American History Hit - Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea's Expedition

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Lewis and Clark's expedition is a foundational story of America and Sacagawea was more central to it than is remembered. We hear this incredible tale through Sacagawea's eyes with our guest Dr Margaret Huettl, from the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Hannah Feodorov and Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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It is the giant carcass of a deceased whale, stripped of much of its flesh. The travelers had been alerted that they could find the whale at this location, understanding it to be a must-see. This is January 1806 with Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery crew a year and a half into their two and a half year journey. Among the crew is Sakajuwea, a native-born woman who has been with a party since North Dakota, and who, along the way, has given birth to the baby she now carries on her back, all the while guiding this expedition of 30 people. Shoshone by birth, Sakajuea has lived a landlocked existence her entire life. So faced with this creature, this vision, this Leviathan of the deep on one side of her,

in the Pacific Ocean on the other, she is suddenly faced with the unimaginable. So much of this journey has been otherworldly, towering mountains, endless rivers, strange peoples in unfamiliar lands. For the white men, it was a journey into a haunting, awesome world they would report upon with maps and documents. But for Sacchiauea, here at the edge of the continent, she might have had another impression that here was a continent destined for cataclysmic change. And it was coming. Welcome to American History Hit.

I'm Don Wildman. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Margaret Hiddle. She is the assistant professor of history and the director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Ashgosh. Hello, Margaret. Thanks for joining us on American History Hit to talk about the most famous camping trip in American history. Greetings. Hello.

I'm excited to be here. Before we get into the events of the expedition, Lewis and Clark and Sacchia, let's provide listeners with context. Lewis and Clark's expedition had been dispatched for what purpose exactly? Why was this so necessary at this time? The short answer is American expansion. The longer answer, the more specific context is that Thomas Jefferson had recently purchased the Louisiana territory from France, 1803, and this is territory from Louisiana, all the way up to the like Montana, Great Plains, Pacific Northwest area. But the problem is that they bought that territory from France.

They didn't know anything about it. And they didn't actually negotiate for that territory with the people who lived there, the native people who lived there and, you know, were still the legal owners of the land. And so what the Lewis and Clark expedition was supposed to do was get information, figure out what resources were in this territory, figure out what the native relationships were in this territory, and then also open trade routes with native people to help the United States get a foothold in these indigenous territories. Sure. This is the great sight unseen real estate purchase of all time. I mean, they just did this. And now these several guys who are about to discuss in more detail take off in what's called the core discovery.

It was commissioned by Thomas Jefferson, as you say, kind of an inventory of the United States newly acquired resources, which is the unkind way of saying there's a lot of people out there as well. And what are we going to be encountering now that we're, well, another third of the country is suddenly being added to this in the big picture. Mary Weather Lewis and William Clark were the leaders of this expedition. There were 30 others in this corps. Who else are on this crew? Can you take me through a few individuals?

Yeah. So when they leave from St. Louis, there's Lewis and Clark and then a series of a group of sergeants. So it's a military-led expedition. And there's a group of sergeants. Their names are Charles Floyd, Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and Nathaniel Pryor, a group of 23 U.S. Army soldiers. And then York, who is enslaved by Clark, he was born into slavery on. on Clark's family's plantation and had been with Clark for many years. And then a group of French Canadian boatmen, about a dozen French Canadian boatmen, because they were better at sailing canoes than many of the Americans. A hunter named George Drew Yard. And that's most of the group that sets out from St. Louis. The expedition took roughly two years. It begins in May, 1804.

It goes until September 1806. The goal was to find a way to the Pacific Ocean by water. and map this journey along the way, developing relationships with indigenous peoples along this route. It starts in Missouri. If you ever want the, there's a place that you can stand under a bridge in St. Louis, and there's a statue in the middle of the river. I mean, it can be in the middle of a river when it's flooded. That is too, it's so funny.

