Choose Your Own Sacajawea

There's something pretty weird going on at www.usmint.gov. Thousands of people, most of them surely white Americans, are telling the U.S. Mint which of six images of an American Indian woman they want on a new coin. The woman is Sacjawea, the Shoshone slave who accompanied Merriwether Lewis and William Clark on their 1804 journey across the Pacific Northwest. The coin is the new gold-colored, quarter-sized dollar piece, which will be minted next fall and which may replace the dollar bill within a few years.

To be honest, I had never heard of Sacajawea until a minor controversy arose this past summer over whether she was an appropriate symbol for the new coin. Still, I initially sided with those who supported her. How perfect it would be, I figured, for the United States to recognize an American Indian woman on its first new coin of the 21st century, a piece of currency that may become one of the most widely used of all.

At age 15 and six months pregnant, Sacajawea helped direct the historic 31-person expedition on a safe path from the Ohio River Valley to the Pacific, negotiated so that Lewis and Clark could buy horses for the journey, translated for them and taught them to survive a cold winter on the plains.

She even kept the peace. "Carrying a woman along, especially a woman who was carrying an infant, said to tribes this is not a party that is out for aggressive reasons," American Indian author William Least Heat-Moon told PBS last year. "She was a living white flag...a sign of peace, better than anything they could have found."

Many conclude that Sacajawea is a wonderful symbol of America's greatness; her success in the face of great obstacles is a testament to the American spirit.

Sacajawea "was simply a woman of exemplary physical courage and stamina," the director of the Mint, Philip N. Diehl, explains on the Web site, "who through a remarkable confluence of circumstances contributed to the success of one of the greatest American adventure."

"Modern mothers should read her story whenever they are tempted to complain of 2 a.m. feedings," praised Rheta Grimsley Johnson in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution last Wednesday. "Sacajawea had the right stuff in spades."

"Were she alive today," added Colorado's Rocky Mountain News in an editorial last Thursday, "she would be a triathlete with her own software company."

Maybe. Or she might be a casino worker. Or she might be selling pottery by the roadside. Or she might be coping with alcoholism.

For there's another side to Sacajawea's story. Without her, Lewis and Clark might never have survived their journey and thus might never have been able to map the terrain-mappings which enabled American fur-trading companies to compete with their British counterparts. Sacajawea may have been proactive in playing a key role in the expedition, but she was still a captive.

The fact is that Sacajawea's good works only made it easier for the non-native Americans to exploit her people and the land itself. She may have served as a sign of peace, but Americans were anything but peaceful in forcing hundreds of tribes from their homelands. It is therefore somewhat ridiculous to honor Sacajawea for what Rheta Johnson called "an enormous and personal contribution to this country." Her contribution, willing or not, was to a grand injustice. And if we as a nation didn't care about the plight of the American Indians then, we don't care much today, either.

The most distasteful part of this episode may be the voting now taking place on the Web. Because no one knows what Sacajawea looked like, the Mint consulted 300 people-historians, artists, coin collectors and representatives of American Indian organizations-to choose the best among more than 120 designs. The top 13 are now up for the public's scrutiny and comment.

The Mint apparently thinks it's doing us a great service. "Rarely, if ever, in the history of the nation's coinage has the public played such an important role in the design of a new circulating coin," the Web page brags momentously. "Please consider each choice not only as a potential coin design...but also as a work of art that will exist in the public consciousness for hundreds of years."

Admittedly, it is exciting to help pick the new design. But as I evaluated the choices last weekend, I felt the hypocrisy eating at me. Which image of Sacajawea did I prefer? No. 14, where she looks dark and almost manly, with a large nose and braided hair? Or No. 98, where her features are duller and softer, with her baby on her back? And what about No. 100, where we see her whole, thin figure, one arm pointing to the west, mountains in the background?

Which Sacajawea did I like best? Which American Indian woman do I want on my money? There's really a better question: Who am I-who are we-to decide?

Maybe it's not such a great idea to have Sacajawea on the new dollar coin. This tokenization of American Indians isn't raising awareness of our past and present wrongs; it is merely reinforcing our indifference and self-glorification. Until we more honestly and forthrightly deal with the damage our nation has wrought on an entire continent of people-in our schools, in our politics and in our hearts and minds-it is inescapably hypocritical to use Sacajawea as, in the Mint's words, "an allegorical representation of Liberty."

Geoffrey C. Upton '99 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.