Sacajawea Historical State Park History
“The wife of Shabono our interpretr we find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions… a woman with a party of men is a token of peace.” --William Clark, on the Snake River, October 13, 1805
Sacajawea Historical State Park is named for the young Agaidika Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Her efforts as an interpreter, a symbol of peace and the geographic and ecological knowledge she shared contributed to the success of the Expedition’s journey. Her legacy is recognized at the park and continues to inspire many.
Confluence of Two Great Rivers
The confluence of two great rivers—the Snake and the Columbia—provides the setting for Sacajawea Historical State Park. The Snake River flows more than 1,000 miles from its headwaters in Yellowstone National Park. The Columbia River begins at the outlet of Columbia Lake in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, flowing more than 900 mils to the point where the Snake River flows into it at Sacajawea Historical State Park. From the park, the Columbia continues another 325 miles west to the Pacific Ocean.
For thousands of years, the Columbia and Snake River watersheds were renowned for massive runs of anadromous salmon and other fish. Though greatly reduced in number by the construction of dams and other developments that have impacted their spawning and rearing habitats, the salmon still return each year.
Indigenous Lands
Sacajawea Historical State Park lies within the traditional territories of Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
The confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers and the plateau lands that surround it have provided a habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of Tribal cultures. All salmon and other migratory fish, such as lamprey eels, bound for spawning areas in the upper reaches of the Columbia and Snake River watersheds pass by the confluence. Large numbers of fall-run chinook salmon spawned directly in gravels of the main stems of the Columbia and Snake in the area of today’s park. This run was particularly important to regional Indigenous people because of its availability at the end of the harvest season, and because the low body fat content of the fall chinook facilitated efficient drying for storage and winter consumption.
The adoption of horses by regional Indigenous people in the early 1700s facilitated traditional seasonal rounds for food collection—gathering cous, camas and bitterroot on the plateaus, hunting and berry picking in the mountains and even long trips to the Great Plains to hunt bison. But it was the fishery at the confluence of two great rivers that anchored a diverse group of people from throughout the region to the gathering place at today’s Sacajawea Historical State Park.
Visitors from the East
On October 16, 1805, the Corps of Discovery led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark arrived at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers on their trek from the United States to the Pacific Ocean. Sgt. Whitehouse wrote in his journal that: “We found upwards of 200 Indians, that were encamped on a point of land, that lay between these two Rivers, in a very pleasant situated place.” Once camp was made, the Corps welcomed the Indigenous people into their camp for singing, dancing and exchanges of gifts. The Corps remained at the camp until October 18th, repairing their equipment, mending clothing, and learning about the route ahead of them from the many Indigenous people gathered at the confluence.
Mapmaker David Thompson visited the confluence on July 9, 1811, seven days after he had begun paddling down the Columbia River from Kettle Falls. He was an employee of the North West Company of Canada, tasked with expanding that company’s fur trading empire into the region. At the site of today’s Sacajawea Historical State Park, Thompson recorded that he had “erected a small pole, with half a sheet of paper well tied about it, with these words on it: ‘Know hereby that this country is claimed by Great Britain as part of its Territories, and that the Northwest Company of Merchants from Canada finding the Factory for this people inconvenient for them, do hereby intend to erect a factory in this place for the Commerce of the Country around.’”
Heroine of an American Myth
The story of Sacagawea’s life and her role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition is clouded by the fact that most of the written record of her life is contained in the five journals kept by members of the expedition. Sacagawea is mentioned 130 times in the course of all of the journals, but interestingly, only 11 entries actually use her name, spelled eight different ways.
Born around 1788 in today’s central Idaho, Sacagawea was taken by members of the Hidatsa Sioux Nation (descendants include members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation) when she was about 12 years old. She must have quickly learned new tribal customs and language and may have been treated as an adopted daughter. About a year later, she married Toussaint Charbonneau, a Canadian fur trader. Customarily, such a marriage would have been cemented with an exchange of gifts.
Charbonneau was hired by Lewis and Clark as a civilian language interpreter and laborer for the expedition, and Sacagawea, with their two-month-old son Jean Baptiste, accompanied him. The expedition departed their winter quarters at Fort Mandan, North Dakota, in April 1805, not returning until August 1806 after navigating to the mouth of the Columbia River and back.
Sacagawea’s mentions in the trip journals center around a few notable incidents:
- May 14, 1805—Sacagawea rescued items that had fallen out of a boat capsized by Charbonneau, including Lewis and Clark’s journals.
- August 14, 1805—Lewis recorded “this evening Charbono struck his Indian Woman for which Capt. C gave him a severe reprimand.”
- August 17, 1805—Sacagawea met her brother Cameahwait in her Shoshone homeland and provided language interpretation that allowed successful bartering for horses and guides to assist the expedition in their crossing of the Rocky Mountains.
- August 19, 1805—Lewis reported that they met a Shoshone man who claimed to have been promised Sacagawea in a marriage arranged before her capture by the Hidatsa. He did not press his claim.