I went there on a business trip one time, and it was a big flood at the time. And there was one hand above the water, and that was Lewis's or Clark's hand. It was really quite comical. The expedition starts in Missouri, continues along the Missouri River, north towards the Pacific Northwest, eventually through the Columbia River, constructing Fort Clatsup in what is today, Oregon. But the individual we're most interested in today is Sacchia. Who was she? And how has she been hired? Or is hired the right word? So Sacagawea was a 16 or 17-year-old young woman, girl. It's always hard to know what terms

to use when we're talking about people in the past. But she was a 16-year-old girl. I have a 16-year-old niece. I always think about her now when I think about Sacajia. she was Shoshone, although there are some Hidotsa people and some Crow people who say that she was in fact Hidotza and Crow. But the dominant narrative, the narrative that has come down through written history is that she was a Shoshone girl who was kidnapped by the Hidotza when she was about 12 and then trafficked. and trafficked at a fort where she was either sold to or won in a gambling game by Toussaint Charbonneau, who then marries her, takes her as one of his wives. He had at least one other wife. And, you know, it's unclear how much consent was involved in that relationship.

But I don't think there was very much consent involved in that relationship. But apart from being a young girl who experienced traumatic separation from her family in at least some form, she was known as being a really good swimmer of the breaststroke. She was a great swimmer. She protected her younger siblings. She was good with kids. And she really liked coffee. And these are just some of the things that we know about her as a human being, which don't. show up in things like Lewis and Clark's journals. But she was, you know, an adventurous,

a brave and a kind person. Yeah. Let's just say from the outset, this woman is pregnant when she starts this expedition. She's pregnant and she is getting on a boat with a bunch of strangers, white guys, to march off and paddle off into the great unknown, which would have been unknown to her at the time. Of course, you know, she's, I guess, born in what would be today, Idaho, right? That territory is generally where she's from. And then the trafficking and the passage she goes on lands are more in the state of North Dakota, I suppose, is that that's where that area would be. You know, she's gone through a lot already. And now here she is married to this guy and she's pregnant with their child, I suppose, right? Right. And he is a guy with a bad reputation.

He is known to be a violent husband who abuses his wives. This is observed by both Lewis and Clark noted in their journals. It's documented that it happened. He also was described as pretty worthless, very bad boatman by Lewis and Clark, but a decent cook. So, redeeming qualities. How was she perceived by the people on the expedition? They must have written all kinds of things about her, right? I mean, it was really something for this bunch of guys to go, oh, my goodness,

we go into nothingness that we don't know. And this young woman, they would describe her as that. We would say a girl is going to guide us, right? They often don't describe her. They call her that Indian woman, Charbonneau's wife, the interpreter's wife. And she appears very rarely. But the ways that she appears are really profound. And you get kind of a sense of what her role was on the journey. She's described as often like picking service berries. One of the things that she knew, even if she didn't know the specific path is she knew the land, she knew what food was available in the land and she helped to provide food for the

expedition. There's this one incident that the journals describe where she's in a canoe with Charbonneau and the canoe gets blown over and the canoe capsizes and Charbonneau freezes. he is panicking, but she gets into the water and she saves some really expensive scientific equipment where her husband was just a flailing, panicking mess. And so it's clear from these little notes that she was respected in many ways and also sidelined in many ways. But a leader.

Right. Yeah. Right. Yes. Fourthright personality, a leadership quality to her. Yes. And never mind, you know, as she's saving that scientific equipment, she's putting her baby aside. You know, she's jumping in the water.

Having put her infant over there, let me save the day for these guys. And just to underscore this, she was already pregnant. She joins the expedition. She gives birth along the way to her son, Jean-Baptiste Chabernot during the journey, then carried him along the way. And on a cradle board on the back, that's the classic symbol, which is on the dollar coin, I suppose. The cradle on the back, the rest of the journey. Much of this is very similar, if I must say, when we were having conversations about the separatists, the pilgrims in Massachusetts, the relationship that we have cast, that white America has cast upon Squanto, you know, that whole kind of thing.

Right. You know, where we're raised with this sort of mythology about these indigenous people welcoming and being so gracious about this. And my goodness, of course I'll take off into the middle of nowhere and help you folks not die. Her story is more about a rougher persuasion, right? Right, right. The hard thing about Zaki Jua is that we never get her perspective. We only see her filtered through the eyes of her husband, the eyes of Lewis, the eyes of Clark, the eyes of these other white men.

