Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea's Expedition

Summary

American History Hit – "Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea’s Expedition" (June 25, 2026)

Episode Overview

Host Don Wildman is joined by Professor Margaret Hittle, Director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, to revisit the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–1806) through the critical lens of Sacagawea’s story. The episode explores the motivations behind the expedition, delves into the roles and perspectives of key individuals (especially Sacagawea and York), challenges the traditional myth-making around the "Corps of Discovery," and incorporates Indigenous viewpoints to rethink how this iconic journey should be remembered.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

The Purpose and Context of the Expedition

• Motivation for the Journey

  • The expedition was initiated after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson directed Lewis and Clark to inventory the vast new territory’s resources, identify trading possibilities with Indigenous nations, and establish American presence (04:41).
  • Margaret Hittle: “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 Lewis and Clark expedition was supposed to… get information… figure out what resources were in this territory… and open trade routes with native people.” (04:41)

• The Expedition Party

  • Leaders: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
  • Participants: About 30 people, including sergeants, 23 U.S. soldiers, French Canadian boatmen, a hunter, York (Clark’s enslaved servant), and Sacagawea with her husband, Charbonneau (06:24).
  • Notably diverse, with mixed Métis ancestry among boatmen, and including both enslaved African American (York) and Indigenous (Sacagawea) members.

Centering Sacagawea’s Story

• Sacagawea’s Background

  • Likely Shoshone by birth, kidnapped at 12 by Hidatsa, trafficked, and either sold or “won” by Charbonneau, whom she married; she joined the expedition at 16 or 17 and while pregnant (08:07).
  • Margaret Hittle: “Apart from being a young girl who experienced traumatic separation from her family… she was known as being a really good swimmer of the breaststroke… an adventurous, a brave and kind person.” (08:07)

• Experience on the Expedition

  • Sacagawea was rarely named in the journals, more often referred to as “that Indian woman” or “the interpreter’s wife,” yet pivotal stories from the journey showcase her resolve:
    • She famously saved valuable scientific equipment during a canoe capsize while her husband panicked (11:19).
    • Though young, mothering, and mostly sidelined, her skills, knowledge of edible plants, and symbolic presence as a peaceful woman with a child were crucial and respected by the party (11:19, 20:51).

The Layered Roles of Other Key Figures

Lewis and Clark

• Both were Virginians from enslaving, plantation-owning families; Lewis was close to Jefferson and served as the expedition’s scientific mind; Clark was a cartographer and primary journal keeper (13:53).

York

• Clark’s enslaved servant took part in the expedition, shouldered the same dangers and responsibilities but remained enslaved afterward, despite repeated petitions for his freedom (15:40).
• Margaret Hittle: “No matter how many times York asked for freedom, Clark consistently refused… York spends the rest of his life in slavery under the Clark family.” (42:42)

The Expedition as a Microcosm

• The group included Métis boatmen and reflects the complex, multi-cultural realities of North American frontiers, contrary to simplified historical narratives (15:49).

Life on the Trail & Encounters with Indigenous Peoples

• Hardships and Adaptation

  • Extreme discomfort, hunger, cold, and the challenge of river travel with small boats.
  • Sacagawea’s background in migratory Indigenous life gave her practical resilience (18:29).

• Diplomatic Value of Sacagawea

  • Her presence eased tensions in Native encounters, signifying peaceful intent (20:51).
  • Margaret Hittle: “Having a woman and having children in your group is a sign of peace…” (20:51)
  • She joined the expedition at Fort Mandan (February 1805), brought along as a linguistic intermediary by Charbonneau (21:27).

• Encounters with Nations

  • The expedition encountered the Lakota, Shoshone, and Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), each meeting shaped by the local context and complicated by the diversity of Native America (19:49, 25:53).
  • Shoshone Encounter: Sacagawea reunited with her brother (or cousin—translation ambiguity), which facilitated crucial horse trades (24:36).
    • Hittle (on the brother/cousin question): “…part of the problem of translation, because the word for brother and male cousin… is the same.” (24:41)
  • Nimiipuu Encounter: Assistance pivoted on the intervention of an Indigenous woman and the abundance of camas bulbs, though new foods made the men sick (25:53).