- October 19, 1805—Clark noted “the sight of This Indian woman, wife to one of our interprs. Confirmed those people of our friendly intentions, as no woman ever accompanies a war party of Indians in this quarter.”
- November 20, 1805—Sacagawea offered her blue-beaded belt to barter for a sea otter robe from the Chinook Nation, which Lewis and Clark wanted to present to President Jefferson.
- November 24, 1805—Sacagawea participated in a vote among all of the expedition members to choose a winter camp location near the mouth of the Columbia River.
- July 6, 1806—Sacagawea pointed out the location of today’s Gibbons Pass to cross the Continental Divide in Montana.
- July 13, 1806—Sacagawea advised William Clark to utilize today’s Bozeman Pass as a better route to return to Fort Mandan. The route was later confirmed as an ideal route by engineers surveying the route of the Northern Pacific Railway.
After the expedition’s return, the record of Sacagawea’s life largely returned to obscurity. It is generally believed that she died in 1812 (about 24 or 25 years old) after the birth of her daughter Lisette, but less-well-documented evidence points to a much longer life that ended at Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation in 1884.
Sacagawea’s introduction to popular acclaim can be attributed to author Eva Emery Dye, a widely read chronicler of other Pacific Northwest historical figures including Dr. John McLoughlin and Ranald MacDonald.
Dye’s The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis & Clark, was a best-selling historical novel published in 1902 in anticipation of the centennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. As Dye researched the expedition journals before beginning to write the book, she noted in her own journal: “Finally I came upon the name of Sacajawea, and I screamed, ‘I have found my heroine!’”
The Conquest portrayed Sacajawea as indispensable to the expedition’s success and the colonization of Indigenous nations that followed:
Sacajawea…heroine of the great expedition, stood with her babe in arms and smiled upon them from the shore. So she had stood in the Rocky Mountains pointing out the gates. So had she followed the great rivers, navigating the continent. -Eva Emery Dye, The Conquest
As Dye had wished, Sacagawea became widely popular as a pan-racial symbol of the significance of women in creating the necessary conditions for the development of “civilization,” supporting the drive for expanding women’s legal rights in the United States.
According to the 2021 National Monument Audit commissioned by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, Sacagawea is represented by 20 monuments in the United States, putting her among the 50 people with the largest number of monuments erected in their honor (William Clark has 22 monuments; Meriwether Lewis has 16). Sacagawea is one of only three women represented in the “top 50.”
Despite her notoriety, even the pronunciation of her name is subject to some disagreement. Most spellings in the expedition journals seem to indicate a hard “g,” in keeping with the translation of her name in the Hidatsa language—“bird woman.” Thus, many official representations of her name (including three of the five mountain peaks named for her—one each in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon, plus one more group of three summits on the Montana/Idaho border officially named in 2001) use the spelling “Sacagawea.” Alternatively, many speakers of the Agaidika Shoshone language prefer the softer “j” sound, more commonly represented in the language of Sacagawea’s homeland. It was that spelling that was used by Eva Emery Dye in her popularization of Sacajawea and used in the official naming of Sacajawea Historical State Park.
Biographer April R. Summitt summarized Sacagawea’s legacy, writing:
“Few figures of history have made as significant an impact on the collective memory of a people, and with so short a life and so little remaining evidence of how she lived.”
Treaties and Conflict
The Oregon Treaty between the United States and Great Britain in 1846 established the border between the two countries’ colonial administration at the 49th parallel, putting the site of today’s Sacajawea Historical State Park under American jurisdiction.
Representatives of numerous Indigenous people with traditional territories in what is now eastern Washington negotiated and signed treaties with Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens at Walla Walla on June 9, 1855, ceding ownership of the area to the US federal government but keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the lands and waters of the Snake and Columbia Rivers. The treaties were not ratified by the US Senate until 1859, and in the interim, the benefits promised by the treaties were not available to the tribes that had signed.
The discovery of gold in the Colville area during this period resulted in numerous Euro-American prospectors entering the as-yet-unceded Indigenous land, sometimes coming into conflict with residents. A government agent sent to investigate the incidents, Andrew Bolon, was killed by Indigenous warriors.
In response, the US Army unsuccessfully sent soldiers into the area to apprehend those involved. After several skirmishes and a widening of the conflict into the Puget Sound area, Colonel George Wright was ordered to “attack All the hostile Indians you meet, with vigor; make their punishment severe and persevere until the submission of all is complete.”
Armed with new, highly accurate rifles, Colonel Wright’s forces defeated the allied tribes at the Battle of Spokane Plains on September 5, 1858.
Land Disposal
Town of Ainsworth
In the late 1870s, the NP began building a transcontinental rail line to link the Great Lakes with Puget Sound. In 1879, the NP located the western terminus of the railroad near today’s Sacajawea Historical State Park, accessible by sternwheel steamboats of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSNC) transiting the Columbia River from supply points downstream. A sawmill established at the site by Cy Smith in 1878 supplied processed wood products needed for construction.
