Note 3 — Chapter I

Toussaint Charbonneau had been an employé (1793-94) of the North West Company, at Pine Fort on the Assiniboin. About 1796 he came among the Minitaree (Hidasta) on Knife River, living at their central village, Metaharta. Lewis and Clark found him among the Mandan, with whom they wintered (1804-05). They engaged him as an interpreter for their detachment. His chief qualification for that service was that he had for his squaw a young woman of the Shoshoni (or Snake) tribe, who some five years previous, when a child, had been captured by a war party of Minitaree. Her name is given by Lewis and Clark, in their journals, both as Sacajawea and Sahgahjawea, meaning “bird woman,” but modern students of Indian linguistics state that the proper phonetic spelling is Tsakákawea, Sakákawea, Sakágawea, or Sacágawea—preferably the last. The place of her capture was Fort Rock, at the Three Forks of the Missouri (Gallatin, Jefferson, and Madison rivers). Sacajawea—as she has come to be known in historical accounts—and her infant son accompanied Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, her services proving valuable both as interpreter and guide. Upon the return journey, the explorers offered to take Charbonneau and his squaw to the settlements, but they preferred remaining among the Mandan. Charbonneau was seen (1833) in the Minitaree villages by Prince Maximilien (see vols. xxii, xxiii, and xxiv of our series). Five years later Larpenteur encountered him in the same region, when he speaks of him as an old man. See Coues (ed.), Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri (New York, 1898). This is the last known of Charbonneau. An Indian visiting St. Louis in 1902, claimed to be a great-grandson of Charbonneau and Sacajawea.—Ed.