The Story Of Sacajawea

As a young girl, Sacajawea was separated from her family when she was captured by a band of Minnetaree warriors and taken to be their slave. Several years later, she was bought by a French fur trader to be his wife. Then, in 1804, when she was only sixteen years old, Sacajawea met Lewis and Clark. Carrying her infant son on her back, Sacajawea helped guide the famous team of explorers through the uncharted terrain of the western United States. Her courageous efforts made an important contribution to America's history.

More than 200 years ago, explorers went on a journey to the Pacific Ocean. With the help of a young American Indian girl, the trip was a success. Her name was Sacajawea.

Clad in a doeskin, alone and unafraid, she stood straight and proud before the onrushing forces of America's destiny: Sacajawea, child of a Shoshoni chief, lone woman on Lewis and Clark's historic trek -- beautiful spear of a dying nation. She knew many men, walked many miles. From the whispering prairies, across the Great Divide to the crystal capped Rockies and on to the emerald promise of the Pacific Northwest, her story over flows with emotion and action ripped from the bursting fabric of a raw new land. Ten years in the writing, SACAJAWEA unfolds an immense canvas of people and events, and captures the eternal longings of a woman who always yearned for one great passion -- and always it lay beyond the next mountain.

A frank portrayal of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader, who, with his Shoshone Indian wife Sacagawea, joined the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803. While Sacagawea assumed legendary status as a "token of peace", Toussaint has been maligned in fiction and nonfiction alike.

The fascinating story of the young woman who made the historic Lewis and Clark expedition possible

Sacagawea was only sixteen when she made one of the most remarkable journeys in American history, traveling 4500 miles by foot, canoe, and horse-all while carrying a baby on her back! Without her, the Lewis and Clark expedition might have failed. Through this engaging book, kids will understand the reasons that today, 200 years later, she is still remembered and immortalized on a golden dollar coin.

Kessler supplies both the biography of a legend and an explanation of why that legend has endured. Sacagawea is one of the most renowned figures of the American West. A member of the Shoshone tribe, she was captured by the Hidatsas as a child and eventually became one of the wives of a French fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau. In 1805 Charbonneau joined Lewis and Clark as the expedition's interpreter. Sacagawea was the only woman to participate in this important mission, and some claim that she served as a guide when the expedition reached the upper Missouri River and the mountainous region. Although much has been written about the historical importance of Sacagawea in connection with the expedition, no one has explored why her story has endured so successfully in Euro-American culture. In an examination of representative texts (including histories, works of fiction, plays, films, and the visual arts) from 1805 to the present, Kessler charts the evolution and transformation of the legend over two centuries and demonstrates that Sacagawea has persisted as a Euro-American legend because her story exemplified critical elements of America's foundation myths-especially the concept of manifest destiny. Kessler also shows how the Sacagawea legend was flexible within its mythic framework and was used to address cultural issues specific to different time periods, including suffrage for women, taboos against miscegenation, and modern feminism.

Introduces the life of Shoshoni Sacagawea, from early childhood through her days guiding the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the American wilderness, and speculates on her life after that adventure.