{"id":1642,"date":"2023-02-25T21:09:22","date_gmt":"2023-02-25T21:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ltamerica.org\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2023-09-11T05:03:03","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T05:03:03","slug":"just-who-is-buried-on-the-wind-river-reservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ltamerica.org\/just-who-is-buried-on-the-wind-river-reservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Who Is Buried on\u00a0the Wind River Reservation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sacagawea has become a giant figure in American memory and mythology. There are more statues of her than any other woman in America. But we know little about the facts of her actual life.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Explorers Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, her son Jean Baptiste and husband Charbonneau at the mouth of the Columbia River, 1805. Drawing by Frederic Remington in Collier’s Magazine, 1906. (LOC).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Driving recently from Salida, Colorado, to Cody, Wyoming, I realized I was within range of the grave of Sacagawea<\/a> on the Wind River Indian Reservation<\/a> near Lander, Wyoming. I was in a bit of a hurry, but how many times in a life do you get close to a little visited Lewis and Clark memorial?<\/p>\n\n\n

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I had never been to this Sacagawea grave before, though I had driven the splendid state highway, WYO 789, between Lander and Thermopolis, Wyoming, a dozen or more times. After the usual small difficulties, I found the cemetery west of Fort Washakie<\/a>. It was about 7 p.m. on a perfect Great Plains day \u2014 a soothing breeze, a giant blue sky with high wispy clouds. I had seen photographs of the grave marker before, but I tiptoed through the dry grass of an acre of graves, mostly Native, to a statue of a young, beautiful woman leaning into the future. It had to be her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 40-something white couple was studying the signage, holding a video camera. It soon became clear that the woman was intending to record a video for her \u201cpodcast.\u201d I said, \u201cYou know that she is also buried in another place, don\u2019t you?\u201d \u201cYeah, we heard something about that,\u201d the man said. I said, \u201cThe other site is on the North Dakota-South Dakota border, at the confluence of the Missouri and the Grand Rivers.\u201d They listened politely but I could tell that my commentary was unhelpful, even annoying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sacagawea gravestone on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. The two shorter grave makers on either side are for her two sons. (Photo by Clay Jenkinson).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I said, \u201cIs this the actual grave?\u201d I was pretty sure it wasn\u2019t, but the woman solemnly informed me that this was exactly where she was buried, right under our feet. Saw it on the internet. I took some photographs of the memorial, from every angle, including the signage, and sat for a few minutes thinking about the rich tangled maze of the Sacagawea story. The fact is we don\u2019t know for certain where she is buried. We don\u2019t know for certain where or when she was born. And though we know some of the things she did in the course of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and a few of the things that happened to her along the way, we still don\u2019t know quite how to characterize her contributions to its success. And we still don\u2019t know quite how to define her role, official or unofficial, between November 4, 1804, and August 18, 1806.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sacagawea Is \u201cA Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma.\u201d <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Statue of Sacagawea at the Wind River Reservation cemetery. There are more statues of Sacagawea than any woman in America. (Photo by Clay Jenkinson).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that we know about Sacajawea\/Sacagawea\/Sakakawea\/Janey (Lewis and Clark spelled her name over a dozen ways<\/a>) would not fill a passport book. She gave birth to what Lewis called \u201ca fine boy\u201d at or near Fort Mandan<\/a> on February 11, 1805. She got very sick near the Great Falls of the Missouri; Lewis thought she might die. She gave William Clark two dozen weasel\u2019s tails for Christmas 1805 at Fort Clatsop<\/a>, near Astoria, Oregon. She insisted on seeing the beached whale on the Pacific Coast. She showed poise and resourcefulness when her inept husband Charbonneau nearly sank the White Pirogue on May 14, 1805, in eastern Montana. She appears to have done quite a bit of craft work along the trail, some of which she traded for a horse. She had a blue beaded belt that the captains appropriated to purchase \u201ca roab made of 2 Sea Otter Skins\u201d from the Chinooks. She danced for joy when she was reunited with the Shoshone near today\u2019s Salmon, Idaho. