Sacajawea

About the Book

As the author of SACAJAWEA: Her True Story, I'm pleased with the reaction to the book but even more thrilled over the interest in Sacajawea, even from overseas.  Although my e-mail is on only one website (it's rwhaney@yahoo.com), I'm surprised about how many comments and questions I've received, including three from the United Kingdom this week.  I try to personally respond to all the e-mails but I've also decided to use this forum to answer the best questions I receive, such as this one from Jeffrey Dawson, Wales: "An American friend told me about your book and I have ordered but not received it yet from Amazon.co.uk/United Kingdom.  She also has sent me five of the Year 2000 Sacajawea Golden Dollar Coins, knowing my interest in the 1805-06 Lewis and Clark Expedition that ended merry-ole England's claims to the region stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific.  I surf the internet for Sacajawea stuff and read more about your book and learned that the little Indian girl is vastly widening the gap as easily the most memorialized female in American history.  WOW!  I have a question.  As Sacajawea led the mission from the Missouri to the Pacific and back, were there any deaths among the members of the expedition on the arduous journey?"

ANSWER:  There were many close calls but only one member of the expedition died during the journey.  That was Sergeant Charles Floyd.  He died on August 20th, 1804, near present day Sioux City, Iowa.  It is believed his death was due to a burst appendix.

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Carol Meminger; St. Paul, Minnesota: "I enjoyed your book and notice you spell your icon 'Sacajawea' but from time to time I see it spelled 'Sacagawea' or 'Sacakawea' or even 'Sakakawea' just as often.  Can you explain this to me?"

  ANSWER:  I use the "Sacajawea" spelling simply because she was a Shoshone and my Shoshoni friends think of her and spell her name that way.  In other words, Sacajawea is family to them and that gives them the perogative, I think.  If a white family had a daughter named Kathy, for example, I would think of Kathy with a "K" and not Cathy with a "C."  But I understand your confusion.  Sacajawea was Shoshoni but she was captured and enslaved by the Hidatsa Indians of Knife River in present day North Dakota when she was a child.  Her Hidatsa captors named her "Sacagawea," which to them meant "Bird Woman."  The Lewis and Clark Expedition helped reunite her with her Shoshoni people in 1805 and by then her brother Cameahwait had become Chief of the Shoshones.  Even within their own tribe, Shoshoni women often had several name changes from time to time but Sacajawea apparently liked her Hidatsa name and it closely resembled the Shoshoni name that meant "one who launches boats."  So, even today the Hidatsas and Shoshones pronounce the name basically the same except for the third syllable.  Lewis and Clark, on the expedition, spelled her name as they pronounced it -- "Sah-cah-gah-we-ah."  The Hidatsa word for bird is "sacaga" and the Hidatsa word for woman is "wea" and combining the two was how Sacajawea originally was named.  But the general acceptance of the name by her Shoshoni people affords them the right to start the third syllable with a "j" and not a 'g' and pronounce it "Sack-a-ja-wea," I think.  To the Shoshones, her name is "Sacajawea" and it means "boat launcher" but to the Hidatsas her name is "Sacakawea" and it means

"Bird Woman."  The third spelling -- "Sakakawea" --is promoted by the North Dakota Hidatsa and they pronounce it "sa-ka-ka-we-a."  In 1814, eight years after the expedition, a man named Nicholas Biddle edited the Lewis and Clark journals and corrected many of the explorers' spelling and grammar mistakes.  Biddle was the very first in the English language

About the Author

Born in Fluvanna County, Virginia, in 1945, Rich Haney began working part-time at WINA Radio in nearby Charlottesville when he was a high school junior.     While attending Lynchburg College, he continued to work at WINA on weekends.     Then, for eight years, he was Sports Director and Program Director for WINA.     During this period he did football play-by-play for Lane High School, then the record-setting, perennial state champions.

He left WINA Radio in Charlottesville to become the Sports Anchor/Director of WTVR-TV, the CBS affiliate in Richmond, Virginia.      During his twelve-year stint at WTVR-TV, he also did football and basketball play-by-play on the radio networks of the University of Richmond, the University of Virginia and/or Virginia Tech University.     For five years he covered regional sports for the Raycom and CBS networks and also published a sports weekly, The Rich Haney Report, as well as a syndicated newspaper sports column.

After a divorce, Rich moved to Montgomery, Alabama, when his son Tony received a baseball scholarship at Auburn University.    While Tony was at Auburn, Rich was the Sports Director/Anchor of WAKA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Montgomery.      It was in the Deep South, essentially alone for the first time, that Rich began researching and writing Historic Novels, which soon became his passion.      A recently published Civil War novel entitled CHATTAHOOCHEE encouraged him to move to Laramie, Wyoming, where he writes full-time.

SACAJAWEA: Her True Story is Rich's first non-fiction work but, in Laramie, he has also deeply researched and written two Western Novels -- ROSEBUD and FAWN -- that are currently being represented by a New York agent.     His particular interest, symbolized by an extensive personal library that he is quite proud of, is the history of the American West, particularly the Plains Indians.

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    Even prior to the soon-to-be ubiquitous dollar coin, which debuts in March of 2000, Sacajawea is already the most memorialized female in American history.     Yet, controversy still rages as to whether she died in 1812 in South Dakota or in 1884 in Wyoming.     And where is she buried?     This book answers those questions by validating the Oral or Traditional History of the Shoshones, her own people, and explains why many white historians, including Ken Burns and Steven Ambrose, are wrong when it comes to America's greatest female icon.