When she was seven, a little Indian girl of the poor Shoshoni tribe tried one day to find the tent of the sun. She only got lost and had to be rescued by big brother Travels Fast. But the Bird Girl resolved then and there that when she was grown she would live up to her name and fly off beyond the hills to see the sun come out of his tepee in the morning.

It was 1794 in the Far West and there were lots of things for a little Indian girl to learn and do. First there was the Salmon Run. The big fish came up the river and the Shoshoni men speared them and had fine feasts every day. They also dried and stored many of the fish to eat when other food became scarce. When Baby Brother on his cradleboard fell into the water, there was sudden need for all the Bird Girl's presence of mind and energy.

But she was ever one to rise to an emergency!

One day the warriors came in from the hunt with two guns which they called "shooting sticks." And Sacagawea heard of the tabba bone, the men with pale faces, the white men who had come in their great white-winged canoes across the wide water.

How her grandmother showed the Bird Girl ways to make things—a leather bag for her precious belongings, a willow basket, a deerskin dress—how Travels Fast was put to the warrior's testing in the Sun Dance, how the Shoshoni made the far journey to the buffalo hunting grounds, how the Bird Girl was captured by the hostile Minitaries—these and other adventures lead the reader eagerly on in fascinating disclosures of Indian character and customs and in exciting development of the gallant Bird Girl's personal fortunes.

Terrible as it seemed at the time, her capture proved Sacagawea's chance to see strange places and people—and she was always ready to make the most of opportunity. Fortunate indeed was her meeting with the tabba bone—Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. She helped them in their epoch-making expedition, a story which lives in the records of the explorations and settlement of the United States. With them she traveled west to the great salt waters where the sun goes to sleep at night; then back to the place from which they started.

Lewis and Clark loved the Bird Girl, and all Americans after them have loved her too. She is one of the true heroines of our history. Mrs. Flora Warren Seymour, traveler and author, is well equipped to tell the story of her childhood. Mrs. Seymour takes an absorbing interest in Indians. She has studied Indian life at first hand and was the first woman member of the Board of Indian Commissioners. She says, "I have been especially attracted to Sacagawea because of her resourcefulness and her steadfastness. She does not need the trappings of the imaginary princess to be a real heroine."

The name Sacagawea has been pronounced by white men in a number of different ways, but the author prefers Sah-kah'-gah-way'-a as nearest to the way the Indians say it.

From the dust jacket