Importance and Erasure of Sacagawea

• She was essential for survival—providing food and negotiation routes that allowed the journey to proceed, especially after reunification with her kin unlocked resources and goodwill (30:58).

  • Hittle: “She made it possible for the journey to continue multiple times.” (30:58)

• Despite her vital contributions, she remained largely unacknowledged in the records, relegated to the background (32:06).

  • Memorable Moment: Clark wanted to adopt her baby, Jean Baptiste; Sacagawea refused to give him up while nursing (32:13).
  • Despite her daring, the expedition’s leaders never fully credited her. “She remains relegated to the background and very rarely even mentioned by name.” (32:06)

At the Pacific: Sacagawea’s Moment

• Famous Whale Scene
  • At Cannon Beach, Oregon, she insisted on seeing the ocean and the beached whale, asserting her agency after such a grueling journey (35:21).
    • Quote (Lewis’ journal, via Hittle): “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.” (35:21)
  • This story is emphasized as a rare instance where Sacagawea’s own wishes and humanity—her curiosity, resilience, and insistence—shine through the colonial narrative (37:43).

The Journey’s Aftermath: Fates of the Major Figures

Meriwether Lewis

• Died young in 1809, likely by suicide; “struggles with alcohol” and depression (38:45).

William Clark

• Rewarded with land and government positions, including Superintendent of Indian Affairs, but his actions did not reflect understanding or respect for Indigenous nations or York’s humanity (40:10).

York

• Never granted his freedom despite repeated requests; “spent the rest of his life in slavery under the Clark family… received no money or compensation for his part in the expedition.” (42:42)

Sacagawea

• Her fate is contested:
  • The written record says she died of fever in 1812 (44:34).
  • Shoshone and Hidatsa oral tradition claims she lived into her 80s, had additional children, and died decades later (44:34).
  • The written history only briefly mentions her post-expedition, reflecting the erasure common in colonial records.
  • Statues across the U.S. overwhelmingly center on Lewis, Clark, and even Seaman the dog, with far fewer for York or Sacagawea (43:13).

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau

• Sacagawea’s son, adopted by Clark, received a European education, traveled with a German duke, became a multilingual guide, fur trapper, and died during the Gold Rush (46:43).
  • Hittle: “Pretty much every important epoch, every important era in American history. There he is.” (47:27)
  • Notably, he loved quoting Shakespeare.

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Rethinking the Expedition’s Legacy

Rewriting the Myth

• Margaret Hittle: “From my perspective, as someone who works in Indigenous studies, I think that the Corps 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.” (48:17)
• She urges recognition that the mythic narrative—of peaceful discovery and exploration—masks the dispossession and colonial violence central to the journey’s legacy.
• Still, the story holds individual human bravery and themes of hope, resilience, curiosity, and contradiction.

Reframing Through Indigenous Voices

• Indigenous oral histories persist and add nuance, continuation, and resilience to the narrative—far beyond the brief span of Lewis and Clark’s journey (51:27).
• Hittle: “We could flip some of these narratives. Where Native people become passive victims… When you look at the Lewis and Clark narrative through Sacagawea’s lens, it is a story of contradictions. It’s a story of hope and survival… of the beginning of loss and the taking of Indigenous sovereignty… But… the Shoshone people continue. The Hidatsa people continue. The Nimiipu people continue… We’re just starting to hear them and to share them on a more national scale.” (51:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “This is the great on sight unseen real estate purchase of all time.” – Don Wildman (05:40)
• “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.” – Journal entry, relayed by Margaret Hittle (35:21)
• “She remains relegated to the background and very rarely even mentioned by name.” – Margaret Hittle on how Sacagawea is treated in historical records (32:06)
• “I think that the Corps of Discovery should be remembered as an invasion… The goal was never to live and coexist with Native nations, but to dominate Native nations. That’s how American policy worked.” – Margaret Hittle (48:17)
• “What’s new to someone like me who’s not Shoshone?… 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.” – Margaret Hittle (51:27)

