Cameahwait and Sacajawea
The story of Sacajawea's reunion with her family and tribe during the Lewis and Clark Expedition is a familiar one, told from her vantage point. However, her brother, Cameahwait, by this time chief of the Salmon Eater band of the Lemhi Shoshone would have also had feelings in the matter.
Little is known of Cameahwait's life or how he rose to a position of authority among his people. Apparently, he was several years older than Sacajawea. In their society, siblings and cousins are often considered the same relationship and spoken of in the same words. Some sources suggest that they may have been cousins, or even half-siblings. No matter what the exact familial rank, their actions when they met up again suggested a close family bond. When Sacajawea was 12 and her brother much older and already an established warrior, the Hidatsa raided their hunting camp. Four men, four boys and some elderly and children were killed. Sacajawea and some other girls her own age were take prisoner and led by the Hidatsa to their villages near what is now Washburn, North Dakota. At that point, brother and sister probably thought they would never see each other again.
Fast forward to August, 1805 and a party of White explorers shows up in Cameahwait's village in the Lemhi River Valley of Idaho. This was the first group of Europeans the Shoshone had encountered, probably with the exception of French-Canadian fur trappers such as Charbonneau. The two sides communicated as best they could through sign language but as far as Cameahwait could make out and Meriwether Lewis could put across, the foreigners wanted horses to cross the mountains and keep on going. This would have made Cameahwait skeptical. This wasn't a hunting party or a war party that he could see. Why they wanted to journey over the mountains and needed his horses to do it would take some explaining and intricate negotiating. Lewis, who was traveling separately from Clark at the time, sent a message to Clark to hurry and bring Sacajawea.
Cameahwait agreed to accompany Lewis to meet Clark but his concern and suspicion, as Lewis notes in his journal, was beginning to grow and his patience with the whole business was wearing thin. As the two groups neared each other, Sacajawea began crying out and even dancing with delight. She recognized the group with Cameahwait as her own band of Shoshone and Cameahwait himself as her brother. Both Lewis and Clark record that Cameahwait was just as happy to see her and that the meeting between the siblings, and later between Sacajawea and a childhood friend who'd also been captured but escaped the Hidatsa and returned home was "quite effecting". And, there was a bonus, Cameahwait got to meet his nephew, Jean-Baptiste. Whoever these White men were and whatever they were really up to, they'd done him a personal favor and he was eager to repay it. Lewis and Clark got the horses to cross the Rocky Mountain passes and continue their journey.
Nothing else is known of Cameahwait's life. When the Expedition returned to Shoshone country, he was away and so missed a final meeting with Sacajawea. He was later killed in a conflict with the Blackfeet, traditional tribal enemies. Sacajawea most likely died by 1811, at Fort Manuel Lisa in present-day Wyoming.
Little is known of Cameahwait's life or how he rose to a position of authority among his people. Apparently, he was several years older than Sacajawea. In their society, siblings and cousins are often considered the same relationship and spoken of in the same words. Some sources suggest that they may have been cousins, or even half-siblings. No matter what the exact familial rank, their actions when they met up again suggested a close family bond. When Sacajawea was 12 and her brother much older and already an established warrior, the Hidatsa raided their hunting camp. Four men, four boys and some elderly and children were killed. Sacajawea and some other girls her own age were take prisoner and led by the Hidatsa to their villages near what is now Washburn, North Dakota. At that point, brother and sister probably thought they would never see each other again.
Fast forward to August, 1805 and a party of White explorers shows up in Cameahwait's village in the Lemhi River Valley of Idaho. This was the first group of Europeans the Shoshone had encountered, probably with the exception of French-Canadian fur trappers such as Charbonneau. The two sides communicated as best they could through sign language but as far as Cameahwait could make out and Meriwether Lewis could put across, the foreigners wanted horses to cross the mountains and keep on going. This would have made Cameahwait skeptical. This wasn't a hunting party or a war party that he could see. Why they wanted to journey over the mountains and needed his horses to do it would take some explaining and intricate negotiating. Lewis, who was traveling separately from Clark at the time, sent a message to Clark to hurry and bring Sacajawea.
Cameahwait agreed to accompany Lewis to meet Clark but his concern and suspicion, as Lewis notes in his journal, was beginning to grow and his patience with the whole business was wearing thin. As the two groups neared each other, Sacajawea began crying out and even dancing with delight. She recognized the group with Cameahwait as her own band of Shoshone and Cameahwait himself as her brother. Both Lewis and Clark record that Cameahwait was just as happy to see her and that the meeting between the siblings, and later between Sacajawea and a childhood friend who'd also been captured but escaped the Hidatsa and returned home was "quite effecting". And, there was a bonus, Cameahwait got to meet his nephew, Jean-Baptiste. Whoever these White men were and whatever they were really up to, they'd done him a personal favor and he was eager to repay it. Lewis and Clark got the horses to cross the Rocky Mountain passes and continue their journey.
Nothing else is known of Cameahwait's life. When the Expedition returned to Shoshone country, he was away and so missed a final meeting with Sacajawea. He was later killed in a conflict with the Blackfeet, traditional tribal enemies. Sacajawea most likely died by 1811, at Fort Manuel Lisa in present-day Wyoming.
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