2/15/2007:
Controversy has surrounded the story of Sakakawea for decades – what tribe she belonged to, when and how she died, and where she was buried. Many historians maintain she died at a young age and is buried at Fort Manuel Lisa, south of Mandan. Others believe Sakakawea lived a long life on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. It is said she was buried at Ft. Hall, Idaho.
This week, in 1925, the Bismarck Tribune reported Major A. B. Welch had brought forth a new version concerning her death. Bulls Eye, Sakakawea’s grandson, told Welch the story at a Memorial Day ceremony at Fort Berthold the previous year. When the Major understood the importance of what he was hearing, he asked Bulls Eye to invite other elders to listen, so they could correct him, or remind if he left anything out.
Bulls Eye explained his mother was Otter Woman; Otter Woman’s mother was T(sakakawea)ish, and Sakakawea’s mother was also named Otter Woman. “These white men came along here about a hundred years ago. They made a mistake with the interpreter,” Bulls Eye said. “He could not speak the Indian well and told it wrong. He could not talk English either. He talked French [. . .] We have heard that they wrote it that she was not a Hidatsa. That she was a Shoshoni prisoner among us. But she was not a Shoshoni. She was Hidatsa.”
Bulls Eye told Welch that Lewis and Clark misunderstood when they were told Sakakawea had a brother among the Shoshoni tribe. “Indian relationship is not like the whites tell it,” he said. “When an Indian makes a friend of a stranger, they sometimes call them ‘brothers.’ So I think this interpreter told the whites she had a brother there among the Shoshoni. It did not mean the Gros Ventre had her captive from the Shoshoni. [. . .] We are sorry that they got it wrong. It has been wrong ever since then.”
Bulls Eye said his mother and grandmother were killed when he was four years old; it was still a vivid memory for him. “When my grandmother, Sakakawea was married to this man, Sharbonish,” he said, “she had learned to like coffee terribly well. She could not get along without coffee. When she got out of coffee she would travel a long distance to get some more. She saved the coffee from the pots and would put it on her head so it would smell like coffee.”
Bulls Eye explained they were near Glasgow MT during one of Sakakawea’s coffee-buying trips when they were attacked while sleeping under their wagon. Sakakawea grabbed Bulls Eye and ran to a willow stand to hide. When they returned at dawn, Otter Woman was wounded and sitting up against a wagon wheel, where she died.
“My grandmother was also hit in the side with a bullet, but had not said anything about that,” Bulls Eye said. “My grandmother did not cry any. Sakakawea, my grandmother, died at the trader’s place from her wound 7 days after that time.”
By Merry Helm
Source: The Bismarck Tribune. Saturday, 14 Feb 1925. Pages 1 & 3.