Since aiding Lewis and Clark on their famed 19th-century expedition across the West, this Shoshone woman has become a symbol for everything from Manifest Destiny to women’s rights to American diversity. Does it matter that we don't seem to know that much about her?
If Grace Hebard gave half a damn about the opinions of men, perhaps she would’ve married one. But she never had the time: Since ditching Iowa in 1882 for a pioneer’s life in Wyoming, she had become one of the most renowned scholars in the West. So when U.S. government officials kept rejecting requests for public cash, Hebard simply took matters into her own hands: In the spring of 1933, now in her seventies, Hebard shelled out $150 of her own money to round out a set of three historical markers up the road from Fort Washakie. The center monument honored the gravesite of Sacagawea, the fabled Shoshone interpreter who hiked with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific. The other two were for her sons: one for Bazil, and one for Jean-Baptiste, whose life began as a transcontinental papoose strapped to his mother’s back.
Hebard is the one who blew the Sacagawea story wide open, discovering the Native American guide had been buried right there on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Hebard’s conclusions were amazing: The girl guide apparently lived to be 100 years old. She witnessed years of westward expansion, conquest, ethnic cleansing, and forcible corralling. Hebard even unearthed evidence that Sacagawea eventually reunited with her long-lost Jean-Baptiste, and became a chief among her people until she died in 1884.
That is, if you believe a single word of it. Plenty of historians, members of other tribes, and even some residents of Wind River, say Sacagawea never set foot in Wyoming. She never rejoined her tribe, never got this amazing new life, never even lived long enough to see a Native American reservation. Detractors claim Hebard didn’t even spell her subject’s name right. She used a "J," as in “Sacajawea," while most scholars — and I, as long as we're at it — favor “Sacagawea” with a hard "G." Grace Hebard had engineered a historical fantasy that hoodwinked the country. The old woman buried in that hill by Fort Washakie is not Sacagawea, and the boy to her left is certainly not the transcontinental papoose. And Bazil? Who the heck is Bazil?