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 Sacajawea, the novel, was widely read and wildly popular when Anne Lee Waldo wrote it in 1984. Now the story of the young Indian women is revived as the United States celebrates the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's courageous search for the "Passage to the Northwest." Sacajawea has been lauded as a translator, guide and symbol of nurture to the journey. Anne Waldo fills in researched fact with fictitious detail. For that reason the book has to be classed a novel.
Sacajawea, abducted as a child, by the Minnetaree is from the Tendoy Shoshone of southwestern Montana. Anne Waldo includes abundant descriptions of Sacajawea's life with the Minnataree. Lewis and Clark meet Sacajawea just before she delivers her first child at the Mandan Villages in the winter of 1805. Her son Pomp's father is Touissant Charbonneau, a French scout and guide. Charbonneau and Sacajawea agree to join the expedition. In Montana, Lewis asks Sacajawea to act as a go-between with the Tendoy Shoshone when horses are needed for the journey through the mountains to the Colombia River. Sacajawea finds her lost people and more singularly, the brother who is now Chief of the Tendoy.
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