Bird Woman
(Story 4 of In Fertility, a Rooted Resolve series)
For years I have immersed myself in diverse stories about women, fertility, and traditional medicine, frolicking in a research terrain riddled with rabbit holes. I don’t know what part of these narratives will make it into the book I am writing on this topic, but many feature women using medicinal plants to influence their own fertility. So I wanted to share some of them, in no particular order, on Rooted Resolve.
4. Bird Woman
In early 1805 a teenage Shoshone woman known as Bird Woman gave birth to her first child in a strange place: A white settler fort in North Dakota, surrounded by men and likely aided by the only two other Native women present. She had moved there only recently when her husband, the métis trader Toussaint Charbonneau, was hired as a translator by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Her labor was long and difficult, prompting the husband of one of the other women to ask Lewis if he had any rattlesnake rattles in his medicine kit. Lewis did, and Sacagawea was given two rings of it with water to speed the birth. Her son arrived less than ten minutes later.1
When the expedition soon set off up the Missouri River, they left the other women behind. Denied the customary sixty days of seclusion with her newborn son, Sacagawea nestled him into a papoose on her back and worked to support the expedition however she could.2 She supplemented their lean diet by foraging, digging up wild licorice and caches of wild artichokes stowed by rodents. When one of their canoes nearly capsized in high winds, she bravely saved their supplies from floating away in the current. In gratitude, Lewis and Clark named a river after her.
But as they approached the Great Falls of the Missouri in early June, the men observed that Sacagawea was “very Sick.” Captain Clark gave her salts and bled her repeatedly while Lewis applied compresses of Peruvian bark to her lower abdomen, where the pain was concentrated (Peruvian bark is a medicinal plant that contains quinine and is not recommended for oral use by pregnant women for fear it may be a uterine stimulant). They also gave her some laudanum to ease the pain.3 But her discomfort only escalated. As Clark noted, she became “very bad and will take no medicine whatever.”
After finding her unconscious, her husband convinced her to take more bark and laudanum. But the expedition leaders were gravely worried. They were particularly counting on her help to negotiate the use of Shoshone horses for the portage between the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. With a note of frustration, Clark commented that “if she dies it will be the fault of her husband.”4
Lewis sent for water from a nearby sulfur spring now known as Sacagawea Spring (after the woman it helped to cure), and after Sacagawea drank it he noted that she seemed to improve, eating “heartily” of “broiled buffalo well seasoned with pepper and salt and rich soup of the same meat.” Two days later, she was feeling well enough to go out and gather prairie turnips (Pediomelum esculentum), which she ate raw, along with some dried fish. Lewis angrily chided Charbonneau for allowing this binge, which he believed caused a relapse of fever and pain. But the next day she was out again and fishing, fully recovered.5
Some have theorized that the cause of Sacagawea’s sudden fever, intense pelvic pain, delirium and weight loss was pelvic inflammatory disease, an infection of the ovaries and fallopian tubes brought on by sexually transmitted bacteria.6 The temporary infertility typical of this ailment could also explain why she did not become pregnant again for several years. But historians have recently suggested another explanation. She could have suffered a miscarriage.
Sacagawea’s illness was described as an “obstruction of the menses” as a result of “taking a cold,” terms often used to suggest pregnancy or other female afflictions. As one 12th century Italian text by the midwife (or midwives) known as Trotula explains, when menstrual blood is retained due to excessive cold it can lead to severe illness. The remedies suggested to address this problem are the same ones used to help stimulate the uterus. As Trotula notes: “all of these things that work to stimulate the menstrual flow work also to extract the afterbirth and the child dead in the womb of its mother,” as well as an embryo that has implanted too soon after giving birth to another child.7 Unbeknownst to her male observers, Sacagawea may have been using traditional Shoshone medicine to tend to her own health and ensure a safely completed miscarriage. The men around her just didn’t recognize the signs.
Placing her story in its historical context suggests that Sacagawea was likely grappling with an early-term pregnancy gone wrong. So even after centuries of study, “the history of women’s bodies written by men of another era” reveals new insights. Moments like these break the smooth surface of what we think we know about women’s knowledge and reproductive health. They also show how one woman’s resolve, rooted in the traditions of her culture, helped her to persevere despite the odds.8
Like Pocahontas, Sacagawea’s willingness to help white men made her one of America’s favorite and most recognized Native Americans. And not surprisingly, this reputation does not feature her ability to manage her own fertility. But her ability to serve as a critical member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition relied on her personal fortitude and resolve, as well as her commitment to her Shoshone roots. The traditional medicinal practices of many Native American tribes include herbal remedies to stimulate menstruation and induce early abortion. Isolated from other women in a group dominated by strange white men, Sacagawea drew on her smarts and her heritage to bounce back and continue on her famous journey.9
*Please note that any medicinal plants mentioned here are just that—medicines—which can be dangerous if used without expertise. Indigenous medicines, in particular, are difficult to convert for use in Western systems of care since they rely on non-Western spiritual beliefs and interpretations of health and the body.*
Barbara Fifer, “Sacagawea’s Story,” Discover Lewis and Clark, https://lewis-clark.org/people/sacagawea/sacagaweas-story.
Drusilla Gould and Maria Glowacka, “Nagotooh(Gahni): The Bonding between Mother and Child in Shoshoni Tradition,” Ethnology 43, no. 2 (2004): 185-191.
“Cinchona – Uses, Side Effects, and More,” WebMD, https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-406/cinchona.
Grace Raymond Hebard, Sacajawea: Guide and Interpreter of Lewis and Clark (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002 [1932]), 50-57.
Grace Raymond Hebard, Sacajawea: Guide and Interpreter of Lewis and Clark (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002 [1932]), 50-57; David J. Peck and Joseph A. Mussulman, “Sulphur Springs,” Discover Lewis and Clark, https://lewis-clark.org/the-trail/falls-of-the-missouri/sulpher-spring; and Barbara Fifer, “Sacagawea’s Story,” Discover Lewis and Clark, https://lewis-clark.org/people/sacagawea/sacagaweas-story.
David J. Peck and Joseph A. Mussulman, “Sulphur Springs,” Discover Lewis and Clark, https://lewis-clark.org/the-trail/falls-of-the-missouri/sulpher-spring.
Translation from Etienne van de Walle, “Flowers and Fruits: Two Thousand Years of Menstrual Regulation,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 28, no. 2 (1997): 183-203.
Peter J. Kastor and Conevery Bolton Valenčius, “Sacagawea’s ‘Cold’: Pregnancy and the Written Record of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 2 (2008): 276-309.
See the Native American Ethnobotany Database, http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Abortifacient.
fabulous. So beautiful, so well written!