On display at the Old Spaulding Log Cabin Mission Museum near Lewiston was a collection of items from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Along with a canoe used in their travels, Sacajawea’s buckskin dress, a string of glass beads, and a lock of her hair were part of the collection that was destroyed by a flood in 1964.

As the story goes, the items believed to belong to the Shoshone woman were actually gifts given to another princess of the Nez Perce tribe, some 40 years after the famed expedition of white explorers. Sacajawea also received gifts from Jane Timothy Silcott, daughter of a Nez Perce chief, in the exchange. How did that gesture of friendship come to be?

The tale of the two princesses begins with Sacajawea of Idaho’s Lemhi Valley, who ended up married to a French-Canadian fur trapper in North Dakota after being kidnapped as a child by a rival tribe. As history tells it, the couple was hired as guides and interpreters there, setting off for the long journey to the Pacific in 1805. Along the way, the expedition stayed with the Nez Perce tribe in the Lapwai Valley, assisted by Chief Twisted Hair.

Decades later, another tribal chief sent several men to find Lewis and Clark in St. Louis, inquiring about the white man’s bible. This led to a new expedition – this time of missionaries – to the Lapwai Valley. The first Protestant mission by Henry and Eliza Spalding was established among the Nez Perce in 1836. Chef Timothy and his wife were among the first Christian converts, along with daughter Jane.

Chief Twisted Hair’s sister was mother to Chief Timothy, whose wife Temar was sister to Old Chief Joseph. Chief Timothy was later much resented by the nearby Cayuse tribe and a rebellious faction of his own Nez Perce for welcoming the missionaries – and the rush of settlers that followed in the 1840s – into the rich agricultural land of the Palouse.

Timothy’s daughter Jane ushered in a different white invasion that caused disruption to native peoples. Like Sacajawea before her, in 1860 Jane led “explorers” to the headwaters of the Clearwater and Salmon Rivers, where gold was discovered. Tensions with other inland tribes had escalated to the point that Nez Perce men traveling with white prospectors would be killed. A woman was safer, so Jane volunteered to scout.

It was not the only time Chief Timothy sent his daughter off alone into wild country. Jane’s journey from northwest to southeast Idaho and into Wyoming to find Sacajawea likely occurred in the 1850s, since Jane met her husband, John Silcott, shortly after leading Elias Pierce’s mining party to Orofino. The couple settled near Lewiston and later built and operated the first commercial ferry across the Clearwater River.

According to tribal accounts, Chief Timothy had heard that the famous Shoshone princess he met as a child had returned to her people around 1843, and he wished to send gifts as well-wishes. Now called “Porivo” or “chief,” the revered woman believed to be Sacajawea died on the Wind River Reservation in 1884. Or did she?

Another version of the story had the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau dying of fever in1812 at Fort Manuel near the border of North and South Dakota. But if that were true, how could Jane Timothy Silcott, who died in 1895, have met with Sacajewea to exchange gifts of beaded buckskin and other historic artifacts?

The likely answer is that Charbonneau had two Shoshone wives, both captured by the Hidatsa tribe as children to be traded away in North Dakota. The wife who died first could have been “Otter Woman” and not the “Lost Woman” of the Lemhi Shoshone.