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Selects: Sacagawea: Impressive Teen · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's Select,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I've chosen our 2021 episode on Sacagawea, whose name I
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: learned to pronounce correctly after 45 years on the planet
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: in this very episode. She's one of those figures in
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: American history who's been morphed into more of a folk
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: legend than a real-life person. And I think that's because
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: we round out the contours of historic people so we
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: can teach young kids about them. And that after a while,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: that kiddified version is all they become in everyone's mind. So,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: like anyone, there's a lot more to Sacagawea than the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: average person realizes. But what's most amazing is that we
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: actually know a lot of that stuff about her. It's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: amazing because not only was she a Native American living
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the 19th century on the Great Plains,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: but she was a teenager and a girl. And yet,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: we know a bunch about her. And what we know
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: adds up to a pretty great person. That's why we
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: named this episode Impressive Teen. Hope you're impressed by her too.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and Jerry's over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: And I can't help but feel that I'm being subtweeted
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: What for? I don't know what that means.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's where you talk about somebody without directly talking
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: about them. You just kind of maybe talk about their behavior,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: how you disapprove of something that they did, but you
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: don't directly say this person did this and I don't
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: like it.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: You know, I, uh, one time, I don't know all
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: this lingo with the Twitter cause I was never on it.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: And I was emailing with Jonathan Colton, musician, Jonathan Colton
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: about coming on movie crush. And I can't remember what
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: I said, but he said something, something don't at me.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: And I didn't know what that meant. And I was like,
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I'm not sure what I did. Uh,
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I apologize if I did something wrong.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: And I think he was kind of.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Like, who is this idiot?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Hodgman likes this guy.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: And I think don't– I mean, doesn't that just mean
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: you're tagging someone on Twitter or something?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but usually it means like you're telling them that
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: they got something wrong or you disagree with what they
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: said or they should be ashamed of what they said.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: It's usually a hostile thing that you're adding somebody. Or you're– yeah,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: they don't– they're– They have made their point and they
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: don't want to hear any feedback from you about it.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: That's kind of what I took from it. And you
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: have to like kind of snap a few times when
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: you say it.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: I'm just really so thankful still that I never joined Twitter.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: That's the last thing I need. I'm already on Facebook,
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: which is terrible. I've been enjoying Instagram, I have to say.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: That seems like a pretty nice crowd.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Totally different place. Yeah.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: But, you know, we're talking about all this because we're
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: talking about Sacagawea.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, we are.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Naturally.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, naturally. Who would probably eschew both Instagram and Twitter
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: because she seems like a pretty solid human being.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: She'd be like, don't at me.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: That's right. So just to get this done out of
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the gate, again, I thought that her name was pronounced Sacajawea.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I am not like in the minority in the United States,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: at least, because that's how we were raised to say
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: her name. Unfortunately, we have such things as historians and
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: people who listen to Native Americans who have been told
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: over the years, no, it's not Sacagawea, it's Sacagawea, right?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: There's one pronunciation of it. But it's not ja, it's ga.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And we've started to kind of pronounce her name correctly.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: You say it way better than me. So why don't
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you take it?
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, gosh, this is the third time now
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: we're on this. I've seen different things from Sacagawea to Sacagawea.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: I think in Clark's journal, William Clark, that is of
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Lewis and Clark fame, spelled it S-A-H-K-A-H, emphasis on that, G-A-R-W-E-A.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: So Sacagawea or Sacagawea. But then the Shoshone, which is
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: a Native American tribe that– well, we'll get to the
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: importance there– They say, actually, it is S-A-C-A-J-A-W-E-A, and it
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: means boat pusher, not the Hidatsa language of bird woman.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: So there is some debate.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing that I did see is that Lewis
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and Clark– and they factor in this because Sacagawea was
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: the main guide and interpreter as they pushed further westward–
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: they actually tried to spell every Indian or Native American
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: word that they encountered phonetically as best they could. They
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: were terrible spellers even of English words. I mean, just
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: like barely literate, it seemed like. But they tried their best. Yeah,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: it's really bad. But they tried to spell every word
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: that they found phonetically. And I think Sacagawea's... name appears
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: 17 different times in both of their journals. And not
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: once do they spell that third syllable, guh, with a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: J sound, with a J. It's always a G. And
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: they think that it was a hard G so that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: it's Sacagawea, not Sacagawea.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: So they said it's definitely Gif and not Jif.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Right. Which it is definitely Gif, as we all know.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: So if you listen to the Lewis and Clark episode,
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: was it a two-parter? I feel like it was.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: It was not. It was not? Wow. You're thinking of
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the Evel Knievel episode.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: God, it's so embarrassing. You always bring that up to
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: shame me, I think.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: It shames both of us and Jerry to a certain
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: extent as well for letting that one through.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: She could have stepped in and been like, for God's sakes,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: what are you doing?
