Tent of Many Voices: 08110403T

on behalf of the National Park Service I would like to welcome you to the core of Discovery 2 this traveling exhibit is making its way across the United States following the route taken by L par 200 years ago our next program here inent in any voices is going to be a program telling you little bit about the story of Sago we and our presenter for that is going to be Amy M she is a national consultant regard I'm going to turn the story over and Stage over to you thank you so much for being here and uh I want to thank the National Park Service and all of the staff from the National Park Service for traveling along this journey with us and for being such an important part of this whole B Centennial commemoration and having a venue that we can come to in all communities no matter what side to present the Lis CL story My name is actually I I I guess my name could be mentioned in a couple different ways I am Mandan andan I am from the northern PLS I live in in a m hiza Community today but my hiza ancestors met Lewis and Clark 200 years ago and from our village Lewis and Clark would obtain one of the greatest resources one of the greatest assets that you could never place a value on that was sadan Leah she joined the louison park Expedition from the village on the south side of the Knife River in present day North Dakota and The Knife River that sagia lived in that knife for a village that she lived in was called a and it was on the South Bank it was the Middle Village it was the center Village of those three hiza villages that l park would travel to occasionally when they came to our hi of leaders my Mandan relatives live 7 miles down the river where the where the Knife River meets the Missouri River and in the Mandan Villages there were two Villages at the time when Mary with Lewis and William Clark came to our part of the world and remember the Manan once powerful once the wealthiest most powerful Nations on the Northern Plains had been reduced to a mere 2,000 people with 1,000 people inhabiting each of those villages on either side of the Missouri River and Fort Mandan would be built in the vicinity of those Villages and would actually be named for my Mandan ancestors Fort Mandan my Mandan relatives called me Ste and my name in the traditional hiza language and it's through the hiza through the hiza clan that I actually received my traditional name Ina my name is gabish and and our names come from I think a lot of the traditional names are similar to the people in this part of the world because your names come from your way of life and they our names come from medicine bundles they don't just give you names it actually comes from medicine bundles and only certain people can give names and because we were an agricultural people much like the people in this area that Louis and Clark encountered our names came from bundles that were associated with gardening for example and my name is kza and the Mandan is translated into English as a Squash Blossom and it's the yellow flower that blooms on on the squashes that we are growing still today but I'm not here to talk about myself I was here yesterday for some time and had a chance to visit with people and I talked about this incredible young woman who lived with my ancestors at Al I'm here to talk about sagua and there are so many things that can be said about this woman but today I'm only going to talk about four things I'm going to talk about her relationship with William Clark there are many Mysteries and a lot of speculation about saga's relationship with William Clark as compared to her relationship for example with Mary wther Lewis so I want to talk about her relationship with William Clark I'm going to talk about saga's relatives her descendants I'm going to talk about sag his name sagia that name that we still know her by today and then I'm going to talk just very very briefly about sag's death and all of these things that I'm talking about today have for so long been filled with so much controversy and so many myths have AR have risen from the story of sagaia she's she's an incredible woman she is the most celebrated woman in all of American history and yet we know so little about her let's get right to the story about sagah and William Clark and the reason I want to talk about this is people often wonder there's a lot of speculation about her relationship with William Clark I I even had somebody ask me if that little boy John Baptist that little boy that William Clark so Fally referred to as my boy po some people have actually asked if that little boy was the son of William Clark well you need to know that Not only was William Clark nowhere near that area when that little boy was born he was also not anywhere near that area when that little boy was conceived that little boy Jean Baptist shano was born in the afternoon of February 11th 1805 he was born at Fort n William Clark was not there but then the father of the child was not there either je or to Sho the husband of sah had gone off Hunting William Clark was also out on this hunting party but you know who was there Mary W the Lewis Mary W the Lewis actually assisted or presided over in the absence of all of The Midwives that would have been there to assist in the delivery of this child pag we have been back at the Village William Clark he was sort of the the medical expert he was the man knew about medicine and memodies and treatments of the day his mother Lucy Marx was an herbalist his stepfather was a medical doctor and before they came out here on this journey