Wrapping up Week 2

The Oregon Coast at Cannon Beach, near where Sacagawea got her first look at the Pacific Ocean. Taken from Ecola State Park, February 2017.

Hi all,

I want to share a few thoughts as I wrap up grading Module 2.

First, overall, the caliber of the answers was very good. If you didn’t get a score you expected, be sure to look at the rubric and check and see if I provided you any comments. If you still have questions, contact me and let’s see if we can set up a time to talk about it.

I did deduct a couple points on otherwise strong answers because they didn’t bring in specific cited evidence. Remember my bar for citations in discussion posts isn’t very high: Just tell us the reading and page number so we can find the information if we have questions. This especially holds true for quotations (and I do love a short, relevant, powerful quote). We’re practicing historians in this class and historians are all about argument and evidence mixed with context and nuance. The discussions give us a way to practice those things so they become second nature.

And, oh, Sacagawea. I appreciated that several of you noted that Sacagawea’s role has been romanticized over the years. The root of that is very likely elite Protestant women in Portland who organized tributes to Sacagawea during the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. The woman, embroiled in a campaign to win the votes for women, memorialized her as the woman pathfinder, a forgotten figure that deserved as much recognition as Lewis and Clark did because she did as much—or more—than they did (after all she did all the same stuff while also caring (and carrying) for her infant, than toddling son). They may also have pointed out that Sacagawea was the first woman—white or otherwise—who is recorded as voting in the region—and her vote counted just as much as any of the men’s in the expedition.

I agree with Emily’s point that “it’s valuable to continue to recognize and celebrate the role of a Native American young woman using her skills as a translator and guide to assist the explorers.” I would extend that to all the women who worked to create the Pacific Northwest. I suspect that some of you may have already notice that two of the organizing frameworks of this course are the presence and contributions of women and Native Americans. In Sacagawea we get to look at both! And while we do need to avoid romanticizing her, she was an integral part of the expedition and made significant contributions.

My favorite story of Sacagawea, which get’s just a line or two in Lewis and Clark’s journals, is when the party has hunkered down in it’s winter quarters at Fort Clatsop (roughly between Astoria and Seaside in present day Oregon) and heard that a whale had washed up on the beach not far away (Cannon Beach). The men gathered their things to go check it out apparently fully intending to leave Sacagawea behind to, well, you know take care of camp and keep house. Sacagawea wouldn’t have it. Although her exact words are lost, we can definitely pick up the favor of them thorough Lewis’s entry in his journal:

“[T]he Indian woman was very impo[r]tunate to be permited to go, and was therefore indulged; she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either.”

“Indulged”? I suspect that Lewis and Clark and the others not only recognized the merit of Sacagawea’s demand but that she could make things very uncomfortable for them if they didn’t.

She went. Or, perhaps in 2017, we should say, “Nevertheless, she persisted.” ;-)

I like to imagine Sacagawea coming over the last hill and seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, then walking along the edge of the water feeling it, tasting it, and then seeing the whale, smelling it, touching it, probably tasting it as well. It must have been a great day.

For a slightly different take on Sacagawea then we read, check out this page from an Oregon PBS station’s documentary on the Corps of Discovery.