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Why Is Sacagawea Important

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Sacagawea

Stephanie Krakowski
US History 1 Honors
Mrs. Farris
October 22, 2014 Sacagawea was one of the most important people to make the expedition of Lewis and Clark a success. She is the most well-known person for the expedition of Lewis and Clark. Despite Sacagawea facing difficult problems before joining the journey, she immediately proved to play a vital part to help the members of the Corps of Discovery along the journey. Sacagawea played a significant role in the success of the expedition of Lewis and Clark. Sacagawea was known to speak the language of the Shoshones which was her home village or tribe as well as being familiar with their culture. Sacagawea even gave birth to a child along the …show more content…

First, Sacagawea had many valuable skills such as an Indian language translator, navigator, and an expert on which foods are safe to gather along the journey. "The captains brought with them 43 men, 8 canoes, food, medicine, and gifts for the Indians." The environment was very diverse with mostly men and few women on the expedition. Sacagawea was able to change the atmosphere of the journey. She created a positive feeling on the expedition. The group was able to avoid the hostile Indians due to the peaceful symbol that Sacagawea represented. ""William Clark explained that “the Wife of Shabono [Charbonneau]…reconciles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions. A woman with a party of men is a token of peace.”" Sacagawea and her child represented peace to other tribes in the different regions that they came across during the journey. ""As Clark explained in his journals, Charbonneau was hired “as an interpreter through his wife.” If and when the expedition met the Shoshones, Sacagawea would talk with them, then translate to Hidatsa for Charbonneau, who would translate to French. The Corps’ Francois Labiche spoke French and English, and would make the final translation so that the two English-speaking captains would understand."" Not only could she understand different languages but she could also negotiate with different tribes. The members along the expedition of Lewis and Clark were …show more content…

Local Indians were kind enough and told the Corps about a whale being on the beach. There was a scarce amount of food during the winter and it was hard to obtain food during the season. When they had heard that there was a whale on the beach, Clark took this as an opportunity to get food. Clark got a group of men to accompany him to find the whale on the beach and possibly feed the Corps with oil and blubber. Sacagawea had yet to see the whole Pacific Ocean and wanted to take the opportunity to see the ocean finally on the beach. When Sacagawea asked Clark to join him on the beach he could not refuse. ""As Captain Lewis wrote on January 6, 1806, “[T]he Indian woman was very impo[r]tunate to be permited to go, and was therefore indulged; she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either.”" After they had discovered the whale and had eaten they decided to return back from the journey. On their journey back they had passed through Sacagawea's homeland, where she proved to be a valuable guide. "She remembered Shoshone trails from her childhood, and Clark praised her as his “pilot.” The most important trail she recalled, which Clark described as “a large road passing through a gap in the mountain,” led to the Yellowstone River.

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Sacagawea is a Shoshone Indian who helped navigate during the Lewis and Clark expedition. Her name means “Bird Woman’’ in Shoshone and “Boat Launcher’’ in Hidatsa. Sacagawea was born in 1788 Lemhi County, Idaho. Sacagawea is the daughter of the Shoshone chief. She not only helped navigate around the wilderness, but she was a good spokesperson between the Native Americans and explorers.

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Who is Sacagawea, Sacagawea is a born in Lemhi County, Idaho and helped Lewis and Clark with the Expedition the Pacific Coast. What did Sacagawea do? Sacagawea was a Shoshone interpreter for Lewis and Clark. When did she join the Expedition? Sacagawea joined the expedition when she was around the age of 12. Where did Sacagawea grow up? Sacagawea grew up around the Rocky Mountains and her father was the chief of the Shoshone tribe. Why Sacagawea is important?

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Then when she was 12 years old she was kidnapped by a group of Hidatsa Indians. The group of Hidatsa indians were her tribes enemy. Then she was traded or gambled off by a French Candadian fur trapper named Toussaint Charlameaic . After that Sacagewea then became pregnant with her first child Jean Bapitiste and his nickname was Little Pomp at age 16 . Then in 1804 she was invited to the Lewis and Clark expedition to be the navigator and interpreter.

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To understand sacagawea’s roll in the expedition, when we think about expeditions, especially one that is this long we think of it as this massive journey, of just traveling every day, packing up and moving and going forward and trying to figure out where they were going and how they would get there and what they would eat. Sacagawea played an important role, not as a guide as she’s been mythologized into, but as a person who could read the landscape fairly well. I think she could read rivers. She could read a valley. She had a sense of what the landscape said about direction and where they were going.

