Closed Captions Audio Described

Historical interpreter and actress Joyce Badgley Hunsucker, who has Cherokee and Lakota ancestry, performs as Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman, recounting her capture by Hidatsa raiders, enslavement, marriage to fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, and her crucial role as translator and guide on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The presentation spans her birth people's territory, the winter at Fort Mandan, the difficult journey westward, and her reunion with her brother Cameahwait.

Transcript

0:32 Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the tent, mini Voices and the core of Discovery Two
0:41 here in the 10 of many voices. We have regular programming every hour. On the hour, we get a wide variety of speakers and presenters here. And this afternoon, we're pleased with help of our good friends at the Bureau of Land Management, one of our sister agencies to have Joyce Badgley Hunsucker.
1:05 She's an award-winning historical interpreter, author and storyteller whose meticulously researched programs have earned her international acclaim as both an actress and a historian. Her ancestral bloodlines include Cherokee and Lakota, French English and Scotch Irish.
1:30 Her program today, Saga Wea speaks is premised on the assumption that Saga was a Shoshone tribal member. Not all tribal nations agree that this was the case. You may ask questions of Saga Waya after the program, she will answer in character. Then you may ask questions of Joyce
1:55 and she will answer as a scholar. So please give a warm tent to many voices. Welcome to Chicago Way.
2:14 Hey,
2:19 some say my name is Saka.
2:23 Others say Saga Hua or Saka Wea or Sagua. My own husband rarely called me the same thing. Twice. Usually he just said you woman or squaw. When Lewis and Clark came, they called me the same things as my husband had.
2:47 But they added Jamie for it was easy for their white tongues to say. And when they named the river for me, they called it bird woman's river for it was their understanding. This was the meaning of my name. But once my son was born amongst my birth clan,
3:11 I became a new name, the mother of Pump. And that is how I have thought of myself ever since I was not born. Among those that Lewis and Clark called Miari where they found me. I was born instead amongst neah,
3:36 the people, the aga of people, the salmon eaters. This is the sign by which my people identified themselves. It's the tale of the salmon coming upstream to feed us. But those who did not understand this sign said,
4:00 looks like the snake crawling along the ground. So they called us the snake Indians. And later they called us Shoshan and Shoshone. The people of the waving grass from which we made our baskets.
4:21 In the old days, there were many of us on the land. And every year we would go out beyond the beaver head, out beyond the mountains on the plains and the men would hunt buffalo and elk and deer. It was
4:41 when I had 11 snows at buffalo camp that my life changed. It was at a place where the three forks of the river come together. All of the able bodied men were out hunting and only old men were left in camp to look after the women
5:06 and the Children. I was old enough to help the women scrape the hides old enough to have my own root, digging stick old enough to be promised in marriage.
5:23 And the cry went out, run, cried the old man run for your lives. Run to the trees. It's our enemies from the plains. They're coming on their fast horses. We knew who they were. These were the ones that Lewis and Clark called M Atari, but they were Mandan.
5:48 They were Hidasa
5:50 and they had raided our camp for as long as there was memory. They came to take slaves. So we ran into the trees and we tried to hide but we didn't hide good enough. I saw my people killed that day for women.
6:14 Most all of the boy Children. But the girls, the girls they took to be slaves. They found me and they took me as a slave. This is how it came to be that I lived among the man and and heats.
6:38 I lived there as their slave at the great village called AWA ah on the river called misery.
6:51 I kept my mouth quiet. All of the sleeps. It took to come to a w exam. I kept my eyes open.
7:02 I was made to work very, very hard. I learned new things I learned to mound up the earth and the trees in lodges. Different from the lodges of my people. I learned to do a thing. They called plant corn and beans and squash.
7:27 I learned that here at the great village of Awa, uh there were men Atari also called big Belly Indians. For their bellies were always full from this planting that they did. And I learned their talk. It was in this way that I found out
7:50 one of the other girls who had been taken same time as me, she ran away. I knew she would try to find our people again. But the way was so long and the dangers were so many. I thought she'll never make it. She'll die alone in the mountains
8:15 with no one to grieve for her, no one to do ceremony. So I stayed where I was.
