''Dux Femina Facti "
Sacajawea Statue Association
Oregon, Washing'ton, Idaho, Montana, Dakota, Nebraska, UtaH, Colorado
TEN REASONS WHY THE WOMEN OP THE NORTHWEST SHOULD ERECT A STATUE TO SAC A J AWE A:
1. Sacajawea was the only woman to accompany the Lewis and Clark expedition.
2. She was their guide and interpreter.
3. She protected them when threatened by hostile Indians.
4. She procured for them food and horses when destitute of both.
5. She saved their journals and valuables papers at the risk of her own life.
6. She was the only one of the party who received no pecuniary compensation for her services.
7. While enduring hardships and suffering, she administered to the necessities of others.
8. She welcomed with intelligent appreciation the civilization of the white race.
9. Over a million dollars will be spent in honoring the memory of the heroes of the Lewis and Clark party and not a cent of it has been appropriated to the only heroine.
10. She was the first pioneer mother to cross the Rocky mountains and carry her baby into the Oregon country.
"Dux Femina Facti"
( "A woman led the deed"—Virgil)
Sacajawea Statue Association
OFFICERS.
President—Mrs. Eva Emery Dye, Oregon City.
First Vice-President—Mrs. C. M. Cart-wright, Portland.
Second Vice-President—Mrs. M. A. Dalton, Portland.
Third Vice-President—Mrs. J. B. Montgomery, Portland.
Secretary—Mrs. Sarah A. Evans, Oswego, Oregon.
Treasurer—Mrs. A. H. Breyman, Portland.
Honorary President—Mrs. S. A. Duniway.
Honorary Vice-Pr -sident—Mrs. A. C. Gibbs.
DIRECTORS.
Mrs. E. W. Bingnam, Portland; Mrs. H. McArthur, Portland; Mrs. Jno. McRoberts, Portland, Mrs. S. L. M. Farmer, Portland; Mrs. Geo. Harding, Oregon City.
For further particulars, address the Secretary.
Membership Fee       ^       Fifty Cents
MANN & BEACH
printers
92 Second Street Portland, Oregon
What Dr. James K. Hosmer Says.
The following beautiful tribute is from the pen of Dr. James K. Hosmer, of Minneapolis, the noted editor of the Lewis and Clark journals:
"Now that the centenary of the first crossing of our continent is close at hand, Lewis and Clark the heroes, who accomplished it, come into our minds, and a revival is taking place of interest in their story. Especially will the world turn to that noble and picturesque book, 'The Conquest,' by Mrs. Eva Emery Dye, in which with admirable power that story is made vivid. One may see sometimes at a May festival, a rough cord transformed into a thing of beauty, by being intertwined with ivy and smilax and set off with daisies and roses. In like fashion the plain thread of history furnished by the stout explorers, unwinding day by day as they marched, taken in hand by a writer of genius, has become a thing of beauty, while losing nothing of its truth. Her mind is well stored with the traditions belonging to the period; her eyes have beheld the scenes described; her imagination is quick and fruitful. She imparts life to a tale which it is well worth while to make thoroughly vital.
"Readers of the 'Conquest' will find not only the heroes but their followers made dis-
tinct and attractive, and it will be strange indeed if the world does not wake up to an admiration for one among these followers whose desert has not been appreciated.. But one woman, a young squaw, plays a part in the story of Lewis and Clark. Her doing, however, was of such a character as to make it quite right to claim for her a high place among heroines; in the whole line of Indian heroines, indeed, from Pocahontas to Rani on a, not one can be named whose title to honored remembrance is any better than hers.   Here is the outline of the story:
The Bird Woman.
"Sacajawea, the Bird-woman, belonged to the Shoshone, or Snake Indians, a mountain tribe which, in the days of Lewis and Clark, was in danger of extermination at the hands of the Minnetarees, or Blackfeet. She had been taken captive when a child by these foes. When Lewis and Clark, coming up the Missouri, reached in their first winter the Mandans and Minnetarees, Sacajawea, a girl of 16, had shortly before became the slave and wife of Chabonneau, a French voyageur, who, like many a waif of his race, had sunk far towards savagery ana was living with the wild men. Perhaps the best strike the Captains made in preparing for their work was in engaging Chabonneau and Sacajawea to join the expedition. It was believed that he would be a useful interpreter, and that the Bird-woman, too, might be of some service when they reached the mountains from which she had come. When the party started westward in the spring of 1805, these two
were included—the degenerate Frenchman, and his poor little slave-wife, who, although she carried strapped to her back her papoose, born so lately as the preceding February, had no choice but to follow her lord.
Engaged the White Man.
