Women and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Woman throughout history have had a powerful impact on our country’s growth, direction, and success. March is Women’s History Month and we’ll look at several woman who made significant impact on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Apart from the two Captains, a young Shoshone woman is perhaps the best known member of the entire Expedition. Fact and fiction have made Sacagawea a legendary figure whose name often appears in lists of the country’s most admired women.

Sacagawea was either 16 or 17 years old when she joined the Corps of Discovery. She met Lewis and Clark while she was living among the Mandan and Hidatsa in North Dakota, though she was a Lemhi Shoshone from Idaho. She had been taken during a raid by the Hidatsa when she was either 11 or 12, and had lived at the Awatixa (Sakakawea) Village.

During Women’s History Month, we’re honoring the Expedition’s most important woman – Sacagawea. There are more statues dedicated to Sacagawea than to any other American woman. While most memorials are along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, one proudly stands in Washington, D.C., in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center.

After the men of the Expedition finished the brutal crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains and reached the home of the Nez Perce in September 1805, some warriors considered killing the exhausted and starving explorers. After all, they carried an ample supply of firearms, ammunition, and trade goods.

While she’s often overlooked, Lucy Meriwether Lewis Marks made an indirect but important contribution to the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s outcome. Meriwether Lewis’s mother was a talented and resourceful woman who effectively shaped her son to become an outstanding man capable of leading a group of soldiers across the continent.

On January 8, 1806, Captain Clark and a small party of men were visiting some Tillamook and Clatsop people near the Necanicum River (in today’s Seaside, Oregon). In the evening, McNeal went off with a woman, through an arrangement by a Tillamook man – a man who intended to kill McNeal and take his possessions.