonneau praising his wife: " ... 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 ..."
There has been much debate as to what happened to Sakakawea. Current research indicates she died of "a putrid fever" in 1812 at Fort Manuel near Kenel, S.D. and is buried there. Clark published an account book for the period 1825-28, listing the expedition members and whether they were then alive or dead. He recorded that Sakakawea was deceased. An alternative but largely unaccepted view suggests she died on the Wind River Shoshone Reservation in Wyoming in 1884 at the approximate age of 100.
Sakakawea's son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was born February 11, 1805, while the expedition was in winter quarters at Fort Mandan near present-day Washburn, N.D. On April 7, 1805, carrying her infant son in a cradleboard, Sakakawea accompanied the expedition as it left Fort Mandan for the journey west. The infant was affectionately nicknamed "Pomp" by William Clark.
Clark offered to educate the boy, and apparently took him into his home at St. Louis when Baptiste was about six years old. In 1823, Baptiste met the traveling Prince Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Wurtemburg, who took him to Europe to live. He returned with the German nobleman to the United States in 1829, becoming a mountain man, fur trader and later a guide for such explorers and soldiers as John C. Fremont, Philip St. George Cooke, W. H. Emory and James Abert. In 1847, he was appointed Alcade (an office comparable to magistrate) for the San Luis Rey mission in California. Baptiste died of pneumonia in Oregon on May 16, 1866 while on his way to the gold fields of Montana Territory.
Spelling Sakakawea. Is it Sakakawea, Sacagawea? Why is it spelled that way?
Sakakawea was a Shoshone Indian girl, captured by a war party of Hidatsa or Minnetarees who were at that time living in three earthlodge villages on the Knife River in North Dakota. According to the Original Journals of Lewis and Clark, Sakakawea was captured in 1800 and it is believed that she was at this time about 12 years of age. Some time after her arrival at the Hidatsa villages she was acquired by Toussaint Charbonneau, a French trader residing in the village and was later taken by him as a wife.
The derivation of the name Sakakawea is a matter of record but it is not known what her original Shoshone name may have been at the time of her capture. As was customary she was given a name which suited the fancy of her Hidatsa captors. The spelling of this name has been a controversial subject for some time and there may be some justification for using a simplified spelling, providing it is basically correct. Apparently Lewis and Clark had much difficulty with the name as they attempted to spell it in several different ways. Her Hidatsa name, which Charbonneau stated meant "Bird Woman," should be spelled "Tsakakawias" according to the foremost Hidatsa language authority, Dr. Washington Matthews. When this name is anglicized for easy pronunciation, it becomes Sakakawea, "Sakaka" meaning "bird" and "wea" meaning "woman." This is the spelling adopted by North Dakota. The spelling authorized for the use of Federal agencies by the United States Geographic Board is Sacagawea. Although not closely following Hidatsa spelling, the pronunciation is quite similar and the Geographic Board acknowledged the name to be a Hidatsa word meaning "Bird Woman." The spelling adopted by Wyoming and several western states has been "Sacajawea." This is a Shoshone word meaning "Boat Launcher" and while it has been widely used there is no historical justification for it. The use of this name merely perpetuates an unexplained spelling used by the editor of the Biddle text of the Lewis and Clark journals. It does not occur in the Original Journals.
Information taken from: Sakakawea: The Bird Woman by Russell Reid
[The following brief article was published in the Collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota in 1906 (vol. 1, pages 69-72). The editor of the Collections was Professor Orin G. Libby. The author, Rev. C. L. Hall, was a missionary to the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. The term Grosventre refers to the Hidatsa.]
THE GROSVENTRE SPELLING OF THE NAME, BIRD WOMAN.
BY REV. C. L. HALL.