But yes, she's on this journey because she doesn't have a choice. Her husband brings her along. Let's talk a little bit more about the two men who are most famous here, obviously. Meriwether Lewis, whose lifetime is 1774 to 1809, which is a pretty short time. A Virginian family plantation owners, they are enslavers, goes on to have a military career and then becomes personal secretary to Jefferson. And upon the president's request, Lewis travels to Philadelphia to study. And he's really, has a big relationship, in other words, with Thomas Jefferson personally because of his family. Whereas we have William and Clark, who is born around the same time, 1770, lives a bit longer to 1838.

Also a Virginian, also belongs to a plantation owner, owning family. joined the militia and was often involved in conflicts between native groups and settlers along the way. William Clark, I understand, was a friend of Lewis and was invited to be part of this expedition, serving as the cartographer, the main journal keeper. But there is this third member of the troop of the leadership crowd that you talked about. His name is York. And he is the enslaved member of William Clark's household. He lives from about the early 1770s.

We don't know much about his origins here. lives to 1832, was probably born and enslavement under that Clark family. That's questionable. He's the only African-American on this expedition. And at the time of the expedition, he was married to a woman who was enslaved back in Kentucky. So on this expedition, he carries out many of the physical tasks, of course, of hunting and gathering, keeping these people alive, building forts, caregiving to Charles Floyd and Sakajua. It's a whole mixed crowd. Boy, it's almost like this was invented for a novel. You know, you have a microcosm of this. new land. You know, these white people dominating, but along the way are these other people who are

representing other populations that they are going to encounter. Right. Well, and even the boatsmen, a lot of the boatsmen were Métis, so mixed, often Cree or Ojibwe and French. Yes. So just another example of already the interchange of people and relationships and cultures that was happening in North America. Let's take a short break in. adjust that for now. When we come back, Margaret and I will be talking more about the expedition and how it unfolds. Welcome back. We're talking with Margaret Hiddell of the University of Wisconsin at Ashgosh. Margaret, what would life have been like on the trail itself? And especially for a young woman, a young mother, carrying her baby on her back. It would have been

uncomfortable a lot of the times. That's one of the things that everybody wrote about in the journals was their discomfort. The one advantage that Saka Jua would have had is that she comes from a nation that is used to moving. Both the Shoshone and the Hadatsa were farming people and tended to, you know, live in big farming villages, but both groups of people moved for different seasonal purposes. So the Shoshone, for instance, would move for the buffalo hunts and then they would moved to other places to fish for the winter. And so she had the advantage of being used to having to pick up and move relatively often. But, you know, food was often scarce.

Nights were often cold. The rivers were often difficult to travel. So not exactly a fun camping trip, not a weekend vacation. And we're talking about small boats, a series of these boats that are moving along waters that are probably moving against them times, you know. This is hard crossings and hard passage. So as they move along these rivers mostly, they are encountering different peoples along the way, you know, separate from each other. They're kind of getting this cross section of this area vis-a-vis the indigenous tribes.

Right. And the way that many people think about Native Americans is all the same. We have this idea, right, and it comes from Hollywood movies. We lump a lot of Native people together, but they're traveling through an incredibly diverse region. So, you know, going for a long time without seeing people and then encountering people. And it's always a little uncertain how those different nations are going to react to Lewis and Clark. They had had some pretty tense interactions with the Lakota people before they headed further west early in the journey. So because they don't have a fully filled in map, they don't know when they're going to encounter the next group of people.

They just have a rough estimate. And as a result, Sakajua is, of course, central in this situation. Here is this one person that they can recognize, you know, as their own in quotation marks, I know, but also a pregnant, also a mother at some point, you know, with her baby. I mean, it's quite a different, quite an amazing sight, I would imagine. Right. And that actually is really important. And part of the reason why I think Lewis and Clark agreed to bring her along, because they knew that from indigenous. perspectives, and this is something that's true across many different nations, having a woman and

having children in your group is a sign of peace. It's a sign that you're not there for conflict. And so she helped to, just her presence helped to open diplomatic doors for Lewis and Clark. I'm confused when she joins this journey. I imagine they'd set out alone and then, I mean, without her and then suddenly she comes along. Is that what happened? Or does she start for the beginning? So, no, she joins in February of 1805. Ah, okay. They are at a fort outside of where the Mandanahedatza live. They are at this fort.