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

• Background & Objective of the Expedition: 04:41–06:24
• Sacagawea’s Origin and Role: 08:07–11:19
• York, Métis participants, and group dynamics: 13:53–16:00
• Day-to-day trail life and Indigenous encounters: 18:17–22:44
• Family reunion with Shoshone (horse trading): 24:36–25:53
• Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) encounter and hardship: 25:53–29:10
• Sacagawea’s impact on the journey’s survival: 30:58–32:06
• Whale story and Sacagawea’s insistence to see the ocean: 35:21–37:43
• Aftermath and fates of Lewis, Clark, York, Sacagawea, Jean Baptiste: 38:45–48:02
• Indigenous perspective and reframing the myth: 48:17–52:47

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Conclusion

Re-examining Lewis and Clark’s expedition through the lens of Sacagawea and Indigenous perspectives demands we reconsider the journey’s legacy—as both a human survival epic and an episode of colonial encroachment. Margaret Hittle contends that centering Native voices, especially around figures like Sacagawea, illuminates a story not of passive participants but of active, resilient, and marginalized people whose legacies continue in their communities today.

As host Don Wildman notes in closing:
“You see this incredibly brave woman… Did I know her? No, I didn’t. But I’m assuming that a person of her age and her circumstance [was] incredibly courageous and bold and adventurous… I’m left with pride for Sacagawea.” (49:43)

Transcript

[Don Wildman]

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[Margaret Hittle]

Hello. I'm excited to be here.

[Don Wildman]

Before we get into the events of the expedition, Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, 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?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 taught 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.

[Don Wildman]

Sure. This is the great on sight unseen real estate purchase of all time. I mean they just did this and, and now these, these several guys who are about to discuss in in more detail, take off in what's called the core Discovery Expedition. 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, and what, 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. Meriwether 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?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 US army soldiers. And then York, who is enslaved by Clark. He was born into slavery 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 Drouillard. And that's most of the group that sets out from St. Louis.

[Don Wildman]

The expedition took roughly two years. Begins in May 1804, 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 river when it's flooded. That, that is to. It's so funny. I went there on a trip, 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 Clatsop in what is today Oregon. But the individual we're most interested in today is Sacagawea. Who was she and how had she been hired or is hired the right word?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 Sacagawea, she was Shoshone, although there are some Hidatsa people who. And some Crow people who say that she was in fact Hidatsa and crowd. 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 Hidatsa 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. 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 kind person.

[Don Wildman]

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. And paddle off into the great unknown, which would have been unknown to her at the time. Of course, you know, she's. She's, I guess, born in what would be today Idaho.

[Margaret Hittle]

Right.

[Don Wildman]

That. That territory is generally where she's from. And then the trafficking and the. The passage she goes on lands her. 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.

[Margaret Hittle]

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 wor. Very bad boatman by Lewis and Clark, but a decent cook, so.

[Don Wildman]

Oh, well, there you go. 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, here 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.

[Margaret Hittle]

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. And 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. It's clear from these little notes that she was respected in many ways and also sidelined in many ways. Attention, right?

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. Forthright personality, a leadership quality to her. And never mind, you know, as she's saving that scientific equipment, she's putting her baby aside. You know, she's right, right. She's jumping in the water, having. Putting. Put her infant over there. Let me save the. 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 Charbonneau, during the journey, then carried him along the way and on a cradleboard on her back. That's the classic symbol, which is on the dollar bill, 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. And help you folks not die. Her story is more about a rougher persuasion.

[Margaret Hittle]

Right, right, right. The hard thing about Sacagawea 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.

[Don Wildman]

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. 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. His origins here. Lives to 1832. Was probably born into 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, you know, physical tasks, of course, of hunting and gathering, keeping these people alive, building forts, caregiving to Charles Floyd and Sacagawea. 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.

