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In a cemetery on the Wind River Indian Reservation near Fort Washakie,
Wyoming, stands a prominent tombstone marking the grave of Sacagawea, the young
Shoshoni woman who served heroically with the Lewis and Clark expedition in
1805-06. An inscription on the stone, erected by the Wyoming chapter of the
Daughters of the American Revolution in 1963, states that she died in 1884 and
that the Reverend J. Roberts, who officiated at her burial, identified her
original grave site in 1907.
A few years later Dr. Charles Eastman, a Sioux scholar commissioned by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs to trace Sacagawea’s life, found many who claimed to
remember her as an old woman. According to them, she left her husband, the
trapper Charbonneau, after he took another wife. She then married a Comanche
and, following his death, rejoined the Shoshoni’s in Wyoming. There she was
reunited with Baptiste, the son born to her on the expedition.
But other contend that Sacagawea died at Fort Manuel, South Dakota, when she
was only about 25, and buried in an unmarked grave. On December 20, 1812, a
clerk at the fort noted in his journal: “This evening the Wife of Charbonneau
a Snake (Shoshoni) Squaw, died of a putrid fever.” Unfortunately, he failed to
mention which wife. A dozen years later, however, William Clark (who provided
for the education of Baptiste) listed expedition members and their fate in a
notebook; next to “Secarjaweau,” he wrote, “Dead.” Oddly enough, the
complete story of one of America’s most celebrated women may never be known.
*Taken from the book, ‘Strange Stories, Amazing Facts of America’s Past”
Readers Digest. Copyright 1989 The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.
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