Charbonneau approaches them and says, hey, do you need an interpreter? I speak Hadatsa, although he actually speaks terrible Hadatsa and even worse English. But he says, I speak Hadatsa. I have this wife. She speaks Shoshone. We could be useful to you. And so that's how they joined the expedition in North Dakota. I think I'd cast Randy Quaid in the role of Charbonneau, wouldn't I?

I think that would be a great choice, yes. Their roots are not entirely unknown, and this is me piecing this together. They're traveling on roots. I mean, some of these guys are fur trappers or know these traditional routes to go into these lands, but that's obviously not going to do the job as far as understanding the indigenous peoples out there, which is such a big part of this. And so Sacchia is absolutely necessary in this situation. They make that call.

In August 1805, they end up encountering the Shoshone tribe, which is actually not her home tribe, right? That's not her native place, but she knows these people a lot. And tell me about that encounter. Well, it's possible that it is her home. Oh, okay. Okay. So she either was born in the Shoshone Nation and was kidnapped by the Hidotza, or she was born to a Hidotza father and crow mother. And if that's the case, she would have.

known the Shoshonee due to like a diplomatic or trade encounter earlier where her father adopted a Shoshone person who she then sees at this encounter. There you go. Thank you for indulging all of this because what we're really talking about in a bigger sense is the absolute navet of white Europeans encountering this entire world that has been there for hundreds of thousands of years, which is a whole diverse. Words escape me because it's like it's a huge vast area. And so this is as a result completely confusing to them. And as they come along, here they go.

And as we're talking about it, in 2026, there are people like me who are completely still naive about how diverse this nation really was at the beginning. And without even the language to talk about it. And we often talk about this on the podcast in a sense of like the sheepish shame of, oh my gosh, What a world. Now, Lewis and Clark are out there to experience this. And that's, if there's beauty to this, it's really that experience aside from the natural environments that they're going through. But that's such an important part of this, that we actually have this commonality today with Lewis and Clark because so much of American history has steered clear of this fact. It's amazing. I want to understand this encounter with the Shoshone. As I said, August 1805, they're negotiating to trade for horses with a group of Shoshone. Sakajua, really. realizes at that moment that Shoshone chief leader was her brother. Tell me his name. His name is Kamei. And he was her brother, right? He was either her brother or her cousin. This again is part of the problem of translation because the word for a brother and male brother and male cousin in Shoshone is the same. So maybe her brother, maybe her cousin. Either way,

he was her close kin. Wow. You have to wonder what this was looking like to these guys as they're realizing they're walking into family relationships and, you know, whole giant, you know, tapestries of people that know each other and stories from each other all over the place. And they tell these stories in these journals. Lewis, August 17th, 1805, he writes, shortly after Captain Clark arrived with the interpreter Charbonneau and the Indian woman, who proved to be a sister of the chief, Kamehuea, the meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Saka Juea and an Indian woman. who have been taking prisoner at the same time with her.

Another key encounter comes in the fall of September 1805. And really, this is the first six months or so of this journey. Things are going badly at this point. Tell me what happens when they encounter the Nespers, that nation of indigenous people. And that's their not their name, of course. What's the real name? Their name for themselves is the Nimi Poo, which means the people.

Okay. The expedition had encountered them at a time when these Americans, are starving. They've lost their horses. They're leaving them behind. They're transitioning into canoe travel at this point. And Clark reports that many of these men were very sick. So when they meet the Nimi Poo, they have really good timing because they happen to meet them at their Camus gathering site. So Camus is Hardy Bulb. It's a kind of like Lily that the Nespers, the Nimi Poo people eat, right? So they encounter them in a valley where they are harvesting Kammis, which means that the Nespers have a lot of food to give them. But at first, the encounter is a

little dicey. The Nimi Poo are suspicious of these new people. But what happens is, according to Nimi Poo oral tradition, there is a woman who had been taken captive by the black. Feet earlier, traded through the Northwest, similar to Sakajuwea. This whole problem of trafficking Native women has a long history, and today is culminated in the missing and murdered indigenous women crisis. But this woman had been trafficked, and she had eventually ended up with a white family that treated her well. And so she eventually found her way back home, and she comes and tells the Nimi Poo leaders,

be nice to these strangers. their relatives treated me well. And so that helps smooth over the encounter. They feed the core of discovery and they feed Lewis and Clark's group. And they give them Camus and Camus bread and they give them salmon. But the problem is that the men on this trip did not have a lot of fiber in their diet. Camus is incredibly fiberful. And so it makes them very sick for like two.

