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In August of 1806, William Clark wrote to Toussaint Charbonneau: “Your woman, who accompanied you that long dangerous and fatiguing route to the Pacific Ocean and back, deserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that route than we had in our power to give her.”
Clark invited the whole family to come to St. Louis. He repeated his offer to keep Pomp (Jean Baptiste) with him. Clark also said he would see to the boy’s education. A while later, the whole family did journey to St. Louis, where Clark was then Indian Agent for the Louisiana Territory. In October 1810, Charbonneau bought farmland from Clark near St. Louis. However, in the spring of 1811, he became homesick for the plains and his trading life. He sold the land back to Clark. Then he and Sacagawea sailed back up the Missouri. They left Pomp with Clark.
▲ There are two very different stories about Sacagawea’s death. The one that most historians accept was recorded by John Luttig. He was the clerk at Fort Manuel, in what is now South Dakota. On December 20, 1812, Luttig wrote in his journal: “This evening the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake squaw, died of a putrid fever. She was a good and the best woman in the fort, aged about 25 years. She left a fine infant girl.” Luttig later took the infant, named Lisette, to St. Louis. There, in Orphan’s Court, William Clark adopted Lisette and Jean Baptiste Charbonneau on August 11, 1813. If this account is correct, Sacagawea is buried somewhere on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, site of the old Fort Manuel, in present-day South Dakota. Those who dispute this account maintain that Charbonneau had many wives. They say the woman who died was not Sacagawea but another Shoshone.
◀ William Clark paid for Jean Baptiste’s schooling in St. Louis until at least 1820. In 1823, Prince Paul of Württemberg (Germany) met Jean Baptiste on a hunting trip to the United States. Jean Baptiste returned to Europe with the prince. He remained there until 1829, and became fluent in four languages. After that, Jean Baptiste returned to the U.S. and resumed the life of a frontiersman. By all accounts, he was an intelligent, courageous, and skillful guide and hunter. In 1866, he died of pneumonia. He is buried near Danner, Oregon.
▲ The oral tradition of the Shoshone says that Sacagawea wandered all over the West for many years. It says that she had several husbands and children. It also says that she eventually settled at the Wind River Reservation (above) in Wyoming with Jean Baptiste and Bazil, her sister’s son, whom she had adopted. This woman was called Porivo. People who met her said that she spoke both English and French. They said she told stories of traveling with Lewis and Clark. These stories included seeing the “big fish” on the ocean shore. They also said that she owned a treasured Jefferson Medal. This woman died on April 9, 1884.
Think Piece!
We will never know exactly how Sacagawea died. That’s partly because the clerk who recorded the death of an Indian woman at Fort Manuel described her only by her relationship to a man. He didn’t describe her by her own name. Which of the two versions of Sacagawea’s death do you like better? Why?
