How did Lewis and Clark feel about Native Americans?
Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals about how many of the Native Americans they met were honest, warm, and generous. Americans and Europeans in Lewis and Clark's time described Native Americans as “savage,” meaning cruel and uncivilized.
Several Native American tribes encountered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition expressed varying degrees of opposition to the expedition. Some of the tribes that resisted or opposed the expedition included the Teton Sioux, the Blackfeet, and the Nez Perce.
Ask almost any American today, who was Lewis and Clark's interpreter? Almost always, he or she will answer with the name of “Sacagawea.” She is rightly given credit for the rapport she brought to encounters with Indian sachems and headmen, particularly among her native Shoshone.
Lewis and Clark had three goals for their expedition: explore unknown territories, promote the sovereignty of the United States and its government, and establish trade with Native Americans. Lewis, Clark, and their men were successful in a large number of their dealings with Natives.
Lewis and Clarks' expedition succeeded because of the help from the Native Americans they encountered along the way. The Nez Perce tribe gave them food, took care of their belongings, and cared for their horses. One of the main reasons this tribe helped them was because of the relationship they had with Sacajawea.
Lewis and Clark were not respectful to the Native Americans they encountered on their journey. They killed a Native American unnecessarily, stole horses, and made unreasonable demands and threats.
For most of the journey there was mutual respect born of expediency. That respect and friendship was genuine nonetheless. Lewis and Clark left behind among many Indians a legacy of nonviolent contact. Those who came later enjoyed that legacy and too often betrayed it.
When she was approximately 12 years old, Sacagawea was captured by an enemy tribe, the Hidatsa, and taken from her Lemhi Shoshone people to the Hidatsa villages near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota.
Kidnapped at the age of 12 by the Hidatsa Tribe, a rival Native American group, she was then sold into slavery and forced to marry the French Canadian fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, who also claimed one other Shoshone woman as his “wife.”
While Lewis admired Sacagawea's poise in crisis, caring for her during a serious illness happened to fall to Clark. That seemed to initiate a special friendship between Clark and the Charbonneau family—one with lifelong consequences for Jean Baptiste.
How did Lewis and Clark communicate with the Indians?
In order to convey a message from Lewis and Clark to Shoshone leadership, the captains spoke English to Drouillard or Labiche who would speak French to Charbonneau, who would speak Hidatsa to Sacagawea who would finally speak Shoshone to the Shoshone leaders.
Lewis solicited the help of William Clark due to Clark's abilities as a draftsman and frontiersman, which were even stronger than Lewis's. Lewis so respected Clark that he made him a co-commanding captain of the Expedition, even though Clark was never recognized as such by the government.
After the expedition had set up camp, nearby Native Americans came to visit in fair numbers, some staying all night. For several days, Lewis and Clark met in council with Mandan chiefs. Here they met a French-Canadian fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, and his young Shoshone wife Sacagawea.
Neither Meriwether Lewis nor William Clark could speak directly to the Native Americans. They managed to communicate with them using hand signals, facial expressions, and through the use of interpreters. Sacagawea, a Shoshone Indian, and her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, were interpreters.
The boys came from Teton Sioux villages along the Bad River, opposite present-day Pierre, South Dakota. From the very beginning of their enterprise, the captains had known they would have to face the feisty Tetons.
In their speeches, Lewis and Clark called the Indians “children.” To explorers, the term expressed the relationship of ruler and subject. Clark modeled this speech to the Yellowstone Indians on one that Lewis gave to Missouri River tribes.
There was some disagreement over what to name the curious creatures. Lewis called them “barking squirrels” while Clark referred to them as “ground rats” or “burrowing squirrels.” It was Sergeant John Ordway, an Army volunteer, who first called them prairie dogs.
Sacagawea was not deaf. Her most important role in the Lewis and Clark expedition was as a translator. She spoke her native Shoshone language and Hidatsa, another Native American language.
Some fictional accounts speculate that Sacagawea was romantically involved with Lewis or Clark during their expedition. But, while the journals show that she was friendly with Clark and would often do favors for him, the idea of a romantic liaison was created by novelists who wrote much later about the expedition.
Answer and Explanation:
After Sacagawea's death in December 1812, her husband took both of her children to William Clark in St. Louis, Missouri. Clark had previously promised to provide an education for Jean Baptiste. Clark adopted both children.
Are there any real pictures of Sacagawea?
Sacagawea is one of the most depicted Native American women in history, with more statues than any other American woman. Sacagawea's image is in books, movies, paintings, stamps and currency. But not all images of Sacagawea look the same since there weren't any photographs of her.
There is no known image of Sacagawea that was made of her during her lifetime, so no one can be sure what she really looked like. Yet because the Lemhi Shoshone woman has been the subject of so many statues and paintings, especially since about 1900, we have a rich heritage of artists' conceptions to contemplate.
Hidatsa oral history states that she was actually born a Hidatsa, originally captured with her brother Jamawaih and a sister by the Shoshone as a very young girl, and the raid when she was 10-12 simply recaptured her to her own people. Some say she was not bought by Charbonneau but won in a gamble.
The circle marks the approximate place where Lewis and three companions camped with eight Blackfeet Indians on the evening of July 26, 1806, along Two Medicine River. The next morning, a fight erupted when the natives tried to seize the explorers' rifles and run off with their horses.
Lewis and Clark NHT Visitor Centers and Museums
The Two Medicine Fight Site represents the first encounter with the Blackfeet Nation, a Native American Tribe that for much of the trip through Montana had been narrowly avoided.
