|
NFPW
2002 Highlights
Sakakawea
Shares Her Story
Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived at the home
of the Hidatsa and Mandan people on the Missouri River banks the
winter of 1804-1805 in need of two things: shelter and interpreters.
So, they built a triangular fort called Fort Mandan and hired
French Canadian Toussiant Charbonneau as an interpreter.
Charbonneau came as a package deal. His wife, Sakakawea, would
travel with the expedition carrying their first-born son, Pomp,
in a cradleboard on her back. Kidnapped from the Shoshone people,
Sakakawea could speak Shoshone, Hidatsa and French, and knew Indian
sign language. Later, she would learn English.
Humanities scholar Selene Phillips assumed the persona of Sakakawea
to share her story with NFPW conference attendees.
Sakakawea stood before the audience in native dress, her long
black braids hanging to her waist. The year was 1807, after the
Corps of Discovery had returned from its journey to the Pacific.
She told of overturned riverboats, a harrowing escape from a flash
flood and men jigging to fiddle music by campfire light.
“My happiest time was when we met the Shoshone people,”
she said. Led by Sakakawea’s brother, the Shoshones provided
the corps with much-needed horses. Those horses would later become
food as the corps struggled through the mountains to the ocean.
Lewis and Clark did not want Sakakawea in the party for the last
stretch, but she insisted on traveling to the ocean.
Sakakawea answered NFPW members’ questions, then Phillips
answered questions Sakakawea could not. An Ojibwe from the Lac
du Flambeau Band of Chippewa in Wisconsin, Phillips is completing
a doctorate in American Studies at Purdue University and is a
presenter with the Great Plains Chautauqua.
One question neither scholar nor historical figure could answer
is where and when Sakakawea died. No one knows for sure.
- Cathy Jelsing
|