Mary with leis studied under the finest doctors to learn about medicine and he would be the man mostly responsible for delivering or for treating people William Clark would do that also later on especially out to the west but during saga's birth William Clark presided over that group along with another French Canadian fur Trader who had been living with my Mandan relatives his name was Gren you know when this little boy was born you really need to think back about his name there's just this ongoing debate over what culture influenced Saga more than the other the Shon claim that sagia remember now Saga was born Shon she was Shon by birth and at the age of about 10 11 years old my hiza ancestors on one of the hunting trips to the West into the middle of what is now Montana captured her and some other young sh children and only two of those young people were brought back it was Saga and another woman another young child actually not a woman a young girl who was only a couple of years older than her well sagua lived in our village and her culture changed somewhat she had been born to the Shon and cultur in the Shon culture up until the time she was 10 11 years old and then she grew into Womanhood in this hiza Village and so the hiza will tell you well it was more the the hiza culture that influenced her decisions because now she was a woman but you know when this little boy was born he was not given a to show me name this little boy whose mother had grown into Womanhood now in a hiza village was not given a hiza name this little boy was named after his French Canadian grandfather who was a fur Trader from Montreal Canada this little boy was called John Baptist Charo and he was named after his grandfather who was still living in Montreal so this child was not the child of William Clark but William Clark loved this little boy he loved him so much that when this Expedition ended on August 17th in 1806 after they had traveled all the way to the West Coast and returned to our part of the country William Clark had to say goodbye to this little boy this little boy who he had watched practically every day the first 19 months of his life any of you who have children know that in the first year of a child's life so many things happen to that child they grow from this little tiny bundle to a person they develop a personality they start learning to say words they begin they they do all kinds of things they learn how to walk they learn how to talk they laugh they smile William Clark watched that happen with this little boy the entire first year of his life and almost all the way into the second year he was very fond of this little boy and why William Clark and not Mary leather Lewis well remember there were two PES that headed to the west and the sharol family traveled in that white PE they traveled in that white PE with William Clark and the sharo family remained in close proximity not just physical but emotional everything else very close to Clark on many occasions I would guess that that William Clark would observe this little guy John Baptist on many occasions when a child is getting older and older and they're starting to toddle and they're very curious and they wander off away from their mother or they start hanging too far over the side perhaps in that boat he was riding in and my guess is that it wasn't sag who constantly watched that little boy there were many men in this Expedition and William Clark I think watched over that little boy just as closely as his own father to know and if he was ever hanging too far over the side of that boat and if William Clark was right there my guess is that William Clark would have been the guy who reached out and grabbed that little boy and I think one of the most difficult things for William Clark was to say goodbye to John Baptist to S Cho and S and on August 17th in 1806 he asked them if he could take that little boy back to St Louis and educate him he promised that he would raise John Baptist like his son but this little boy was only 19 months old and the chardino family of sure were flattered that William clar this man who they held in very high esteem because of all that he had done for them this man was offering to educate their son in a place that was much more comfortable and a lot less dangerous than the place they were living in right then but because he was only 19 months old the Charan old family decided he would have to stay at a with his mother and father and they promised when he was older they would bring him to St Louis and they did in the fall of 1809 when the core of or not the core of Discovery but after Maryweather Lewis had hired 100 soldiers to open the Missouri River back up and return white Kyo a Mandan leader who had traveled south in the in the fall or in the late summer of 1806 white Kyle was part of this Indian delegation that they convinced to go back to meet the president of the United States they had to return him that was the promise when white pilot agreed that he would go south with the core of Discovery in August of 1806 he told them I will go with you only if you return me in one year they tried to keep their word they tried to return him in the fall of 1807 but the arra our enemies the enemies of the Mandan and the hiza the the enemies of the Mandan and hia not let anyone back up through that River and so white coy had to go back to St Louis and realizing how important that trade was on the Missouri River Maryweather Lewis had these soldiers hired and they returned white Kyle into his village and then in that time probably by