weeks until they adjust to this food. One of those journal entries I'm going to read, September 20th, 1805, this is written by Clark. Wednesday, September 20th, 1805, set out and proceeded through a country as rugged as usual, passed over a low mountain into the forks of a larger creek, which we kept down two miles and ascended a steep mountain, leaving the creek to our left hand, passed ahead of several streams on a dividing ridge, and at 12 miles descended the mountain to a level point. We're talking about an entire huge, huge. hike here, and it's all one little paragraph. Yeah.

We proceeded through the beautiful country for three miles to a small plane and found many Indian lodges. Met three boys. They saw me and ran and hid themselves, but I gave them small pieces of ribbon, R-I-B-I-N, and sent them forward to the village. You know, these are fascinating journals to read because they're the details of a world that, you know, has been what it has been for so long. It will all go away, you know, in the coming hundred.

years or so and beyond. But you see this kind of Eden that they're walking through filled with people who are either happy to see them or interested in seeing them or really not happy at all. How does that split? What is the different perceptions of these indigenous tribes as these guys come along? Some of the Native nations who encounter Lewis and Clark have general information. They are aware because, again, the West was a place full of movement and encounters between people, the Nimi Poo are the center of a trade empire. And so from their perspective, when they meet

Lewis and Clark, they see an opportunity for trade. They see them through an economic lens. They also are very interested in getting access to their guns, especially since some of the other Native nations who they had encountered had access to firearms. And that was changing the nexus of power on the planes. Other Native nations were not interested in having those relationships, had heard bad things about white men coming from the East. And they also had encounters because we think of American history, east to west. But as you get out to the West, you have Spanish, Russian, and other Europeans who were also telling them that sometimes this new group of people wasn't interested in balanced relations. but was interested in exploiting their lands and people.

Yes, exactly. There's an enormous story to be told about the day-to-day life of this journey, which, you know, as I mentioned before, takes from May 1804 to September 1806, both the way up to the northwest of North America and then the way back. I mean, that's how long this journey is. So to cover that in such a small conversation is not possible, but I just wanted people to understand that without this woman along the way guiding this group, they wouldn't have made it. Is that fair to say?

I think that's fair to say, yes. And I mean, from her ability to provide food and some helpful medicine to when they encounter the Shoshone, Lewis had been talking to the Shoshone for several days before the rest of the party caught up to them. The Shoshone weren't willing to trade horses. After Secajuweo reunites with her kin, they're willing to. to trade horses. So very basically, right, she made it possible for the journey to continue multiple times. Right. So had perceptions changed? I imagine, I mean, this is a gigantic experience

they're all going through. This is a bonding experience for any human being of any age and time and history. They must have softened about her and valued and understood where they would be without her, right? No. Oh, gosh. That was the answer to you. I didn't want to hear or anyone listening. Really? Like, I mean, she's given birth. She got on pregnant. She gave birth. She, every time they walk up on a new tribe, a new group, a new village, she's the one who has to talk for them. They haven't learned this by now? Nope. She remains relegated to the background and very rarely even mentioned by name. Wow. And Clark really fell in love with Jean Baptiste, her son.

And he was a cute baby. Who doesn't love a cute baby? And he offers to take him and adopt him, to adopt him. And Sacagawea does say no. She won't give up her breastfeeding baby. We can get into what happens with that more. Yes. Please.

But she won't give up her baby. I think there probably was some real affection of Clark towards Sacajawea. I think he probably did respect her as a human being, but it's not something that he takes the time to write down. Yeah, it was Lewis who really referred to her as, you know, racial slur and all the rest of that in the writings. And of course, Charbonneaux as we've described. It's just so painful to imagine that experience for this person thrown to the wolves of a sort. After the break, Lewis and Clark will reach the left coast of the continent. And we talk about how we end up on this trip, which is just, you know, halfway home at this point.