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Totally. Consolidate, man.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: So a great episode, though.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: I know in that episode we talked a bit, obviously,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: about Chicago Way and Ken Burns and his great documentary
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: about the Corps of Discovery. But she was born, she
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: lived a short life, and there is a little controversy
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: on how long she did live, which we'll get to
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: at the end. But she was born in either 1788
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: or 89 as a member of the LEMHI, is what
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: L-E-M-H-I, Band of The Shoshone tribe, which we spoke about
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: a minute ago.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Is it Shoshone or Shoshone?
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Shoshone? Is it Shoshone?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: That's what I've always heard. But then again, I always
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: heard it was Sacagawea, too.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I believe it's Shoshone.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: She grew up, though, in a very, I imagine, lovely,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: lovely part of the country in what is now Idaho
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: in the Salmon River region.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Yes. So she was actually a member of a specific
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: band of the Lemhe Shoshone tribe. The salmon eaters is
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: what they were called. And she grew up in that
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: part of Idaho. I guess it was around the Bitterroot
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Mountains near the Continental Divide. And the Bitterroots are part
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: of the Rockies. But, yeah, it just sounds absolutely gorgeous.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: The Shoshone tribe was enemies to the Hidatsa, who you
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. And the reason that they say that Sacagawea
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: means bird woman is because Sacagawea became an involuntary member
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: of the Hidatsa tribe when she was around 12 years old.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't get if she was out on a buffalo
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: hunt or if the Hidatsa happened to be out on
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: a buffalo hunt and came across her. Did you understand that?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: I kind of just in my mind thought that they
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: were out, but I guess it doesn't really matter because
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: either way she was kidnapped.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: And settled with them near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: And here's where her.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Life took a– or I guess that event actually took
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: her life in a very different direction. And that was
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: a trading center, an international trading center. So people from
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: all over the world would kind of stop through there
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: to trade their wares. And she was essentially– I mean,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: it's hard to not say kidnapped again. A French-Canadian fur trader,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Toussaint Charbonneau.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Beautiful.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Took her as property. He called her his wife.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: But we can't, you know, now through today's lens, we've
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: gotten a lot better about not glossing over that stuff.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: She was property to him. She was a teenager, I
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: think like 16 or 17.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Not even, I think she was actually 15.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, was she?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: And she was about two decades younger than him. And
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: there's no other way to say it other than she
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: was property. And part of being property was that she
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: was raped by Charbonneau.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like there's no way you can put it that
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: like she didn't have any say in the matter of
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: whether they had sex. So like it's just that's rape
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: no matter what. But yeah, over the years, like she's
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: always been referred to as one of his wives because
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I guess Americans didn't want to kind of confront that stuff,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: you know? So she ends up living among the Hadatsa
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: as Charbonneau's wife slash property because Charbonneau being a fur
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: trader and the Hadatsa settlement that they lived at being
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: this kind of international trading post, he had kind of
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: adopted like the Hadassah way of living himself. Just being
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a fur trader, he had to be able to handle
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: himself out in the elements. So I think it kind of,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: it was his speed. From what I gathered for the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: rest of his life, he just basically lived in a
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: style similar to Native American's. So she– aside from being
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: away from her native tribe, she lived probably fairly– in
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: a fairly cosmopolitan manner compared to how she would have
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: had she never been kidnapped from the Lemhi band of Shoshones,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: which is kind of sad. But there's one thing that
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: should be said. There's documentary opinion that she was– she
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: was not unhappy living on this kind of this border
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: land between the two cultures. Like she, she seemed to
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: feel somewhat comfortable living among, you know, the, the colonizers
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: way of life on the frontier. It just as much
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: as she did living among the Shoshone. Yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: And we should also point out that a lot of
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: this is very little is recorded. A lot of speculative information. because,
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: you know, there's remarkable, well, I guess not remarkable because
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: it was 1803, but very little actual recorded information about
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: her life.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: But it's remarkable how much there is for the typical
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: teenage Native American girl at the time. Like the fact
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: that there's anything recorded about her is kind of a
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: huge testimony to her and her personality.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: No, absolutely. So 1803 is when.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Charbonneau takes control of her life. 1803 is also when
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson said, hey, we got this big tract of land,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: really sweet deal called the Louisiana Purchase, 828,000 square miles
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: of land stretching from the Canadian border to the Gulf
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: of Mexico, from the Mississippi to Colorado. And we need
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: to go see what's out there because White people have
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: never explored this territory. I want to find a Northwest Passage,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: which was eventually found. They were looking in the wrong place.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: But that's what they were sort of after. But they
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: were after more. Jefferson really wanted to know what was
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: out there, the landscape.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: He wanted maps.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: He wanted to know about the Native American tribes. He
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: wanted to know about the plant life and the animal
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: life and just like go uh, Meriwether Lewis out there
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: and record everything you can.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Meriwether Lewis was, um, Jefferson's personal secretary and Lewis, um, selected, um,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: what was Clark's first name?