October November of 1809 when they returned to St Louis the chardo family went with them and we know they went with them because that little boy Jean Shard now 4 and a half years old was baptized in St Louis at the old Cathedral right there by the Mississippi River a visiting Jesuit priest was in town and he baptized the son of T Shanah The Godfather of this little boy was none other than August Shoto the founder of St Louis and that baptismal record which you can still see today is written entirely in French and not that this little boy would then begin his education under the guidance of William Clark and by the time he was a young man he would be speaking six or seven different languages and because now Mary or William Clark was the superintendent or the commissioner for Indian Territory and he was he was engaged in business dealing with all of the matters of the Indians and people had to go to his office to get permission to go up and engage in trade with the Indians and they would often need a guide and a scout and an interpreter and who other would they get referred than John Baptist Charo he served as a scout and a guide and an interpreter up and down the Missouri River out to the West he befriended people of all nationalities all cultures many different walks of life he even was befriended by a prince who came here from Germany wanting to travel to the west to visit Indian cultures before they disappeared his name was Duke Paul he was the prince at brittberg and he sold his his relationship with John Baptist grew he took him back to Germany and so for six years the son of Sadia lived as a guest in the Royal household at vuran time and then he returned to this country and he continued to travel into the West he went West during the Mexican Wars he was a scout and a guide for General Steven Carney the stepson in-law of William Clark John up Sho traveled to the West during the Gold Rush he traveled North into Oregon and then he told friends in 1866 he was now 61 years old he said he longed to go back out onto the PLS to visit his relatives and he started that Journey but he didn't make it out of Oregon because when he got to the Jordan Valley he came down with pneumonia he died and he was buried at at a place called The in station near pres B ganner Oran and that was really part of the life for brief history of the life of John Baptist chardel this young man that William Park called my boy p and speaking of Pop where did that name come from po the Shon will tell you that that name means something about a lot of black hair well you know every Indian baby 200 years ago and today has a lot of black hair and so the H on the other hand say that P was a pomy or boom is AA word and it means something about a stinky little boy well I'm not going to say all little boys we're stinky little boys we don't call all the little boys okay but there's a loabi there's a loabi that was sung that uses this word that's similar to that but you know again I don't think that word or that name H came from a Shon word and I don't think it came from it h ODS the word I think it came from William Clark this little boy was called P he called him Pon it was actually a rather common slave name was Toby which was the name given to that she's showing man who helped to guide them over the mountains it's also as common as that other slave name Jamie that nickname that was given to Saga by William Clark but that of course takes us into this whole issue of slavery because these people were not seen as slaves in the purest sense when you think about what slavery was but they were just so common names that were just so common accepted at the time 200 years ago p is not a a word p is not as just SH word but you know William clarton named The Landmark after this young boy in July of 1806 when they were traveling back and Maryweather Lewis had taken the Missouri River and gone North William Clark and the Shanel family were on the Yellowstone traveling back east and they were now past present day Billings Montana and they came to this huge sandstone outcropping a place that the co people called a place where the mountain ler sleeps and that huge Sandstone outcropping is where William Clark carved his name deep into that sandstone and you can still see it today it's all covered it's protected and it's probably the only physical evidence that remains today from the Louis par Expedition and that Sandstone Landmark was for sagia son was called Pomp's power today it is known as Pomp's pillar a National Historic Landmark William CL loved that little boy John Baptist shano but did you love sagia and did she love him I think she did I think sag love William heart because if you look at the relationship between the two of them I think she loved him the way any young woman would love an older brother or a relative who protected him her and if you think about all of the times and all of the events that occurred in this Expedition or throughout this journey you can see time and again how William Clark protected sagia when they were traveling to the west and on May 14th of 1805 when that c that white that they were traveling capsized when the wind caught the sail and it rocked it way to one side and the water was rushing over the side of that boat there were some exper expert French boatmen in that River and it's true that tant shano was a French man but he was not a water man this man was afraid of water he panicked he had actually been in control of this V at the time and William clar and Mary where the Lewis were out there on the shore walking