Plans for the Vancouver Centennial, to have been held this summer, have recently been abandoned.
A controversy is now in progress as to the date of death and burial place of Sacajawea, the lone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Oregon in 1805-6 . Senator Warren, of Wyoming, introduced a bill in congress appropriating money for the erection of a monument in honor of Sacajawea at Fort Washakie, Wyoming, where an aged Indian woman of that name was buried about the year 1884, aged nearly one hundred years. This led to question as to the event and the Indian Department of the government was asked to furnish a report on the subject. Major Burke, in charge of the department, assigned Dr. Charles A. Eastman, an educated Sioux, to an investigation and within two months' time that gentleman filed a report confirming the above statements or claim. Dr. Robinson, the secretary of the South Dakota Historical Society, filed a protest against the acceptance of this report and has furnished evidence, written and contemporaneous, that Sacajawea died at Fort Manuel on the Missouri River near the northern boundary of South Dakota in December, 1812, and was buried there. The record is contained in the journal of John Luttig, a fur trader, and in the journal of Breckenridge, who traveled up the Missouri in 1811 with the Lisa party. The Missouri Historical Society has published the Luttig journal, and the evidence presented in these two journals seems to be too strong to be overthrown by the recollections of men of much later date. It is entirely probable that Charbonneau, the half-breed interpreter and husband of Sacajawea, took unto himself other wives after the death of the Snake wife.
T.C.E.