We're back with Margaret. Margaret, this journey that started in May 1804 finally reaches the Pacific Coast in late 1805. There is a very famous story about this. There's a number of them. But I'm going to ask you, first of all, what sticks out for you when they finally reach the Pacific? Do you know how Sakoja reacted to seeing the ocean? I'm just curious if there is any way of understanding this. So this is one of my favorite stories about Sakajia because I think you really understand who she is.

So Lewis writes in his journal that she was insistent on being allowed to go and see the ocean. They also had just heard that there was a whale that a dead whale washed up on the beach. And so this is a quote from Lewis in his journal. He says, she observed that she had traveled a long way, with us to see the great waters. And now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either. So she puts her foot down and says, I am going to see the ocean. I've gone all this way. I'm going to see this whale, bigger fish than I've ever seen in my life before. And she goes and she looks at the ocean. And of course,

because we don't have anything from her perspective, we can only imagine how she felt when she looked out at the ocean. But here she is, again, 17 years old probably at this time, a one year, less than one year baby on her back, looking out at water like she's never seen before. And water that she made a choice there, right? That's what I love about this story, right? is she she wants to see the water and she goes to see the water. And I can just imagine how awe-inspiring and empowering it would have felt to look out at the Pacific Ocean for the first time. That was a sensation, a state of mind that all of us can relate to, of course, every time we see it now. Can you imagine here's a woman that was a landlocked individual all her life, probably heard mythological stories about the ocean.

There were the Great Lakes, not that far away. so there were big bodies of water for sure, but nothing like the ocean. And suddenly here it is, as we all know is impossible to describe until you're looking at it. And there's this whale. You know, it's just evidence of these strange creatures, these monstrous creatures inside this water. And that's when Mary Lewis would lean over and say, he says, it's a mammal, not a fish. No, he didn't say it. Right.

Yes, the scientific classification there. Absolutely. Also, Sacajawea so often is reduced to a symbol. Yeah. And for me, this story really is a reminder that she was human, that she was curious, that she was part of a world that was full of travel and movement and people not just waiting to be discovered, that core of discovery name, right? These weren't people waiting to be discovered.

They were people who lived in a vibrant world and who wanted to learn not just about their own communities. They weren't isolated. they were learning about each other, they were learning about the newcomers, and they were able to take in new information like what it means to see the ocean and, you know, bring that back to their communities. Yeah. This all happened on Cannon Beach, Oregon, which you can visit yourselves anytime. It's very famous. That reaches the peak, basically, or the apex of the trip, I suppose.

They've reached their point, their objective, which is the Pacific Ocean. Now, not so directly, but eventually they have to turn around and come back. Once they do, I want to just talk about the aftermath. What happens to everybody afterwards, especially Zekaduja, but let's start with Maryweather-Lewis. What is his fate in life? Well, as you mentioned, he does not live a very long time. He dies by gunshot in 1809. And this is another one of those historical uncertainties.

Most likely, he died by suicide. But there's also a possibility that he was killed by someone who he was involved in a financial dispute with. but nobody knows. Yeah. One of these guys, I guess it was Mary Weather Lewis, was a very depressed guy, wasn't he? He went through a lot of depression. Yes, and struggles with alcohol. Yeah, that's why we suggest that he was a suicide.

William Clark, on the other hand, rewards Clark with double pay and 1600 acres, same as Lewis, by the way. Thomas Jefferson appoints Clark as Brigadier General of Militia for the Louisiana Territory and federal Indian agent for Western tribes, now that he's been educated and his, No, he's not. He's not well first in anything. In 1822, President Monroe appoints Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs. And in this role, he exercises to jurisdiction and control over Western tribes as well as Eastern tribes. It's so interesting, you know, we're going to go into a terrible period of what unfolds during this time as far as the wars and so forth. And there's this man who has had this very intimate contact with these people's through the help

of Sacchiaia. Did that temper his own? view of those peoples or what was his position as a result? I think I'm going to disappoint you with my answer once again and say it didn't really temper his view. He very firmly believed that the United States had a right to expand and like a, you know, basically manifest destiny before those words manifest destiny were used to expand democracy civilization throughout the North American continent. He's involved in a whole bunch of really questionable treaties with Native nations in the St. Louis area and further west.