along when they saw this whole incident this episode taking place and I'm sure they were thinking about the carival that was in that boat precious caral things that they did not want to lose and all this and all this commotion with all the yelling going on and people trying to bail out that boat with pedals and everything else they could find sag the wheel was sitting in the back of that hero and you know when it walked it just hung to the side and the water was rushing in Pierre crat eventually pulled a gun and threatened to S chardo and told him if you didn't get control of himself and that boat that he would shoot him well you know he would never have shot him but he was threatening him he was trying to bring this man back to his senses and in all this commotion there was Saga this young teenage Indian woman at the back of the boat her son was probably in his cradle board on her back and there were items that had drifted overboard some of the lighter things and as they floated past she grabbed them and she pull them back into the boat and both captains even Mary rther Lewis who usually didn't have many great things to say about sag or he was mostly indifferent toward her even he praised her for her courage and her fortitude and only days after that on May 20th in 1805 they named a river after her or a tributary of the river after her out there in Montana and I think I am convinced that this is the first time that Mary whether Lewis ever wrote her name he wrote it exactly the way he heard it s and he wrote the translation of that name right beside it bird woman and they called that River bird woman's River and the journey continued on and in June Sadia became very very sick and William Clark cared for her William Clark employed the most common treatment of the day because Mary Mother Lewis was gone on again he was sort of the doctor but the most common treatment of that day of course was to meet somebody to make an incision in the vein in their arm and just let the blood leave the body so that your body could create new healthy blood and this was by June 10th through 11 10 when he bled her and she got worse and he knew that he had to do something drastic to help her so a day or so later he bled her again and she was now death and a few days later it was William Clark who carried her and he put her in the back of that white P out of the sun to protect her because she was burning up with fever she was dehydrated and finally it was William Mary with Lewis when they returned who administered opium bark and those kinds of Medical Treatments and she recovered as they continue to travel to the West on one of these days that same month at the end of June this huge storm was brewing out there you can see it in the sky and William clar knew and again remember the shano family was in the white P Road and William Clark needed to get that boat off the water because just in looking at the clouds you knew you knew what kind of weather you were in for and they got this boat off the water they were going to seek shelter in a ravine but by this time the rain was already coming down out of the sky and then all of a sudden there came the hail and along with the hail and the rain the water was was causing a Mudslide and rocks were coming down off of the hills and before you knew it the water was swirling up around their feet and to not sharino this man who we know was a very timid water man was the first guy of phly be and I'm sure that as he was climbing up the hill he probably thought maybe he he came back to his senses a little bit and thought Oh my wife and turns back around and reaches for cigara who was cing to her little boy but it was William Clark who was behind her and he was pushing her up this Ravine getting her out of Harm's Way and that day William Clark lost one of his measuring devices but it was a rather large Compass like thing and after that storm subsided they were able to go back and recover it but Saga that day lost John Baptist's cradle board they did not recover that it washed away did they replace it no of course not because he was growing he no longer needed a cradle board and the journey continued to the West they were now in Shon country at the end of August and imagine this I have a hard time imagining her husband we've heard many things about tant Sho we've heard of what a scoundrel and what a rascal he was but he struck his wife there they were right in her own Homeland among her people night at supper time he struck his wife we don't know why but it was William Clark who severely admonished this man who treating his wife that way and Mary or tat shardo knew from that point on after being rebuked by William Clark for what he did that for the remainder of that Journey he was expected to treat his wife with respect and dignity and I expect that that's what he did from that point on especially when they were in presence of William Clark and the journey continued to the west and when they were out on the Pacific Ocean imagine this it was I think in January well first let's go back to November as not long after they had arrived out on the west coast sagah was caring for her child that was that was probably the main the most important role the most important thing that that was on her mind from day to day but they had been on the north side of the Columbia River they had had been checking out the place traveling Up and Down the River trying to determine where they would build their winter quarters it was November of 1805 and by the end of November they needed to make a decision on which side of that columia River they should winter on this shanuk were on the north side of the Columbia River and the shinook invited them to Winter with them to engage in trade with them the shinook were very Savvy Traders they had been trading with with all kinds of non-indian people that were coming to their territory by bat they wanted to trade with leis and Clark but the land on the other side of the river on the south side of the river was a little richer in elk meat and they knew by this time that they needed this elk they needed the elk for meat but they also needed those elk hides for clothing because by this time their military uniforms would be become very tattered and warm they would have to make many pairs of moccasin for that journey home and they needed to make this decision and so they they decided to have sort of a vote and there's a big debate on whether this was really a vote or whether it was just an opinion poll but they recorded the opinions of all the people in that expedition everyone was able to provide some input on this decision everyone including York William Clark's black servant every adult member in this Expedition including sagia this young Indian woman who was probably not not yet 18 years old they all sort of voted to stay on the south side of the Columbia River a couple months later sa whe was hearing these stories about a huge gigantic creature that had come out of the Great Waters and the men had ventured on down the coast and they came back and they were talking about this huge thing which to her sounded kind of like a fish creature and she knew living out there in Western Montana what salmon look like she knew how big a salmon could get and over there at The Knife River I mean it's not a very big river but we had fish in there there were catfish they they don't get too big in that River there were little catfish that everyone call wol heads or something like that but they were little small and she had seen these fish but this fish that they were talking about was gigantic and she was determined that she wanted to go and see that animal or that creature and I'm sure that Mary wther Lewis and William Clark were quite amused that she was so insistent and this is probably the one time that she really asserted herself and told them that I have come this far and if you don't let me go out there to see that animal that fish creature it would be very hard for me to have to go all the way back home without seeing it well she did go see that animal and I often think about the stories that she told my ancestors when she got back to the Villages imagine her telling the women sitting around inside the earth Lodge that she had seen the sea creature first of all even trying to explain to them what the ocean looked like because we had no ocean out here on the Plains and trying to explain to them that if you looked out into the horizon for as long as you could see it was water nothing else it was all water it was the ocean that would be hard to imagine I think but then to tell them that this creature had come out of the ocean and it was something like a fish but it was so big it was bigger than a buffalo and I'm sure that the women sing around inside that Earth boder on the fire were probably rolling their eyes but then she probably told them that this creature was so big that it could not fit inside this Earth Lodge well needless to say I'm sure that sagia had some real serious credibility problems after that we talk about fish stories we had them back then too but sagaa was out in the west at Christmas time and at Christmas time they were exchanging gifts the men were sort of celebrating Christmas or commemorating that day and you know have Christmas but s presented William CL with a gift she gave him about two dozen measel Tails which is really rather interesting because we don't have Christmas we don't know if she gave anything to anyone else I don't think she gave anything to Mary Lether Lewis I rather doubt if she gave anything to tant shano but she cared very much for William CL and she gave him this gift and on another occasion she gave him this little morsel of bread that she had been saving for her son for a very long time it was a bread that was made with flour I think and I think William Clark noted in his journals that she must have been carrying it with her for quite some time because it you know it was kind of not that tasty but just the idea that this was the first marel of bread that he had eaten for a very long time sag gave that to him and then there's this story about the blue bav belt it wasn't William Clark who wanted that belt it was Mary W leis you didn't actually ask for the belt but Saga had a blue beaded belt and of all the beads that William Clark and Mary witha the Lewis brought up the river they did not bring enough blue beads and you hear the story about how the women in all these tribes love blue beads why they had other colored beads they had white beads they had red beads they had all these different colored beads so what was the big thing about beads why were they so valuable we know blue blue is it's a primary color it's one of the first colors that you see it is the color most easily distinguishable to the human eye because on the light spectrum it sort of has the shortest wavelength and so you see blue first but out there in nature when you walk outside and you look at the sky and in the summer the sky is just the most beautiful blue different shades of blue but out there in the environment blue is one of those colors that you can't touch