Lost Chapters
Sacagawea, River Guide: Emerald Character
Sacagawea was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who traveled with the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1805 to 1806, carrying her infant son. She was not hired as a guide, but her language skills and her reunion with her brother, a Shoshone chief, helped the expedition get the horses it needed to cross the Rocky Mountains.
- Cost
- 3 crystals
- Type
- Character · Adventurer
- Power / Health
- 2 / 3
- Color
- Emerald (Frontier & Explorers)
- Rarity
- Ultra-Rare (Legacy)
- Set
- Liberty & Lightning (Set 1)
Your other Adventurers have Explore.
On play: if you control Lewis or Clark, search your deck for an Adventurer.
Teenage Shoshone interpreter who navigated hostile territories with an infant strapped to her back and clueless explorers at her side.
The real history
Sacagawea was born around 1788 among the Lemhi Shoshone in what is now Idaho. When she was about 12, a Hidatsa raiding party captured her and took her to the Hidatsa and Mandan villages on the Missouri River, near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. There she became the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader.
In the winter of 1804 to 1805, the Corps of Discovery camped near those villages, and the captains hired Charbonneau as an interpreter. On February 11, 1805, at Fort Mandan, Sacagawea gave birth to a son, Jean Baptiste. When the expedition headed west on April 7, 1805, she went too, carrying the baby.
The National Park Service notes that she came along because her husband was hired, not as a guide. Her value was real all the same. She knew the Shoshone language and recognized landmarks of her homeland, and a woman with a baby signaled to the nations they met that the party was not a war party. In August 1805 the captains finally met a band of Shoshone, and Sacagawea recognized its leader, Cameahwait, as her brother. The Shoshone traded the horses the Corps needed to cross the mountains, and the expedition reached the Pacific coast in November 1805.
The Corps returned to the Mandan and Hidatsa villages in 1806, where her part in the journey ended. Her later life is debated. Records from Fort Manuel point to her death there in December 1812, while some Native oral histories say she lived much longer, in Wyoming.
Sources
In the game's story
In the game's invented story, Sacagawea falls into the world of Marginalia alongside Lewis and Clark, her son asleep in a cradleboard. The Wildkin of the Deckle Wilds refuse to meet the two captains, so she goes to them alone and comes back three days later with permission, guides and a gift of dried berries. The Deckle Rangers make her an honorary member.
How the card plays
Sacagawea costs 3 crystals and is a 2/3 Emerald Adventurer. Her first ability is the reason to play her: every other Adventurer you control has Explore, so it can only be blocked by characters that also have Explore. That turns a field of ordinary Adventurers into attackers your rival struggles to stop.
Her second ability rewards the expedition theme. If you already control Lewis or Clark when she arrives, search your deck for an Adventurer, so she replaces herself in your hand.
Play her on turn 2 or 3 after Meriwether Lewis, Captain or William Clark, Lieutenant has landed, then follow up with the Adventurer you fetched. Up a River adds +1/+0 to everything with Explore, and her aura makes that a lot of characters. Keep her out of trades: she is small, and the team loses Explore if she leaves.
- Playable in decks led by Amelia Earhart, and by any Traveler Leader whose colors include Emerald.
- In the Earhart starter deck (2 copies). Deck code:
LC2-Ax8CIAEhASIBIwIkAiUBJgEnASgCKQEqAisBLAEtAS4BLwEwATEBMgEzATQBNQE2ATcBOAE5AToBOwE8AT0BZQJ0Anuc - Works with Meriwether Lewis, Captain; William Clark, Lieutenant.
- A deck holds up to 3 copies of this card.
Questions about Sacagawea
Was Sacagawea the guide of the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
Not officially. The captains hired her husband as an interpreter, and she traveled with him. She helped with language, recognized landmarks in Shoshone country and was key to getting horses from her brother's band, which is why the card calls her a River Guide.
How old was Sacagawea on the expedition?
She was a teenager. Born around 1788, she was about 16 or 17 when the Corps left Fort Mandan in April 1805, with her two-month-old son.
Card art
The standard version of Sacagawea, River Guide. The Full Art above is a rare version that can appear in packs.
Related cards
Meriwether Lewis, Captain5 crystals · Character · Ultra-Rare
William Clark, Lieutenant4 crystals · Character · Rare
Amelia Earhart, Adventurer3 crystals · Character · Legendary
Daniel Boone2 crystals · Character · Rare
Sally Ann Thunder6 crystals · Character · Uncommon
Corps of Discovery3 crystals · Character · Uncommon
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