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Josh? Billy.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: William. William Clark. Billy Clark. Um, as who had been his, uh,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: captain in, um, the army as the leader of the expedition.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: He found him to be an able leader and said, Hey,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: you want to come lead this super high prestige, um,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: expedition for the president that the entire nation is going
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to be watching. And Clark said, sure, let's do it.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So Lewis and Clark set out, um, on this expedition
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and they actually traveled, I think 1600 miles before they
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: ended up, um, in at that, uh, Hidatsa settlement, um,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: which is about where they really started to hit the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: frontier from what I understand.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: All right. That sounds like a great turning point to
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: take a break.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: So we'll be back right after this and pick up
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: with the meeting of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. Okay, Chuck,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: so we've reached what is now today Bismarck, North Dakota.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: South Dakota.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: South Dakota. You sure?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: No, it's– Is that not right? Yeah, it's Bismarck, North Dakota.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Are there two?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I was going to say it almost literally doesn't matter.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: We're going to get crushed for this.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: It is. No, it's definitely Bismarck, North Dakota.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Okay. Then that was a misprint then in the.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, get this. I've got this machine
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: called the Computor.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Are you actually going to look it up?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to look it up. I'm going to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: do a favor for the people of Bismarck for once. Bismarck,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: North Dakota.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's North Dakota.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: That's weird because I think this is from How Stuff Works.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: They've got South Dakota written in there. Oh, boy.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: All right. We'll have to send an email.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: I'm going to at them.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Don't you know that's the tagline of How Stuff Works?
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Don't add us.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: So apologies to all the people in both Dakotas, all
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: three Dakotas. We meant nothing by it. And we're going
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: to do a live show there one day to make
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: up for it.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Are we?
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Sure. Why not?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you later.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Where are we? It's November 2nd, 1804.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. When they finally land and they meet up with Sacagawea,
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: who is six months pregnant at this point. And Charbonneau is,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I get the impression that he's a bit of a,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: not a grifter maybe, but sort of an opportunist.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I think so, for sure. I mean, like,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: he's a fur trader for Pete's sake. Like, you got
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to be a little.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Like that includes not just survival in the woods and
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: killing animals, but also having to, you know, get the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: highest price you can for your pelts. So I'm guessing
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: there's a bit of used car salesman to Charbonneau for sure.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: And he was not exactly— It seems like it. He
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: was not well-liked by Lewis and Clark. I don't know
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: that he was hated or despised, but I get the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: impression from reading historians' interpretations of their journal entries about
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Charbonneau is that he was kind of a cross between—
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Chris Farley.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: And Gollum, maybe? I can't wait to see that photoshopped.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, goodness. Yeah, I know who's going to take care
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: of that for us.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: So just this idea that this guy was not competent
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: necessarily and was maybe a little bit evil. And that's,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: you know, all you need to know about Charbonneau. I
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: also get the impression, Chuck, that there was a, you know,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about later, but there was, Sacagawea was plucked
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: from historic obscurity. And really kind of raised up on
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: this pedestal. And I think rightly so. But there was
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: a sport that developed alongside of that where you could
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: very easily raise Sacagawea up by contrasting her to her good-for-nothing, slave-holding, quote, husband.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And showing how just terrible he was at everything. It
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: made her look all the much better. So I think
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: there's a sport to it. There's kind of a long
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: history of putting down Charbonneau. Um, but I think that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: it's kind of rooted in fact, from what I understand.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: So at any rate, he comes along and he's like, Hey,
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: you guys really need to bring me along. And, uh,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: and my wife, uh, slash property here. Um, I speak
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: Hidatsa in French and they're like, we don't really need that,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: but I see that Sakagaway speaks Shoshone and we really
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: need to learn that because at a certain point, we're
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: going to need to talk to them to get some horses.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: And since we can't hire a woman because it's 1803,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: we have to actually hire the husband to get her
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: to come along.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I guess you both can come.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like, we got to explain why Sacagawea being
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Shoshone was really important. And it was, like you said,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: those horses. Somehow, I'm not exactly sure how they already
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: knew this because these are the first Americans to chart
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: a course westward. But they knew that the— The Missouri
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: River and the Columbia River was separated by mountains, the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Rocky Mountains, the Bitterroot Mountains to be specific. And that
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: since they were taking to the river, they were going
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to need to get from one river to the other.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And that the Shoshone Indians happened to live exactly where
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: they needed or where they needed to pass through, where
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: they needed the most help, where they needed horses. And
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: so having a Shoshone along to help broker a deal
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: would be incredibly useful. So useful, in fact, that the
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: arrangement was going to be that when they finally met
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: up with the Shoshone tribe in this area where they
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: needed the horses the most, Sacagawea was going to speak
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: to the Shoshones. And then she was going to translate
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: what the Shoshones said into Hidatsa to Charbonneau. Sure. Yeah.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Charbonneau was going to translate from Hadassah into French for
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: a French-speaking member of the Corps of Discovery, who would
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: then translate from French into English for Lewis and Clark.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: That's how important.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Charbonneau didn't even speak English?
