The famous story of Sacajawea is so improbable that you wonder how it has withstood so much interest for so long. While romance novelists might get away with a similar plot, even they would be chided for the gratuitous serendipity, and no self-respecting journalist today would dare report such a tale. Yet there it is.

Lewis and Clark might well have failed in their vaunted trek across the West 200 years ago had it not been for a teenage Native American named Sacajawea. That the course of a young, ambitious nation depended so heavily on the outcome of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Corps of Discovery is a fair piece of drama in itself. But that their mission so often rested on the frail shoulders of a Shoshoni woman young enough to be their daughter seems to be gilding the lily. We get that it was an amazing feat — a small band of daring explorers literally mapping the Manifest Destiny of the American future across a vast, little-known continent. Why embellish it with the chance recruitment of a smarmy French-Canadian trapper and his young bride, who turns out to be from the very country into which the Corps is headed?

Read the complete story about Sacajawea in Montana in the pages of Cowboys & Indians magazine at your local newstand or call (800) 982-5370.