Sacagawea Finds Her Brothers

From Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose:

"Shortly thereafter, Clark arrived, accompanied by Charbonneau and Sacagawea.  Cameahwait gave Clark the national hug and festooned his hair with shells.  In the midst of the excitement, one of the Shoshone women recognized Sacagawea.  Her name Jumping Fish, she had acquired on the day Sacagawea was taken prisoner, because of the way she had jumped through a stream in escaping the Hidatsas.  The reunited teens hugged and cried and talked, all at once.

"Lewis had a camp set up just below the forks.  He had a canopy formed from one of the large sails.  At 4:00 p.m., he called a conference.  Dispensing with Drouillard and the sign language, he decided to use a translation chain that ran from Sacagawea, speaking Shoshone to the Indians and translating it into Hidatsa, to Charbonneau, who translated her Hidatsa into French, to Private Francis Labiche, who translated from French to English.

"Scarcely had they begun the cumbersome process when Sacagawea began to stare at Cameahwait.  Suddenly recognizing him as her brother, 'she jumped up, & embraced him, & threw her blanket over him and cried profusely.'

"What a piece of luck that was.  No novelist would dare invent such a scene.  As James Ronda writes, 'the stars had danced for Lewis and Clark.'

"Lewis wrote that the reunion was 'really affecting.'  He wrote not a word to indicate that he was surprised by the show of so much emotion from Sacagawea, whom he had characterized a couple of weeks earlier as someone who never showed the slightest emotion.

"When Sacagawea recovered herself, the council began—although it was frequently interrupted by her tears."  (Page 277).