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Updated: July 1, 2025
The captains offered to take Chaboneau and Sacagawea and Toussaint on down to St. Louis. The Bird-woman would gladly have gone. She wanted to learn more of the white people's ways. She wanted to be white, herself. But Chaboneau respectfully declined. He said that it would be a strange country, and that he could not make a living there; later, he might send his boy, to be educated by the captains.
Unless the company could get guides and horses from the Snakes, and travel rapidly, they would be stuck, for the winter likely enough starve; at any rate be forced to quit. By August 16 Captain Lewis had not returned. Captain Clark set out afoot, with Sacagawea and Chaboneau, to walk across country. The Snakes simply must be found. The toiling boats rounded a great bend, and a shout arose.
Five were packed with the supplies; Sacagawea and little Toussaint were mounted upon the sixth, and the whole company, escorted by the Snakes, marched over the pass to Chief Ca-me-ah-wait's principal camp.
Of course she was used to roughing it; that was the life of an Indian woman to do the hard work for the men, in camp and on the trail. But Sacagawea early showed great good sense. Her husband Chaboneau almost capsized their canoe, by his clumsiness. She neither shrieked nor jumped; but calmly reaching out from it, with her baby tightly held, she gathered in the floating articles.
"What is the matter, Sacagawea?" She had been crying again. "I come a long way, capitin. I carry my baby, I cold, hungry, wet, seeck, I come an' I no care. I show you trail; I say 'Snake peoples here, an' you find Snakes. You get hosses, food, guide. When Indians see me an' my Toussaint, dey say 'Dis no war party, an' dey kind to you.
A brass tablet marks her grave. A mountain peak in Montana has been named Sacagawea Peak. A bronze statue of her has been erected in the City Park of Portland, Oregon. Another statue has been erected in the state capitol at Bismarck, North Dakota.
But although Sacagawea eagerly peered, and murmured to herself, no Indians appeared. The water was icy cold, from the snow range. The nights were cold, too. Game grew scarce. Three thousand miles had been logged off, from St. Louis.
Finally, before he could persuade them, the captain had delivered over his guns, and had promised them to be their prisoner if they did not find, down below, one of their own women acting as the white men's guide. But now all was well. The token of Sacagawea saved the day. The other woman, whom she hugged, had been captured by the Minnetarees, at the same time with herself, and had escaped.
He was a generous, whole-souled man, was this russet-haired William Clark, and known to all the Indians of the plains as their stanch friend. So it is probable that he did not forget Sacagawea, his loyal Bird-woman. In 1810 she, the boy Toussaint, and Chaboneau, visited in St. Louis. In 1811 they were on their way up-river, for the Indian country.
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