Sacagawea was born around 1788, near the Continental Divide at the present-day Idaho-Montana border..

When Sacagawea was 12 years old she was captured and taken from her tribe by the Hidatsa raiding party near the Missouri River’s headwaters about 1800. She was enslaved and taken to their Knife River earth-lodge villages near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, she was purchased by French Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau and became one of his plural wives about 1804. They lived in one of the Hidatsa villages, Metaharta.

Sacagawea was a Shoshone Indian woman who traveled thousands of miles from the Dakotas to the Pacific Northwest as an interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. She was 16 years old at the time and just had a baby. She traveled with her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau and newborn baby, Jean Baptiste.

 Charbonneau was originally hired as an interpreter for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, however, he did not know Sacagawea's language. Lewis and Clark need Sacagawea to interpret for them with the Shoshone tribe to secured horses that they needed to get over the mountains during their journey. 

Sacagawea used her knowledge of the land to help guide Lewis and Clark when they needed her.

She also made clothes for the men and taught them how to live off of the land they were entering into. She saved valuable items from the boat she was in that was sinking. She also negotiated with the Shoshone tribe for horses. Upon her return, she found her brother had become the chief of the tribe. During the journey, Sacagawea and a slave named York even had an equal vote in where the explorers would spend the winter months. This was important because women and African-American men were not given that privilege until much later. 

After the expedition, Sacagawea returned to the Hidatsa tribe. She later died  December 20, 1812 in Fort Manuel on the Missouri River in the Dakota Territory.

 Sacagawea has been memorialized with statues, monuments, stamps, and place-names. In 2000, her likeness appeared on a gold-tinted dollar coin struck by the U.S. Mint. In 2001, U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton granted her a posthumous decoration as an honorary sergeant in the regular army.