[Margaret Hittle]

Right. Well, and even the boatsmen, a lot of the boatsmen were Metis, so mixed. Often Cree or Ojibwe and French.

[Don Wildman]

Yes.

[Margaret Hittle]

So just another example of already the interchange of people and relationships and cultures that was happening in North America.

[Don Wildman]

Let's take a short break and digest that for now. When we come back, Margaret and I will be talking more about the expedition and how it up ended unfolds.

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[Don Wildman]

Welcome back. We're talking with Margaret Hill of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. 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?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 Sacagawea would have had is that she comes from a nation that is used to moving. Both the Shoshone and the Hidatsa 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 move 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.

[Don Wildman]

And we're talking about small boats, a series of these boats which are moving along waters that are probably moving against them times. You know, this is a hard, 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.

[Margaret Hittle]

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.

[Don Wildman]

And as a result, Sacagawea 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, I mean, it's quite a different. Quite an amazing sight, I would imagine.

[Margaret Hittle]

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 communities, diplomatic doors for Lewis and Clark.

[Don Wildman]

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 did she start from the beginning?

[Margaret Hittle]

So, no, she joins in February of 1805.

[Don Wildman]

Ah, okay.

[Margaret Hittle]

They are at a fort outside of where the Mandin and Hidatsa live. They are at this fort. Charbonneau approaches them and says, hey, do you need an interpreter? I speak Hidatsa, although he actually speaks terrible Hidatsa and even worse English. But he says, I speak Hidatsa. I have this wife. She speaks Shoshone, we could be useful to you. And so that's how they join the expedition in North Dakota.

[Don Wildman]

I think I'd cast Randy Quaid in the role of Charbonneau, wouldn't I?

[Margaret Hittle]

I think that would be a great choice.

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Yes.

[Don Wildman]

Their roots are not entirely unknown, and this is me piecing this together. They're traveling on routes. I mean, some of these guys are fur trappers or know these. These traditional routes to go into these. These lands. But that's obviously not going to do the job as far as understanding the indigenous peoples that out there, which is such a big part of this. And so Sacajawea 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.

[Margaret Hittle]

Well, it's possible that it is her home.

[Don Wildman]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Margaret Hittle]

So she either was born in the Shoshone nation and was kidnapped by the Hidatsa, or she was born to a Hidatsa father and Crow mother. And if that's the case, she would have known the Shoshone due to, like, a diplomatic or trade encounter earlier where her father adopted a Shoshone person who she then sees at this encounter.

[Don Wildman]

There you go. Thank you for indulging all of this, because what we're really talking about in a bigger sense is the absolute naivete of white Europeans encountering this entire world that has been there for hundreds of thousands of years, which is a whole diverse. There's 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, you know, 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 are negotiating to trade for horses with a group of Shoshone. Sacagawea realizes at that moment that Shoshone chief leader was her brother. Tell me his name.

[Margaret Hittle]

His name is Kameoe.

[Don Wildman]

And he was her brother. Right?

[Margaret Hittle]

He was either her brother or her cousin. This again, is part of the problem of translation, because the word for 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.

[Don Wildman]

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 are. Know each other and stories from each other all over the place. And they tell these stories in these journals. Louis. August 17, 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 Kamehameha. The meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Sacajawea and an Indian woman who had been taking prisoner at the same time with her. Another key encounter comes in the fall of September, 1805. And we're in really. This is the first six months or so of this. Of this journey. Things are going badly at this point. Tell me, tell me what happens when they encounter the Nez Perce. That. That. That nation of indigenous people, and that's. They're not their name, of course. What are they? What's the real name?

[Margaret Hittle]

Their name for themselves is the Nimi Poo, which means the people.

[Don Wildman]

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.

