Charbonneau and Sacagawea were to gain fame as part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, supported by the Corps of Discovery.
Charbonneau, then an interpreter for the Hidatsa, had left a nearby hunting expedition to learn about a recent council between leaders of the Corps and local tribes.
During the Corps' winter with the Mandan and Hidatsa people in 1803–1804, the journal keepers of the expedition were very clear that Charbonneau had two Shoshone-speaking wives.
Four years after the Corps returned to St. Louis, Clark began working with Nicholas Biddle,[2] editor of the expedition's journals, for publication as a narrative.
Emmons, Della Gould, Sacajawea of the Shoshones, Binfords and Mort, Portland, 1943 Hebard, Grace R., Sacajawea: A Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with an Account of the Travels of Toussaint Charbonneau, and of Jean Baptiste, the Expedition Papoose, Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale, 1932 Schultz, James Willard, Bird Woman (Sacajawea): The Guide of Lewis and Clark, Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., Boston, 1918 Thorne, Tanis C., The Many Hands of My Relations: French and Indians on the Lower Missouri, University of Missouri Press, Columbia & London, 1996