Hey, just clear something up for me quick, guys -

[conuly]

The Shoshone do not, actually, in reality, have princesses, right? Meaning that Sacajawea could not honestly or accurately be described as a princess, right?

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

Part of the answer depends on how you define "princess"; terms of nobility (just like terms for mythical creatures such as goblins) are notoriously culture-dependant and rarely map 1:1 between languages or cultures, such that you can say that the Shoshone word "abc" exactly means "princess".

[conuly]

Fair enough.

[strega42.livejournal.com]

She was a chief's daughter. She could - if you really, really, stretched the definition - be described as a "princess"; the daughter of a hereditary leader.

To the best of my knowledge, however, the native Americans' various tribes didn't really have "kings" as Europeans define them, which makes the princess thing really iffy.

A lot.

*sigh*

Princess? Really? I'ma go scrub my brain now. Because that's just... wrong.

[conuly]

On the plus side, she's a Shoshone princess, which makes her oh-so-much rarer than the much-touted "1/16 genuine Cherokee princesses!" who run around annoying even other white people. (At least, they annoy me.)

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

Aww. But hey, at least I don't claim to be a princess. :-p

[tenou-k.livejournal.com]

I've never heard that she was a chief's daughter. And as far as I know she was born into a Shoshone tribe but was kidnapped during a raid and lived in a Hidatsa settlement until she was goven to a fur trapper in marriage.

So...no, not a princess.

[conuly]

And what I've just googled about her suggests that said fur trapper was abusive and anyway, she was only like 15 when that happened anyway, so she's a non-princess who probably didn't have a very happy adult life either.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure "Indian Princess" was a big marketing term back in the day for when you wanted to make money or at least news stories off of your war bride/freshly kidnapped sideshow exhibit :(

[mortaine.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I know Pocahontas was a chief's daughter.

[conuly]

But not a princess.

[mortaine.livejournal.com]

Eh. For certain definitions of "princess."

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Sacajawea, no; she was just a poor working Mom. But Pocahontas qualifies under the current common definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess). True, she wasn't called a Princess, because whatever language she spoke, it sure wasn't Latin-based, but surely she had a title in her own tribe, that must have been the equivalent.