Copyright © 2000 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

The latest edition of a dollar coin has been in production since November, 1999, and has been circulated in some retail stores and banks. The coin bears an image intended to represent a woman, Sacajawea, on one side and an eagle flying in the neighborhood of 17 stars - one for each State in the Union in 1804 - on the other.

The last time the U.S. Mint brought out a dollar coin, Susan B. Anthony graced its 'head' side. For most Americans, the Susie was a bust, too like a quarter, even with her linear edges. But conservatives decried her radical feminism - Susan B. Anthony favored women's suffrage - and excoriated the Mint for its implicit politics. Now the Mint is going further left: Sacajawea was not only a woman, but an American Indian woman at that.

Mainstream media articles invariably describe Sacajawea as the Shoshone woman who served as a helpful guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition up the Missouri River and then west to the Pacific Ocean in 1804-1806. Some media outlets have also reported that Sacajawea was married to a French trader named Toussaint Charbonneau, and lived near Fort Mandan near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. Most mainstream reports portray her as a willing guide and interpreter for the expedition, as though she just signed up with the Lewis and Clark entourage for a grand adventure that would pave the way for the greatest land theft in history.

Like most mainstream outlets for history, these articles tell just enough truth to obfuscate the real history. How did a Shoshone woman, barely 16 years old, end up “married” to a white man? Shoshone people had never even seen white people in 1804. An even better question: What was a Shoshone teenager doing out late at night in what would become Bismarck? The nearest Shoshone town was hundreds of miles from Fort Mandan.

Sacajawea was born to a village of Lemhi Shoshone on land that is called Idaho today. Another tribe, the Hidatsa of present-day North Dakota, were at odds with the Shoshone, and they occasionally traveled hundreds of miles southwest to raid Shoshone towns and steal a few horses.

The Hidatsas generally got the better of the engagements, armed as they were with rifles from French traders. Shoshones defended themselves with bows and arrows, which could be reloaded much more quickly than even the best-made guns of the era. But a well-placed bullet usually was more deadly than an arrow.

Sacajawea was abducted by Hidatsas on one such raid when she likely was about ten years old. She lived with them near Fort Mandan, where Charbonneau had set up shop to trade with the Hidatsa and Mandan nearby. Charbonneau had made quite a name for himself there – or rather quite a few names. He was variously called “Bear of the Forest”, “Chief of the Little Villages”, and “Pumpkin Man” by his Native hosts.

He also was a slave owner. He owned at least one Shoshone girl when he allegedly got into a game of chance with some Hidatsas or Mandans and won himself another. She was Sacajawea. Charbonneau promptly impregnated her, and their son, Jean Baptiste, was born in early 1805.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their famous journey in St. Louis in 1804 and spent the winter at Fort Mandan. The United States had just purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in a deal Thomas Jefferson struck with Napoleon. Neither Jefferson nor Napoleon bothered to consult the Osage, Ponca, Blackfeet, Cheyenne or any of the others who truly owned the land, those who had lived on that land for thousands of years. Nonetheless, Jefferson promptly signed up Lewis and Clark to inspect the newly acquired goods. They and their retinue were officially called the "Corps of Discovery.

Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau as an interpreter, as he was fluent in the Siouan languages of the Hidatsa, Mandan, and some other tribes along the Missouri River. Charbonneau had to persuade Lewis and Clark that taking Sacajawea along on the trip might be a good idea. The plan was to follow the Missouri to its headwaters further west and search for a route through the mountains to the Pacific.

The Hidatsas explained to Lewis and Clark that the Shoshone lived out there, and the success or failure of the trip could hinge on the reception the explorers got from the Shoshones. Although Shoshones had never seen white men, they had heard nasty rumors about the treachery and aggression of white men. Lewis and Clark likely had no idea how important it would be for them just to have a brown-skinned woman with them as they pressed on through Indian country.

Further, Lewis and Clark had no idea how to get through the mountains to the Pacific Ocean. When they realized that Shoshone help would be essential, Lewis and Clark allowed Charbonneau to take his “wife” and their six-week-old boy along. She would serve as a guide as well as a translator of the Shoshone language into the Siouan dialect both she and Charbonneau spoke. Charbonneau would translate the Siouan dialect into French, and another translator would render the message into English. Lewis and Clark also reasoned that taking her along would help convince the Shoshones that these white interlopers actually had peaceful intentions. They might even talk the Shoshones out of a few horses in the event they needed to travel by land any distance to reach the Pacific.

When the Lewis and Clark gang finally arrived in Shoshone country, they got all they had hoped for, plus a surprise. Their first meeting with a Shoshone chief was held in the vicinity of present-day Armstead, Montana, but it took considerable coaxing on the part of Meriwether Lewis to get Chief Cameahwait even to talk to them. He and his people finally relented and headed to the camp where Clark and the other tourists were holed up.