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They learned food and Navigation which was helpful. The expedition provided extensive facts of natural resources, size, minerals, and geology of the area. Lewis and Clark were able to document over 100 animal species and over 170 plants. If people hadn 't ever documented animals or plants, other people would only know what they saw and wouldn 't know the many different varieties and species that there are in this world. The Lewis and Clark expedition provided widespread knowledge about the topography of the Pacific Northwest and produced more than 140 maps of the region and we all know how important maps are to us in the past and present

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The year after his wife’s death in 1820, Clark married Harriet Kennerly Radford, a widow with three children, and fathered two more sons. A generous man, Clark served as legal guardian for Sacagawea’s children, cared for numerous relatives, and offered assistance to religious groups, missionaries, explorers, and travelers. On the other hand, Clark treated his slave York harshly upon their return from the expedition, although he claimed to have eventually freed him. When Lewis and Clark had problems with illnesses or anything like that the blackfoot indians would send their women to their camp to help them.

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They discovered many new plants and if they had not people would eat every plant they see and could have died. WIth the knowledge on these plants people would know what is edible and what is not. The discoveries about animals were important because people do not know which animals are dangerous and they might try to touch them which may cause death. Then they would also know which animals you can eat. Who is Sacagawea and why did they need

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As Lewis and Clark journeyed through the land they had met Shoshone woman

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Everyone knows about Sacagawea. Either its because she is on the american $1 coin or it’s because he assisted Lewis and Clark on their expedition. Let 's start more towards the beginning. According to http://www.biography.com/people/sacagawea-9468731#synopsis

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Lewis and Clark have created a legacy that deserves to be remembered. The number one reason that Lewis and Clark deserve to be remembered was for finding a way into the Far West to make friendly contact with the Indian groups for trade purposes. They made good friends with the Western Indians and brought back information about the west and their peoples. The expedition of Lewis and Clark helped set the stage for the settlement of the West. It also led into the Louisiana Purchase,

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According to the author, Sacajawea was a young Shoshone Native American woman. She played a very important role guiding Lewis and Clark the expedition through the northwest territory of the United States of America in 1805-1806. She was fearless and soon died of typhus and only lived to the age of 25. I hope you enjoy my paper. Before the expedition Sacajawea was born in 1789, in present-day Idaho.

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Some of the voyagers included the famous Sacagawea; a 16 year-old Native American who helped with translations in a peaceful demeanour that would disband hostility, all while caring for her infant. There was George Drouillard; a 28 year-old who was a good hunter equipped with the knowledge of Native American character and sign language, who also helped transport volunteers. Toussaint Charbonneau; a 37 year-old French Canadian man who lived among the Hidatsa people, and could translate and was known as the husband of Sacagawea, he boasted about skills he didn’t have and was lazy as well. Patrick Gass; he made detailed notes and coined the name “Corps of Discovery”. He also commanded the return portage around the waterfalls.

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Biography.com says “Sacagawea was chosen to accompany them (Lewis and Clark) on their mission. Lewis and Clark believed that her knowledge of the Shoshone language would help them later in their journey.” Because of her assistance in Lewis and Clark’s expedition, I believe Sacagawea should infact be recognized for her actions. One of the reasons why Sacagawea was chosen to join the men on their expedition was because like I said earlier, She was fluent with the Shoshone language, and some other languages. Ask.com says that “Sacagawea changed history in many ways, due to her ability to communicate in different languages and translate the message for Lewis and Clark during the expedition of exploring the new land.”

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George Rogers Clark once said: “If a country were not worth protecting, it was not worth claiming.” Nearly everyone knows how the United States gained recognition as an independent nation after the Revolutionary War. George Washington and his men fought to free the States in the East; however, few people know the story of how the country swelled in size. During the Revolutionary War, the actions of George Rogers Clark’s expedition, west of the Appalachian mountains, would later prove necessary for peace and expansion of the country’s frontiers. The future conqueror of the West grew up in Virginia, one of ten children of John Clark and Ann Rogers.

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Members chosen for the expedition were sought after for skills that included hunting, blacksmithing, and gunsmithing, making United States Army soldiers a good option for crew who traveled by land, water and horseback, for nearly 8,000 miles over mountains, through plains and by rivers (The Lewis and Clark Expedition, 2016). The success of the Lewis and Clark expedition was important to science, as they made important observations about the land of North America that lead to creation of maps with Captain Clark having the duty of mapping the landscape because of his experience: the result of maps made by Clark became one of the most important achievements of the western exploration. (The Lewis and Clark Expedition, 2016). The scientific information collected on geography, meteorology, cultures, and animal life and plant life were greatly important to the nation (Corps of Discover, 2016). The trip also was partially useful in creating peaceful relations with the American Indians in territories of the Northwest, although not all tribes were accepting of the gestures, giving gifts was important to building peaceful relationships with the American Indians (The Corp of Discovery, 2016).

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