Sacagawea, with the infant Jean Baptiste, was the only woman to accompany the 33 members of the expedition's permanent party. Baptiste, who Captain Clark affectionately named "Pomp" or "Pompy" for his "little dancing boy" frolicking, rode with Sacagwea in the boats and on her back when they traveled on horseback.
November 1804
February 1805
April 1805
May 1805
August 1805
September 1805
January 1806
| Sacagawea's Journey with the Corps of Discovery |
| February 1805 There aren't many occasions in the journals when Sacagawea attracts the captains' notice, but those that do tend to be dramatic moments rendered in characteristically laconic prose and decidedly unfussy spelling. In February 1805, at the fort the corps had built for itself near the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, Sacagawea "was delivered of a fine boy," Captain Lewis recorded. "It is worthy of remark that this was the first child which this woman had boarn and as is common in such cases her labor was tedious and the pain vilent." A French-Canadian trader name Rene Jusseaume administered a tribal remedy for speeding up labor — a small portion of a rattlesnake's rattle. "Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not," Lewis noted, Sacagawea "brought forth" Jean Baptiste Charbonneau within ten minutes. |