Personal Narrative: Sacagawea Tribe

Narrative: Sacagawea (Dani E.)
“Everything I did I did for my people” Bird woman I was born in May of 1788 in Lemhi County, Idaho into the Shoshone Tribe. My dad was the chief of the Shoshone Tribe. At around the age of 12, I was captured by the enemy Hidatsa tribe during a buffalo hunt.
I was traded to a French Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, who made me his wife in 1804. My husband and I lived with the Hidatsa tribe and Mandan Indians in the upper Missouri River which is near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota. In 1804 Lewis and Clarke entered our land. They had been called to acquire western lands and find a route to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark, plus their crew, stayed in Fort Mandan, which they built themselves. They stayed there through the winter until they could start their expedition again. They soon realized that they would need horses to get over the mountains. My tribe was to provide them horses once they got to the mountains. So they knew they would need an interpreter. Charbonneau and I accompanied the expedition and served as their interpreters for the expedition. Although I was pregnant with my first child, I chose to accompany them on their mission. My knowledge of the Shoshone and Hidatsa Indian language would help them if they were to run

Clark wanted to educate Jean Baptiste and offered my husband, Charbonneau and I land to farm if we would allow him. In the fall of 1809, we traveled to St. Louis to take Clark up on his offer to educate our son. The farming did not pan out for us and in August of 1811 my husband and I left our son, Jean Baptiste, in Clark’s care to join a fur expedition. In August of 1812, I gave birth to my daughter, Lisette, and became gravely ill. A couple of months later on December 22, 1812, I died at Fort Manuel. Clark who had become my children’s God-Father took care of them after my