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: No, he spoke Hadassah in French.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, I thought that meant in addition to English.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: No, so he did play a role that was important.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: He was going to translate from Hadassah into French. It
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: would have been way better if he had spoken English,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: but it just meant another person in the chain. Everything
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: came out purple monkey dishwasher at the end.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: So one thing we failed to mention, I think, which
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: is just remarkable, is that a few, a couple of
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: months before they leave together, Sacagawea has her son, Jean-Baptiste,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: known as Baptiste. And so, and I know we talked
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: about this in Lewis and Clark, but I think I
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: didn't have a kid at the time. It's just astounding
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: to me now that I've had a two-month-old baby to
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: take and like keeping that baby alive and all the
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: comforts of modern-day America, to take a baby like that
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: on a voyage like.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: This is astounding. Yeah, for sure. It's really remarkable.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, like, if you look at all
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: of the memorials to Sacagawea, I don't think there's one
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: out there that doesn't also show Baptiste as well.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Of course not.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Not just because he was an adopted honorary member of
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the Corps of Discovery. Basically a mascot, sure. Yeah. But
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: also because it just goes to point out just how
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: astounding what his mom did was. I think when Sacagawea
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: was put on the dollar coin in the United States
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: in 2000, Hillary Clinton famously referred to her as the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: original working mom.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's a pretty cool designation.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I thought so, too. So, yeah, I think it's great
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: that she's remembered as doing all this with a baby
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: strapped to her back the whole time.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Right. So that's their plan.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: They plan to get there, send her out to talk
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: to the Shoshone tribe to get these horses, which was
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: a good plan. But it was even way better. It
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: worked out almost like it had been written in a
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: movie script or something. Because I think it is Lewis—
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: shows up first and has contact with an older woman
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: of the tribe. And then about 60 Shoshone on horseback
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: ride up. And they're like, you seem like a decent guy.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: You're friendly. Let's all make this work out. Then Clark's
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: group shows up about a day later with Sakagaway. And
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: they're like, oh, my God, it's you. You were the
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: one that was kidnapped and taken away so many years ago.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: And then Chief Kameowate rides up. And it's Sacagawea's brother.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So not only do they get to have this reunion,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: but Lewis and Clark are like, yes, we're going to
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: get such a good deal on these horses.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: The chief is her brother. Like, this is perfect. But
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you know what that stuck out to me as, Chuck?
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: That meant that Sacagawea probably would have met Lewis and
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Clark even if she had never been kidnapped.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe so.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Isn't that really crazy to think like that one way
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: or another, she was going to probably meet Lewis and Clark,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: even with her life diverging that radically from its, you know,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: original projected path. Yeah.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: And what it really did was, I mean, she was
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: already proving to be useful in that she could identify
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: berries and things that you could eat and plants that
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: you could use as medicine and kind of acted as
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: the The navigator, in a lot of cases, is like, no,
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: we need to go this way. I've been here before.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: This is where I grew up.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a huge, huge rock called Beaverhead Rock that
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: she famously recognized that you can go visit and stand
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: in the place, basically, where she showed Lewis and Clark, like, look,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: my people are going to be right around here. I
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: recognize this place.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so they've already got all this respect for her
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: up until that point. And then she has such an
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: in with the Shoshone community. Like you said, they get,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: I'm sure, a really good deal on the horses. And
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: not only that, but they get help. They kind of
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: partner up with them to help them along, which is
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: a really big deal.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because Lewis and Clark's expedition had somewhere in the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: neighborhood of 40 people involved, huge boats, several huge boats,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: lots of equipment, lots of instruments. And some people say, well,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: like if they needed horses, why didn't they bring the horses? Well,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: because they traveled by water. They really needed horses really,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: really badly. Yeah. But just for this one specific part
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of the trip in between the Missouri and the Columbia River,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson very famously called it a dilly of a
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: pickle that they had run into. But the fact that
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: they were able to get the horses from the Shoshone,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: it just basically checked this enormous box that the whole
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: expedition was predicated on. They could not have completed their
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: mission without this. Right. And Sacagawea basically brokered that, made
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: sure that box got checked. And there's one other thing
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that stands out about her too that gets overlooked that
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I saw in a few places. Charbonneau had another wife
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: who was Shoshone. And if they needed a Shoshone speaker
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: who was, you know, with Charbonneau, who came with Charbonneau,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: they could have very easily gone with Otter Woman, the other,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I guess, victim of Charbonneau. And they didn't. They went
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: with Sacagawea, who, knowing full well that she came with
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: an infant now, like there was going to be an infant,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: even though with Otter Woman there wouldn't have been. So
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: clearly Sacagawea is like putting out the right kind of vibes.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: It's saying like, I'm extraordinarily competent. You should probably pick me,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: even though if you pick me, I'm going to be
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: bringing a newborn baby along on this frontier trek. I
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: think that says a lot about the kind of... I guess,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: charisma or competence or whatever she was putting out that, that,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: that Lewis and Clark were like, yes, I think she
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: would be the better of the two.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Because you don't want a two month old baby along.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: No, but if you're cute, but nah.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: But if you say, okay, we'll have a two month
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: baby along, like that says a lot about the mom
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that's carrying the baby around and her abilities are, I think.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Um, she also proved her worth when, And
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I can't remember if we– I think we might have
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: talked about this.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: When there was a– one of their sailing vessels almost
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: capsized when a big squall hit it. Apparently Charbonneau was navigating.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: He panicked under pressure. And it was Sakagaway who was
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: calm and.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Said, you know what?
