Review: "Museum of Human Beings," Colin Sargent

By Paul Carrier

Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who served as an interpreter and, to a lesser extent, a guide on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, may well be the most famous Native woman in American history.

But what of the child to whom she gave birth in 1805? In illustrations, paintings and even on a dollar coin, Sacagawea is pictured carrying the infant, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, on her back as the explorers wended their way westward. Jean Baptiste’s father, Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trader and interpreter, traveled with the expedition as well.

Jean Baptiste has achieved some measure of fame, although he is nowhere near as well-known as his celebrated mother. Following the conclusion of the expedition, he lived for a time in St. Louis as the foster son of William Clark, who had led the expedition with Meriwether Lewis. Jean Baptiste later spent several years in Europe before returning to the United States, where he worked as a guide, trapper and U.S. Army scout, among other occupations.

It is a fictionalized version of Jean Baptiste’s story that Colin Sargent tells in Museum of Human Beings, a novel published in 2008. Highly intelligent, multilingual and a skilled musician, the Jean Baptiste who emerges from these memorable pages is a troubled soul in search of his place in the world.

He is a man who faces hardship, prejudice and abuse while grappling with the (presumed) premature death of his mother in her 20s, the faithlessness of his father, the savagery of the “civilized” world and the ultimate indifference of Clark, whom Jean Baptiste had long viewed as “father Clark,” a surrogate parent.

Through it all, Jean Baptiste remains haunted by the loss of his mother, whose absence fuels a nagging sense of abandonment and leads him to try to commune with Sacagawea’s spirit. It is a touching preoccupation which, Sargent convincingly suggests, may well have been a fixation of the real-life Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Sargent has produced a sensitive, often haunting, portrayal of a fascinating and underappreciated man.