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Was she born Shoshone, captured by the Hidatsa, acculturated into Hidatsa traditions, and given a Hidatsa name \u2014 S\u00e2h-c\u00e2-gar me-\u00e2h<\/a><\/em> as Lewis thought he heard it \u2014 and married off to Toussaint Charbonneau<\/a>? Or as the distinguished Hidatsa elder Gerard Baker and other Knife River historians insist<\/a>, was she Hidatsa (or possibly Crow) all along, captured by the Shoshone, but safely back in the Hidatsa world by the time the Expedition reached the Mandan and Hidatsa villages at the end of October 1804? Did she die young, on December 22, 1812, at Fort Manual Lisa<\/a> on the Upper Missouri, of what a local official called \u201cputrid fever;\u201d or did she live for many decades after Lewis and Clark left the scene, become a much-respected holy woman, spend time among the Comanche, and die, at the age of 100 or more, on April 9, 1884, on the Wind River Indian Reservation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody knows for sure. Such inconclusive evidence as we have favors Sacagawea\u2019s early death. That was how William Clark understood it. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Sacagawea Golden Dollar minted between 2000\u20132008. It was the first dollar made with an outer layer of manganese brass, giving it a golden color.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The historians and the interpreters of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial did their best to retire the traditional view that Sacagawea guided<\/em> Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and back, but they were not successful. The website RoadsideAmerica.com<\/a> begins, \u201cIndian guide Sacajawea helped lead Lewis and Clark\u2019s expedition to the Pacific Ocean.\u201d In our national memory, the first or second most famous Native woman in American history will always be pointing towards the pass, towards Beaverhead Rock, towards Shoshone Cove, towards the Pacific, or \u2014 more accurately \u2014 towards Bozeman Pass. However erroneous this idea is, it has extraordinary tenacity, in part because it conforms to our desire to believe a comely and cooperative Native woman showed us the way to create Mr. Jefferson\u2019s \u201cempire for liberty such as the world has never previously seen.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I sat at the monument thinking about all of this, it became clear that the woman with the video camera was not going to record her podcast as long as I was within earshot. She seemed to think I would be a podcast killjoy, raising my eyebrow at whatever quirky, postmodern, free-floating, and ahistorical commentary she recorded at the site. I would have liked to have heard it, but since she wanted privacy, I moseyed on down to the actual grave marker (\u201cactual\u201d is a contested term here) to pay my respects. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Eva Emery Dye, American writer and historian. Author of “The Conquest – The True Story of Lewis and Clark,” published in 1902. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Whatever she actually was between 1787-1812 (or 1884), Sacagawea has become a giant figure in American memory and mythology. There are more statues of her than of any other woman in America. The modesty of the fact base has not prevented novelists, beginning with Eva Emery Dye<\/a> and more recently Anna Lee Waldo<\/a>, from writing heavy tomes about her life. Nature abhors a vacuum. We would give anything to be carried back in a time machine to an average day on the Lewis and Clark trail \u2014 to describe how she looked, how she dressed, when or if she smiled, how much she spoke, including how much English she picked up along the way, to observe her with her young son and her old husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would be a cultural revolution. But when that time traveler came back from the trail, even if possessing what Jefferson called \u201ca fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves,\u201d<\/a> would we choose to accept and absorb that testimony, or just continue to load onto her undoubtedly strong back whatever cultural baggage most satisfied us at any given time: guide, suffragette, Native diplomat, embodiment of peaceful intentions, exemplar of domesticity, or \u2014 as she has more recently been described \u2014 survivor, woman of pluck and resourcefulness, like the clich\u00e9 about Ginger Rogers<\/a>, doing all that they did, but in high heels and dancing backward?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Discover more on these topics at Listening to America<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sacagawea has become a giant figure in American memory and mythology. There are more statues of her than any other woman in America. But we know little about the facts of her actual life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[545,546],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-lewis-and-clark","tag-wyoming"],"yoast_head":"\nJust Who Is Buried on\u00a0the Wind River Reservation? - Listening To America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Just Who Is Buried on the Wind River Reservation? Sacagawea has become a giant figure in American memory and mythology. There are more statues of her than any other woman in America. 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