In February of 1805, in a cold village along the upper Missouri River, a teenage Shoshone woman gave birth to a baby boy.

Two months later, she strapped that baby to her back and headed for the Pacific Ocean.

Her name was Sacagawea.

Her son was Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, affectionately nicknamed “Pomp” or “Pompy” by William Clark.

And before mother and child returned, they would travel thousands of miles through some of the wildest country on the continent—up the Missouri, across the Rocky Mountains, down the Columbia to the Pacific and all the way back again.

Not bad for a new mother.

A Girl Taken From Home

Sacagawea was probably about eleven or twelve years old when she was taken from her homeland and separated from her people during a Hidatsa raid.

By her mid-teens she was living among the Mandan and Hidatsa villages along the Knife River in what is now North Dakota and had become the wife of French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, a man roughly thirty years her senior. Exactly how that marriage came about—and how much choice Sacagawea had in it—is something history cannot tell us with certainty.

Then, during the winter of 1804–05, some unusual visitors arrived.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had brought their Corps of Discovery more than 1,500 miles up the Missouri and built Fort Mandan for the winter.

They were headed west.

And they had a problem.

Somewhere beyond the mountains they expected to encounter the Shoshone. They would desperately need horses from them to carry men and supplies across the Rockies.

They needed somebody who could speak their language.

Charbonneau could speak Hidatsa.

Sacagawea could speak Hidatsa and Shoshone.

So an extraordinary translation chain was assembled: English could become French, French become Hidatsa, Hidatsa become Shoshone—and the answer could make the same journey back again.

Charbonneau was hired.

Sacagawea was coming too.

There was just one complication.

She had given birth to her first child on February 11, 1805.

On April 7, the expedition headed west.

Baby Pomp was not quite two months old.

The Woman With the Baby

Imagine the picture from a distance.

A heavily armed party of strange men appears along the river.

Rifles. Knives. Boats. Supplies.

Nobody waiting ahead knows whether they're traders, explorers—or a war party.

And then somebody notices something unusual among them.

A young woman carrying a baby.

William Clark eventually understood exactly what that meant.

He wrote that Sacagawea's presence helped convince Native people of the expedition's friendly intentions because:

“A woman with a party of men is a token of peace.”

On another occasion along the Columbia, villagers initially hid when expedition members approached. Then the canoes arrived carrying Sacagawea and her child.

The atmosphere changed.

Clark wrote that seeing the woman helped convince the frightened villagers that the strangers had come peacefully.

Sacagawea didn't carry a peace flag.

She was one.

And that, right there, is where The Peacemaker gets her name.

Home Again

Months into the journey, something else happened.

The expedition was approaching the Rocky Mountains, and the situation was becoming desperate.

They needed horses.

Without them, Lewis believed getting their supplies across the mountains might be impossible.

Then Sacagawea began recognizing the country.

This was the landscape of her childhood.

And on August 17, as Shoshone riders approached, Sacagawea recognized them as her people.

One expedition member recorded that she “danced for the joyful sight.”

What followed has become one of the great moments of the Lewis and Clark story.

Sacagawea was brought forward to interpret.

The Shoshone chief sitting before her was Cameahwait.

And Sacagawea suddenly realized she knew him.

He was her brother.

After years of captivity and separation, the young woman who had been carried away from this country as a child had returned—with a baby of her own, accompanying an expedition from a world her family could scarcely have imagined.

And now the fate of that expedition depended in no small measure upon the conversation she was about to help conduct.

The Corps got its horses.

And headed for the mountains.

Across the Mountains

Getting the horses was one thing.

Getting across the mountains was another.

Ahead of the Corps lay the Bitterroot Mountains and roughly 200 miles of the Lolo Trail — some of the hardest country the expedition would encounter.

By September 1805, winter was already arriving in the high country. Snow covered the trail. Game became scarce. Food ran dangerously low. The men slaughtered horses for meat and supplemented their dwindling supplies with whatever they could find.

Sacagawea crossed it all with an infant.

Eventually the Corps staggered out of the mountains and into the country of the Nez Perce, who helped feed the exhausted travelers and assisted them in preparing for the river journey ahead. From there came the Clearwater, then the Snake, and finally the great Columbia River carrying them westward.

They had crossed mountains, descended rapids, endured cold, hunger and exhaustion.

Then, in November of 1805, after a year and a half of traveling west, the expedition was finally nearing the goal that had pulled them across a continent.

On November 7, William Clark famously scratched his excitement into his journal:

“Ocian in view. O! The joy.”

His spelling, not ours. 😄

The celebration proved a little premature — what Clark was seeing was the broad Columbia River estuary, not yet the open Pacific. But after more than 4,000 miles, they were close enough to taste the salt air.

A few days later, there could be no doubt.

They had reached the Pacific Ocean.

A Voice at the Pacific

Now came another question.

Where would they spend the winter?

On November 24, Lewis and Clark gathered the expedition and asked everyone's opinion about where their winter quarters should be established.

Clark recorded the choices in his journal.

