You're listening to an I-Heart podcast.

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, Sikadioia.

Here's our own Monty 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 College's Dr. D. Dejaburzer, with more on that.

They add in Sakaduaya, 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 Mati Toussaint Charbonneau,

who has three wives, and two of them are Hidotza, and then they have Sikajuaia 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.

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