Ode to Sacajawea (Sacagawea)

This poem, by Bert Huffman of Pendleton, was probably written in commemoration of a bronze statue of Sacagawea (Agaideka Shoshones spell it "Sacajawea"; the hard "g" comes from the Hidatsa spelling) and her son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. The statue, which is now located in Portland’s Washington Park, was created by artist Alice Cooper for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Sacagawea (Agaideka [Lemhi] Shoshone) was the only woman on the Expedition, and Cooper portrayed her as a guide and a pathbreaker who led the “conquering captains” westward to the Pacific. Huffman writes that she was the first to chart “the trails that led the hosts across yon mountain crests,” and the poem emphasizes her role in bringing to fruition America’s “manifest destiny.”