Sacajawea’s loyalty, courage, and devotion were instrumental in the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-1806. On July 15, 1806, she was traveling with her infant son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, nicknamed “Pomp” by Capt. Wn. Clark, as Clark and several members of the Corps of Discovery headed downstream on the Yellowstone River to rendezvous with Meriwether Lewis and the rest of the explorers. She served as an interpreter for her Shoshone people and helped negotiate for horses, knew native food sources and local geography, and, as a woman traveling among armed soldiers, signaled peaceful intent to the tribes the Corps encountered. Carrying an infant to the Pacific and back, she also exerted a calming influence as a wife, mother, sister, and friend. Although uncertainty surrounds many aspects of her life, including the spelling of her name, her ancestry, and her death, she has, in two hundred years, come to outshine nearly every other member of the expedition except possibly Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, becoming a larger-than-life blend of legend, historical fact, myth, iconography, and multicultural embrace. When the expedition departed her Mandan Village in North Dakota for the return toward St. Louis, William Clark wrote to her husband Toussaint Charbonneau on Aug. 20, 1806, praising “you woman who accompanied you that long dangerous fatiguing route to the Pacific Ocean and back” and saying she deserved a greater reward for her attention and service than they had been able to give her at the Mandan.