And he's not well thought of among most native communities. Also, you would have hoped that all of his interactions with diverse people, having someone like York keep him alive, would maybe make him rethink, owning another human being. But no matter how many times York asked for freedom, Clark consistently refused to give him that freedom. So Clark continued to operate from the view that white American civilization was inevitably going to expand throughout the North American continent. It's the continuing dilemma. How much do we project our own values into this history? You know, how could someone, you know, if you put your

yourself in that position, how could you, after all those years, all those months of traveling in such intimacy and understanding of the diversity, then come back and say, okay, yeah, we need to take this place over. You know, it's really impossible for a modern mind to really grasp. Right. And it's hard because he does. So eventually, Charbonneau and Sacagawea do move to St. Louis. Clark helps them get some land. And he does put Jean-Baptiste through school. And he eventually become Jean-Baptiste Guardian because Charbonneau sells their land and, you know, moves back up to North Dakota. It's not clear, again, how Saka Joia felt about leaving her son in St. Louis. It was common at the time for especially mixed descent kids to live in settler centers and get an education in settler schools. But like, he loved this kid, right? This kid who is native. On an individual level, he had these feelings of a.

but that didn't translate into policy that respected the humanity and sovereignty of Native nations. Yeah. Let's talk about York in more detail. On their return to the east, York reportedly asked for his freedom, as you said, in order to live with his wife in Kentucky. Clark refuses to free him due to financial constraints. Hard to believe, considering Clark had this reward for the expedition.

He had the money because he was paid so much more than he expected. As a result, York spends the rest of his life and slavery under the court. Clark family. He received no money or compensation for his part in the expedition. Let's talk about Sakajua. Where did she land in the conclusion of this journey? Before we talk about Sakajua, can I mention, so one of the things that I think is really interesting about how the Lewis and Clark story is remembered is like the statues that are made, right? And I did forget to mention a very important member of the team, which was the dog, semen. There are more statues of semen than of York and Saka Jua. There's 12 statues with semen in it, and there are only two statues of York.

All right. And where could you find those statues? Where are they all along the path? Yeah, there's statues all along the path. There's one when I used to work in Nebraska. There's one in Lincoln that has Lewis and Clark and seaman and like a young native boy. And then a native man, the young native boy is holding an American flag. And the man is like pointing here. Here is all our land. But there's so many Lewis and Clark statues around the country, especially along the trail. Sure.

Yeah. Well, it becomes its own tourism and all the rest of that. Never mind the memorials do this journey. Sackageway's lifetime goes from 1788 to 1820. which is only a few years after she returns. So what happens to her at the end of her life? So the documented narrative, the narrative that historians and others have been writing for a long time, is that she died of a fever in 1812.

And that's just the end, right? She disappears from the record. She died. There's a very brief mention of it. But there are other stories that. her life lasted much longer. Both the Shoshone and the Hadatsa have oral traditions that she lived to be in her 80s. On the Shoshonee reservation, there is a grave that is supposed to be Saka Jua's grave, where they say she lived out the rest of her years with the Shoshone people and has had other children

and has descendants. The Hadatsah say the same thing that she lived to be in her 80s had at least three more daughters and has living descendants to this day. And to be clear, these stories, you find documented examples of these oral traditions that say that she, that her life was much longer than that two-year Lewis and Clark trip. There are examples of these oral traditions being told to anthropologists and others in the late 19th century. They're told for more than 100 years but they just never make it into the written records. Yeah. For so many obvious reasons, the complications are, you know, make the story a little too complicated to tell as we're even encountering now.

Right. As far as what we want to believe, of course. Her son, after Charbonneau dies, her husband then, their son and daughter are given to William Clark, as you mentioned. There's a lot of debate about all of this stuff. And as you mentioned, she may have lived as long as 1869, or one of the many, one of the several stories, having had, as you said, three daughters. One story tells us, mentions that she was eventually shot in a raid by another indigenous tribe, right? Right. Yes.

Yep. And died in her grandson's arms. There you go. I want to read a little bit of the biography of Saccharge's son, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau. He lives from 1805 to 1866. William Clark became his legal guardian in St. Louis. In 1823, Jean was invited to go to Germany with Duke Paul Wilhelm of Wurtenberg after he and the Duke made acquaintance in St. Louis. He traveled with the Duke through Europe as a companion, lived with him in the palace. Jean then returned to America in 1829, where he utilized his skills as a multilingual guide, scout, fur trapper. He eventually dies in Oregon of illness after taking him. part in the gold rush. Oh, my Lord, what a, what a life this man led.

