Joan's Reading Adventures

Sacajawea is a name nearly everyone recognizes. Many of us learned about her role in the Lewis and Clark expedition, but I never realized the challenges she faced throughout her life.

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Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea takes readers on a journey back in time, narrated by Native American author Diane Glancy. Glancy tells Sacajawea’s story from her own perspective as an Indian interpreter on the expedition, alongside actual journal entries from Lewis and Clark. The physical exertion and struggles Sacajawea and the Corps of Discovery faced were unimaginable to me. Illnesses plague her. Her husband beats her. She endures freezing temperatures, remains wet and tired for long stretches, and eats spoiled meat. Swarms of mosquitoes torment the group, and river rapids challenge them. They cross the Rocky Mountains—often slogging through hip-deep snow and treacherous terrain. The journey lasts over two years, from May 1804 to September 1806. Sacajawea’s physical and mental toughness impresses me deeply.

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At the age of twelve, Sacajawea, a young Shoshone girl, is taken captive by the Hidatsa tribe, a Missouri River Siouan people. This marks an early turning point in her life. She is then taken to live between the Heart River and Knife River along the Middle Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. Yearning for her home, she makes the best of her captivity.

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Sometime after her capture, Sacajawea becomes the property of the French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau—either through sale or by being won by him. Fast forward to 1804. When Lewis and Clark first meet her, she is 16 and pregnant, living in the Mandan village of North Dakota, where the expedition winters. In the spring of 1805, as the Corps of Discovery prepared to depart, Sacajawea and her husband were chosen as interpreters, set to guide the search for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. With her two-month-old son, Jean Baptize, strapped to her back, Sacajawea begins the long, perilous journey west over the Rocky Mountains. Day after day, she fights to keep herself and her baby alive as they endure the treacherous trek. Her value extends beyond her skills as a translator: she gathers roots and berries to help feed her fellow travelers, scrapes hides for blankets and clothing, and, most importantly, serves as a peace symbol when the expedition enters numerous Indian territories.

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Diane Glancy gives Sacajawea a voice that pointedly challenges the differences between Native and European cultures, and between male and female, throughout the story. Through her perspective, we witness firsthand the trials and hardships Sacajawea, Lewis, Clark, and the rest of the men endured as they mapped a route from St. Louis to the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. This journey is one that most modern-day people would likely find impossible to accomplish.