On April 7, 1805, the Corps left their winter camp at Fort Mandan, having hired interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau brought along his wife Sacagawea and their newborn baby. Not much is known about Sacagawea's life either before or after the Lewis and Clark expedition. She was quite young, and was a Shoshone, having been captured by the Hidatsas about five years earlier. It was while living with the Hidatsas that she became Charbonneau's wife. Lewis and Clark knew that she would be an asset as an interpreter, especially since they were hoping to get horses from the Shoshone in order to cross the Rocky Mountains. In February, Sacagawea gave birth to Jean Baptiste, whom she had to carry with her on the entire arduous journey west.
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Sacagawea golden dollar coin
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Sacagawea was valuable not just as an interpreter. She was able to aid the men by showing them different edible plants as they traveled, thus adding to their food supply, and by helping them make leather clothing and moccasins. Because she was a woman, her very presence with the Corps showed the different tribes of Native Americans that the group was on a peaceful, rather than a warlike or military, mission. As the expedition approached Shoshone territory, she was able to recognize landmarks and help lead the men to her people. To everyone's astonishment the chief of the band, Cameahwait, turned out to be her brother, which greatly eased Lewis and Clark's negotiations with the Shoshone. On August 17, 1806, the Corps of Discovery parted company with Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Jean Baptiste, who decided to stay with the Mandans. Charbonneau was paid about $500; Sacagawea was paid nothing. On August 20, 1806, Clark wrote a letter to Charbonneau in which he expressed his sorrow that the expedition was unable to compensate Sacagawea for her assistance, writing that
"Your woman who accompanied you that long dangerous and fatigueing rout to the Pacific [Ocean] and back diserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that rout than we had in our power to give her."
Although there is a Shoshone legend that Sacagawea eventually returned to her people and lived for many years, the best historical evidence supports the belief that she died at Fort Manuel Lisa in South Dakota in 1812, at about the age of 25, of an illness. William Clark, already caring for Jean Baptiste, became the legal guardian of Sacagawea's other child, a baby girl named Lizette. Sacagawea has been honored for many years for her role in the Lewis and Clark expedition. Recently, her "image" (created using a Shoshone model, since no one knows what Sacagawea actually looked like) was used for the U.S. golden dollar coin. 
