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Blackfeet
Name given to three similar Algonkian-speaking Indian tribes in Alberta (Canada) and Montana. -
Columbia River
The largest North American river flowing into the Pacific. It starts in the Canadian Rockies and flows through Washington and Oregon. -
Fort Clatsop
The location in Oregon where the Lewis and Clark Expedition spent the winter of 1806. -
Hidatsa
Native Americans of the Upper Missouri River. Related to the Sioux. It was a Hidatsa group that kidnapped Sacajawea from the Shoshoni. -
Louisiana Territory
Western half of the Mississippi Basin, purchased from Napoleon in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States. -
Mandan
Native Americans of the Great Plains, who lived along the Missouri River. The Mandan language derives from Sioux. -
Marias River
A river that flows through Montana into the Missouri River -
Missouri River
The greatest of the Mississippi River's tributaries. The Missouri flows through Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, among other states. -
Nez Perce
A Native American tribe from central Idaho, Oregon, and Washington -
Portage
"Portage" refers to the act of carrying boats across land, from one body of water to another. -
Shoshoni
The Native American tribe into which Sacajawea was born. In the early 19th century and before, the Shoshoni spread through parts of what are today California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. -
Sioux
The Sioux constituted an important confederacy of seven Native American tribes in the American plains. (The Sioux normally refer to themselves as Lakota or Dakota, meaning "allies.") -
Walla Wallas
A tribe of Native Americans living in Oregon in the 19th century -
Yellowstone River
A river that starts in Wyoming, flows through what is today Yellowstone National Park, and passes through Montana and North Dakota before joining the Missouri River. -
Lewis and Clark Expedition
An 1804-1806 expedition sent by US President Thomas Jefferson to explore the land called the Louisiana Territory, acquired in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France, and to search for the Northwest Passage, an hypothesized water-route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Although they never found such a passage (none exists), the explorers uncovered a wealth of knowledge about America's native peoples, as well as its geography, flora, and fauna. The expedition's captains were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who shared dual command over about 30 well-trained outdoorsmen. At Fort Mandan, the expedition hired Toussaint Charbonneau as an interpreter, and the French-Canadian trapper brought along his wife, Sacajawea, and their child, Jean Baptiste. Sacajawea proved far more useful to the expedition than her husband.