Sacajawea

Sacajawea? Sacagawea? Sakakawea?

Where She Came, How Its Spelled

"Sacajawea." Most Americans pronounce it that way too, SAH-kah-jah-WEE-ah.

I couldn't explain or articulate it, but saying "Sacajawea" somehow always felt "wrong." It was always explained to me that "Sacajawea" meant "Bird Woman." In Lakota on Standing Rock, they were taught that to say "Bird Woman" as "Zitkala Winyan." It turns out that Sacajawea was known to the Lakota too, and they did in fact know her as "Zitkala Winyan," as Bird Woman.

The story of Bird Woman is a complicated one. The Shoshone Indians insist that her name is "Sacajawea." They say that her name means "Boat Launcher." The general story is that she was kidnapped by the Hidatsa and brought to the Five Villages at Knife River (today its called Knife River Indian Villages located at present-day Stanton, ND). The Hidatsa Indians, however, were sedentary agricultural people, not particularly wont to journey so far west to Shoshone Indian country to steal children. The Hidatsa were traders, with trade coming to them. Bird Woman was likely kidnapped by the Crow Indians, a sister tribe to the Hidatsa, and who were west of the Five Villages, and who would have most likely raided the Shoshone Indians for horses.

At the Five Villages, Bird Woman came to be known amongst the Hidatsa as Bird Woman. In Hidatsa, they called her Tsacagawea (run the "t" together with the "s"), tsah-KAH-gah-WEE-ah.

When the Corps of Discovery met Bird Woman, they struggled with her name. Captain Lewis spelled it four different ways, Captain Clark spelled it yet four more different ways, and altogether the Corps of Discovery spelled it seventeen different ways. Not once with a "j".

The picture of Mizuo Peck as Sacajawea in the movie Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.