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: We need to get these papers together. We need to
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: get the books that we've been writing in, all these
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: navigational instruments and medicines and provisions and other stuff. We
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: need to get it all together and take care of it. And, oh,
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: also this baby. And basically saved that situation. And Charbonneau
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: was just, you know.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: He was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: my God. Oh, my God.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Sacre bleu. Sacre bleu.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: That's right. So, yeah, that's one of the big stories
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that's told about Sacagawea. So much so, I mean, that
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: either Lewis or Clark wrote about it and basically was like,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: this Sacagawea is an amazing creature. Like, she's doing stuff
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that other members of the Corps are not doing. I mean,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: there is, I think, at least 12 members of the
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Corps of Discovery who aren't mentioned by name in either
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: of the journals of Lewis and Clark throughout the expedition.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: They did work. They did their job, obviously. But they
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: didn't get mentioned because they weren't doing stuff like Sacagawea was.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: And I think the fact that she's mentioned multiple times
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: with kind of frequently— discussing like just their impressed, how
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: impressed they were with her. It says a lot as well.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, they named because of that sailing incident, they
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: named a branch of the Missouri river after her. And
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: I think Clark was the one who really grew closer
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: to her. It's really hard to get a read on
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: exactly what the nature of their relationship was. It seems
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: just like maybe a mentor type of relationship in that he,
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: kind of took her under his wing and took these
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: long walks with her. I don't think there's anything untoward
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: about it is kind of what I'm getting at.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I don't have that impression either, and I have not
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: run across a historian that's asserted that there was something
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: untoward about it either.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: But they were close.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were. The way I took it was like
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: an adopted little sister kind of thing.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of the way I see it too.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I also don't think Charbonneau would have stood for that.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I think that would have been— not okay with him
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: because he was the kind of guy who'd be like,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: that's my property, you know? Right.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Well, of course.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: So I, yeah, I don't have that impression, but yeah,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I thought the same thing, you know, as well.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Uh, and in fact, they thought so much of her,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: especially Clark that, and this is a really telling thing
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: is that they gave, when they reached the Pacific coast,
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: there was a vote on whether or not to stay
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: there for the winter or not. And they actually let
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: her vote, which in, The early 1800s, to let a
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: woman have a vote like that was remarkable.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So when they decided to stay, that vote led
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: to them staying in what's now Astoria, Oregon. They build
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: a winter quarters called Fort Clatsop after a friendly tribe nearby.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Fort Clatsop? That's what I thought too, but it's close.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: There's an L in there. Yeah, Clatsop. But the Clatsop
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: people said, hey, get this. There's a beached whale. You
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: got to see this thing. It's enormous. And so I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: think Lewis was like, okay, we're going to go check
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: this out. You guys stay here. And Sacagawea, I know
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: we talked about this in the Lewis and Clark episode.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Sacagawea said, look, man, I have walked a long ways
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: and helped you guys out. And the idea that you're
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: not going to let me see the ocean, I've never
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: seen any ocean. You're not going to let me see
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: the ocean. And this giant whale that's been beached, come on.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: And so Lewis relented very famously and was like, okay,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: come along. So, so I could go away. I kind of,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: she put her foot down basically and said, no, I'm,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I'm going to see this. That would be unusually cruel
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: not to let me. So She went and saw this
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: giant whale. She saw the ocean for the first time.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a pretty big– I've never seen a
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: beached whale. Imagine seeing a beached whale the first time
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: you see the ocean too.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: I remember when I– as a young kid when I–
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: we showed my grandmother the ocean for the first time
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: and she was in her– geez, she was probably in
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: her 70s.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: She lived to be 100.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: So she had to be in her mid-70s when we
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: took her to the ocean. Yeah.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: And we walked her out there, and she walked out
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: on the beach, I'll never forget it, and.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Said, ooh, it's big.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: That's cute.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: And that was about it. She didn't hang out for long.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: She's like, oh, I'm good. This was enough.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was no whale to poke with a stick.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: I'm kidding, by the way. You should never do that.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Poke a whale with a stick?
