Delusions of Truth

Delusions of Truth

In this essay, Ben Metcalf, expresses his outrage at the federal government’s decision to use Sacajawea’s image on the silver dollar coin. Throughout the essay, he supports his anger with facts about the Native American girl that are colored by his own biases and past experiences.

Metcalf believes that the government had no business putting Sacajawea on the United States dollar. This was a heinous misrepresentation in his opinion because her life did not portray the essence of America’s beliefs and values. She is not worthy of being anywhere near the word “Liberty” and rather he thinks that she should be the poster for “teen mother” because she has a child at a very young age. He has other, more demeaning words to describe her legacy, like “enabler” and “burden”, which is hardly indicative of a person whose should be represented on our currency. But in truth, just like he feels slighted and betrayed by the government misrepresentation, he turns around and does the same thing by constantly misrepresenting the facts of the Lewis and Clark expedition. For example, he hastily comments on Sacajawea’s quick thinking when the party’s boat capsized but moved quickly to Charbonneau’s incompetent boating skills which he inferred from Lewis’ journals. Lewis stated that, “that Charbonneau was perhaps the most timid waterman in the world”. How timid and incompetent can be used interchangeably is beyond the scope of this paper, but the fact is that Charbonneau was not put on the dollar, his wife was so the essay should stay focused of Sacajawea herself.

He constantly focused on the negative, stating that Sacajawea was a burden to the party, especially when she fell sick in June of 1805. Metcalf alludes that she “feigned disability” and stretched her sickness to a whole month. According the informative website, “Notable Women Ancestors,” http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/index.html, the journals stated the she “maintained a helpful, uncomplaining attitude” and it “was so remarkable that it was commented on by all of the men who kept diaries. He is like a lawyer in