Toussaint Charbonneau

Toussaint Charbonneau
Born	March 20,1767 Boucherville, Province of Quebec
Died	August 12, 1843 (Aged 76) Fort Mandan, Dakota Territory
Occupation	Explorer, Fur Trapper
Spouse(s)	Sacagawea

Toussaint Charbonneau (March 20, 1767 – August 12, 1843) was a French Canadian explorer and trader, and a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He is also known as the husband of Sacagawea.

Charbonneau was born in Boucherville, Quebec (near Montréal), a community with strong links to exploration and the fur trade. Charbonneau's ancestors were French. His paternal great grandmother Marguerite de Noyon was the sister of Jacques de Noyon, who had explored the region around Kaministiquia, present day Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 1688.

Charbonneau worked, for a time, as a fur trapper with the North West Company (NWC), founded by Great Britain, which was one of the most powerful nations 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."

While living among the Hidatsa people, Charbonneau purchased or won a Shoshone woman: Sacagawea (Bird Woman) from the Hidatsa. The Hidatsa had captured Sacagawea on one of their annual raiding and hunting parties to the west. When he married Sacagawea in 1804, he was already married to Otter Woman, another Shoshone woman. 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. By the summer of 1804, Sacagawea was pregnant with their first child.

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