Sacajawea and Liberty

Sacajawea is well known all around the United States for being a part in the great Louis and Clark expedition of the new world. She is often referred to as the main “heroine” of the expedition, who was the reason why the expedition was such a success. Movies, books, magazines and all of popular culture have one major image of Sacajawea. This image consists of one of the greatest guides America has ever seen and an extremely hard working and self-sufficient mother. She is known throughout popular culture as a great interpreter that helped Louis and Clark communicate with the Indians of different tribes and succeed throughout the journey. As her picture appears in the minds of most Americans, she is thought to be an ultimate role model, and some movies such as “Night at the Museum” even use words such as “The ultimate working mother” to describe her, and her accomplishments. She is known as the beautiful and mature woman who guided the expedition, translated for the expedition and helped in the expedition, all with a baby strapped to her back. She is shown as a smart married woman whose husband is a proud Frenchmen. This is the major image of Sacajawea as it appears to the mind, though showings from popular culture, this is also the “white-washed” image of “the great” Sacajawea.

Popular culture might have portrayed Sacajawea as a role model, to whom all should look up to and aspire to be like. While in reality the journals from the expedition, including those of Louis and Clark have a completely different portrayal of Sacajawea. In reality she was between the ages of 10 and 15 through the expedition and was not all popular culture portrayed her to be. Sacajawea was born into a tribe called Shoshoni, which resided in present day Id...

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...y being imprinted atop a picture of Sacajawea. This one word imprinted on one coin tells so much about Americans, but the most important things it shows is that Americans are overly proud. They try and pretend that they are better than others through presenting fake stories and one important lesson all Americans should learn is that “pride comes before the fall”. Overall the practice of white washing stories, such as the Sacajawea story and connecting it with words such as liberty keeps the public from learning the most important lesson about history. “History is not learned for names, but rather for learning the mistakes and not repeating them.” This practice of white washing keeps the public from learning the true meaning of history and forces the same mistakes to repeat, which could have been easily avoided. “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme”.