Writing Women Back Into History — Otter Woman

Most elementary school children in our country know who Sacagawea is, but most of them have never heard of Otter woman, whose story begins when Sacagawea’s does.

As young girls living with their people, the Shoshone, Sacagawea and Otter Woman were stolen by Hidatsas who were raiding mainly for horses. Since neither the Shoshone nor the Hidatsa kept written records, and oral histories after all these years aren’t entirely trustworthy, the years they were born (especially for Otter Woman, who is rarely mentioned by anyone) and the year of the abduction aren’t clear. Historians believe that Sacagawea was born between 1788 and 1790, and that Otter Woman was a year or two older, and that the Hidatsa raid occurred between 1799 and 1800.

Some histories write that the girls became the slaves of their captors, but cultural anthropologist Dr. Mary Jane Schneider, who spent her entire professional life studying the culture of the agricultural river tribes along the Missouri in what is now North Dakota, states unequivocally that the Hidatsa never practiced slavery. Children taken by their warriors on raids were adopted by families, often families who had lost a child (early deaths were common back then), and were treated exactly the same way as their other children. It seems that Sacagawea and Otter Woman were adopted by different families, but the village wasn’t so big that they wouldn’t have seen each other and been able to do many things together, like picking berries and gathering roots, or grinding grain and tanning hides. Sacagawea’s name, in Hidatsa, is Tsa-ga-ga Wiya, meaning Bird Woman. While Otter Woman’s name would also have ended in Wiya, I don’t know enough Hidatsa to tell you the first part of her name.

Historians debate about how old Sacagawea was when she married French-Canadian (and possibly Metis, or mixed blood) trader Toussaint Charbonneau, and how that marriage came about. We may never be sure of Sacagawea’s age at marriage; she may have been as young as thirteen, but was probably no older than 16, a typical age for marriage in those days. Regarding the marriage, there are two common stories: one, that her Hidatsa family sold her to Charbonneau, and the other, that he won her in a gambling game.

Again, relying on Dr. Schneider’s years of research, it’s safe to say that neither story is true. Children were loved by Hidatsa; they were considered a precious gift from the spirits, not property to be sold or gambled away. Also, Hidatsa women made the earth lodges that families lived in, and the main woman in each lodge basically owned that lodge; a man could be “put out” by simply leaving all his possessions outside the door, and women were rarely forced into an unwelcome marriage.

Toussaint Charbonneau was no prize. We know from journals and letters that years before, when he was working for the North West Company under Jonh MacDowell along the Assiniboine River, he was stabbed by an elderly Saultier woman as he was raping the woman’s daughter. The woman wasn’t punished, and Charbonneau lost his job and was unable to get another with an established trading or fur company. He began to work as a “free trader” and interpreter, working for whoever would pay him. When Lewis and Clark arrived at the Hidatsa and Mandan villages on the Missouri River in the fall of 1804, Charbonneau had interpreting contracts with two traders: Larocque, from the North West Company, and McKenzie from Hudson’s Bay Company.

One possible reason for Sacagawea to agree to a marriage to Charbonneau is his connections to the white traders. Those connections would have added to her Hidatsa family’s status, and also brought them a larger amount of white trade goods. Another possible reason is that Charbonneau had already married her good friend, Otter Woman, so she knew that she would not be alone. She would be with her friend, who shared her history and her language.

Otter Woman has been written out of history quite successfully, due in part to Toussaint Charbonneau. She is mentioned, although not by name, in one of the diaries of the Corps of Discovery; “today the wives of Charbono [sic] came to the Fort [Ft. Mandan] bringing gifts of buffalo robes.” Note the plural “wives.” Yet later that winter, Charbonneau and one wife, Sacagawea, moved into a tipi inside the palisade of Fort Mandan. In February she gave birth to her first child, a son named “Jean-Baptiste” by Charbonneau, but whom she called “Pomp,” a name very similar to the Shoshone word for “first.”

After the single nameless mention, Otter Woman disappears from all but oral histories, and there’s very little to find there. She didn’t accompany Lewis and Clark (and her husband and sister-wife) to the Pacific and back. It doesn’t appear that she went to St. Louis with Sacagawea and Charbonneau in 1809, where Charbonneau claimed the 320 acres of land promised to each “man” of the expedition. (I find it interesting that Sacagawea, who was much more useful than her husband on that expedition, as an interpreter, a peace maker, a boat handler, and a finder of food that often kept the Corps of Discovery alive, was never granted land or money. Interesting, but not surprising.)

Otter Woman didn’t accompany Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau in 1811, when the two went north again, this time with Toussaint in the employ of the Missouri River Fur Company. While there is debate as to whether Sacagawea died in a fire not long after that, or returned to the Shoshone and died as a very old woman on the Wind River Reservation, there is absolutely nothing known about Otter Woman. Or at least nothing that was shared with whites, or that they considered worth recording.

Did Otter Woman remarry when Charbonneau and Sacagawea left with Lewis and Clark? Did she have any children by Charbonneau? Why did Charbonneau take Sacagawea to Fort Mandan but leave Otter Woman in the Hidatsa village? Was Otter Woman ever able to return to her Shoshone family? Without written records, there may never be an answer to any of these questions. But even though she didn’t accompany the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific, Otter Woman deserves a place in history beside Sacagawea, her friend and sister-wife.