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was making a joke. That wasn't nice.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I think everybody knew that, Chuck.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you try and get that whale back in the
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: water if you can.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Not with a stick, though.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Not with a stick.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: You want to take our second break?
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll talk about how this all wrapped up and
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: what happened to her afterward right after this.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know. Okay, so they made it to
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: the Pacific. They overwintered there in, I think, 1805, 1806.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: And then they started to make their way back. And
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: they actually went right back to the same Hidatsa settlement,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: that international trading post outside of Bismarck, North Dakota, where
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: they picked up Charbonneau and Sacagawea. And they said, hey,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: thanks a lot. We'll see you guys later. And everywhere
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I saw, um, Charbonneau was paid something like $ 500 and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: 33 cents for his efforts. And Sacagawea was not paid anything. Um,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: although I saw also in this article that she was
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: paid as well. What do you, can, do you have
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: any idea?
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I was confused too.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Everywhere else I looked said that she did not get
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: direct payment.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Which article said that she did?
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be right. Um,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Or maybe they just sort of said, well, since her
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: captor slash husband was paid, then sort of means she was.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but that's all nowhere else that said
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: that she was actually paid independently.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: And I mean, that would make the most sense, you know?
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Although after that expedition, I would also not be surprised
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: if she was paid directly, even though it bucked, you know, convention.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he got paid $ 500 and.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: 320 acres of land, which was.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: And it's– like I tried to do an inflation comp,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: but it's– they don't even have anything. I think it said–
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: like when you go that far back, you can't even
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: compare it to today's currency.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Westgate gave me an estimate of about nine grand.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, see, I saw that too, but I didn't see
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: that as a direct inflation calculator, more like the goods
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: that you could have bought back then.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. No, they said $ 9, 000, 000.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: No, I saw that. It just didn't seem like a
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: one-to-one to me.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. Even still, it seems like really I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: would imagine $ 500 back then would be like $ 10 trillion today,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it would seem to be the case. It's a
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: little weird.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, because I mean like a journey of thousands
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: of miles at the behest of the president of the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: United States– And he paid nine grand. Seems like, it
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: just seems like you would get more than that. I
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: don't know. But then again, he's a fur trapper who
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: only speaks Hadassah in French. So who knows?
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: I think what confused me is, like, if you enter
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: $ 500 100 years later, it's like $ 15, 000. Or maybe that
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: does work.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It just didn't seem to work out math-wise.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: But what do I know?
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm with you. You kind of have to
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: be able to peer back into the vagaries of the
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: American economy over the last couple hundred years to suss
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: that out.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: I looked it up and it said what that would
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: be today would be 200 mink, 80 beaver tails. Right.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: And $ 9, 000. Those poor beaver.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I know. That's the other thing about Charbonneau that people
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: don't say he killed a lot of animals for their pelts.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: So.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: All right, so after the expedition, she stayed with Charbonneau.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: I think a few years later, they moved to, with
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: little Baptiste, moved to St.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Louis.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at the invitation of Clark, right?