[Margaret Hittle]

So when they meet the Nimiipou, they have really good timing because they happen to meet them at their camas gathering site. So camas is hardy bulb. It's a kind of like lily that the Nez Perce, the Nimi Poo people, eat, right? So they encounter them in a valley where they are harvesting camas, which means that the Nez Perce 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 Nimipu oral tradition, there is a woman who had been taken captive by the Blackfeet earlier, traded through the northwest, similar to Sacajawea this whole problem of trafficking Native women has a long history, and today has 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 Corps of Discovery, and they feed Lewis and Clark's group, and they give them camas 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. Camas is incredibly fiberful, and so it makes them very sick for, like, two weeks until they adjust to this food.

[Don Wildman]

One of those journal entries I'm going to read. September 20, 1805. This is written by Clark. Wednesday, September 20, 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, past ahead of several streams on a dividing ridge, and at 12 miles, descended the mountain to a level pine. We're talking about an entire huge hike here, and it's all one little paragraph.

[Margaret Hittle]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

We proceeded through the beautiful country for three miles to a small plain 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? You know, how. What is the different perceptions of these Indigenous tribes as these guys come along?

[Margaret Hittle]

Some of the Native nations who encounter Lewis and Clark have general information like they are aware because, again, the west was a place full of movement and encounters between people. The Nimiipu 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 plains. 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 relationships, but was interested in exploiting their lands and people.

[Don Wildman]

Yes, exactly. There's an enormous story to be told about the day to day life of this. 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?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 Sacagaweo reunites with her kin, they're willing to trade horses. So very basically. Right. She made it possible for the journey to continue multiple times.

[Don Wildman]

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 in time in history. They must have softened about her and, and valued and understood where they would be without her, right?

[Margaret Hittle]

No.

[Don Wildman]

Oh, gosh, I didn't want to hear or anyone listening, really. Like, I mean, she's given birth. She got on pregnant. She gave birth. 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?

[Margaret Hittle]

Nope. She remains relegated to the background and very rarely even mentioned by name.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Wow.

[Margaret Hittle]

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. Right, 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.

[Don Wildman]

Yes, please.

[Margaret Hittle]

But she won't give up her baby. I think there probably was some real affection of Clark towards Sacagawea. I think he probably did respect her as a human being, but it's not something that he takes the time to write down.

[Don Wildman]

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, Charbonneau. Charbonneau as we've described. It's just so painful to imagine that experience for this person. Thrown to the wolves of a sort of. 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 halfway home at this point.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

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[Don Wildman]

We're back with Margaret Hennel. 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 Sacagawea reacted to seeing the ocean? I'm just curious if there is any way of understanding this.

[Margaret Hittle]

So this is one of my favorite stories about Sacagawea 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.

[Don Wildman]

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, as we all know is impossible to describe until you're looking at it. And there's this whale. You know, it's just, you know, evidence of, of these strange creatures, these monstrous creatures inside this water. And, and that's when Mary Lewis would lean over and he says, it's a mammal, not a fish. No, he didn't say.

[Margaret Hittle]

Right. Yes. The scientific, the scientific classification there.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Absolutely.

[Margaret Hittle]

Also, Sacagawea so often is reduced to a symbol.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah.

[Margaret Hittle]

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 corps 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.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, this all happened on Cannon Beach, Oregon, which you can visit yourselves anytime. It's very famous. That reaches the peak, basically, of. Or the apex of the trip, I suppose. They've. 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 Zecodea. But let's start with Meriwether Lewis. What is his fate in life?

[Margaret Hittle]

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.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, one of these guys, and I guess it was Mary Weather. Lewis was a very depressed guy, wasn't he? He was. He went through a lot of depression.

[Margaret Hittle]

Yes. And struggles with alcohol.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. That's why we suggest that he was. It 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 is. No, he's not. He's not well versed in anything. In 1822, President Monroe appoints Clark Superintendent of Indian Affairs. And in this role, he exercises 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. And there's this man who has had this very intimate contact with these. With these peoples through the help of Sacagawea. Did that temper his view of those peoples or what was his position as a result?

[Margaret Hittle]

I think I'm going to disappoint you with my answer once again.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah.

