Sacagawea’s Story

This 1912 drawing of Sacagawea was completed almost a century after her death.

Paxson, Edgar S. 1912, Montana Historical Society

Quick Facts

Location:

9386 Lake Sakakawea Road, New Town, ND 58763

Significance:

Sacagawea lived in a Hidatsa village seventy miles from this site.

Designation:

Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail

MANAGED BY:

MHA Interpretive Center

Amenities

8 listed

Amphitheater, Food/Drink - Coffee, Gifts/Souvenirs/Books, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Parking - Auto, Restroom, Restroom - Accessible, Wheelchair Accessible

Sacagawea is one of the most recognizable names in American history.  

But who was she? 

Sacagawea spoke both Shoshone and Hidatsa. We know that she grew up with Shoshone people near what is now the Montana/Idaho border, and that, at the age of twelve, she was captured by Hidatsa people. There is some debate over whether she was originally born in a Hidatsa or Shoshone village, but we do not know for sure.  

From age twelve to sixteen, she lived along the Knife River in a Hidatsa village called Awatixa.

She was married by age sixteen, and we do not know how much choice she had in the matter. Her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, was thirty years older than her and had another wife, named Otter Woman. Sacagawea had a baby at age sixteen, and her son had a French name, like his father.

We know she was happy to reunite with her Shoshone family and friends. She served as a translator and diplomat for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a liaison between cultures.  

But there is so much we will never know. Oral histories and written documents only tell us so much.  

What would it have been like to be an Indigenous woman on this American military expedition? In their respective journals, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Patrick Gass, and Joseph Whitehouse often used an offensive term to describe Sacagawea. These men, on a colonizing mission, saw her usefulness while also discriminating against her based on her race and gender. How was Sacagawea different than the woman we read about in those journals?  

Whoever she was, Sacagawea has captured the imagination of so many people over the last two hundred years. In the 1910s, women fighting for suffrage used Sacagawea as an example of a woman casting a vote. In 2000, the U.S. Mint put an image of Sacagawea and her baby on a dollar coin. There are more statues of Sacagawea in this country than of any other American woman. 

Perhaps it is because she was a woman—with a baby!—in a male space. Perhaps it is because she had a foot in so many cultures. Very likely we remember her because, unlike other Indigenous women, White men wrote about her, and those words lived on in print.  

About this article: This article is part of a series called “Pivotal Places: Stories from the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.”

Lewis and Clark NHT Visitor Centers and Museums

Visitor Centers (shown in orange), High Potential Historic Sites (shown in black), and Pivotal Places (shown in green) along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail