Tribute paid to Sacagawea’s son
JORDAN VALLEY, Ore. – History buffs and students here paid tribute to Sacagawea’s son, whose life began as explorers Lewis and Clark trekked to the Pacific Ocean and ended 61 years later on eastern Oregon’s high desert while in search of gold.
The group, which included members of a local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, gathered Monday in the Jordan Valley Elementary gymnasium to mark the 139th anniversary of the death of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, nicknamed “Pompey” by William Clark.
He died May 16, 1866, apparently of pneumonia, in nearby Danner, now a ghost town, after crossing the Owyhee River on a trip northward from California to Virginia City, Mont.
Gold had been discovered there and Pompey had set off to find some of it for himself.
“To know that he died here and it’s marked and has been preserved is a big deal,” said Anne Schorzman, president of the Idaho Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, who attended the event.
The DAR chapter donated a wreath for the gravesite.
A spring downpour chased the group to the school from the actual gravesite, which is marked by two plaques – one from Pompey’s American Indian ancestors of the Lemhi-Shoshone tribe.
The grave, entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, is 17 miles west of Jordan Valley on the gravel Danner Loop road. The Oregon Department of Transportation has installed signs on U.S. 95 directing travelers to the memorial.
Sacagawea, a Lemhi-Shoshone woman who accompanied Clark and Meriwether Lewis as an interpreter, gave birth to Charbonneau on Feb. 11, 1805, at Fort Mandan in what’s now North Dakota before the expedition left its winter camp for the trek west.
The infant then went along with his mother and father, Toussaint Charbonneau, the explorers’ French-Canadian interpreter, as they joined the expedition. Today, Pompey is depicted as a baby resting on Sacagawea’s right shoulder on the U.S. dollar coin.
At Monday’s event, Idaho State Historical Society Director Steve Guerber wore a long black wig, moccasins and wool pants meant to depict how Pompey might have looked as a man.
“People wonder why a Lewis and Clark sign would be (in Danner), and of course it’s because a member of the expedition was buried there,” Guerber said.
Hundreds of events across the United States have taken place to mark the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery expedition. They set out May 14, 1804, from a camp near St. Louis.
The explorers and their party were charged by President Jefferson with finding a waterway west and mapping the country they passed through. While there was flourishing trade and exploration along the Pacific Coast, there had been few forays overland.
Charbonneau’s life included a six-year stay in Europe after befriending Prince Paul Wilhelm, of Wurttemberg, while the German was on a natural-history expedition to America.
Pompey, who was a trapper and guide after his return from Germany in 1829, spent 18 years in Sacramento during the Gold Rush before setting out for Montana.