"From the first, however, the Bird-woman won upon the Captains and their men by mild and engaging qualities; and as they worked their canoes up the Upper Missouri, she showed extraordinary efficiency. Though burdened with her babe, she labored with the men, with paddle and tow-rope, and soon rendered an important service. A canoe loaded with the most valuable belonging of the expedition, the journals of the Captains, their scientific instruments, and their medicines, was caught in a rapid by a squall, and on the point of being overturned. Chabonneau, who with Sacajawea, was on board, had the steering oar, and struck with fear went 'howling to his Gods.' The boat filled to the gunwale and was saved from an overturn only at the last moment, her precious cargo floating out upon the stream. But the Bird-woman, with her wits all at hand, saved not only herself and baby, but grasping right and left at the escaping packages rescued what was indispensable. It was the first conspicuous exhibition of her presence of mind and handiness, which later were constantly shown.
Meeting Her Lost Brother.
"As the summer waned the party approached the Gates of the Mountains, where
the canoes must be forsaken, and the horses obtained with which it would be possible to cross the divide to the head springs of the Columbia.   Thus far since leaving the Man-dans, there had been neither sight nor sound of man; nor as the mountains rose before them was there a trace of human beings except in camps deserted months before. The Captains ranged far ahead of their men; but though at last glimpses were obtained of Indians at a distance, these at once hurried away, avoiding all contact.    Caution, for those mountain tribes, in fact, was the price of existence.   When the case for Lewis and Clark was growing desperate, and the possibility appeared that the attempt must be abandoned and the expedition go back, the Bird-woman began to dance and sing. She was once more among the naunts of her people; she recognized the valley into which they had penetrated as the place where five or six years beiore she had been taken captive.   Presently some Indian women were brought in, who abandoned by the men, had been  left to fall  into the hands  of the strangers.   As the poor creatures cowered before their captors, bending their heads to receive their deathblow, suddenly a young girl, catching sight of Sacajawea, rushed toward her.   She was a tribeswoman, who having been captured at the same time with the Bird-woman, had for a time undergone with her the pains of bondage. Escaping, however, the friend had found her people again.   Now a second time losing her freedom, as she supposed, she descried among the newcomers no other than her old companion.   The two squaws embraced tenderly.
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The Shoshone women acting as guides and intercessors, brought back the warriors. It was the very band of the Bird-woman that at last had been reached, and when presently at the council she began to interpret the speech of the chief, lo, it was her own brother whose words she was translating! A firm friendship was at once established between the party and the Shoshones; the Indian girl had made further progress possible.
Serving as a Guide.
"Henceforth the way was smoothed. Horses and guides were furnished; the friendly Shoshones passed the whi.e men on to the Plat-heads and they in turn to the Nez Perces. At the councils Sacajawea was always the most important one in the line of interpreters. The Captains speculated, amused as to what kind of representation it was that at last reached the mountain men, when their speech, done into French for Chabonneau, rendered by him into Minnetaree for Sacajawea, filtered on from her Shoshone into Chopunnish, Ootlashoot or whatever barbaric dialect might be at hand. But some message was conveyed, and through the Indian girl those remotest wilds first heard of the greatness of Uncle Sam and the good things
*^_he meditated for his newly gained children
of the forest. Nor was it solely as an interpreter that she was useful. As the party passed from tribe to tribe, who were always timorous at the first encounter, disposed to fly like frightened deer, the sight of Sacajawea with her papoose, riding with the Cap-
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tains, was reassuring. It could be no war-party ii a squaw and her baby were among them.
"The Pacific was safely reached before winter set in, and the journals record the wonder of the squaw before the great ocean, and the mighty whale which its waters had cast upon the beach. With the tribes near the coast there might have been much barter; but Lewis ana Clark had now quite ex-hasuted their stock of merchandise; there could be no more trading unless they fairly stripped themselves.
"We read how Clark, to obtain a fine horse, gave in exchange his sword; while Lewis, determined to obtain a magnificent skin of the sea-otter, persuaded Sacajawea to let him buy it with her girdle of blue beads. It is, however, with Clark that the Indian girl seems to have been more especially associated. At Christmas time her present to him is two dozen tails of the white weasel; and at a time of distress, when starvation seems near, it is pathetic to read how, with almost too great loyalty to her captain, she gives him the piece of bread which somehow she had reserved for a long time, intending it in case of extremity for her baby.
On the Return Journey.
"As the expedition worked its way back again in 1806, the friends made through Sacajawea remained faithful. Though in part the road had been once traveled, to some extent t^e party struck into new paths, and
in the mountains sometimes felt themselves to be utterly lost. When all were in doubt and the wilderness seemed likely to swallow them, then the strange capability of Sacajawea proved their salvation. As a little child she had come with her people through this desert, and now, with me keen sight of the migrating bird which directs its course by landmarks not noticeable by ordinary sight, again and again she pointed out the path. So it was that in the summer the expedition came again to the Minnetaree villages, having accomplished an immortal achievement. Nothing remained for them but a short and easy course downstream to St. Louis and civilization. Here Chabonneau decided to take up again his abode, at the spot where he had enlisted; and here stayed, too, Sacajawea, under the thrall of her lord and master. The student of Lewis and Clark reads with a pang that while Chabonneau received $500 for his services, Sacajawea received nothing, not even her freedom; and it is perhaps the most serious blemish upon the fame of the Captains that, for all the record shows, the gentle faithfulness, the affection, the extraordinary skill of this daughter of the wilderness remained unrequited.
