On May 21, 1804, the group left St. Charles, Missouri. They followed the Missouri River through what is now Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota before stopping to stay with the Mandan and Hidatsa
Indian tribes during the winter of 1804. It was then that Lewis and Clark met Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian fur trapper, and his young Lemhi Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. They decided to hire Charbonneau and Sacagawea as interpreters to communicate with Native American tribes they would encounter when they traveled farther