Abstract
More than 220 years after she first appeared in the journals of Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea continues to loom large in the American imagination, memorialized in many forms, from statues to the one- dollar coin. The National Park Service claims on its website that ‘there are more statues dedicated to Sacagawea than any other American woman’, including one in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center.1 Since 2000, Sacagawea has been depicted in some form on the one- dollar U.S. coin.2 In the 2006 film Night at the Museum, exhibits come back to life, including Sacagawea, who attracts the attention of Theodore Roosevelt in a bizarre depiction of the historical figures. In these and many other depictions in American culture, Sacagawea is often remembered – and celebrated – for her role as a guide and interpreter during the Lewis and Clark expedition with the Corps of Discovery, from 1805 to 1806. What is paid less attention, however, is the role that Sacagawea’s Indigenous Knowledge about food and culinary practices played during the Lewis and Clark expedition. Certainly, the knowledge she possessed as an Indigenous woman was one of the reasons she was hired along with her partner, Toussaint Charbonneau. Yet the importance of Sacagawea’s knowledge of food as an Indigenous woman for the expedition remains uncertain in dominant understandings of the expedition, though it is visible in primary sources that documented the expedition. Through a discourse analysis of entries in the Lewis and Clark journals, I examine the importance of Sacagawea’s Indigenous knowledge during the expedition and argue that Sacagawea’s practical Indigenous food knowledge benefitted the Corps of Discovery. However, the response of Lewis to her illness shows that her expertise did not mean that she had authority over her own food choices.