8-18-19 Riverton, WY

It was a long drive, 325 miles, to Riverton, but we switched off twice and that makes it much easier.  It was another one of those choices I had to make:  drive too far or not far enough.  There weren’t many campgrounds to choose from out in the middle of the Wyoming plains.  Thus, here we are, parked at Wind River RV Park, a small, rustic, tired little campground with no amenities to speak of save a huge, sparkling clean laundry room and bathhouse.  That’s OK, every day on these trips can’t be frantic.  Sometimes, it works to take a couple of days off to catch our breath.

After our “chores” were wrapped up for the day, though, we decided to explore a bit.  We found Sacajawea Cemetery nearby where, theoretically, she is buried.  Sacajawea, a Shoshone Indian born in about 1788, was married off to Toussaint Charbonneau when she was 12 years old. (Charbonneau had a second Shoshone Indian wife, Otter Woman.)  In 1804, Thomas Jefferson enlisted William Clark and Meriwether Lewis to launch the Corps of Discovery expedition.  They knew they would need an interpreter and Charbonneau applied since he spoke at least 2 languages, French and English.  Clark and Lewis signed him up and naturally, his 2 wives came with the deal.  Sacajawea, who spoke Shoshone and English, was pregnant at the time with her first child, Jean Baptiste.  Not much is known about Otter Woman, but Sacajawea turned out to be an incredible asset to the expedition.  She was a wife and mother, an interpreter, a knowledgeable provider of food because she knew about edible roots and could hunt, trap and fish, a doctor who knew herbal healing medicines and a diplomat.  When hostile Indians threatened, Sacajawea could turn down the heat and assure them that the Lewis and Clark team was non-violent and she would give them gifts to soothe their fears.  She was a phenomenal woman and Lewis and Clark wrote quite a bit about her in their journals.

In theory, this is Sacajawea's grave

Two theories exist, even today, about Sacajawea.  The first is that she ran away to escape from Charbonneau, lived with a tribe of Comanche in Oklahoma for a time and then traveled on to Wyoming to live among her Shoshone people.  She died at the age of 96 and is buried at the grave we visited.  The second is that Sacajawea, who had given birth to a second child, Lizette, a few months earlier, died at the young age of 25 while still on the expedition.  It is a fact that Clark had written next to her name in his journal, “dead.”  Clark also adopted Jean Baptiste and Lizette at a later time.  That doesn’t mean the running away story isn’t true, though. 

Sacajawea's gravesite, in theory.  To the
left, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Sacajawea's son.
To the right, Bazil, the old woman's son. 

As for the old Shoshone woman, she had a child named Bazil.  The old woman lived with the Shoshone and claimed that she had been on the Lewis and Clark Expedition but no one, it seems, knows her name.  Historians theorize, on the one hand, that the woman in the grave we visited is the old woman, name unknown.  Local lore adamantly claims that Sacajawea lies in this grave and she lived to be 96, as the grave marker says.  There is another marker in Mobridge, SD honoring Sacajawea and it declares her death date to be December 20, 1812, as Clark documented.  Jean Baptiste Charbonneau is buried next to the grave we visited but so is Bazil, the old woman’s son.  So Rob and I are caught in the middle.  Did we see Sacajawea’s grave or didn’t we?  You be the judge!

Chief Washakie's monument

Chief Washakie's grave

The other cemetery we visited holds the grave of Chief Washakie, a man famous among the Shoshone for his bravery and heroism in battle.  Crowheart Butte in WY is named in honor of Washakie’s victory in a battle against the Crow tribe over hunting lands.  The story is that after the victory, he raised his sword with a Crow heart impaled upon it.  Nasty!  He is known for his gentle, peaceful temperament toward the white man, but apparently, he wasn’t too fond of the Crow on whom he was happy to perform a heartectomy. 

Crowheart Butte

Incidentally, if you are a numismatist, you can buy a gold one dollar Sacajawea coin, minted for a short time around the year 2000, on Etsy for $9,500.  Get it while it’s hot!