Sakakawea, the Bird Woman, was a captive among the Grosventres and had been taken to wife by a Frenchman named Charbonneau, who became the interpreter for Lewis and Clark when they were in their winter camp in 1804-5. She was a Shoshone by birth, but being young she had become like one of her captors. Her Grosventre captors gave her a name, which may have been a translation of her Shoshone name, but is more likely to have been entirely different. A stranger coming among the Grosventre tribe or any other tribe of Indians that I know, at once receives a name, such as may suit their fancy. The writer got the name of Ho-was-te which means Good-Voice, because these were the first words of a Dakota hymn that he tried to sing. A friend named Orchard gets the name of Hacit from the Rees, because they think that word sounds like the English name, and it has in Ree the meaning of Branch. So, for some reason or fancy, the Shoshone girl was called The Bird Woman. There is no doubt about this name or the spelling of it. Washington Mathews, a collaborator of the Smithsonian Institution, published in 1873 a short account of the Grosventre people, together with a partial grammar and dictionary of the language.1 This work is highly commended by the great linguist, Max Muller, who made use of it in writing his book on "The Origin and Growth of Religion." The words for bird and woman are given in place in this dictionary. We thus get for the name The Bird Woman, Tsakaka-wia. The dotted s at the end stands for sh in English, and makes the compound word a proper name. It is equivalent to the definite article the. Anglicizing this a little to suit those using only the English alphabet and unfamiliar with the scientific use of the vowels, and leaving off the initial t sound, which is hard for English tongues, we have the spelling in English, Sakakawea. During the last thirty years I have made numerous additions in manuscript to Mathews' book, and also some corrections, but I have no occasion to correct the spelling of the words in question.
On examining the reprint of the original Lewis and Clark journals we find that Lewis makes four different attempts to spell this name, and Clark tries to do the same also four different ways. They were evidently aiming at the name we give, and now have in common use among our Grosventre people. But they were not linguists and not accurate students of the language, and had no alphabet suited to the language, but tried to represent the sounds by the use of the English alphabet. Consequently they used c for the k sound, and the hard g also for k, and added h and r without stint to help out. We append herewith these spellings from the journals, and also the spellings of the name of the interpreter Charbonneau, the husband of the Bird Woman. It is an interesting study in orthography, or rather heterography. It must be said for them, however, that the English alphabet is a poor gun to hit an exact representation of sound.
The j sound is not in the Grosventre language. The hard g is very nearly the same as k to some ears, but is not the correct pronunciation of the Grosventre.
Elliott Cones, the ornithologist and historian, in his edition of Larpenteur's Journal, entitled "Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Missouri," p. 141, note, gives the spelling of the name of Bird Woman as I have given it, and there also we find that in 1898 the first suggestion is made that the heroine be honored with a statue.
The following references are to the Original Journal of the Lewis and Clark Exposition, N. Y., 1904.
I. Variations in the spelling of Charbonneau:
Clark's spelling. References: Vol. I., 217, 226, 239, 248, 250, 251, 269, 271, 274, 275, 311; Vol. II., 198; Vol. III.. 111; Vol. V., 9, 341, 344; Vol. VII., 330. Chabono, Charbonee, Chabonoe, Chabonat, Chaboneau, Chabonah, Chaubonie, Charbono, Shabonoe, Shabonah, Shabona. Shabowner, Shabono, Shabownar, Toisant Chabono, Tousent Chabono, Teusant Charbono.
Lewis' spelling. References: Vol. I., 257, 284, 301; Vol. II., 197, 226, 273; Vol. V., 48; Vol. VII.. 331, 359. Charbono. Sharbono, Sarbono, Touasant Charbono, Touisant Charbono, Tauasant Charbono.
II. Variations in the spelling of Sakakawea:
Clark's spelling. References: Vol. 1., 287; Vol. II., 141, 181; Vol. IV., 333. Sahkahgarwea, Sahcahgagwea, Sarcargahwea, Sahcahgahweah.
Lewis spelling. References: Vol. II., 140, 283, 371; Vol. III., 14. Sahcahgahwea, Sahcahgarweah, Sahcargarweah, Sahcahgar Wea.
1Matthews, Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians. Dept. of Interior, U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey, Misc. Pub. No. 7, Washington, 1877.
[EDITORIAL NOTE.]
The newly awakened interest in this state on the spelling of the Indian name of the Bird Woman has doubtless arisen from the recent effort of the Woman's Federation of Clubs of the state to have erected at Bismarck a bronze statue of Sakakawea. This laudable enterprise is in a fair way to succeed, and Leonard Crunelle of Chicago is hard at work on his model.
It is a singular thing that the spelling of this Indian name has been so long allowed to go as "Sacajawea," which is Shoshone for Boat Launcher and has, therefore, nothing to do with the name Sakakawea, which is Bird Woman. Naturally it is a matter of state pride to every one in North Dakota that the form of this name should he as nearly as possible like the original. Fortunately the Society has been able to avail itself of the expert knowledge of Rev. Hall, who speaks the language of the tribe among whom Sakakawea lived and from whom she received her name. Mr. Hall's modesty did not allow him to say what may be added here, that he has had thirty years' experience among the Grosventre Indians and is the only living authority on their language at the present time. His opinion, therefore, on such matters has far greater weight than that of any or all of the passing travelers who have left accounts of their experiences among the people of this tribe.
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