The townsite built in the northeastern part of today’s park was named “Ainsworth” for John C. Ainsworth, a founder and owner of the OSNC. Ainsworth quickly grew to a town of more than 1,500 people, including Chinese and Irish laborers hired to build the railroad. Shops, gambling houses, saloons and brothels were built to serve the town, and it was selected as the county seat of Franklin County in 1883. A rail ferry served as a connecting link to rails on the other side of the Snake River, continuing onward to Portland and Tacoma.
On April 20, 1884, a railroad bridge across the Snake River at Ainsworth was opened, completing an unbroken rail line from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound. The NP moved its roundhouse and shops to nearby Pasco later that year, and the county seat followed in 1887, spelling the end for the town of Ainsworth.
Most of the land at the confluence was subsequently acquired by Thomas C. Carstens (1865-1931), whose Carstens Packing Company, based in Tacoma, was one of the largest meat packing operations on the west coast.
Making a Park
In 1911, sixty women met in Seattle to found “The Daughters of the Pioneers of Washington,” an organization of women descendants of “a pioneer who established his or her residence in Washington Territory during the year 1870 and/or prior thereto.” The organization’s third chapter was organized in Pasco in 1926, planning to establish a small park at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers to commemorate Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery and David Thompson’s exploration of the Columbia River.
In the summer of 1927, Thomas Carstens and his wife Stacie donated an acre of land at the confluence to the Pasco Chapter of the Daughters of the Pioneers of Washington. Captain W. P. Gray, who had operated the NP ferry before the completion of the railroad bridge, located the Lewis and Clark campsite at the confluence. Pasco mayor A.P. Gray provided a wooden marker and the site was dedicated on March 9, 1927.
The Daughters of the Pioneers raised money for a permanent stone monument and it was installed and dedicated on October 16, 1927, the 122nd anniversary of the arrival of the Corps of Discovery at the confluence. The monument remains in the park to this day. The park was called by various names—Columbia and Snake River Park, Carstens’ Park, and Lewis and Clark Memorial Park.
State Senator Charles Stinson of Pasco encouraged the Daughters of the Pioneers to donate the park to the State Parks Committee, and the deed to the land was accepted by the Committee on June 29, 1931, stipulating that the gift would be used for a public park “dedicated to the memory of Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea.”
Since Lewis and Clark State Park was already established in Lewis County, the State Parks Committee chose to name the new park “Sacajawea State Park.” 33 additional acres were acquired from the Carstens Packing Company in 1933 and 1939 to enlarge the park.
In the 1930’s as the Great Depression deepened, people throughout Washington and across the US struggled with poverty as job losses and business closures erased their economic security. Newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved fast to provide material relief for suffering families.
Unlike the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which provided employment opportunities for young single men, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established to help unemployed men and women with families to support. The slogan “A hand up, not a hand out,” recognized that the program was providing a chance to work for a living and avoid the stigma of charity. Over the eight-year life of the agency, more than 8.5 million people worked on more than 1.4 million individual projects.
At Sacajawea State Park, WPA workers, supervised by the park caretaker, installed irrigation lines to water lawns and trees. They planted 2,000 shrubs and 500 trees, replacing the native shrub-steppe vegetation. They also developed a swimming beach by clearing boulders and filling the site with sand.
The developed park quickly became very popular. In 1949, when the Army Corps of Engineers proposed that the park should be relocated to another site to accommodate the flooding of the Columbia River bed by the construction of McNary Dam 35 miles downstream, 250 local residents met with representatives of the Corps to object to the plan. Eventually, only five acres of the park were condemned by the Corps; the $75,000 paid to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission was used to replace park facilities inundated by the reservoir and build a new park entrance road.
Sacajawea Interpretive Center
The largest WPA-funded project at Sacajawea State Park was the construction of the Sacajawea Museum (today’s Sacajawea Interpretive Center). On April 4, 1938, the State Parks Committee approved WPA funding for the construction of the museum. Work began later that year and the museum was dedicated on June 29, 1941.
Kennewick resident Jay Perry had long advocated for a museum at the site to highlight his and others’ private collections of local Indigenous artifacts. For three months in the fall of 1941, Perry inventoried the more than 10,000 items in the collections and designed exhibits and labels.
In 1958, Park Historian Albert Culverwell undertook a project to remodel the Sacajawea Museum, improving the displays and infrastructure. With the help of Perry and a gift from Charles Bassett, the loaned collections were converted to ownership by the WSPRC. A second remodel in 1976 further improved the displays and thematically centered the exhibits around the Indigenous residents of the area, the Corps of Discovery and the role played by Sacajawea. The museum was rededicated as the Sacajawea Interpretive Center on April 16, 1978.
As part of a bicentennial project to center the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition around the resilience of the Indigenous people they met on their journey, artist Maya Lin designed seven story circles that explore the Indigenous cultures, language, flora and fauna, geology and natural history of the confluence. The information in the story circles comes from Indigenous stories, Lewis and Clark expedition journals and Yakama elder Dr. Virginia Beavert. The installation was dedicated on August 27, 2010.
Sharing the histories of Washington’s state parks is an ongoing project. Learn more here.