Sacajawea danced with evident glee when she saw her people approaching. She sucked on her fingers to indicate that she was one of their people. From the group of approaching Shoshones, a young woman rushed forward to Sacajawea and embraced her. She had been abducted with Sacajawea some six years earlier but had escaped her captors and returned home.

As the council meeting commenced, Cameahwait sat on a white robe and invited Lewis to join him. Sacajawea was in the vicinity to interpret, when she suddenly rushed to the seated Cameahwait and tossed a blanket over his head. The two embraced affectionately. Chief Cameahwait was the girl’s brother.

What happened to Sacajawea after her fateful journey with Lewis and Clark is disputed. One theory is that she died at Fort Manuel Lisa in South Dakota in 1812. The journal of John Luttig, a clerk at the fort, includes an entry dated December 20, 1812, stating that “the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake Squaw [Shoshones were frequently called “Snakes”] died of putrid fever.” Luttig's journal does not indicate the wife's name. This legend has Sacajawea buried anonymously in an unknown grave.

Indians tell a different story. She eventually escaped the clutches of Charbonneau, himself an indisputably cantankerous and brutal man who frequently beat his “wives.” Sacajawea headed south into Comanche country, as they are modestly distant relatives of the northern Shoshones. She married a Comanche man, bore “a number of” children with him, and remained with him and her new family until her husband died.

Then she returned to the people with whom she started. Shoshone Elders spoke to Grace Raymond Hebard, an historian at the University of Wyoming who published a book in 1932 on Sacajawea’s life. Those Elders, many of whom had attended the last treaty council between the United States and the Shoshones who ended up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, insisted that Sacajawea returned to them after her Comanche husband died. She had a new name, a Comanche name, Porivo. They said that Porivo spoke at the Fort Bridger Treaty meeting in July, 1868, and lived until 1884 – which would have made her nearly 100 years old.

Those Elders said she was buried at Fort Washakie – named for the celebrated Shoshone Chief who negotiated the Fort Bridger Treaty. But her grave was not marked by the name of Sacajawea or of Porivo. It was marked “Bazil Umbea,” which means “Bazil’s Mother.” Bazil was a son Sacajawea had adopted. Bazil preferred living in the whiteman’s world, in a house at the fort, to living in the old Shoshone way in an animal-skin house, free and independent of whites. Her grave marker, thus, according to some, put Sacajawea in the same category as her adopted son, one who was born Indian but died white.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the U.S. Mint slaps an image of her on its new dollar coin. After all, she was the single most important character on the Lewis and Clark expedition. And it took only 71 years after the trip was completed for the United States to seize twice as much land from Indians as it had already seized up until 1803, when Thomas Jefferson "bought" this Indian land from a guy in France. For most Americans, then and today, land is little more than money disguised as dirt, and so the coin may help us to remember what we have stolen.

The image on the coin is also deeply ironic. Philip Diehl, director of the U.S. Mint, said that "We believed that the story of Sacagawea [sic] is rich with the symbols and values that make our nation great." Those symbols and values surely must include the same kind of treachery and aggression that Shoshones had heard about way back then. But our nation's values also include obfuscating and misleading history lessons that are designed to make Americans feel good about our country's past and to delude ourselves about the truth.

There are politics with this coin that simmer beneath the consciousness of the American public, so blissfully ignorant of their own history. The U.S. Mint spells the girl's name "Sacagawea," one of myriad spellings used in the diaries of white men on the Lewis and Clark journey. It represents roughly the pronunciation used by her original captors, the Hidatsa, and is said to mean "bird woman" in their native language.

But Shoshones and Shoshone historians have spelled the name "Sacajawea." In the Shoshone language, the words comprising that name mean "Launches the canoe." At stake in this linguistic duel is the very source of the girl's name. One side argues that Shoshones gave her the name and it evidently got corrupted when she was taken by Hidatsas. The other side argues that Hidatsas gave her the name during the years she lived with them. Appropriately enough, the U.S. Mint sides with those who enslaved her and the explorers who exploited her.

Moreover, the coin itself is flawed. The model for the coin was a 23-year-old Shoshone-Bannock woman instead of a teen aged Lemhi Shoshone, and Lemhi Shoshones of today say that the physical features on the coin do not resemble them. The coin also depicts Sacajawea carrying her baby in a blanket on her back. A real Lemhi Shoshone mother would have carried him on a cradleboard on her back.

But most startling of all is the most obvious. The word "Liberty" blazes above the head of Sacajawea on the coin. The girl had little experience with anything remotely related to liberty during her years of fame with Charbonneau and Lewis and Clark. She was a slave. And at the end of that famous road, back at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark paid Charbonneau 500 dollars. Sacajawea got nothing.