In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we explore the extraordinary journey of Sacagawea, a nursing teenager travelling across North America with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Corps of Discovery from 1804–1806. Looking beyond the legend, we examine her role as a traveller, cultural mediator, and Native American woman navigating survival, motherhood, and agency in a rapidly changing America.
Join us as we gently dismantle the stereotypes attached to Sacagawea to tell her story as a voyager and cultural pioneer learning to move between two radically different worlds.
Was she the faithful guide so often portrayed in American history books? A collaborator in a process that brought devastation to Indigenous peoples across the United States? Or was Sacagawea acting for her own reasons – making the best of a situation she did not choose, while doing what she believed was right for herself and her newborn child?
Do you know someone who loves travel? How about someone who loves great stories from history? Send them a link to this episode. It’s an even better gift than a dead sea otter. Just ask Thomas Jefferson.
Born into a world shaped by seasonal migrations and annual rhythms, her tribe, the Shoshone, were part of a complex network of exchange, cooperation and conflict with neighbouring peoples, including the Hidatsa, Mandan, Sioux and Crow – each with their own languages, customs and political realities. It was a world Sacagawea understood instinctively, and one the expedition did not.
Along the way, she repeatedly saved Lewis and Clark from disaster, asserted herself when it mattered – insisting on being allowed to see a beached whale – and experienced moments of deep emotion, including a brief reunion with her long-lost brother, only to be forced to leave him again.
This is a story of a Native American woman negotiating colonial expansion, motherhood on the move, and the power of finding your voice in a world being reshaped around you. We finish the episode by exploring how modern travellers can follow in Sacagawea’s footsteps today along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, tracing her route through some of the most dramatic landscapes in the United States – from the Missouri River breaks to the mountain passes of her Shoshone homeland.
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