The following is taken from "A Daughter of New France," by Arthur G. Doughty who wrote the book for the Red Cross work of the Magdelaine de Verchères Chapter of the Daughters of the Empire, and dedicated it to Princess Patricia, whose name was given to the famous "Princess Pat" regiment.
"On Verchères Point, near the site of the Fort, stands a statue in bronze of the girl who adorned the age in which she lived and whose memory is dear to posterity. For she had learned so to live that her hands were clean and her paths were straight.... To all future visitors to Canada by way of the St. Lawrence, this silent figure of the First Girl Scout in the New World conveys a message of loyalty, of courage and of devotion."
Our own early history is sprinkled thickly with brave, handy girls, who were certainly Scouts, if ever there were any, though they never belonged to a patrol, nor recited the Scout Laws. But they lived the Laws, those strong young pioneers, and we can stretch out our hands to them across the long years, and give them the hearty Scout grip of fellowship, when we read of them.
THE EXPLORER
If we should ever hold an election for honorary membership in the Girl Scouts, open to all the girls who ought to have belonged to us, but who lived too long ago, we should surely nominate for first place one of the most remarkable young Indian girls who ever found her way through the pathless forests,—Sacajawea, "The Bird Woman."
In 1806 she was brought to Lewis and Clark on their expedition into the great Northwest, to act as interpreter between them and the various Indian tribes they had to encounter. From the very beginning, when she induced the hostile Shoshones to act as guides, to the end of her daring journey, during which, with her papoose on her back, she led this band of men through hitherto impassable mountain ranges, till she brought them to the Pacific Coast, this sixteen-year-old girl never faltered. No dangers of hunger, thirst, cold or darkness were too much for her. From the Jefferson to the Yellowstone River she was the only guide they had; on her instinct for the right way, her reading of the sun, the stars and the trees, depended the lives of all of them. When they fell sick she nursed them; when they lost heart at the wildness of their venture, she cheered them. Their party grew smaller and smaller, for Lewis and Clark had separated early in the expedition, and a part of Clark's own party fell off when they discovered a natural route over the Continental Divide where wagons could not travel. Later, most of those who remained, decided to go down the Jefferson River in canoes; but Clark still guided by the plucky Indian girl, persisted in fighting his way on pony back overland, and after a week of this journeying, crowded full of discomforts and dangers, she brought him out in triumph at the Yellowstone, where the river bursts out from the lower canon,—and the Great Northwest was opened up for all time!
The women of Oregon have raised a statue to this young explorer, and there she stands in Portland, facing the Coast, pointing to the Columbia River where it reaches the sea.
These great virtues of daring and endurance never die out of the race; though the conditions of our life today, when most of the exploring has been done, do not demand them of us in just the form the "Bird Woman" needed, still, if they die out of the nation, and especially out of the women of the nation, something has been lost that no amount of book education can ever replace. Sacajawea, had no maps to study—she made maps, and roads have been built over her footsteps. And so we Scouts, not to lose this great spirit, study the stars and the sun and the trees and try to learn a few of the wood secrets she knew so well. This out-of-door wisdom and self-reliance was the first great principle of Scouting.