On November 4, 1804, Charbonneau visited the Corps of Discovery's camp on the bank of the
Missouri River. Charbonneau, then an interpreter for the Hidatsa, had left a nearby hunting expedition to learn about a recent council between leaders of the Corps and local tribes. More importantly, he sought a job as the Corps' interpreter, informing the two captains that he spoke Hidatsa, and that his two wives spoke
Shoshone. A diary from the Corps of Discovery refers to Otter Woman: "Today the wives of Charbono [sic] came to the Fort (Fort Mandan) bringing gifts of buffalo robes." After that single nameless mention, Otter Woman disappears from all but oral histories. During the Corps' winter with the
Mandan and Hidatsa people in 1803–1804, the journal keepers of the expedition were very clear that Charbonneau had two Shoshone-speaking wives. Four years after the Corps returned to St. Louis, Clark began working with
Nicholas Biddle, editor of the expedition's journals, for publication as a narrative. In response to a query from Biddle, Clark noted that of Charbonneau's two Shoshone wives, the young woman from the Northern Shoshone was lighter skinned than the one from the "more Southern Indians". Sacagawea would accompany the expedition as one of the Corps' interpreters. There is no further evidence of Charbonneau's first wife in the journals. Otter Woman did not accompany Charbonneau and Sacagawea on the Lewis and Clark expedition. ==See also==