In the early 1800s, Sacajawea (1784-1812) accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their historical expedition from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean. Sacajawea is responsible in large part for the success of the expedition, due to her navigational, diplomatic, and translating skills.
Sacajawea was an interpreter and guide for and the only woman member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806. She was born somewhere between 1784 and 1788 into the Lehmi band of the Shoshone Indians who lived in the eastern part of the Salmon River area of present-day central Idaho. Her father was chief of her village. Sacajawea's Shoshone name was Boinaiv, which means "Grass Maiden." The primary documentation of Sacajawea's life is contained in the journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, a lawyer and a clerk of a fur trading company who led an expedition authorized by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 to explore the recently purchased Louisiana Territory.
