Why did Lewis and Clark call the natives children?
In their speeches,
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.
Among the Plains tribes Lewis and Clark met were the Osage, Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow, and Mandan. Upon reaching the Rocky Mountains, Lewis and Clark entered the country of the Plateau Indians.
Sacagawea was either 16 or 17 years old when she joined the Corps of Discovery. She met Lewis and Clark while she was living among the Mandan and Hidatsa in North Dakota, though she was a Lemhi Shoshone from Idaho.
Because their St. Louis contacts had warned them about the often violent tactics used by the Tetons to control river traffic, the expedition was armed with more than gifts. Clark cryptically recorded that he and Lewis "prepared all things for action in case of necessity."
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.
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.
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.
In the last days of September 1804 an American exploring party commanded by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark spent four days with the Teton Sioux at a place where the Teton River—it was not yet called the Bad—runs into the Missouri.
The confrontation with the Teton Sioux late in September 1804, one of the few incidents on the entire journey involving hostile Indians, represented the Lewis and Clark Expedition's first major test.
Who kidnapped Sacagawea?
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.”
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.
Captain Lewis had the more dangerous assignment because his explorations took him to the lands of the feared Blackfoot and Gros Ventre Indians – warlike tribes already well known for attacking intruders in their territories.
In the summer of 1806, Lewis and three other men had separated from the rest of the expedition to explore the area around the Marias River. When they first encountered the young Blackfeet, relations had been friendly and the Indians had shared a campfire with the explorers.
Sacagawea was a member of the Agaideka (Lemhi) Shoshone, who lived in the upper Salmon River Basin in present-day Idaho. In about 1800, she was kidnapped by members of the Hidatsa tribe and taken to their homeland in the Knife River Valley, near present-day Stanton, North Dakota.
The Salish (Flatheads) initially lived entirely east of the Continental Divide but established their headquarters near the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Occasionally, hunting parties went west of the Continental Divide but not west of the Bitterroot Range.
Yes. And remarkably there was only one. Near present-day Sioux City, Iowa in June 1804, Sargent Charles Floyd died as a result of what is believed to be appendicitis.
The Shoshone were enemies of the gun-possessing Hidatsa tribe, who kidnapped Sacagawea during a buffalo hunt in 1800.
She was invaluable to them in many ways. The Native American tribes they encountered were open to her entreaties, and sometimes she could translate from their languages or through sign language. She knew some of the trails, so she was a helpful wayfinder for the white men who had never traveled West.
Are there descendants of Sacagawea?
Basically, Sacajawea's involvement with the Lewis and Clark Expedition was not of her own choice but the choice of others. A universal Native American teaching is to help others who are in need, and that is what she did on the expedition.
In Lewis and Clark's (and Jefferson's) vocabulary, all Indians were "savages." This applied to tribes the captains considered hostile, such as the Teton Sioux ("the vilest miscreants of the savage race," according to Clark), as well as those they considered helpful, such as the Mandans ("the most friendly and well ...
When Lewis's integrity was questioned over billing as a result of his time as Governor of Louisiana, he left St. Louis deeply troubled and attempted suicide on the boat ride south. A few days later, October 9, 1809, at a small inn on the Natchez Trace southwest of Nashville, Lewis apparently shot himself in despair.
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.
