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The place and the event.
Shortly after the Corps of Discovery arrived on the Pacific West Coast, it was no coincidence that several members of the tribe appeared before Lewis and Clark wearing fine fur garments. These coastal tribes were commercially savvy. They had been trading with foreign sailors for years. They also knew what was on the explorer’s mind other than finding a trade route through the country.
Thus, Lewis and Clark were in awe of one particular sea otter shoulder cloak worn by a member of the tribe. But, they didn’t have enough tradable goods available to get it from him. The tribesman also wanted the blue beaded belt worn by the corps performer’s wife, Sacajawea. Did she voluntarily give it up for that purchase?
Sacajawea’s adolescence.
Some five years earlier, Sacajawea’s early teenage life underwent a tumultuous change. When she was a 12-year-old Lemhi Shoshone girl living near the Idaho-Montana border, she was captured by a group of Hidatsa warriors. From there, she was taken to a large Hidatsa-Mandan dual tribal village near the Knife and Missouri rivers in North Dakota, where she was adopted by a Hidatsa family. The practice of capturing children from different tribes was common among the plains tribes at the time.
For the next four years in her new home, she learned the Hidatsa language and worked with the village women in their large gardens. The Hidatsa and Mandan tribes were matrilineal matriarchal farming tribes. That is, the women there owned and inherited the 20-foot-wide earthen-covered huts and the huge gardens they maintained. They also headed the large clans within these tribes, while the men took care of the village defenses and hunting needs. In fact, the women of these two tribes grew so much food, which they stored underground during the winter months, that they readily traded portions of it for needed goods from various nonagricultural tribes and French and English trappers who passed through the region. .
During these four short years before marriage and before motherhood within her new tribe, Sacagawea, she must have made a favorable impression on the older women there. Her adoptive mother may have been influential in her Hidatsa clan, but no one knows for sure how much. Still, Sacagawea eventually received a blue beaded belt from an influential women’s society there. According to tribal historians, such belts were awarded to those who were hard-working and, perhaps, sensitive and well-grounded. The belt itself could have been three fingers wide, with an extended section hanging down at the point of attachment.
This belt meant a lot to Sacajawea. It meant more to her than mere success through her work. To her, this belt signified acceptance and achievement outside of her own tribal lineage. It was a visible sign of her worth as a person. This belt might have further inspired her to become a grounded teenager. It was then that she married a French-Canadian fur trader at the age of 16.
Meeting Lewis and Clark
Shortly after that, in late 1804, they put the Corps of Discovery there in her dual village, where she gave birth to a baby boy on February 11, 1805. Captain Lewis assisted with the delivery. The captains also hired her trapper husband, Touissiant Charbonneau, as an interpreter. She spoke French, Hidatsa, and Mandan, and she knew how to sign. It also turned out that Sacagawea, who spoke both Hidatsa and Shoshone, accompanied him and her son on this perilous journey. Her son was less than two months old when they left their village for the west.
During the journey west, Sacajawea showed substantial maturity and ability. Lewis and Clark praised her in her journal when she calmly retrieved floating items from the river as the boat she was on began to capsize in a wind storm. She also supplied the body with many wild foodstuffs, and did not think about it. In addition, she well remembered the landmarks of the Shoshone country and its language.
Therefore, he helped immensely with the necessary interpretations when the body reached his home tribe before crossing the Rocky Mountains. Also, when the body left this town for the west, she stayed with her fur-trapping husband to finish the journey. She and her baby could easily have stayed there among her own people now that her brother was the chief of that Shoshone tribe. Instead, she kept her husband and her body.
Back to the question.
Now back to the question: did Sacajawea voluntarily donate his belt for the purchase of that cape? Although it is not known for sure, he definitely could have done it at the behest of the corps’ mission to find a trade route, which he understood. After all, she had been watching the corps collect animal and plant specimens, hides and skins for several months by then.
So during that riveting moment of splendid fur sales, he could have given Lewis and Clark the go-ahead to add his belt to the trade package. In silence and with tears in your eyes, perhaps? However, he also knew that the coastal tribes knew that the corps had a vested interest in the fur industry at the time. This is why these tribes might demand the highly prized chieftain beads, like the blue ones on his belt for quality fur.
Furthermore, the day after purchasing that fur cloak, on November 21, 1805, Clark noted in his diary that Sacajawea had been given a “blue cloth coat” to compensate her for the exchanged belt. That blue coat could have been a highly embellished one of very fine fabric from a military uniform. For more information on Sacagawea, see the lewisclarkandbeyond Dr. Amy Mossett Bicentennial presentations and the following sites.