Sacagawea No More

Op-Ed

The beautiful statue commemorating the Lewis and Clark expedition and their irreplaceable guide and interpreter Sacagawea is being taken down. The Democrats are erasing our history.

The City Council of Roanoke voted unanimously to take the statue down.

They don’t like the idea of Lewis and Clark exploring the land. The narrative states that the Indians controlled the country and we stole it. That isn’t true. There was no country and, yes, there were Indians, but mostly, there were the unpopulated lands.

They seem to think Sacagawea is portrayed in a humiliating pose.

This is our history they are destroying and there will always be a reason.

THE STORY

The City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia has voted to remove a statue of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea, their Shoshone interpreter, from a street in the city. They say they object to the depiction of Sacagawea.

They say she is “cowering,” but she isn’t. It’s how the sculptor was able to fit three people on the rock. Lewis and Clark are the main subjects as they should be, but she looks beautiful and she looks deep in thought.

Lewis and Clark thought highly of Sacagawea and she was happy to join the expedition. It meant she was free. She had been a slave. Her importance to the expedition is exemplified by her presence on the statue.

Mayor Nikuyah Walker said “it would be a challenge for me” to keep Lewis and Clark in the statue because of the historical mistreatment of African Americans throughout the country’s history.

Lewis and Clark had nothing to do with “the historical mistreatment of African Americans” or the mistreatment of anyone.

All statues representing our history will one day be gone.

This is what the cancel culture activists will tell you:

Rose Ann Abrahamson has seen nearly every depiction of her ancestor Sacajawea in the United States.

“This statue in Charlottesville is the worst we have ever seen,” she told City Council at a meeting on November 15, referring to the statue of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea on West Main Street. The imposing monument depicts the Shoshone guide cowering at the feet of the two Virginian explorers.

“It made me feel sadness and worthlessness,” said Dustina Abrahamson, Rose Ann’s daughter.  “And that’s not how I was brought up.”

Kenneth Branham, the chief of the local Monacan nation, said he has 11 grandchildren and that he wouldn’t want them to see the statue. “I ask that the statue be removed because it doesn’t depict the truth,” Branham said.

The statue was erected in 1919, a gift from Paul Goodloe McIntire, the same donor responsible for the Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues. In 2009, a plaque detailing Sacagawea’s contributions was placed near the foot of the monument, but her subservient position (some have argued that she is tracking) has remained a source of contention.

The Native American representatives showed no such confusion about the monument’s message and advocated for its swift removal. “The first thing we need to do is — do you have a truck and a chain?” Rose Ann Abrahamson said.

It only takes one person.

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