Shoshone Interpreter

Bird Woman.

Sacagawea, the Bird Woman, played an important role in opening up the western territories for settlement by Americans. She was a Shoshone born in the western Rocky Mountains around 1788. When she was about ten or eleven, she traveled east with her family to Three Forks, where the headwaters of the Missouri River begins, in present-day Montana. While there they were attacked by Minnetaree warriors, and Sacagawea and another girl were taken captive. It is not certain how long she remained the captive of the Minnetarees, but at some point she became the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trapper and interpreter, and left them.Lewis and Clark. In November 1805 she and her husband traveled to the camp of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark near the Mandan tribe in North Dakota. She was approximately sixteen years old at the time. When Lewis...