Across the Fence: The Youngest Discoverer

Being from northeastern Kansas, and growing up a little more than 15 miles from the Missouri River and the historic Lewis and Clark Trail, it's little wonder that I've long been a student of the unprecedented journey of The Corps of Discovery.

Any family trip to Atchison took us past Independence Creek that fed into the Missouri River and the site where the Corps of Discovery observed the first 4th of July ever celebrated west of the Mississippi. The year was 1804 and the Lewis and Clark expedition had, in essence, barely begun the long and arduous journey that lay ahead.

By October 1804, the expedition had reached the Hidatsa-Mandan territory of what would become known as North Dakota. Here the expedition prepared for the coming winter and began the building of Fort Mandan on the banks of the upper Missouri. As the fort was being built Captain Clark was visited by a French/Canadian trapper by the name of Toussaint Charbonneau who lived and traded among the Hidatsa. Charbonneau had two teen-aged wives that he had won in a wager with a Hidatsa warrior who had captured the girls in a raid on the Shoshones. The Shoshone camp lay further up river, across the Rocky Mountains at the forks of the Columbia, Snake and Yellowstone Rivers.

Charbonneau was looking to be hired by the expedition and Captains Lewis and Clark were eager for his company, not for the Frenchman but for his wives.

The expedition would be traveling through the territory of the Shoshone and the Captains hoped to obtain horses from the Shoshone to pack their equipment and supplies across the Rockies. Charbonneau's Shoshone wives would serve as needed interpreters and also project a peaceful image of the expedition. The Frenchman was hired but would only allow one of his wives to join the expedition. For reasons not known, Captains Lewis and Clark chose Sacagawea. At the time Sacagawea was about 15 years old and was six months pregnant, Toussaint was 47.

The process of interpretation would be complex. Sacagawea could of course speak Shoshone, her native language. She would then convert the Shoshone words to Hidatsa which she had learned in her captivity and would relate those words to Charbonneau. Charbonneau would then translate the Hidatsa to French, his native tongue, and the only other language he knew. He would speak, in French, to another of the Captain's interpreters, a mulatto named Jessaume, who spoke some French and could then translate into his limited use of English so that hopefully, Captains Lewis and Clark might understand. Of course the response from the captains would have to follow the language chain back to the Shoshone. This was obviously a well-intentioned plan that would have proved cumbersome in actual practice.

During the course of the expedition Captain Lewis served as the Corps medical doctor. Medical treatments recorded in Lewis's journal included frostbite treatment, often going as far as requiring amputation of the patient's toes. Other medical practices included administering doses of mercury for the treatment of syphilis, a malady from which many of the men of the expedition suffered. However, the most unexpected medical treatment that Captain Lewis assisted was birthing.

On Feb. 11, 1805, Sacagawea went into labor. Captain Lewis recorded the event in his journal, "this was the first child which this woman had born and as is common in such cases her labour was tedious and the pain violent."

Captain Lewis was uncertain of what to do and consulted Rene Jessaume, his Mandan interpreter, for any possible advice. Jessaume related that in such cases he administered a pulverized portion of rattlesnake rattle, a treatment that had always proven effective.

According to Captain Lewis's notes he did in fact have a rattlesnake's tail in his possession and taking two of the buttons he ground them to a fine powder and mixed it with a portion of water that Sacagawea drank. Captain Lewis wrote, "Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine. But she had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth. This remedy may be worthy of future experiments" Lewis continued, "but I must confess that I want [lack] faith as to its efficacy." Sacagawea had given birth to a healthy baby boy who they named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.

By March 17, the expedition was ready to proceed westward toward the Three Forks region of the Shoshone. The party was made up of three squads of enlisted men each with its own sergeant and Captains Lewis and Clark. Additionally there were four civilians, George Drouillard a Shawnee scout and interpreter, York who was Captain Clark's African slave, Toussaint Charbonneau, his wife Sacagawea and the newest and youngest addition to the expedition, one-month-old Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.

Sacagawea would carry the young Charbonneau, in a cradleboard on her back, from Fort Mandan to Fort Clatsop on the Pacific coast at the mouth of the Columbia River and back to Fort Mandan.

The boy, who Captain Clark took to calling Pomp or Pompy – a Shoshone word meaning "first born" – became somewhat of a pet to the men of the expedition. Never lacking in attention he also won the affection of Captain Clark. During the return trip of the expedition, Captain Clark took a small detachment of the Corps to explore the Yellowstone River and later meet up with the rest of the party where the Columbia and the Yellowstone join to make the headwaters of the Missouri. On this side trip he took the Charbonneau family with him. During the journey down the Yellowstone a large, singular pillar of sandstone was seen on the southern shore of the river. Captain Clark named the formation "Pompy's Tower" and etched his own name, "William Clark" under a protected overhang. The etching remains to this day and the sandstone formation is now called "Pompey's Pillar."

At the completion of the journey over the Rockies and the return to Fort Mandan, the Corps returned to Saint Louis and Charbonneau, Sacagawea and young Jean Baptiste remained at the Mandan villages. Captain Clark expressed his fondness of the boy and offered to provide him with an education and to raise him as his own.

Five years later, in 1810, Charbonneau and Sacagawea brought the 6-year-old Jean Baptiste to Saint Louis and left the boy with Clark. Sacagawea would never see her son again. When young Charbonneau was of age to attend school, Clark enrolled him in one of Saint Louis' finest, the St. Louis Academy.

Jean Baptiste proved to be an apt student and excelled in his studies however, after completing his coursework the young man chose to follow his father's profession and hired on with the Missouri Fur Company. In 1823, Jean Baptiste was among the group of scouts who accompanied the Duke of Wurttemberg on an American wilderness expedition. The Duke was singularly impressed with the young man and insisted on his return with him to Europe. Under the affluence of European royalty Jean Baptiste continued his education and became fluent in the German and Spanish language as well as the French, English and several Native tongues that he had already mastered.

Returning to the United States, six years later, Jean Baptiste once again chose the life of adventure and the wide and wild open spaces of the frontier. He spent time in the employment of both the American and the Rocky Mountain Fur Companies. He became a noted hunter, guide and trader and explored the vast wilderness in the company of such noted mountain men as Thomas Fitzpatrick, William Sublette, Jim Bridger, Joe Meek and Kit Carson. He served as a guide out of Bent's Fort and Fort St. Vrain and in 1847 led the Mormon Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke on a 1,200-mile expedition from Santa Fe to San Diego.

During that hazardous journey, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau scouted and selected the route, hunted game for provisions, and defended the expedition against hostile Indians. Despite losing more than half of the wagons and supplies of the battalion during the grueling expedition, it was considered a monumental success in blazing a viable trade route between the two cities.

Jean Baptiste was an early entry into the California gold rush though not successful as a prospector. He continued in his search for adventure and possible wealth by following the ever-promising news of gold strikes across the west. His last adventure was in 1866 when he left Auburn, Calif., and cut a trail to gold discoveries, announced by the Custer Expedition, in the Montana Territory. During this final journey Jean Baptiste Charbonneau never reached Montana but succumbed to pneumonia and was buried in the Jordan Valley of Oregon.

Toussaint Charbonneau is said to have died at Fort Mandan in August 1843 at 76. He had taken his fifth wife, a 15-year-old Assiniboine girl, in 1837.

Sacagawea is believed to have perished during a battle at Fort Mandan in 1812. She would have been 22.

M. Timothy Nolting is an award-winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. Reach him via email at

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