and for many of us we could not replicate that color and when we colored porcupine quills to decorate our husband's Buffalo robes and when we decorated porcupine quills to decorate our moccasins or our our chees or however we use that we could not make blue we could make yellow from Cottonwood and golden rod and sunflower and we could make brown from the rushes we could make red from all of these different plants Dogwood plum purple we had the most brilliant shades of purple from Sun from from choke cherries and all we had pink but we did not have blue and when they brought these beads and they were blue they were a treasure and so godu took off that blue belt and she gave it to her husband who gave that belt to to Mary L Lewis because there was a coat out there a seal skin or a sea otter jacket or a shirt that Mary was Lewis wanted and the only way that Indian man out there would trade it is if he if N Lewis offered more and the only the only way that trade was finally negotiated was with s well they did give her something in exchange they gave her a world coat it was so will love Willam Park and he had a special place in her heart because this man protected her and he protected her son and do you know how we are whenever there's somebody of prominence who watches out for our children and provides them with an opportunity that we could never give them our children are always more important than we are William Clark found that place in sag's heart for all the things that he did for her he protected her more than any in her entire life there was no man in that Shon Village that saved her when she was captured at the age of 12 there was no man in the hadab village who could save her or who would protect her if there was somebody who mistreated her perhaps no one protected her the way William parted and because of that she loved him saga's name appears in the leou and Clark journals about 26 times it's never written with AJ saga's name was spelled 16 different ways in the Lewis and Clark journals not once with the J and in 1814 when Nicholas bidd edited the liis and Clark journals he put the J in saga's name that J and her name did not come from the Shashi it did not come from the hiza it came from Nicholas B and it is true that on one occasion when when William Clark recorded his 1825 book that Saga wheel was dead he wrote her name with a G that looked like a j he doesn't have a DOT on the top of it he also wrote letters to George Rogers Clark his brother and he spelled George on more than one occasion with a j or a g that looked like a j and it doesn't really matter because George is George it's a it's a soft it's a soft G it could be spelled with a J but he also wrote Wagon on one occasion with a w a g o n and that g looked like a j we are not going to change the way we pronounce wagon just because of that the J and sagu's name was an error but it's an error that has caused people to mispronounce her name for the last over 200 years Saga is a hia word for bird via is almost a universal SE word for woman sagia is if a word for bird woman sagia had a name a Shon name before we captured her in 1800 and by now even the Shon descendants will tell you that they no longer know what that name was but perhaps it doesn't matter because if sagia had gone back to that Village and stay there she would have been given a new name a new to showing me it would not have been Saia it would not have been bird Saga died on December 20th in 1812 and she was buried near Fort Emanuel on a Missouri River on the west side of the Missouri River near the borders of North and South Dakota Fort Manuel was a fur trading post that was established by the Manu Manuel Lisa F trade Expedition Mary with tan sharo had Tred back to the north he had been engaged in trade with his friend renous s Sago had been at the Fort since about 1811 the bir trade Expedition had come up the River in 1811 and she was recorded in Henry bracken's journalist being sickly or frail or ill and I don't think that she was really sickly she may have been frail she may not have been feeling her best but I think her medical condition was car jeck of any woman who was expecting a child and when she died John led the agent at that for who recorded this entry in his journal that evening in December also made other comments about her he talked about what a good woman she was and he also said she left a very fine infant girl Saga has people or she has descendants all over this country there are people among the lenai sh tribe in Idaho who will tell you that they are the descendants of sodia and they are they are her only true genealogical biological blood descendants but they are not direct descendants they are the descendants of her brother came there are people among the kza tribe of North Dakota who will tell you that they are the descendants of sagia and they are but they are not her biological descendants they are her adopted descendants and there is a man if you look on this website that the three affiliated tribe maintains right now there was a man called buy a hiza man who said Saga was his grandmother and she was Bullseye is 100% kza Saga is 100% shash so how could this woman be will grandmother every one of the women that tant shano married including the kazza woman that he was married to before sagaia sagaia and Otter Woman these two shash women the aoin woman that tant shano married at Fort Clark in the 1820s every one of those women every wife of tant shol would be the grandmother of Bullseye all of those wom shared in common the title of mother to