Leader to the West: Sacagawea by Lise Erdrich

In the year 1800, a young Shoshone girl, about 11 or 12 years , was busy helping prepare for winter.  She gathered roots and berries and firewood along the rive bank. She had to work quickly. They were in enemy territory and the enemy tribes had firearms.

Suddenly the camp exploded in noise and confusion. The enemy was attacking. The girl ran into the river, trying to escape Hidatsa warriors who grabbed her and sped away on horseback.

In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase, buying from France, sight unseen, a huge chunk of North America west of the Mississippi River and east of the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson chartered Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead an expedition to map the route up the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.  It was truly terra incognita, and partway up the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark realized that what they needed most was a guide, a translator to deal with the tribes along the way. And in a large Mandan-Hidatsa settlement, the two met up with a French trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau who offered to guide the expedition and his fifteen-year-old wife with the name of Sacagawea, a captive who spoke several languages.

Toussaint was a poor guide, but his wife, now with a baby on her back, shared her skills in medicinal plants and was able deal with the various tribes they encountered, keeping most such meetings peaceful and useful to both sides. But when the headwaters of the Missouri became unnavigable, the explorers knew that to find their way to the sea they were going to need to obtain horses from the Shoshone.

And when they soon encountered Shoshone warriors, Sacagawea recognized one of them, and in perfect Shoshone, urged them to take the explorers to their chief. At that point Sacagawea had an even bigger surprise:

Interpreting in the chief's council was a serious job. Sacagawea wanted to do her best, but when she looked at the face of the Shoshone chief, she burst into tears. He was her brother.

But through her tears, Sacagawea kept to her duty.

And with the help of the Shoshone and their fresh horses, the Lewis and Clark Expedition continued on to the Pacific Coast, where Sacagawea saw a beached whale and help negotiate with the local tribe to share some of its meat for the starved band. Now a voting member of the company, she traveled back east with the Expedition until they parted at Fort Mandan on the Missouri River, with Captain Clark's promise to help educate her now well-traveled son when he was older, as indeed he did.

And Sacagawea passed into history as a strong American woman and a legend of the West, as told in Liselotte Erdrich's Sacagawea (Carter G Woodson Award Book (Awards)) (CarolRhoda Books). Lise Erdrich, herself an Ojibway, sticks to the known elements of this historical account, including Sacagawea's heroic salvaging of key supplies when her own hapless husband caused their boat to capsize and Captain Clark's fondness for her young son, Pompy. Sacagawea's pivotal role in American history is stranger than fiction and Erdrich's account is a not-to-be-missed true adventure story for elementary middle readers and researchers. Beautifully illustrated by Julia Buffalohead and with an author's afterword, a timeline, maps, and bibliography, this book is both a good read and a reliable source for American history studies.

Says Booklist, The author is "...scrupulous about the facts, her personal story (including her anguished reunion with her brother) is set against the discovery expedition, during which she acts as interpreter and guide. The unforgettable full-page oil paintings, in warm earth colors, focus on the brave young woman, showing her roots, her extraordinary skills, her melancholy, and her bond with her child and with Clark."