I watched a video of the journey of Sacajawea and wondered about the contents of the story when so little is historically known about the young Shoshone girl. She has more statues in her honor adorning national historic sites and parks than any other woman in the United States. She was brought into fame by the epic journey of the Corps of Discovery conceived by President Thomas Jefferson. Not that Jefferson foresaw or expected the woman's influence on the voyage. Nor did Sacajawea even become noticed in the national scene until historians began to pick at the journals of those men who opened the United States of America from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

Few entries describe Sacajawea in the journals. Her bravery isn't spoken of as such, just mentioned that she pulled items from the river that fell from an overturned boat. Clark mentioned that when her husband beat her, Charbonneau was reprimanded for the act. Lewis cared for her when she was ill for days with a malady he couldn't explain or treat. Several entries mentioned that Sacajawea dug for roots to feed herself and members of the Corps. IF she was asked when she was born, none of the Corps members would have understood the way she might have described the month of her birth or the many moons that measured her years.

Sacajawea was assumed to be about sixteen years old when she was brought into the fort at the Mandans. Why they assumed that there is little evidence. The years between her capture by a marauding band and her scrutiny by Captain Clark are filled by the understandings of women of the Shoshone tribes which are as authentic as can be found. Because it is no secret that Indian women did all food gathering and preparation, all the work on the animal skins and carcasses for clothing, bedding, and tools and all the hunting for uses of plants for the tribe, it follows that Indians would seek out girls to be presented to wives as slaves to ease the burdens of work - my historic insight.

Regardless of Sacajawea's age when captured, she would have been well schooled in all the work required by women of her tribe. And she would have absorbed the genetic and cultural attitudes expected of women. The desire to travel into the unknown with a newborn babe was no doubt fueled by the hopes that she would find her lost tribe but would today's women contemplate such a venture?

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was born to Sacajawea on February 11, 1805, in the room next to the Captains Lewis and Clark at the fort they built for the winter near the Mandans in what is now North Dakota. According to Lewis the birth was a painful episode for Sacajawea, although he had no experience attending a birthing so did he understand the normal pain of childbirth. I doubt it.

The PBS production: "The Journey of Sacagawea" was put together by historians who looked at the history of 1800's and the life of the Indians as they surmised it to be at the time. It is a good narrative that helps us to admire Sacajawea, and more deeply, the culture of the Native Americans as they lived with nature and shared with the invaders because it was (and is) the source of life.

Naomi Sherer