U of Ideas of General Interest -- June 2000
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor, (217) 333-2894; [email protected]
HISTORY
No simple story behind American Indian on new dollar coin
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The United States has a new dollar coin, and a hip George Washington is making the pitch for it on television.
But at least as intriguing as the dancing, snorkeling George is the choice of Sacajawea, a Lemhi Shoshone Indian, to grace the coin itself -- and how she has been "packaged for consumption" over more than a century, says University of Illinois education professor Wanda Pillow.
Sacajawea was the only woman and only Indian on the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06 -- and has become probably the most famous member of the party besides Lewis and Clark. In fact, there are more U.S. statues dedicated to Sacajawea than to any other woman, Pillow noted.
One reason, she believes, is a symbolic value that goes beyond the role Sacajawea likely played. Starting around 1900, with the Indian wars over and the expedition centennial approaching, it became popular to portray Sacajawea as an "Indian maiden" who guided white men west, thereby aiding the cause of Manifest Destiny, Pillow said. "She was held up during the early 1900s as an enlightened figure, as someone who knew it was right to help open up Indian country to European-American settlement." One 1904 book even suggested a romance between Sacajawea and Clark.
The Suffragettes also saw her as a useful role model for women's equality. "Not only did she walk the trail with Lewis and Clark, but she did it with a baby on her back," Pillow said. Suffragette leader Susan B. Anthony, featured on the previous dollar coin, praised Sacajawea's "patriotic deeds."
In recent decades, Sacajawea no longer is portrayed as guiding the expedition, and most historians now discount that role, Pillow said. Now, however, in classrooms and popular history, Sacajawea and a black slave in the party named York serve the traditional notion of Manifest Destiny as important figures in a new multicultural version of the story, Pillow said. It's a repackaging of the story that still holds onto traditional and often misleading assumptions.
Pillow became fascinated with Sacajawea [spelled Sacagawea by the U.S. Mint and others] after seeing a public television documentary and reading several new books on the expedition. "I wanted to know how is it that she's captured our attention for so long when we know so little about her," she said.
Lewis and Clark mention her less than 70 times in daily journals over two years, Pillow noted, and most references are to gathering food or basic chores. She joined the expedition as a slave "wife" to a fur trader hired by Lewis and Clark. "While Clark's dog is listed on some of the expedition rosters, Sacajawea and York never are," Pillow said. As an Indian woman and a black slave, their status didn't change after the expedition, "nor did it change for their people for a very long time after that."
Pillow hopes the new coin will be used by educators to draw attention to complex issues, like United States-Indian relations, both past and present. She's concerned, however, that Sacajawea will still be seen in the "simple, romantic way" that Indians have been for more than a century.
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