After an enemy tribe captured her, a 12-year-old Shoshone Indian girl was given the name Sacagawea (“Bird Woman”) and taken to present-day North Dakota. There, she was sold to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader, who married her. In the fall of 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, United States Army officers exploring the uncharted northwestern territory, established a winter camp nearby. They engaged Charbonneau as an interpreter and, when the expedition resumed the following spring, allowed him to bring Sacagawea. It was her contribution that history would remember.

Traveling through thousands of miles of wilderness, and carrying her newborn son on her back, Sacagawea proved to be an invaluable resource. She showed the explorers which roots and herbs could be used for food and medicine and made buckskin clothing and moccasins. Her most important role, however, came when the expedition encountered a band of Shoshone in the Rocky Mountains in August 1805. The emotional reunion of Sacagawea and the tribal chief – her brother, Cameahwait – helped the expedition secure much-needed horses and supplies. The explorers reached the Pacific Ocean three months later.

There are conflicting reports of Sacagawea’s life following the Lewis and Clark expedition. By one account, she died of a fever in present-day South Dakota in 1812. However, a woman claiming to be Sacagawea, and possessing clear details of the expedition, lived until 1884 on the Wind River reservation in Wyoming.

PostScript: Sacagawea has had more monuments erected in her honor than any other American woman. In 2000, the United States Treasury issued a dollar coin in her commemoration.