8:27 The sleeps came, the sleeps went, moons came, moons went. And by my, I grew content. I continue to work very, very hard. But one of the things I liked the best about awa IA
8:50 were the strange looking and strange sounding men that came up and down the river. They called themselves traitors. They brought iron, cooking pots, ribbons, beads, axes, knives, guns. But best of all,
9:12 they brought their stories of all they'd seen and all they had heard. And that was what I liked. The best to hear their stories of places I had never seen.
9:29 It was here. At a wat exile that I was given the name by which you call me. It was a day of women. The women came to me and they had a gift. It was a belt like this one blue beads,
9:54 chief beads, you cannot make such a belt for yourself. You cannot buy one or trade for one. It must be given to you a mark of honor. It says to all who see this, the women have found you worthy.
10:16 It says to all who see you wearing the belt. You are now one of them. It was on the day of the blue beads that I became one of them made a relative adopted into the tribe. And it was the women
10:41 who gave me the name Sag. We a little black bird woman.
10:50 It was hoped that now I was one of them I would marry inside the tribe for then my husband would be honor bound to provide meat, not only for me, his wife, but for all of my new relatives. This is how it was done in the old days. But that didn't happen.
11:13 Instead I became the wife, the woman of Toussaint Charbonneau, a mixed blood from the second village. How did this happen? Some say it was a bet and I was the prize. Some say he bought me. Some say he just took me
11:39 doesn't matter how it happened. I had no say I was barely 14 snows and he was almost 50 when I became Toussaint Charbonneau snake wife, it was said of him. He was always marrying somebody.
12:03 So I shouldn't have been surprised when I went with him to the second village. I entered into the lodge and there I met another one of his wife's, her name was Otter woman and she was also of the snake tribe.
12:25 And I was thinking how good it would be to speak the talk of my birth people again. But Charbonneau, my husband said, no, he did not understand the language of the snakes. He didn't know what Otter woman. And I might say to one another behind his back
12:49 in this lodge said my new husband, there will be only Menden or Hidasa spoken or a few words of French that I will teach you. This is all. So we kept our mouths quiet. But I marveled at how hard Otter woman worked.
13:12 I marveled that she already had a son by our husband. He stood this tall when I came and his name was also Toussaint Charbonneau just like his father. When Lewis and Clark came to awa IA, it was the time of the falling leaves.
13:37 The smell of the warming fires was on the wind and the geese were already in the air. They came into the village, they made their speeches and they gave their gifts and they smoked the pipe with the head men.
13:58 Lights danced in the sky at night which was taken for a great sign. So they decided to stay the winter. The first thing they did was to cut down trees and call them logs. Then they built what they called rooms.
14:19 But these rooms were not round as a lodge should be. They weren't round as a village should be. These rooms they made in a straight line, touching one another until there were three such lines. They called it Fort Mandan.
14:43 And then they built a wall around Fort Mandan with a gate in front that locked us out. And them, I
14:56 we wondered what was so important inside Fort Mandate and they had to keep it up locked all the time. My husband said he had seen a great black dog almost as big as a bear. He said he'd seen a great black man almost as tall as a tree. He said this black man's name was York
15:21 and he was the slave of the red haired chief Clark. But when I heard this, I knew it was a lie. No tribe I knew took men as slaves, men, they kill as befitting warriors. But my husband said it's not the same among the whites.
15:45 Some men own other men. He said this York had been in the council of the head men and one of the chiefs had tried to rub this man's color off of his body. They rubbed and he rubbed, but the color did not come off.
16:08 They felt his hair and said, this feels like the hair of buffalo. This is a different animal than the white man. This man is big medicine. And thereafter, all the people wanted to stand by this great black man York
16:31 wanted to touch his color and rub his color on them so that they too would share in his medicine. My husband said, Lewis and Clark wanted to find a river way to where the sun goes down. He said they would pay white man's money
16:53 for those who would speak the talk for them and show them the way my husband liked the white man's money and he began to visit Fort Mandan every day to speak French to one who spoke French there. One afternoon late, he entered the lodge of o
