Sacajawea (196 page)

If any of our five children, Skookumchuck, A Polliwog, Williwaw, Kloochman, or Hee Hee Tum Tum, read this book I have so insistently talked about with them, they will probably feel shock and relief that it is actually finished. I acknowledge that I could not possibly have written the book if they had not criticized my ideas, walked over Lemhi Pass, or had not been quiet while I “worked,” which was beyond the responsibility of usual siblings and offspring.

I thank Carol Sturm Smith and John Burnett Payne for assistance with the manuscript. I thank Jan De-Vries

and Jim Harrison for their kind assistance with the revised manuscript and Candace Finkelston and the Library Services staff at St. Louis Community College at Meramec for their excellent information system.

Like any creation based on literature searches and oral traditions, there are many individuals who have gone before me to whom I owe a large debt of gratitude and thanks for their time and effort. Historians, keepers of diaries or journals, and keepers of legends, which we call folklore, supplied ideas and facts for the basis of this novel. Without these dedicated people, much of early American history would be long forgotten and lost. I am most grateful to the Lewis and Clark party for keeping journals and writing what is still considered the best historical account of Sacajawea’s life, though these accounts cover a period of barely three years.

I am grateful to all those others who wrote about the early Shoshonis, Mandans, and other Missouri River tribes, the river Indians of the Northwest, the Pacific Coast tribes, the Comanches and Arapahos, etc. I am grateful for the historians who believe and show in writing that Sacajawea died at Fort Manuel Lisa when she was only twenty-five. I am equally grateful for those historians who wrote or told me of the persistent oraltradition stories among the Comanche and Shoshoni that Sacajawea lived a long life. Their controversies make her story elusive, mysterious, intriguing, and speculative.

I do not know if Sacajawea died in 1812 or 1884, but as a novelist I prefer the long-life story. I hope that my readers will be thankful for a story that begins with a child wondering about the origin of the ancient medicine circle and ends with an old woman sensing the termination of a free, nomadic culture.

I am thankful that I grew up in northwestern Montana, where Sacajawea is and always has been a heroine for Native and all other Americans alike.

ANNA LEE WALDO

“HIGH DRAMA”

Publishers Weekly

“ENGROSSING”

Detroit News

“EXCEPTIONAL”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“MAGNIFICENTLY ENTERTAINING”

Berkeley Gazette

“A
BLOCKBUSTER HISTORICAL NOVEL”

Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

“AN EXCITING LIFE… TENDER AND TOUCHING”

Portland Oregonian

SACAJAWEA is an original publication of Avon Books.

AVON BOOKS
A division of
The Hearst Corporation
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10019

Copyright © 1978, 1984 by Anna Lee Waldo
Published by arrangement with the author
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-61446
ISBN: 0-380-84293-9

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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03591-2

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