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This is our American stories, and we tell every kind of story here on this show.

And our favorite kind, of course, has to do with

American history. And up next comes Deirdre Berzer. And Deirdre is a professor at Hillsdale

College, proud sponsors of all of our history stories. And today she'll be sharing with us the

story of one of history's most essential woman, Sakajauea. Here's our own

Mountie Montgomery to kick off the story. When Lewis and Clark left St. Louis, Missouri on August 31st,

1803 to find a passage to the west, they left with 45 men, 27 of which were unmarried bachelors. Needless to say, there was no

womanly presence within the core of discovery at all. But something changed. Here's Hillsdale

as Dr. Deidre Berzer, with more on that. They add in Sakaduea, who is just an amazing character on every level. So they spend the first

winter with the Mandan people in their villages in what is now north of Bismarck, North Dakota.

Here in those villages they encounter one of these French Matty Toussaint Charbonneau, who has three wives,

and two of them are Hidotza, and then they have Sikadjua as a third wife, and she is Shoshone,

but she was captured as a child and sold to the Hidotsa.

So she's about 16 years old.

She's pregnant, but the key here is that she is Shoshone, so she knows that language.

And Lewis and Clark already know, and they're very worried, actually, that they're going to need horses to get across the mountains right the boats are not

going to be able to go across the mountains they're going to need horses and they are going to need them

from the shishoni people and they've been really really concerned about how all of this is going to

transpire and they're actually so worried they think they might might have to turn back around

and go back and give up the expedition so they think they might have to turn back around and go back

...