Sacagawea

Learning about Sacagawea this week in both Chapter 8 and our other readings and videos was very interesting. Like I've said before in postings, in high school I was given a less descriptive and thorough history of her, though in this instance, it was not a contradictory version. I've read and learned before that she was the guide for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's expedition across the western half of North America, that she helped them greatly and translated for them when they met Native American tribes and nations, and that she was a Native American. However, some of the details about her were new to me, like that she was married to a French Canadian man, and that she later died of 'putrid fever', or typhus, and that Clark petitioned for and was granted custody of her two children.

In regards to the Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M'Intosh, and the following 'Doctrine of Discovery' that enabled legal status for European, Christian white men to have a legal right to the …show more content…
I would argue that she was probably, and most likely, indispensable to the expedition of Lewis and Clark, and it may have failed otherwise. She knew the native plants and food, knew the lands, the tribes and people, acted as an ambassador between the expedition and Native Americans they met, as well as an 'object of peace', and, as Lewis and Clark described her, was strong, brave, knowledgeable, and calm under duress, as evidenced when she saved many of their supplies after a boat carrying them capsized in a river. In addition, the fact that a Native American gave so much help to this group is in itself a near mythical status - however, I wonder that if she had been able to look into the future and see the future lives and fates of Native Americans, if she would have been so willing to help the American people survey and plan out their further takeovers of lands from Native