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Sacagawea Depicted

Edition #89: Spring 2000

Sacagawea CoinThe obverse of the new coin depicts Sacagawea with her papoose. She was the teen-aged Shoshone Indian who served as an invaluable translator and guide for the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery. The expedition had been commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to explore theLouisiana Purchase, the territory which was acquired from Napoleon's France in 1803. Sacagawea's French-Canadian husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, also a member of the Corps, bought her from her Hidatsa Indian captors. During the couple's years with the expedition, she gave birth to a little boy, Jean Baptiste. Depicted on the coin as a papoose, he survived the often-trying circumstances to which the Corps was exposed.

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