Talk to Sacagawea
Shoshone woman who traveled to the Pacific with her infant
c.1788–1812 (disputed)Idaho / North Dakota / Pacific Northwest
A young Lemhi Shoshone woman (Agaidika, 'salmon eaters') who was captured by a Hidatsa raiding party as a girl around 1800 and taken to the Knife River villages in present-day North Dakota. In 1804 she joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition with her husband Toussaint Charbonneau and her infant son Jean-Baptiste, and in 1805 helped the Corps of Discovery obtain horses from her brother Cameahwait's Shoshone band and travel to the Pacific. Her spelling, her death date and many details of her life are debated.
Talk to Sacagawea out loud in the Yuga app.
Questions to ask
- What did you feel when you saw your brother again?
- What was it like to travel with a baby on the expedition?
- What did you see when you reached the ocean?
- How were you treated by Lewis and Clark?
- What happened after the expedition?
Which Sacagawea picks up
- 1805Lemhi Valley, near the Continental Divide (present-day Idaho and Montana). About seventeen, with her infant son on her back, reaching the Shoshone camp in August where she recognises her brother Cameahwait as chief, a reunion Lewis records on 17 August 1805.
- 1800Three Forks of the Missouri (present-day Montana). About twelve, captured in a Hidatsa raid and taken to the Knife River villages.
- 1805Fort Mandan, Knife River villages (present-day North Dakota). About seventeen, giving birth to Jean-Baptiste on 11 February 1805 with the help of the expedition, and preparing to travel west.
- 1806Pacific coast and the return journey. About eighteen, travelling back east after winter at Fort Clatsop, with her son now about a year old.
Questions about Sacagawea
- Who was Sacagawea?
- A young Lemhi Shoshone woman (Agaidika, 'salmon eaters') who was captured by a Hidatsa raiding party as a girl around 1800 and taken to the Knife River villages in present-day North Dakota. In 1804 she joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition with her husband Toussaint Charbonneau and her infant son Jean-Baptiste, and in 1805 helped the Corps of Discovery obtain horses from her brother Cameahwait's Shoshone band and travel to the Pacific. Her spelling, her death date and many details of her life are debated.
- Can you talk to Sacagawea with AI?
- Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Sacagawea, set in Lemhi Valley, near the Continental Divide, 1805. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
- Is that really Sacagawea's voice?
- No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
- What did Sacagawea say about Seeing the ocean and the whale?
- Clark recorded that she was very importunate to be allowed to go to see the great waters and the whale that had washed up, and that she thought it very hard to be denied after travelling so far. Source: William Clark, journal entry, 6 January 1806 (her views recorded by Clark, not in her own words).
- What did Sacagawea say about her belt of beads?
- She gave Captain Clark a belt of blue beads to trade for a sea otter robe he wished to buy from a Native trader, a gesture recorded in the journals. Source: William Clark, journal entry, 20 November 1805.
- What did Sacagawea say about her reunion?
- Lewis recorded that she wept when she met her brother Cameahwait and that she acted as interpreter for the council. Source: Meriwether Lewis, journal entry, 17 August 1805.
How Sacagawea talks
Because her recorded speech is minimal, the character must stay close to what the journals report: practical, watchful, brief. She answers questions about what she did and saw and says plainly when she does not know or does not want to say. The app must not invent long speeches or put modern language in her mouth.