17:19 woman and his chest was all puffed out. It came in before the rest of him. He said, you pointing to Otter woman, make me more shirts. You, he pointed to me make me moccasins. I Sharbino, I'm going with Lewis and Clark in the spring will be gone a long time.
17:44 Otter and woman and I put our eyes down and started working. But my husband wasn't finished speaking first to Otter woman. Tell me about your birth people, the snakes. He said, do they have horses that they might trade to the whites for going through the mountains?
18:07 Otter woman had not seen her people for so many years. She felt she couldn't answer. So she kept her eyes down. Then he asked me the same thing. What of your people? He said, I have heard they have horses. Will they trade those horses to the whites?
18:32 I couldn't answer. Surely. My husband knew that only men did the trading of horses, not women, but char Rena would not be quiet. He knew my people had horses. So he asked me,
18:53 can you remember the words of your people? Can you speak these words? I had not been allowed to speak these words all the time. I had been with my husband. But yes, I did remember then you will come with me. Cried charbonneau.
19:18 The words will be said first by Lewis or Clark in English by somebody else in French. I Charbonneau will say the words to you in Mandan or Hidasa. Then you will say the words in the language of the salmon eaters.
19:39 I did not want to go. I was big and slow and awkward with child. I did not know when my baby would come. I wanted to stay here, but my husband would hear none of it. A woman carrying a baby. It's a good sign. A sign. This is a peace party.
20:03 Everybody knows, gather your things. He told me we're moving inside the Fort.
20:13 What about Otter woman? What about their son? Toussaint Charbeneau?
20:21 I knew because they had not been named. They would be left behind. I did what my husband told me to do. I gathered our things and the gates closed behind us at the fort. When my son decided to be born,
20:45 it was the middle of the night. There was no woman inside the fort to help me. And the pain lasted so long for so many hours. I thought I might not live to see mourning if it went any longer. Somebody finally sent for Lewis.
21:10 He and Clark had been making medicine in the village all through the winter. Maybe there was something in his pills or his powders from me. But when he looked, he said, no, not for childbirth. This is an army expedition. I didn't figure the men would be given birth to no babies.
21:36 But the interpreter, Joom, whose wife was a man. Then he said, I know what will make this baby come. The rattle of a snake will make the baby come. I could see by the face of Lewis. He didn't think so, but he had such a rattle. And you so
22:01 told him break it into pieces in a cup and pour the water in then make her drink. And that's just what he did. And within minutes, my son was born, his name will be Jean Baptiste Charbonneau
22:24 cried my husband after my father. Hm I kept my mouth quiet. But I thought my son will have one name and one name only. Pump means firstborn. In the language of my birth people.
22:50 I began to make a cradle board of Willows for pump just as soon as I could for. I knew when the river flowed free of ice, it would be time to leave. And it happened only 55 sleeps after my son was born,
23:13 the long canoes, the bolts of Lewis and Clark were all loaded down in the river with books, instruments, papers, all manner of boxes and bundles. There was barely any room for me to sit with pomp in the cradle board on my back.
23:37 So sometimes I took him out and I held him against me in a sling made of skins just as women have done since the beginning of time. The great black dog of Lewis ran up and down the river bank, sometimes barking, sometimes jumping in, sometimes trying to get inside the boat.
24:01 And all the men were anxious to leave the village to the places they had never seen before. We left the village behind and every man was given his turn at steering the boat. Even Charbonneau who could not swim.
24:25 It was he who was steering when a great wind came up against the sail and almost tipped us over. My brave husband raised both arms to his God, won't you, won't you save me, Shamina?
24:43 He was out of his mind with his own concerns until the fiddle man Crusat took a pistol from his pants and pointed it at my husband. He said, regain your senses or lose your head altogether. And Charbonneau regained his senses.
25:05 Two of the other men bailed the water out with kettles while three remaining rode us to the shore. But before we got to safety, I began to see things coming out of the boat going over the side into the water and floating now. So I did what any one of you would do.
25:30 I reached out and grabbed these things back as many as I could. And at last, when we were safe on dry land, the journals were pulled out and the lists were looked at and things were counted very little had been lost.
