Sacagawea was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who, in her teens, helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in achieving their chartered mission objectives by exploring the Louisiana Territory. Sacagawea traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American people and contributing to the expedition's knowledge of natural history in different regions.
Sacagawea (right) with Lewis and Clark at the Three Forks, mural at Montana House of Representatives
Lewis and Clark reach the Shoshone camp led by Sacagawea.
Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia by Charles Marion Russell. A painting of the Expedition depicting Sacagawea with arms outstretched.
Sakakawea obelisk at the believed site of her death, Mobridge, South Dakota, 2003
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select group of U.S. Army and civilian volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. Clark, along with 30 others, set out from Camp Dubois, Illinois, on May 14, 1804, met Lewis and ten other members of the group in St. Charles, Missouri, then went up the Missouri River. The expedition crossed the Continental Divide of the Americas near the Lemhi Pass, eventually coming to the Columbia River, and the Pacific Ocean in 1805. The return voyage began on March 23, 1806, at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, ending six months later on September 23 of that year.
Portraits of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Camp Dubois (Camp Wood) reconstruction, where the Corps of Discovery mustered on the east side of the Mississippi River, through the winter of 1803–1804, to await the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase to the United States
Corps of Discovery meet Chinooks on the Lower Columbia, October 1805 (Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia painted by Charles Marion Russel, c. 1905)
Reconstruction of Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark Memorial Park, North Dakota