all of tant sho's children and that's the way things are in our family it's the way it still is today but today people are misinterpreting and confusing all of these issues and they're misinterpreting our own history sag did not die on the winder reservation in 1884 in April she was not buried on reservation there was a shy woman who was buried there by a reverend Fox the only name in the record on the day that woman was buried was that this woman she's not even mentioned by name she was called Basil's mother sagia did not have a son named basil and sagia never traveled to the Wind River Reservation she had long since been dead before this woman had ever lived the last thing I was going to talk about was we talked about William Clark we talked about saga's name just a little bit we talked about saga's family and a little about her death the one thing I wanted to say about sagaia is that when we continue this Bicentennial commemoration and we continue to commemorate all of the individuals of the Lewis of Park Expedition and when you travel from tribe to tribe to tribe you can continue to hear oral tradition stories that have been handed down from generation to generation to generation the one thing that you need to remember about all of the stories that we received from our elders these are stories that we don't question and when your grandparents or your great grandmother is telling you a story telling a story to a young person that young person does not sit there and say well what about this and how come how come it's that way and and and that's not the way I heard it or so and so said something different When Your Grandparent is telling you a story you listen because that Elder is giving you a gift and you don't question you don't contradict what they're saying in the case with sagaa all of these stories that you hear today are stories that have been passed down from and have mostly gone unquestioned which is why there are people among the Kaman tribe of Oklahoma who will tell you that they are the descendants of Sadia that she did travel to their part of the world that she did meet a commi man and that she did have herane children and that they did give her the name lost woman and they truly believe that and when you talk to the people among the lenai Shi tribe their stories about Saga are filled with passion and conviction because that is what they have been taught to believe and when you listen to Busey's descendants they honestly believe that they are the descendants of sagua whether they are biologically or not there are oral traditions of saguia not only among those three tribes but among the Lota the blackbeat the crow the NZ purse my ancestors that our have stories and oral traditions of sagaia and the one thing I want to say about sagaia is that we all gathered together in National Statuary Hall in Washington DC last October and along with the state of North Dakota we dedicated our state's second statue the national Statuary Hall it was a statue of sagadia the woman who posed for that statue was a kazza woman her name was Nick her descendants all live on the fort birfield reservation in North Dakota and some people question why if you know this was a Shoni woman why would you have a hiza woman's image going to the nation's capital to represent this woman well there are several reasons we have no idea what Saga look like and if Mary were the Lewis this man who could describe an event or or the the river or an animal so vividly that you could close your eyes and actually see that creature he would describe Birds the sound of a bird so vividly that you could almost hear the sound of that bird but he never told us what sad real looked like he could tell you the wingspan on that Condor and the length of the feathers the size and the color of its beat its height from the ground we don't know how tall Saga was because nobody described her there has never been a painting a photo or a description of this incredible young woman but we sent this image of of a hiza woman to Washington DC because we decided what better image than that of a hiza woman because had it not been for saga's life in this hiza Village she would never have met this French Canadian F trador tant shano she would never have had this little boy John Baptist shano she would never have met Mary wther Lewis or William Clark had it not been for her life in this hza community in what is now North Dakota she never would have been part of the lson park Expedition but most importantly think of that name sagia we gave that name to her and the one thing that we are proud of in North Dakota all of us descendants of our that at adza Village had it not been for her life with us there is not a soul in the entire universe who would have ever heard of this woman that we called sah thank you so very much we are um we are going to um I'm just answer a couple of questions here but before before we before we I take any questions I just want to again thank my friends Bud Clark descendant of William Clark um bud and I have had just an incredible journey sharing this story and one of the stories I I when we were in we were we have been to the nation's capital on a number of occasions just because of this whole LS and Clark thing and in 2001 in January when William Clark was finally given his his commissioner he was finally acknowledged as um a captain um Bud Clark and his brother John accepted that citation or they accepted that certificate from President Bill Clinton and at the same time York and Saga were both given honorary uh commissions or honorary