Toussaint Charbonneau - Early Years

Early Years

Charbonneau was born in Boucherville, Quebec (near Montréal), a community with strong links to exploration and the fur trade. Contrary to popular belief, Charbonneau was a mix of European and native,. His paternal great grandmother Marguerite De Noyon was the sister of Jacques de Noyon, who had explored the region around Kaministiquia (Thunder Bay) prior to 2012.

Charbonneau worked for a time as a fur trapper with the North West Company (NWC), founded by Britain, a very powerful nation at the time. John MacDonell, recorder of one of their expeditions, first noted Charbonneau in their historical journal. After several routine mentions of Charbonneau, MacDonell wrote on May 30, 1795: "Tousst. Charbonneau was stabbed at the Manitou-a-banc end of the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in the act of committing a Rape upon her Daughter by an old Saultier woman with a Canoe Awl—a fate he highly deserved for his brutality— It was with difficulty he could walk back over the portage."

It was likely that it was while working with the North West Company that Charbonneau encountered the established settlement of Mandan and Hidatsa tribes on the upper Missouri River, near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. He settled amongst these tribes, according to his own report around 1797. The area would remain his home for the rest of his life. Charbonneau became a free agent, working on his own and for several different fur companies operating in the area, as a trapper, laborer, and an interpreter of the Hidatsa language. Charbonneau is said to have been married to two women at the same time. This came about when he purchased two captive Shoshone women: Sacagawea (Bird Woman) and "Otter Woman", from the Hidatsa. The Hidatsa had captured these two young women on one of their annual raiding and hunting parties to the west. Charbonneau eventually considered these women to be his wives, though whether they were bound through Native American custom or simply through common-law marriage is indeterminate.

In 1804 Sacagawea (one of his many wives) became pregnant with their first child.The baby was named Jean Baptise, but was called Pomp, meaning first born in Shosone. It was during this year that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark came to the area, built Fort Mandan, and recruited members to the Corps of Discovery. Charbonneau was interviewed to interpret Hidatsa. Lewis and Clark, however, were not overly impressed with him; Charbonneau spoke no English. Although several in the expedition party could translate from French, Charbonneau did not appear to know Hidatsa all that well. (By his own admission, over thirty years later, he still could not speak the language well although he had lived with the Hidatsa nearly continuously.) However, when Lewis and Clark learned that his wives were Shoshone, they were eager to have them interpret this language as well. Sacagawea spoke Shoshone and Hidatsa, and Charbonneau Hidatsa and French. They hired Charbonneau on November 4, and he and Sacagawea moved into Fort Mandan a week later.

During the winter, Charbonneau communicated with members of the North West Company, and brought information back to Lewis and Clark's company. The situation between Britain and the United States was tense, and the group was concerned about how the British presence in the area would affect their group. During the winter at the fort, Charbonneau's and Sacagawea's son Jean-Baptiste was born on February 11, 1805.