HIDATSA

[Alan H. Hartley]

Jimm GoodTracks wrote:

> It is agreed that L & C had no reason to misrepresent her, and there
> is no suggestion of such on the part of the early day Hidatsa, nor by
> my comments here.  However, it is rather ethnocentric to accept the
> information on Bird Woman as understood and written by L & C in their
> journals and then forthright, dismiss the history offered by the very
> people with whom this woman lived. At best, L & C were foreigners who
> were traveling through the land of then indigenous country.  The fact
> is that they spent only several months in Hidatsa country; they did
> not understand the various cultures with whom, they communicated via
> a minimum of three languages of not so great interpreteurs.  L & C
> were two (2) people -- "Americans" -- and as such, their information
> stands against a community of indigenous people who say simply that
> he did not get the correct story.  A fast forward to compare with
> today's world, we who enjoy state of the art communication equipment,
> attested interpreteurs and expert CIA information -- and it was just
> with absolute certainty that "confirmed weapons of mass destruction
> were within Iraq...".    Infallibility -- never!

I don't claim infallibility for Lewis and Clark, but I do give their
accounts credit as first-hand reports of Sacagawea. In fact, it seems
"rather ethnocentric" to prefer the accounts of Hidatsas living over a
century after the facts on which they report. (Your reference to two
native Virginians as ""Americans"" -- implying that, because of their
European ancestry, they didn't really qualify -- also smacks of
ethnocentrism.)

Following is part of Lewis's entry for 17 Aug. 1805: "Capt. Clark
arrived with the Interpreter Charbono, and the Indian woman, who proved
to be the sister of the Chif Cameahwait. the meeting of those people was
really affecting, particularly between Sah cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian
woman, who had been taken prisoner at the same time with her, and who
afterwards escaped from the Minnetares [Hidatsas] and rejoined her
nation... we called them together and through the medium of Labuish
[English to French], Charbono [French to Hidatsa] and Sah-cah-gar-weah
[Hidatsa to Shoshone], we communicated to them fully the objects which
had brought us into this distant part of the country"

That seems pretty straightforward to me, and I don't see how even a
naive ethnocentrism on Lewis's part could have twisted the facts of
Sacagawea's origins so radically.

> if indeed, L & C's Journals are completely creditable, and are to be
> taken as is, then the French have been spelling their names
> incorrectly, to wit, "Shabono" [in lieu of Charbonneau], etc., and in
> fact, the entire United States country has fallen into a habit of
> misspelling English, and needs to return to the faultlessness of the
> correct spellings as per the L & C Journals.

The journalists, especially Clark, were not as educated in spelling as
we are today, and they often spelled as they heard, giving us valuable
clues into the pronunciation of English and other languages of the time.
Their records are imperfect, but they're among the most important
sources we have for the state of the trans-Mississippi lands in the
early period of contact between whites and Indians.

Alan