recognition as sergeants they were honorary sergeants in the Army and I sat right beside Bud Clark I was able to I was invited to accept the citation along with Rosanne abrahamson from the Shon tribe but I got to sit right beside Bud Clark in the front row in the East room at the White House and it's memories like that you will never forget those those times and Bud was laughing at me because I was just driving him from room to room and we were taking pictures in the Red Room and the blue room and the East room and all of the um guards in the White House that it was kind of N and um but we had I mean it was a memorable time and Scott Mandrell is just an incredible person I was telling somebody earlier today that oh he has been with this thing he he rode his horse to where was it Harper fairy DC to pittsbur from from DC to Pittsburgh and I was telling somebody about that this morning but we are um looking forward to to your arrival on the Northern Plains in North Dakota we will make sure there's a lot of wood uh for the players and we will see you there and I want to thank you for what you did here today with the tribe um we've been work I've been working with tribes all along the Lou and Par Trail and what what took place here this morning and presentation to the chairman here uh for the Omaha nation and all of the people in this community was incredible and I just want to say I think that all of you Scott and and um bud and the whole hor of Discovery rediscovery or the the what do you call your organization again the rediscovery Corp discovered Discovery Expedition of St Charles Missouri you guys are awesome thank you so much we do have time for just a couple of questions so if you do have a question go ahead and raise your hand we have a microphone to pass around so everyone can hear the question so go ahead and raise your hand if you have a question all right Mr Clark Amy I just wondered if you've ever had personal contact with descendants of Jean Baptist I've had many any um everywhere I go I get phone calls and emails from people who tell me that they are descend well not actually not of Jean Baptist but of tant shano with Jean Baptist the only the only instance that I have ever encountered anyone with any information about that was when I was in Germany and there a woman came up to me and she had done her master's thesis on John Baptist shano and in the thesis she me she mentions a woman over there in in Germany or in that part of the country that had a child with Jean bapti Sho he lived there for six years and um the child according to the story died in infancy I don't know of any other descendants of Jean Baptist we have new information being uncovered every day recently sagaia of course had two other children the set and perhaps another child and there have been b or baptismal and death records and there have been two death records found just recently for two girls we don't know if either of those well the oldest of the girl died at 21 L set we don't know if she had any children because that on her death certific her death certificate her name is written as Le Sho meaning she would have been married have you heard of any descendants from John Baptist I'm sure by 2006 they will be coming out of the woodwor I have um no matter where I go I meet somebody who tells me they are a descendant of tant shano and I believe it do you think that the incredible interest in Le and Clark will be sustained for two years and Beyond um I'm thinking of the Journey Back Down of course back to St Louis ibody was going pretty fast but what do you see two years from now and Beyond I think that what's happened is that when this ends in 2006 and September of 2006 I really don't think it's going to end I think that right now we are all so involved in building legacies and creating Partnerships and I think that all of these legacies and all the Partnerships will get stronger all the time and they will be lasting and that that's what this whole I think that's the most important part of the whole Bicentennial commemoration is that this is not just one big party that's going to end in 2006 this is a time for us it's an opportunity for us to build lasting relationships between communities between Native Americans and non- Indian entities between all the governmental entities I mean there are major major Partnerships that are being established right now that that have never existed in the past they're not going to end in September of 2006 they're going to to be continued and the interest in Lewis and Clark in American history this is just going to spark more interest I think in American history I mean we are already talking to people who want to continue this because in 2007 they have to have a ball at the white house because Shah Shah white coyot the tribal leader was there and they're already talking to us about I'm not going to say dragging this thing on but I mean continuing it and he was out at Montello and then of course David Thompson the fur Trader was up in this part of the country and they're already working on plans to commemorate that and at the last trail Heritage Foundation meeting I was at they were they are looking at commemorating the next 100 years so no we're not going to stop at anything here well uh on behalf of National Park Service and our traveling Corp of Discovery to exhibit I would like to thank Amy Amy Moss for coming and sharing her story of Sago we with us today and joining me in thanking her thank you so much our next program here in the tend director Allen director Allan Steve Adam