[Margaret Hittle]

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, you know, 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.

[Don Wildman]

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 yourself in that position, how could you, after all those years, all those months of traveling in such intimacy and understanding these, the diversity, then come back and say, okay, yeah, we need to take this place over. You know, it's. It's really impossible for a modern mind to really grasp, right?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 becomes Jean Baptiste guardian because Charbonneau sells their land and, you know, moves back up to North Dakota. It's not clear again how Sacagawea 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 affection, but that didn't translate into policy that respected the humanity and sovereignty of Native nations.

[Don Wildman]

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 in slavery under the Clark family. He received no money or compensation for his part in the expedition. Let's talk about Sacagawea. Where did she land in the conclusion of this journey?

[Margaret Hittle]

Before we talk about Sacagawea, can I mention. So one of the things that I think is really interesting about how the Lewis and Clark story is remembered is 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 Sacagawea. There's 12 statues with seamen in it, and there are only two statues of York.

[Don Wildman]

All right. And where could you find those statues? Where are they? All along the path.

[Margaret Hittle]

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.

[Don Wildman]

Sure. Yeah. Well, it becomes its own tourism and all the rest of that. Never mind the memorials do this journey. Sacajawea's lifetime goes from 1788 to 1812, which is only a few years after she returns. So what happens to her at the end of her life?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 Hidatsa have oral tradition that she lived to be in her 80s. On the Shoshone reservation, there is a grave that is supposed to be Sacagawea'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 Hidasah 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.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. For so many obvious reasons. The complications are, you know, make the story a little too. Too complicated to tell as we're even encountering now.

[Margaret Hittle]

Right.

[Don Wildman]

As far as what we want to believe, of course, her son after Charbonneau dies, her. 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. 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.

[Margaret Hittle]

Yes. Yep. And died in her grandson's arms.

[Don Wildman]

There you go. I want to read a little bit of the biography of Sacra'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 Wurttemberg. 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 part in the gold rush. Oh, my Lord, what a. What a life this man led.

[Margaret Hittle]

Yeah. Pretty much every important epoch, every important era in American history. There he is.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Exactly.

[Don Wildman]

Which is very. It's interesting. So much about this 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 for this.

[Margaret Hittle]

Well, and my. My favorite detail about Jean Baptiste, too, is that he apparently loved quoting Shakespeare. And 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.

[Don Wildman]

Definitely. In summation, Margaret, and addressing the American mythology of this, how do you think the Core of Discovery expeditions should be remembered in retrospect? And how is the storytelling of this changing even as we live?

[Margaret Hittle]

From my perspective, as someone who works in indigenous studies, I think that the Corps 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 worked. 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 Core 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.

[Don Wildman]

Which is such a huge story today. I mean, of course the Trump administration released Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History executive order and the removal of slides 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, 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, 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, to whitewash it with this glean of history that we want to see in Sacagawea. 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 Sacagawea. It's a shame that we need an American dollar coin to communicate that to most people, but. But that's how I feel. There you go, there's my blurt.

[Margaret Hittle]

Look, I can get on a soapbox with the best of them.

[Don Wildman]

So I mean, that's how I feel. Margaret, how does. But I'm more interested in you. You are a director of the Indigenous Studies at University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Listening to you tell this story, the Lewis and Clark expedition becomes the story of Sacagawea. I mean, that's a remarkable turnaround, isn't it?

[Margaret Hittle]

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 Sacagawea's lens, it is a story of contradictions. 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 that's never. It's never an end. The Shoshone people continue. The Hidatsa people continue. The Nimiipu 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.

[Don Wildman]

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 Hittle. She's the director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. She's an assistant professor of history there. Thank you so much, Margaret. I feel much closer to Sacagawea, and I haven't even begun. Thank you so much.

[Margaret Hittle]

You're welcome. We should go drink some coffee in her honor.

[Don Wildman]

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. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

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[Margaret Hittle]

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[Don Wildman]

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[Don Wildman]

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