-Two Sacagawea Dollar Coins-
Since there was not a dollar bill to be found among the receipts in my wallet, I found myself paying a $1.50 library fine (for James B. Twitchell's Lead us into Temptation) with two coins bearing the image of the Shoshone interpreter.
It made me wonder briefly about the historical Sacagawea, elevated into the history books for being one of the two native women with the historical good fortune to aid the most famous European explorers on the American continent.
Like Pocahantas, Sacagawea's name is familiar, even if we spell it different ways. Unlike Pocahantas, who lived on the east coast two centuries before Sacagawea made the northwest journey with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, we know very little of her life after the brush with the great explorers. Most texts offer several possible accounts of the remaining life of Sacagawea, but she never had a portrait done in Europe, never married a famous Tobacconist.
I would challenge a representative sample of this nation to name her husband (French Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau) and the child (Jean Baptiste Charbonneau) born to them on the expedition, I wonder how many would be surprised to discover her immediate family's existance in the first place.
Even worse than the revisionist who empowers her, are the revisionists who cruelly sexualize Sacagawea. Pocahantas suffered similar treatment, I understand. She became John Smith's willing concubine in popular imagination, saving him from her father's wrath out of love. Similarly, in some non-scholarly expedition lore, Sacagawea's helpful nature is derived from an unorthodox connection to one or both of the leaders.
This lore is entirely unsubstantiated, of course. Call it plantation-mentality, to take the exotic object and charm it away from its family. "It" becomes "she" only when she settles into Anglo-Christian domesticity. Or marries into the precursor to Big Tobacco. Until then, it's a way for the heroes to show their prowess without society's censure.
Fortune forbid Sacagawea's memory suffer the fate of every famous woman in histroy. Every woman, that is, with the posible exception of Mary, Mother of Christ. Bear in mind that a growing number of revisionist artists have petulantly sexualized her in recent years, in a hypocritical and violent denunciation of their avowed principles. We have much to learn, still.
In the library, I reluctantly pass over the gilded coins bearing the Shoshone woman with the Mona Lisa smile. The library staffer asks me if I would like to keep them, and pay the fine later. It's not a hotdog I'm buying, and even if this view ascribes too much power to objects... I'd rather have this relic of Sacagawea in a library register than that of a supermarket. The staffer turns to her co-worker as she places them in with more care than she offers dimes, pennies, nickels, and quarters.
Look, she says. Sacagawea.
Two coins bearing George Washington's visage are thrust into my palms in return, but of course there is no magic in the gout-ridden general's disks. We know everything about him. We know when, where, and how he died. If he stands above the others framers we love, know, and whose signifigance we largely ignore, it is because he was first.
Objects can be signifigant. Sacagawea dollars seize me, the most cynical of historians, because I want to believe she glowed as brightly as her coin.
Addenedum: This Library of Congress exhibit does not mention Sacagawea. Not even once.
Since there was not a dollar bill to be found among the receipts in my wallet, I found myself paying a $1.50 library fine (for James B. Twitchell's Lead us into Temptation) with two coins bearing the image of the Shoshone interpreter.
It made me wonder briefly about the historical Sacagawea, elevated into the history books for being one of the two native women with the historical good fortune to aid the most famous European explorers on the American continent.
Like Pocahantas, Sacagawea's name is familiar, even if we spell it different ways. Unlike Pocahantas, who lived on the east coast two centuries before Sacagawea made the northwest journey with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, we know very little of her life after the brush with the great explorers. Most texts offer several possible accounts of the remaining life of Sacagawea, but she never had a portrait done in Europe, never married a famous Tobacconist.
I would challenge a representative sample of this nation to name her husband (French Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau) and the child (Jean Baptiste Charbonneau) born to them on the expedition, I wonder how many would be surprised to discover her immediate family's existance in the first place.
Even worse than the revisionist who empowers her, are the revisionists who cruelly sexualize Sacagawea. Pocahantas suffered similar treatment, I understand. She became John Smith's willing concubine in popular imagination, saving him from her father's wrath out of love. Similarly, in some non-scholarly expedition lore, Sacagawea's helpful nature is derived from an unorthodox connection to one or both of the leaders.
This lore is entirely unsubstantiated, of course. Call it plantation-mentality, to take the exotic object and charm it away from its family. "It" becomes "she" only when she settles into Anglo-Christian domesticity. Or marries into the precursor to Big Tobacco. Until then, it's a way for the heroes to show their prowess without society's censure.
Fortune forbid Sacagawea's memory suffer the fate of every famous woman in histroy. Every woman, that is, with the posible exception of Mary, Mother of Christ. Bear in mind that a growing number of revisionist artists have petulantly sexualized her in recent years, in a hypocritical and violent denunciation of their avowed principles. We have much to learn, still.
In the library, I reluctantly pass over the gilded coins bearing the Shoshone woman with the Mona Lisa smile. The library staffer asks me if I would like to keep them, and pay the fine later. It's not a hotdog I'm buying, and even if this view ascribes too much power to objects... I'd rather have this relic of Sacagawea in a library register than that of a supermarket. The staffer turns to her co-worker as she places them in with more care than she offers dimes, pennies, nickels, and quarters.
Look, she says. Sacagawea.
Two coins bearing George Washington's visage are thrust into my palms in return, but of course there is no magic in the gout-ridden general's disks. We know everything about him. We know when, where, and how he died. If he stands above the others framers we love, know, and whose signifigance we largely ignore, it is because he was first.
Objects can be signifigant. Sacagawea dollars seize me, the most cynical of historians, because I want to believe she glowed as brightly as her coin.
Addenedum: This Library of Congress exhibit does not mention Sacagawea. Not even once.
posted by Benedict | 4:53 PM
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