LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Sacajawea: Clark Corps
built 634 days ago
Sacajawea knew she had reached her home when she found the rocks she had hidden behind during the Minnetaree raid. The explorers found old campfires and footprints, but no Indians. Sacajawea was sad when she walked through Indian village because she could not find her family. When Sacajawea reached the chief's teepee she found her brother. She told her brother how Clark had saved her life and that he was her friend. Then she asked for horses for their trip west.
Source:
After the expedition was over, Charbonneau, Sacajawea, and Jean Baptiste sailed down the Missouri to St. Louis to meet Clark. They lived there a short time until Charbonneau became restless. They later joined the Manuel Lisa fir trading party. Charbonneau went was far as Mandan country where the new Ft. Manuel would be built on the border of North and South Dakota. Sacajawea was with him.
Source:
During her youth among the Shoshoni and the Hidatsa, Sacajawea learned much that would later enable her to help the Lewis and Clark Expedition. For instance, she became an expert in the local flora, becoming skilled at finding berries and nuts, a skill that would help feed the expedition and diversify its diet. Perhaps most importantly, her early capture by enemies accustomed her to hardship; somehow, Sacajawea managed to develop into a cheerful person who accepted the most difficult situations calmly. For this reason, she would practically never complain during the expedition, despite carrying a baby on her back on an 8,000-mile trek, a grueling journey that led even rugged frontiersmen into ill health and exhaustion.
Source:
The film presents a similar scene in which Sacajawea realizes that Clark?s true place is in the parlor with a dainty cloud of finery and she must return to her people. In the novels, she bravely understands that her place is with Charbonneau, even if this means « wearing her life away in hopeless drudgery as one of the Frenchman?s squaws. » (Hueston 334) The fate which the novelists imagine for Sacajawea after the expedition is similar to Otter Woman?s (Charbonneau?s first wife) ; a life of slavery made all the more ignoble because Charbonneau, obsessed with young girls, marries again, as we saw in the passage above. Peattie goes further, imagining the Frenchman beating Sacajawea, causing her to run away from him : « He had heard that Charbonneau had struck her once too often, this time at the instigation of a new young wife, and Sacajawea had walked forth from his roof, free at last because her son, grown a man, no longer needed a father. » (Peattie 264) Finally, despite Clark?s generosity, Charbonneau decides to return to the Mandan village. The novelists interpret this as the sign that the Frenchman cannot readjust to civilized life in St. Louis, is too lazy for the hard life of farming, and is bored with the monogamous lifestyle imposed on him.
Source:
Though it was her husband who was chosen for his trapping experience and knowledge of the rural western geography, Sacajawea proved the most useful to the expedition, as she was knowledgeable about food sources and the Yellowstone area. During the journey, she was reunited with her Shoshone brother, and with his help the group was able to survive a winter and obtain horses. Though she made the trip with an infant strapped to her back, she was recognized throughout Clark's journal as one of the bravest members of the expedition. When her boat was overturned during a squall, Sacajawea maneuvered a white-capped waterway, simultaneously collecting the maps and materials that had been thrown from the boat, while keeping both herself and her infant son from drowning.
Source:
Contrary to popular opinion, Sacajawea did not serve as a guide for the party. She did... lead the group to the mountains where her people lived and where Lewis and Clark hoped to buy horses. By August 1805, the corps had located the Shoshone tribe and Sacajawea was brought in to translate. As it turned out, the tribe's chief was her brother Cameahwait, who agreed to sell the party the needed horses and also sketched a map of the country to the west, as well as provided a guide to take them safely through the mountains. On the return trip from the Pacific Ocean, as they approached the Rocky Mountains in July of 1806, Sacajawea advised Clark to cross into the Yellowstone River basin, later chosen as the optimal route for the Northern Pacific Railway to cross the continental divide.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Clark Corps