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it says that he offered them an opportunity
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: of land to farm, which I don't quite get because
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: he just got 320 acres of land.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I was wondering if that was one and the same.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: I couldn't quite parse that out. But at any rate,
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: he's like, here, you come here. Here's some land to
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: farm if you let me educate your son in the,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: you know, American sort of schooling system. And, you know,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: that was– he was the godfather of the boy at
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: that point, really cared a lot about Baptiste and Sacagawea
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: and wanted the best for him. And I think that
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: was a pretty decent deal for Charbonneau.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, I believe– Clark officially adopted Baptiste
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: as his guardian, at least, if not as his adopted parent.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And he was educated at the St. Louis Academy, I believe.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: And then he... I don't know how he met him,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: but Baptiste went on to meet a German prince who
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, you should totally come back and hang
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: with me in Germany and I'll make sure you get
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: a European education. And he did. He moved to Europe
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: and was educated there, lived a pretty interesting life, said, yeah,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to America, became a trapper
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: for a while, had a bunch of different interesting jobs.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I believe he was a hotel clerk in Auburn, California
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: for a little while. Um, So, yeah, he did a
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: bunch of different stuff and had a pretty amazing life
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: in addition to basically being the official mascot of the
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Corps of Discovery's expedition.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he ended up taking guardianship because Charbonneau and
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: Sacagawea left in April 1811 to go on another fur
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: trading expedition, and they left Baptiste with him.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: So I think it kind of worked out for everyone. Yeah.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I get the impression it wasn't like we don't
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: want our kid and Lewis would give me your kid.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I think it was for the best interest of the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: kid and they all loved him very much. That's the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: impression I have.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: She also had a daughter about a year after that
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: in 1812, Lisette or Lisette.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's an S or a Z.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: And this is where we get to the sort of
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: fork in the road as to what actually happened to Sacagaway.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: There are a couple of stories.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: One is that She died not long after of what
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: was called putrid fever, which is probably typhoid fever.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: That's terrible.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: There's another story, and she would have been about 25
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: years old in December of 1812. There's another story that
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: she went on to live a very long life in
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: another part of the country, but I think that one
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: has kind of been shot down, right?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so at the turn of the last century— Sacagawea
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: was kind of dug out of obscurity. Well, actually, there
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: was a guy who was the official, I don't know,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: biographer or chronicler of the Corps of Discovery's expedition where
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: he was in charge. His name was Biddle, I believe. Yeah.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: He was in charge of basically taking the notes of
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the Corps of Discovery and getting them ready for publication.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: He just couldn't publish the whole thing like that. He
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: edited them, basically. Yeah. But he also interviewed Clark. And
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: out of his interviews with Clark, we found a lot
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: more out about Sacagawea than we knew before. And Biddle
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: was like, this is a very interesting story right here.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put Sacagawea front and center. So he
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: kind of brought Sacagawea into the foreground for the first time.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: But then almost a century later, as the women's suffrage
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: movement was starting to gain momentum, there was a woman named– Emily, no,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Eva Emery Dye, who wrote a book about the Lewis
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: and Clark expedition and said, here's my heroine. Sacagawea is
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: a heroine. I'm going to basically use her. her as
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: an icon for the suffragette movement. And that's how she
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: kind of became this symbol from that point on. I
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: don't remember what kicked off the spiel, though. You asked
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: a question or you said something. What was it?
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Do you remember? What spiel?
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: My spiel about how Sacagawea was kind of brought out
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: of obscurity by these writers.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh, oh.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Where this idea came from that she had gone on
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to live a long life.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, right, right.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: That first book that was written by Eva Emery Dye
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: was picked up by another historian who said, you know what,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I've heard these stories about this woman who went on
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: to live at the Wind River Reservation, and I think
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: she's actually Sacagawea. And that kind of kicked off this
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: whole hunt.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because like you said, there are numerous people who
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: wrote down sort of officially that she did die very
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: young at 25 years old, including I think Clark in
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: one of his– I think like maybe a financial ledger.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Ledger? Ledger.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: It was a cash book about like where people– like
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: where are they now basically and have they been paid?
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: And next to her name, he just wrote dead, which.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Not even a frowny face next to it.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I guess if it's a ledger, you're just trying to
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: sort of, you know, be cold about it. But for
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: someone who really cared a lot about her, it seemed
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: it probably wasn't the right place to wax philosophical.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Right. But also some people have said, well, no, he
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: was covering for her because she, the legend goes that
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: she left Charbonneau, ran off. To live a life away
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: from her.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: As an independent woman.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. Which really kind of dovetailed with the suffragette
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: movement's push for women's rights. So that was a great
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: idea that that's what she did. And the idea was
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: that Clark was covering for her in his little cash
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: ledger by saying she was dead, knowing full well she
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: was alive. Other people are like, who's going to ever
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: look in Clark's cash ledger? Like Sharpa knows ever going
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: to get his hands on it. That's probably not correct.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: And the whole idea that she went on to live
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: on the Wind River Reservation until age 100 when she
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: died in like the 1880s.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: Makes for a good story.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: It makes for a great story. And there was a
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: woman who did live like that. Her name was Para Evo,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: also known as Basil's mother, who lived to be 100.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people said, no, that's Sacagawea. But
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: that was before more historical record came out, including an
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: account from a guy named who worked for the same
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: fur trading company that Charbonneau did, knew Charbonneau personally, and
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: wrote in his journal, had no reason to make anything up,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: but in December, I think on December 20th of 1812,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: was it? Wrote that Charbonneau's wife, he's the one who
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: said that she had a putrid fever and died, and
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: that she was the best woman in the fort. She
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: was a good woman and the best woman in the fort.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: She was aged about 25 years, which totally fits the
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: bill for Sacagawea.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: And she left a fine infant girl.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. So once that guy's journal was found, that was
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: basically the nail in the coffin of the idea that
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Sacagawea had lived to age 100 after escaping her captor husband.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what's kind of cool is, you know,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: even though there's very little officially recorded about her life everywhere,
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: She is recorded.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: It's all glowing praise.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: There's not like one entry where anyone was ever like,
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: oh boy, Sakagaway and that baby are really, like what
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: a mistake that was. By all accounts, she was a
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: boon to the Corps of Discovery and a big, big
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: part of its success.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so as a result, Chuck, Lifetime, as in
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Lifetime Movie Network Lifetime, I couldn't find the year, but
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: they recently conducted a survey of memorials to create the
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Lifetime Herstory And of, I think, 5,500 plus statues, monuments,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and memorials that exist in the United States, only about 200,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: which is around 4%, honor women. But of those 200,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: 16 honor Sacagawea, which means that she is the most
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: honored woman via monuments and statues in the entire United States.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Wow. Amazing.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: The first one from what I read was by a
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: group of suffragettes in Portland, Oregon in 1905. And that
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: statue is obviously still there today. And it is beautiful.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: And guess who's strapped to her back in the statue? Lissette?