Yeah, pretty much every important era in American history, there is. Exactly, which is very, it's interesting. So much about the story is so microcosmic of America at that time. It really is. It's an interesting way of looking at it. I hadn't thought of before this. Well, and my favorite detail about Jean-Baptiste, too, is that he apparently loved quoting Shakespeare. And I, I just love to think about this, you know, this like rugged mountain man of a guy out there quoting. Like, it should be in a Hollywood movie somewhere. Yeah, exactly. In summation, Margaret, and addressing the American mythology of this, how do you think the core of discovery expedition should remember it in retrospect?

And how is the storytelling of this changing even as we live? From my perspective, as someone who works in Indigenous Studies, I think that the core of discovery should be remembered as an invasion. Its intended goal was to get the information that the United States needed to take over these lands and these people. The goal was never to live and coexist with Native nations, but rather to dominate Native nations. That's how American policy work. despite Jefferson's curiosity about Native people, right? That's, you know, his idea is, right, the American civilization, heavy quotes on that, right, has to succeed in the end. So from my perspective, the Corps of Discovery is an invasion.

And it's also complicated, right, because if you put yourself in the position of those 23 soldiers, those American soldiers, for instance, traveling across lands they, you know, never had encountered. Like you also can see the bravery, the persistence, et cetera, of the individual men who went on that journey. And I don't want to take that away from their story. And it's just those tensions that exist, right? It can be a story of bravery at the same time that it's also a story of colonial dispossession. Which is such a huge story today.

I mean, of course, the Trump administration released in restoring truth and sanity to American history executive order and the removal of slines and all the rest of it. I think this is an excellent story, a lens through which to look at that effort. And the general effort to cleanse history by way of, you know, oversimplifying it and fictionalizing it, really. Why is always my question? So what? You know, like deal with the honesty of what happened instead of this fiction. And it's actually filled with wonderful stories about real strength in human behavior. And of course there are strange things that happen and uncomfortable truths about what happens as a result.

But it's a much more dynamic story to tell the truth of it than to whitewash it with this glean of history that we want to see. In Sacchua, the story of that, just like Squanto and all the rest, is a perfect example of this where you see this incredibly brave woman. You know, did I know her? No, I didn't. But I'm assuming that a person of her age and her circumstance is incredibly courageous and bold and adventurous and works it out over a more than year-long journey. It's extraordinary. But I'm not left with uncomfortable feelings of American. I'm left with pride for Saka Jua.

It's a shame that we need an American dollar coin to communicate that to most people. But that's how I feel. There you go. There's my blurt. Look, I can get on a soapbox with the best of them. I mean, that's how I feel, Margaret. But I'm more interested in you. You are a director of the Indigenous Studies at University of Wisconsin-Askosh.

Listening to you tell this story, the Lewis and Clark expedition becomes the story of Sakajuwea. I mean, that's a remarkable turnaround, isn't it? It is. And it represents for me how I think we could flip some of these narratives where native people become passive victims in their own story where Native people are acted on, where Native people are pushed to the sideline, where Native people are simply discovered, rather than the ones who are doing the discovering, who are the intellectual equals of non-Native people. When you look at the

Lewis and Clark narrative through Saka Jua's lens, it is a story of contradictions. It's It's a story of hope and survival. It's a story of curiosity. It's also a story of the beginning of loss and the beginning of the taking of indigenous sovereignty. But it's never an end. The Shoshone people continue. The Hidatsa people continue. The Nimi Poo people continue.

They continue to tell these stories in their communities. What's new to someone like me who's not Shoshone. What's new to someone like you. who's not native, these aren't new stories in native communities. And we're just starting to hear them and to share them on a more national scale. Yes, I think we've begun a real long period of reevaluation. That's going to have a lot of bumps along the road, a lot of trips up the roller coaster and down. But essentially, that's the process that we really are underway here.

Our guest today has been Margaret Hiddell. She's the director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Ashgosh. She's an assistant professor of history there. Thank you so much, Margaret. I feel much closer to Seco Joia, and I haven't even begun. Thank you so much. You're welcome. We should go drink some coffee in her honor.

Thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend.

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