Some of the most sought after new, Sacagawea Golden Dollars are those that grade in extraordinarily high, “Deep Cameo Proof 69” condition. And we’ll go one better by offering the spectacular first-year-of-issue 2000-S Sacagawea Golden Dollar in exceptional “Deep Cameo Proof” quality.This beautiful new Sacagawea Dollar features distinguishing traits including a golden color, extra wide border, a smooth edge and a specially designed alloy. While the uncirculated versions are readily available at any bank for a dollar, the “Cameo Proof” versions are special, limited editions released exclusively by the United States Mint.

She was a slave, a woman and an Indian. And America might not be what it is today without Sacagawea.
Sacagawea was probably born in 1790 in what is now Idaho. A member of the Shoshone tribe, she was kidnapped as a child by the Hidatsa tribe. The Hidatsas sold her as a slave to the Mandan Sioux of modern-day North Dakota.
There are conflicting stories, but Sacagawea ended up with a Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. One story says he won her and another Indian woman in a bet.

Others say Charbonneau bought the women. Whatever the truth, by the winter of 1805, the two were a couple, and Sacagawea was pregnant and near term. That sets the stage.Two years earlier, President Thomas Jefferson had sent emissaries to France to buy New Orleans. He believed U.S. interests mandated that the city, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, be part of the country. Alternatively, the emissaries were to negotiate free navigation of the river.
But Napoleon had another idea. He needed money and offered a deal: France's entire Louisiana Territory for a

then-kingly $15 million. Jefferson jumped at it. So what was out there? Before the Louisiana Purchase, the United States of America ended at the Mississippi. The fact is, white Easterners at the time knew more about the face of the moon than the interior of the North  American continent -- and the U.S. government had just bought 800,000 square miles of it sight unseen. Jefferson sent his private secretary, Army Capt. Meriwether Lewis, to explore. Lewis recruited Lt. William Clark and the Corps of Discovery and in 1804 set off up the Missouri River into terra incognita. The all-male, all-single, mostly soldier group was to map, observe and record everything and to find a navigable water route to the Pacific.
Lewis and Clark realized they would need interpreters to speak with the Indian tribes they expected to meet. In 1805, they wintered at the Mandan village along the Missouri. There, they hired Charbonneau as an interpreter and guide.
Along with Charbonneau came Sacagawea. The thinking was she could help translate when the expedition reached her native area. The Indian teen-ager gave birth to a son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, on Feb. 12, 1805, in the Mandan village. The baby was strapped to his mother's back when the expedition left the Mandans that April.The expedition continued up the Missouri River. Stories told over the years have Sacagawea guiding Lewis and Clark through the wilderness, interpreting for them and keeping them out of harm's way more than a few times. There are contrarians.
Historian Stephen Ambrose, in "Undaunted Courage his book about the Lewis and Clark expedition, contends Sacagawea was not a guide and that neither Lewis nor Clark thought of consulting her even when she clearly could have helped. The two seem to have asked for her advice only once -- for a route when they entered her people's hunting grounds. She pointed them up a tributary of the Beaverhead River.
What is not disputed are the events following Sacagawea's reunion with her tribe on Aug. 15, 1805. If what happened had been part of a Hollywood movie, critics probably would have panned it as unrealistic. Lewis met with the chief of the Shoshones. Sacagawea listened to the parlay and then recognized the chief was her brother, Cameahwait.
Her relationship to the chief cemented the expedition's standing with the tribe. It also may have been the critical breakthrough Lewis and Clark needed to reach the Pacific and return. They desperately needed Indian help to get over the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and Idaho.
Cameahwait sold horses to the travelers and provided a guide to lead them across the Bitterroots. Even with Shoshone help, the expedition suffered many hardships going over the mountains. Had Sacagewea not helped them establish a rapport with Cameahwait, the explorers would certainly have fared far worse.
Eventually, Lewis and Clark met up with the Nez Perce tribe and made their way to the Columbia River and to the Pacific Ocean. They wintered over at the mouth of the Columbia and started home in the spring. When the party reached the Mandan village, Charbonneau and Sacagawea stayed behind.
Following the expedition, Clark offered to school Jean Baptiste. Charbonneau and Sacagawea accepted the offer and moved to the St. Louis area. They had a daughter named Lizette and then moved back to the Mandan village in 1811.
Sacagawea died of "putrid fever" on Dec. 20, 1812, or maybe not. Shoshone oral tradition says she returned to the Shoshones and settled at the Wind River reservation in modern-day Wyoming. Tribal tradition says she died on April 9, 1884, and is buried there.
A slave, an Indian and a woman, Sacagawea received little respect during her lifetime. Today, the United States recognizes her and her place in American history through its new Golden Dollar coin. The front features a portrait of her and a bundled Jean Baptiste.
livinghistoryonline.com/sacagawe