Fond of White People.
"There is one later mention of Sacajawea. In 1811, the traveler Breckinridge, sailing up the Missouri, records a meeting with an old Frenchman and his wife, who he learns had crossed the continent with Lewis and Clark. The woman seemed fond of white people, tried to imitate civilized ways in her
dress and manners, and in general appeared like one in whom an aspiration had been aroused for something higher than slavery. She was, says the traveler, in feeble health. Probably she died soon after, and there is no memorial of her. The river to which the Captains gave her name bears now another designation. When she laid down her life, and what became of the baby which with its mother had so strange an experience, no man can say.
"After a century, is it not right that the dust should be brushed off this neglected figure—the one woman who went with Lewis and Clark, who contributed so memorably to their success—who, perhaps, was their salvation? Is she not a heroine sweet and brave among the sweetest and bravest?"
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NOTES.
It is the purpose of the Sacajawea Statue Association to erect the statue temporarily on the Lewis and Clark Centennial grounds and later give it a permanent place in one of the city parks.
It is to be of bronze, of heroic size, the entire cost not to exceed $7000.
The women of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska, in fact, the women of all the Rocky mountain and Pacific country have taken up the project, and a Western sculptor, Miss Alice Cooper, of Denver, has been selected to execute the .memorial. This will be not only the first statue ever erected to an Indian woman, but a type of the new recognition that has come to the civilized red man of today. In the light of the setting sun let Sacajawea stand, glorified.
Next to Jefferson, who sent them, it is Sacajawea, who guided them, who deserves to be eulogized with Lewis and Clark.
Place her statue in the exposition grounds, facing the west, for it was she who led the expedition through the tortuous ravines of the eastern slope of the Rockies; led them safely past the retreats of the murderous Blackfeet, and it was she who stood on the brow of that shining range and unlocked the gates of the Pacific Coast empire to the baffled heroes into whose hands she was luckily cast.
BY-LAWS.
ARTICLE I. The name of this Association shall be The Sacajawea Statue Association.   Its principal place of business shall be Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon.
ARTICLE II.
The business and object of this Association shall be to commemorate the services of Sacajawea to Lewis and Clark on their expedition from Port Mandan, on the Missouri River, to Oregon and return. For this purpose to acquire and hold necessary real estate and other property to erect a statue, and to exercise such powers as are given by statute to associations other than those for pecuniary profit.
ARTICLE III.
This Association shall commence on April 18, 1900, and the members shall be the undersigned, together with such other persons as have contributed in money or services, or may hereafter contribute the sum of 50 cents or more to the support of this association.
ARTICLE IV.
The business of this Association shall be conducted by a board consisting of a President, three Vice-Presidents, a Secretary and Treasurer, five Directors, who shall be elected annually at the annual meeting ot the members on pioneer day.   Twenty mem-
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bers shall constitute a quorum at the annual meeting. Each member shall be entitled to one vote in person or by proxy.
ARTICLE V.
The board shall have power to appoint subordinate officers; fill vacancies on their board; call special meetings; make and adopt special by-laws for the management of Association affairs and do any and all things necessary for the transaction of the business of the association.
Written contracts and conveyances of the Association shall be signed by the president and attested by the secretary, and in case of instruments requiring acknowledgment the same shall be made by the president in the name of the Association. In case of her absence or inability, the vice-presidents in succession shall perform all the above duties.
The duties of the several officers shall be such as are usually performed by like officers.
Orders on the treasurer shall be signed by the president and secretary.
The secretary shall receive and receipt for all money paid to the Association, and shall pay it to the treasurer, taking her receipt for the same.
ARTICLE VI.
These articles may be amended at any annual meeting of the members by a two-third vote of the members present or voting by proxy; provided, one month's notice of such amendment is filed with the secretary.
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PRESS NOTICES.
This neglected heroine is to be given a place in history along with Pocahontas.— Chicago Inter-Ocean.
Details of the expedition, as given by the explorers themselves, show that in more than one instance this quickwitted, kind-hearted slave wife averted a catastrophe that would have made the expedition end in a tragedy instead of a triumph that has gone ringing down the years.—Oregonian.
Madonna of her race, she had led the way to a new time. To the hands of this girl, not yet eighteen, had been entrusted the key that unlocked the road to Asia. Across North America, a Shoshone Indian princess touched hands with Jefferson opening her country.—The Conquest.
Next to Jefferson who sent them, it is Sacajawea who guided them, who deserves to be eulogized with Lewis and Clark.—East Oregonian.
A monument to Sacajawea should be erected at St. Louis.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
"Dus femina facti"—a woman led the deed —wrote Virgil in his Aeneid 2000 years ago. I am not sure but thq same might be said of the Lewis and Clark Centennial, for it was Sacajawea, the little Shoshone princess with her baby on her back, pointing the way to Lewis and Clark through the devious mountain passes that made possible this Centennial.—East Oregonian.
The story of the Indian captive girl gives interesting hint of the marked providence in behalf of the brave pioneer.—The Pacific.