Profile of Sacagawea with her infant son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau being carried on her back.

Sacagawea (1788-1812) was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition achieve each of its chartered mission objectives exploring the Louisiana Purchase. With the expedition, between 1804 and 1806, she traveled thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, established cultural contacts with Native American populations, and researched natural history.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States, departing in May 1804, from near St. Louis making their way westward through the continental divide to the Pacific coast.

Engraver: Glenna Goodacre (GG)

The design features hands of the Supreme Sachem Ousamequin Massasoit and Governor John Carver, symbolically offering the ceremonial peace pipe after the initiation of the first formal written peace alliance between the Wampanoag tribe and the European settlers.

In the spring of 1621, Ousamequin, the Massasoit (a title meaning head chief) of the Wampanoag Indians, made a formal treaty with the English who settled at Patuxet (in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts). Massasoit promised to defend the Plymouth settlers against hostile tribes in return for their intervention if his people were attacked. The Plymouth settlers honored the treaty later that summer by coming to Massasoit's rescue when they thought he had been captured by enemies. In mid-October 1621, Massasoit and 90 of his tribesmen celebrated a harvest feast at Plymouth for three days (a traditional English folk celebration). The 1621 feast inspired the legend of the first Thanksgiving, as it was called 220 years later. The treaty at Patuxet lasted more than 50 years.

Designer: Richard Masters (RM)
Engraver: Joseph Menna (JFM)

Inscribed along the edge of the coin is the year of minting or issuance of the coin, the mint mark, and also the legend "E Pluribus Unum" (Latin for "Out of many, one").

Position A: edge lettering reads upside-down when Sacagawea's portrait (obverse) faces up.
Position B: edge lettering reads normally when Sacagawea's portrait (obverse) faces up.