www.centercoin.com/coin_catalog/dollar/united_states_sacagawea_dollars.htm

http://chipmancoins.com/Sacagawea_Mint_Sets.htm

sacajawea ( 1787 ? - 1812 or 1884)

The only Native American woman who served as an interpreter and guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 and 1806.          As a child, she had been captured by members of the Hidatsa Tribe and was sold as a slave to the Missouri River Mandans; later to be sold to a French-Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau.
While the Expedition wintered in the Hidatsa- Mandan Village (1804-1805), they hired Charbonneau as an interpreter and guide for the trip west.  Sacajawea, one of Charbonneau wives, and her baby accompained the Expedition.  Deserving of Praise for her legendary resourcefulness, perseverance, and commitment to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Sacajawea... Sakakawea... Sacagawea

Spelling of her name is controversial.  Charbonneau stated that her name meant Bird Woman and in the Hidatsa language the name should be properly spelled "Tsakaka-wias".  The name adopted by Wyoming and some other Western States is "Sacajawea", the Shoshone word meaning "Boat-Launcher".  The name is entered in Clark's  Journal for April 7, 1805 as Sah-kah-gar-wea. (Ralph M. Shane - A Short History of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation)

May 14, 1805 -  The boat Sacajawea was riding in was hit by a high wind and nearly capsized.  Her calmness earned her compliments from the Captains.   "The Indian woman to whom I ascribe equal fortitude and resolution, with any person onboard at the time of the accident, caught and preserved most of the light articles which were washed overboard". 

July 28, 1805 - Sacajawea was a remarkable woman in time of sorrow.

"Our camp is precisely on the spot that the Snake Indians were encamped at the time the Minnetares of the Knife River first came in sight of them five years since.   From hence they retreated about three miles up Jefferson's River and concealed themselves in the woods, the Minnetares pursued, attacked them, killed 4 men, 4 women, a number of boys, and made prisoners of all the females and four boys, Sacajawea was one of the female prisoners. I cannot discover that she shows any emotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or of joy in being restored to her native country; if she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear I believe she would be perfectly content anywhere..."

August 8, 1805 - Sacajawea was attached to her country and kin.

"The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distance from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west.  This hill she says her nation calls the Beaver's Head, as it resembles the head of that animal.  She assures us that we shall either find her people o this river or on the river immediately west..."

August 17, 1805 - Five years later, Sacajawea had an emotional reunion with her brother, Chief Cameahwait; it was Sacajawea who secured the horses that the Expedition needed.
"Clark saw Sacajawea, who was with her husband 100 yards ahead, began to dance and show every mark of the most extravagant joy, turning round him and pointing to several Indians, whom he now saw advancing on horseback, sucking her fingers to indicate that they were of her native tribe"...
"She came into the tent, sat down, and was beginning to interpret, when in the person of Cameahwait she recognized her brother;  She instantly jumped up, and ran and embraced him, throwing over him her blanket and weeping profusely..."

October 19, 1805 - The presence of Sacajawea was an invitation to the Indians that the white people came in peace. "The sight of this Indian woman, wife to one of our interprs. confirmed those people of our friendly intentions, as no woman ever accompanies a war party of Indians in this quarter..."

November 20, 1805 - Sacajawea, always pleasing the Captains. "one of the Indians had on a roab made of 2 Sea Otters Skins the fur of them were more butifull than any fur I had ever seen  both Capt. Lewis & my Self endeavored to purchase the roab with differant articles  at length we precurred it for a belt of blue beeds which the - wife of our interpreter Shabono wore around her waste..."