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Close enough.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Little Baptiste.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Little Baptiste, that's right. You got anything else?
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: No, other than, and we should mention, I don't think
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: we know a lot about what happened to Lissette. Unfortunately,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: she was sort of lost to history.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I guess that's it.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: All right, so since we said that's it, that means
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: it's time, everybody, for Listener Mail.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're going to do a couple of corrections, a
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: bit of a mea culpa for me and a correction.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, I like those.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: I said the word redneck a lot, entitled the episode
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: about the Klan, used the word redneck. And, you know,
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: I probably shouldn't have. That's a derogatory term. The name
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: actually has a different history. I think West Virginia coal
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: miners has something to do with that. And I just
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: wasn't really being as sensitive enough. I'm not apologizing for
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: degrading the Klan.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: But I probably shouldn't have used the word redneck with
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: such a broad brush.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: But think about it, though, Chuck. That means the Klan
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: is so rotten, they give rednecks a bad name. That's
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: essentially what we're saying here.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: And then from that same episode, We need to address
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: the Robert Byrd incident.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Because we heard from a lot of people.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: That was all me.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think we were talking about Senator Robert
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: Byrd sort of being unapologetic about being in the Klan.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: That was very much not the case. This is one
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: of the many emails, and this is from Aaron Patrick Lyons.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: He, him, his. Hey, listen to the great episode on
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: the KKK. As usual, did a bang-up job.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: However, I have to take issue with Josh's statement indicating
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: that Senator Robert Byrd was an unrepentant Klansman.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: He was indeed.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: and exalted Cyclops or local leader of the clan in
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: the fifties, uh, into the fifties. But through the seventies
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: and eighties, he had a sincere change of heart regarding
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: race relations and voted for the Martin Luther King jr.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: National holiday among other legislation in his very long career. Uh,
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: he was deeply embarrassed, uh, embarrassed and apologetic about.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: His time in the clan.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Uh, and that is like I said, from Eric Patrick, Aaron,
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: Patrick Lyons in Cedar Falls, Iowa. We heard from a
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: lot of people that, um, Not only did he vote
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: for the MLK holiday, but apparently did a lot of
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: work for legislation.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: For equal rights for African-Americans.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: I totally flubbed that one. So my apologies to Robert
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Byrd's family for tarnishing his legacy in that small way.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: And I'm glad we got corrected almost immediately right after
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the episode came out. It was, can't believe you guys
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: use rednecks so much. You were totally wrong about Robert Byrd.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: So this listener mail is perfect. And then there's one
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: other thing I want to say, too, about the redneck thing, Chuck.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Somebody pointed out, I think it was on Twitter, that
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: using the word redneck was not only derogatory towards rednecks,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: it obfuscated, it covered up all of the people who
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: aren't rednecks, who are just kind of everyday normal people
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: who are either in the clan or subscribe to the
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: clan's ideologies. That it makes it seem like just this
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: marginal group or a marginal thought or fringe thought when
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: it's really kind of subscribed to by an alarming number
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: of people. that, you know, you live and work beside
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: and might never really guess at just how deep their
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: racism goes. So I think that's another reason to have
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: eschewed it as well.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and, you know, I'm not going to stick up
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: for myself, but I think when you grow up in
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: the South, you might feel like you have a little
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: bit of ownership on using a word like that.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, my apologies to all the great rednecks of
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: That's right. Sorry, Jeff Foxworthy. That's right. Sorry, Larry the
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Cable Guy. Who's actually not really a redneck if you
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: listen to David Cross's beef with him.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's fully an act, right?
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, from what I understand.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: He created that persona to get more fans of comedy.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: Smart man. That's right.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: And, well, I guess since we started talking about Larry
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: the Cable Guy, that's the end of this episode, and
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: listener mail is petered out. And if you want to
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: get in touch with us to correct us or call
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: us out for something or whatever, lay it on us.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts,
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.