Among the names was Sacagawea.

So was York, William Clark's enslaved servant.

Calling the event a modern democratic “vote” probably stretches things a little too far. The journals describe it more accurately as a consultation or opinion poll. But the remarkable fact remains: Sacagawea's opinion was asked for and recorded.

In 1805.

A teenage Shoshone woman had traveled across much of a continent carrying her infant son—and when the expedition faced a decision at the Pacific, her voice was included.

The Corps crossed to the south side of the Columbia and eventually built Fort Clatsop, near present-day Astoria, Oregon.

And it was there that we get perhaps our favorite glimpse of Sacagawea herself.

The Monstrous Fish

Just after Christmas, word reached Fort Clatsop that something enormous had washed ashore.

A whale.

Clark organized a party to travel down the coast to see it and hopefully obtain some of its blubber.

Sacagawea wanted to go.

Apparently, very badly.

Although the expedition had reached the mouth of the Columbia weeks earlier, Sacagawea had yet to make the trip out to the open Pacific coast.

Now word had arrived that a whale had washed ashore.

Clark recorded that she was “very impatient” to accompany the party. She had traveled a long way to see the “great waters,” she argued, and now there was also a “monstrous fish” to be seen.

After coming all this way, she wanted to see both.

Clark relented.

Sacagawea was going to the beach.

On January 6, 1806, she, Clark, Charbonneau and about a dozen men set out. They traveled by canoe and then on foot, climbing over Tillamook Head before descending toward the coast.

Sacagawea made her way down to the Pacific.

And when they finally reached the whale, there wasn't much whale left to see.

Local Nehalem people had already harvested most of it. Clark found essentially a gigantic skeleton on the beach, measuring it at an astonishing 105 feet.

The party traded for whale blubber and oil before beginning the journey back to Fort Clatsop.

You have to like Sacagawea just a little bit more after that story.

After everything she'd already endured, apparently her attitude was roughly:

I've come this far. I'm seeing the ocean. And I'm seeing that whale.

Turning East

The Corps remained at Fort Clatsop through the wet winter and finally began the journey home on March 23, 1806.

Back up the Columbia.

Back to the Nez Perce.

Back across the mountains.

Eventually Lewis and Clark divided the expedition to explore separate routes. Sacagawea, Charbonneau and little Pomp traveled with Clark's party toward the Yellowstone River.

On July 25 they stopped beside an enormous sandstone formation rising above the plains.

Clark climbed to the top and carved his name and the date into the rock.

He also gave the place a name.

Pomp's Tower.

Named for Sacagawea's little boy, Jean Baptiste — the baby who had crossed the continent on his mother's back.

Today we know it as Pompeys Pillar, and Clark's inscription is still there.

On August 14, 1806, Sacagawea, Charbonneau and Pomp arrived back among the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the upper Missouri.

Their part of the expedition was over.

The rest of the Corps continued toward St. Louis, arriving September 23.

Sacagawea had left those villages seventeen months earlier with a baby not yet two months old.

She returned with a toddler who had traveled across the Rocky Mountains, reached the Pacific Ocean and crossed much of the continent twice before he could even remember doing it.

Which brings us to the knife.

Because if there was ever a Frontier Story that called for a small knife capable of traveling a very long way, I’d say this is it.

This spunky little knife actually started life in the Woody Shop as our Pocahontas Fancy Skinner.

But as our America 250 journey unfolded — and we started digging deeper into the remarkable story of Sacagawea — she seemed to be asking for another name.

A broad Alabama Damascus blade.

Beautifully figured antique Pennsylvania white oak, reclaimed from an 1845 barn.

Old Glory Red, White & Blue liners.

Brass pins and lanyard tube.

A patriotic mosaic pin.

And a handmade top-grain leather sheath by our friend Lonnie Hyatt in Salem, South Carolina.

Not a big knife.

Doesn't need to be.

Handy, capable and built to travel.

A little knife that looks like it belongs on a long journey.

And then we found those words William Clark had written more than 220 years ago:

“A woman with a party of men is a token of peace.”

Well.

That settled it.

So we called her:

THE PEACEMAKER

She crossed a continent carrying a baby.
And somehow made the whole party look less dangerous.

I’ve spent most of my life making knives, and I suppose there are all sorts of ways for one to earn a name.

Some names come from what a knife can do.

Some from what it looks like.

And every once in a while, a name comes from the story you want that knife to carry with it.

Sacagawea didn't conquer the frontier.

She didn't command the expedition.

She didn't fire the first shot or plant a flag.

She translated when words were needed.

She recognized country when others didn't.

She helped strangers understand one another.

And sometimes, just by being there with little Pomp, she told the people ahead that these armed men had come in peace.

That's not a bad legacy for a young woman who probably wasn't yet twenty years old when she made it home.

And not a bad story for a spunky little knife to carry either.

Next Friday, another story from the frontier — and another knife made to remember it by.

Until then, keep your knife close, your friends closer —

and never underestimate the woman carrying the baby.

— Frank

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