November 24, 1805 -  Reaching the place where the Columbia River empties into the Pacific Ocean, the members  of the Expedition were given the right to vote on the location where they would settle for the winter.   Sacajawea (Janey) in favor of a place where there is plenty of Potas.

January 7, 1806 - A whale had washed ashore, near present day Seaside/Cannon Beach, Oregon.   Sacajawea accompanied the group to the ocean.  "...she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous ish was also to be seen,..."

July 15, 1806 - Sacajawea proved a valuable guide on the return journey.   She remembered trails from her childhood; the most important trail was a large road that passed through a gap in the mountain, which led to Yellowstone River.  Today, it is known as Bozeman Pass, Montana.

August 14, 1806 - End of the Journey for Sacajawea... returning to the Hidatsa-Mandan Village. " I offered to take the little son a butifull promising child who is 19 months old to which they both himself & wife were willing provided the child had been weened.  They observed that in one year the boy would be sufficiently old to leave  his mother & he would then take him to me if I would be so friendly as to raise the child ... to which I agreed".  Capt. Clarks' Journal Entry August 17, 1806

www.lewisandclark.org/

1998: Sacagawea as a Symbol  Her face on the new Dollar Coin

A committee, headed by the Secretary of the treasury Robert Rubin, was searching for an American woman to replace Susan B. Anthony on the dollar coin. They chose an image  “inspired by” Sacagawea, since there are no pictures of what she really looked like.  They see her as a symbol of liberty that can represent courageous American women.   When asked to explain their decision, Philip Diehl, the chairman, said,

“She was simply a woman of exemplary physical courage and stamina, who  through a remarkable confluence of circumstances contributed to the success of one of the greatest American adventures. . . She has heroism and the element of   tragedy.     She was reclaimed from history for our generation” (Women’s Wire).
  
Americans may have “reclaimed” Sacagawea, but they have reclaimed from her story what they wanted to. 

A majority of people wish to see her as a representative American Indian woman who did much for the nation; they continue her legacy by holding her up as a symbol, and this symbol is made “better” by the debate that people can still have about her life.  Diehl’s  quote represents what most Americans probably think of Sacagawea.  Sacagawea was a slave who was not even thought of as a real American. She was accidentally involved in the expedition, and Americans know very little about her. Despite all these realities that could be considered to go against Sacagawea being any sort of politically correct legend, she has become a sort of ROMANtic symbol of American women.  This could be attributed to the few women in the 19th century who are known by people today. When Americans find one woman who was part of something great, they grab her and hold her up for all to see.  It is important not to say that Sacagawea was the heroine of the expedition at the same time we cannot say she did not aide them at all. Sacagawea was not the most important member of the Corps, but her presence was valuable to  Lewis and Clark, the Corps, and therefore, America.       Newsweek, a weekly popular periodical, mentions Sacagawea’s upcoming appearance on the dollar coin, responding with,  “You can only wonder.  What might the Christian right have to say upon learning that the plucky teen was an unwed mother who schlepped her baby and lover along with her? Next to that, the yelps over the new $20 will seem like petty change” (Newsweek). The authors are already anticipating controversy over Sacagawea, or at least some light-humored discussion.  This controversy is the modern day world, imposing itself and its morals on history. How will this predicted controversy compare to the debates and controversy that has always plagued Sacagawea’s legend?
Sacagawea can be a role model for women because she was a wife and a mother at the same time as she was working hard for what was the best for the expedition. She must have had an incredible amount of strength to carry her baby on her back while gathering food, walking nearly across a continent, and acting as a sort of “ambassadress” to all the Indian nations.
 

Possible Coin Designs courtesy of the U.S. Mint
www.artsci.wustl.edu/

http://lewisandclarktrail.com/sacajawea.htm

www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/feed/

www.42explore2.com/lewisclark.htm

www.lewisandclark200.com/

www.lewisandclarkidaho.org/

www.lewis-clark.org

www.sacajaweahome.com