25:53 The days came, the days went and weeks and moons all the same. We would stop with the tribes as we would meet them. And Lewis and Clark would make the same speeches.
26:13 They would give the same gifts, they would smoke the pipe of peace and they gave medals to those. They called chief. These medals had the face of great Father Jefferson on one side, they said to the people.
26:37 Great Father Jefferson can see your face right now. He can see into your heart and know if you want peace or if you want war. Great Father Jefferson wants peace for his yellow Children. That's what they called us. Yellow Children
27:02 on the backs of the medals shows hands clasping one another. They told us hands clasped in friendship cannot be raised against one another in war. And they gave so many of these out that finally there were no more.
27:26 And they reached inside their pants and brought out coins from Great Father George Washington's time. And they gave these out as medals. Then they traded for beaver skin, for par flesh, for shields, for beads, for moccasins.
27:50 They said these, we will send back to the Great Father Jefferson.
27:57 But the way grew long, the way grew steep and the water in the rivers grew less and less. The rocks grew more and more and holes had to be dug in the earth so that the white men could put their supplies and make the boats lighter.
28:23 They needed them to be lighter because they were pulling them themselves sometimes with ropes and they were putting bundles on their own backs. This is called portage. That's what my husband said, picking up things out of the boats and carrying them on your back. It was the time
28:47 of the long grass that I began to be sick. First, it was the fever and then the dullness and the aching of the body. And then they said, I walk with spirits. They said my heart would race and then slow
29:12 and race again and slow. They said my arms and legs were trembling like leaves before the wind. I do not remember this thing. What I do remember is Lewis bringing to me water,
29:33 water from the stinking spring called sulfur. And he made me drink and drink
29:44 until finally I slipped in my body once again. And when I woke, I knew who I was. I knew what I was. I was hungry and I begged for food. But they said no, for days you have been with spirits. You almost died.
30:08 We will give you broth. One day, broth, two days, broth, three days broth. At the end of the third day, I wanted something else to eat. So I slipped from camp and I found bread, root,
30:32 Prairie apple. That's what they call. And I dug and dug and dug and I ate and ate and ate. And that night my stomach thundered and thundered and thundered. Lewis was very angry.
30:54 Too many raw apples. He said to me, Janie, Janie, Janie, too little sense. When I was stronger, we began to climb around the great thundering falls. And when we came to a place that was high and flat,
31:19 the men put one of the canoes on wheels, put up a sail in the canoe and let the wind blow that canoe faster on the dry land than it had ever gone on the water. The men danced and clapped their hands and made a great joke
31:40 until they had to run after the canoe. So it wouldn't crash.
31:47 But the same winds that had blown. The canoe brought the summer storms, the skies grew dark, the winds howled like wolves and the winds brought hailstones, the size of fist coming down from the sky and hitting us on our head on our shoulders,
32:11 slamming us to the ground. Clark pointed to a dry ravine. Go. He said, go for safety. Charbonneau. And I ran to this dry ravine. I had pump on my back in the cradle board, but there was no room for the cradle board.
32:33 So I took it off and I hailed my son to me. I put my back towards the river bank thinking this would keep me dry and keep my son safe. Clark came to
32:49 this was not a safe place to be all of a sudden. The hillside above gave way and the dry ravine was filled with water, pieces of trees rocks. My brave husband climbed out first and Clark pushed me up to my husband with pump in my arms.
33:14 Clark was standing waist deep in water where there had been no water before. And just as he climbed out, the water grew as tall as two men standing on one another and then as tall as three men standing before it flooded over the top and chased us towards the trees.
33:39 The next day, we went back trying to find the things that had been lost. Clark's compass, his umbrella and the cradle board. We found this compass and Clark was so happy. He wrote about it in the journal. I shall name this place.
34:03 Defeated, drain for the instrument has been saved. When Charbonneau told me what Clark had named this place. I kept my mouth quiet, but I thought it's a bad name for. It is not the drain that is defeated.
34:26 Pomp's cradle board. All of Pomp's clothes that were inside and all of my possessions were gone and those never came back, never were found.
34:46 Days went on. They came, they went and Lewis and Clark were worried about where they were going to find the people with the horses for crossing through the mountains. We came to the place of the buffalo jump
