Author: Joseph Bruchac
Publisher: Audio Bookshelf
Rating: WARTY!
Tsakakawias had many variations on her name, which wasn't her original Shoshoni name anyway, but since, as far as I can tell, Tsakakawias is closest to her native name - the one she became most commonly known by in her own time - that's the one I'll use here. Other variants are the one which Bruchac, ill-advisedly, in my opinion, uses, along with an alternative, 'Sacagawea'. See wikipedia for more details. Note that the Shoshoni claim that 'Sacajawea' was actually her Shoshoni name, and that it meant 'boat puller', but that makes no sense at all to me. Why would a child be named boat-puller?! No doubt she aided Lewis and Clark since their boats had to be pulled against the current many times, but Tsakakawias had this name long before she was teaching those two how to survive in the wild.
Note that no one knows what Tsakakawias actually looked like. The purported model for the image on the US dollar coin minted in 2000 was a Shoshoni (or Shoshone) named Randy'L He-dow Teton who graduated from University of New Mexico at the same age as Tsakakawias was when she died. He-Dow looks nothing like the image that actually ended up on the coin, so even two hundred years later, the insults continue! I think we can be reasonably certain that the image on the novel cover doesn't represent Tsakakawias either, especially since both the woman in the cover image, and He-dow herself are significantly older than Tsakakawias actually was when she quite effectively lead Lewis and Clark to their triumph.
This audio book was read by Nicole Littrell and Michael Rafkin, and these two people were one of the two main reasons I could not stand to listen beyond chapter one of this god-awfully read novel. Why two people who sound like they're Irish would be hired to read the tale of a Shoshoni woman is mystery enough in itself. Are we supposed to understand from this that there no Shoshoni people who can read? I know there are only 12,000 or so Shoshoni remaining in the world, but I seriously doubt that. Even an Irish narration would have been okay had not these two readers apparently conspired to tell this story in the most irritating sing-sing voice imaginable, as though they were reading a nursery rhyme to a four year old. I seriously felt nauseated by it after one chapter and could not go on. Instead of this abysmal disk, I recommend simply reading the wikipedia article on Tsakakawias as I did just now (for the second or third time!).
The truth about Tsakakawias is that she was a Shoshoni woman who was born in what is today Lemhi County, Idaho. She was kidnapped by a rival tribe before she reached her teens and was shortly afterwards sold to a trapper from Quebec, named Toussaint Charbonneau, who had already bought one native American wife. Thus she was "married" at thirteen and pregnant shortly thereafter. Her name is not a Shoshoni name but a Hidatsa name tsakaka wia meaning 'bird woman', given to her by her kidnappers and contrary to popular culture, it was pronounced not with a soft 'g', but more like tsa-ɡah-ɡa-wea with no stress on any syllable. When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived to build Fort Mandan in 1804, they began seeking a guide to travel the Missouri with them, and as soon as they learned that Tsakakawias spoke Shoshoni, she and her husband were on-board. It fortunate for them that she was, otherwise they would have perished, lost their diaries, and had nothing to trade for the fine otter-skin cloak they took back to President Jefferson, for which I'll bet that Tsakakawias garnered zero credit.
She died at the age of 24, and Bruchac, who claims native American "blood" himself, owed her more than this. OTOH, are there any Americans who don't claim native American blood - the blood of the peoples who were systematically slaughtered and marginalized when this nation was colonized? Not that the native Americans were any better since they were routinely at war with one another and, as you can see from Tsakakawias's own story, were not above kidnapping children. The bottom line is that there are precious few heroes in any story of the annihilation or the brutal treatment of one people by another, and it's truly sad that the few genuine heroes we do have - ones like Tsakakawias - are treated badly, marginalized, or rendered as a fairy tale even by those who should know better. Tsakakawias deserves better treatment than this audio insult, and the fairy-tale story-writing which evidently inspired and informed it.
