Sacagawea was kidnapped from her Shoshone people as a child, sold to a French-Canadian fur trader, and joined the Lewis and Clark expedition as a teenager carrying an infant on her back. She has since been claimed as a symbol by feminists, Native sovereignty advocates, and American expansionists alike — each version of her story shaped more by the needs of the storyteller than by the scant historical evidence.

This episode traces Sacagawea from her abduction through the expedition, the competing accounts of her death, and the ways different eras have reinvented her to serve their own purposes.

• Sacagawea’s kidnapping from the Shoshone and her marriage to Toussaint Charbonneau
• Her role on the Lewis and Clark expedition and the moments that made her indispensable
• The competing death narratives — 1812 in South Dakota or 1884 on the Wind River Reservation
• How feminists, Native activists, and nationalists have each claimed and reshaped her story