35:04 and they found moccasins in the dirt. They had Jamie Reed, the moccasins. No, these are not the shape. These are not the beads. These are not the patterns of my people. And then they began to ask every day, aren't we there yet?
35:30 And the answer was always not yet, not yet. But we came to the place of the three forks and I began to recognize the country. I told the story to my husband about the three forks and being taken by the mandan people.
35:55 I told him once we see the beaver head heal, then we will find my birth people. And it happened in this way, we got to Beaverhead Hill, Lewis made a strange decision. He said all of the men are tired,
36:19 they're still bruised from the hailstones, the spikes from the plants that have gone through their moccasins, they need rest. So all of you, you stay right here in this camp. I'll take a few men forward with me and I will find these people with the horses.
36:42 When my husband told me of this plan, I thought he doesn't know signs. He doesn't know the talk of the Gatica. How's he gonna trade for horses? I should go. These are my people. But Lewis said, no, he came to Charbonneau
37:04 and said, ask Janie, what is the word amongst the snake people for white men?
37:14 There was no word for a white man but to say nothing would have shown disrespect. So I had to say something. I thought about this thing he had asked and I finally came up with the word. Tell him, Tama
37:36 means stranger in the language of my people. And surely these men with their faces, the color of ash, their stink of the great black dog upon them. They would be strangers to my people. I told him paint the cheeks of the women red.
37:59 It's a sign of peace that everybody knows just by looking and then they were gone. It took seven sleeps for us to catch up to them. But the morning I could hear the dogs barking in the far away camp.
38:22 I could smell the warming fires. I could hear Children. I knew this was the camp of my people neah, the people I turned to tell Clark but he did not know signs. He did not know the talk.
38:46 So I did. The only thing I could think of. I curled my fingers and sucked on them. I danced from foot to foot as a child does. When a child is excited, I was trying to tell him these are the people of my childhood. And he looked and he saw
39:10 first came the dogs sniffing and snarling and biting at our ankles. Then came the proud young men, every inch warriors and the women and the Children to the sides in a great throng, the crowd broke open.
39:33 Lewis strode out. He had shelled in his hair, a mark of honor and his face was covered with the red. He hugged Clark so tightly. And so many times that soon both men were covered with the red paint.
39:55 He wrote of this in his journal and he called it the national hug and I am heartily tired of it said he, I got the horses they needed for crossing the shining mountains. I reclaimed part of my family who was still alive.
40:19 But this was the beginning of even more adventure. I tell you these things that they will be remembered and honored in the true way that they happened.
40:37 Hi, it is good that you remember. It is finished. Now,
41:02 I could see as I was talking, there were questions written on some of your faces. I can maybe answer a question or two. Anybody have a question.
41:17 Yes, sir.
41:20 My brother, when did I catch up with my brother, my brother was at the village of my people and I didn't recognize him at first. He was in council and I had been asked to come in and say the words in the language of the people. But I kept my eyes down all the time. I didn't see the faces
41:44 and Louis said the words in English and Labi said them in French char Manna said them in Mandan. Then I said them in the aga tongue. And for a long time, nobody answered until finally, a man's voice spoke.
42:05 And even though it had been years since I heard that voice, even though I could not see his face, I knew who it was. And I jumped to my feet and I cried out, brother, brother, it was Kame Await,
42:23 my clan brother who was there, the one Lewis and Clark called Chief. But until I called out his name, he had not recognized this man and woman with a husband with a son with a new name.
42:47 All right, folks, why we're getting ready for our next presentation, which is gonna be curly bear Wagner to talk about black feet, history and culture and their encounters with Lewis and Clark. If we can have you kind of head to the back of the tent, I'm sure that she would be very happy to continue to answer your questions as we switch over between the programs. So again, please
43:11 give her a hand for presenting here in the tenement voices.
43:17 OK?

Tent of Many Voices

Joyce Badgley Hunsucker: Sacagawea’s Life and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Joyce Badgley Hunsucker

Cherokee, Lakota

45:11

Search the Database

Joyce Badgley Hunsucker: Sacagawea’s Life and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Our Partners

More Voices

Our Partners