This is a story of controversy:

It begins in 1884, in a graveyard. An ambitious young reporter has heard that Sakakawea, the legendary guide to Lewis and Clark, thought dead for 60 years, is actually still alive. The reporter travels to the Wind River Reservation and encounters, there in the graveyard, a mysterious old woman and her granddaughter. He is caught by the spell of their charm . . . the old woman begins to tell her story . . . and through the magic of musical drama, the granddaughter becomes young Sakakawea, and the reporter takes on the role of William Clark.

This is a story of people:

Sakakawea, stolen as a girl by the Hidatsa, is gambled away to a French trapper. As a young woman of 17, a baby in her arms, she persuades Clark that he needs her on this two-year journey into the unknown. Accompanied by her husband, Charbonneau, she discovers there is more to life than Charbonneau’s indifference and brutality. And Clark discovers that a love born in the wilderness may not be the love for a climb to the top in civilization. York, Clark’s slave, understands Sakakawea’s predicament better than anyone, while Lewis, although the protégé of President Jefferson, never truly finds what he is looking for.

This is a story, too, of the first meetings of European Americans and Native Americans. As the two cultures try to understand each other they stand poised between the choices of war and peace.

This is the story of legend:

The Lewis and Clark Expedition was the first journey by European Americans across the Great Plains to the west coast. It was a journey that changed history, and it lives again as adventure after adventure confronts the Expedition in this musical drama that thrills the ear and the heart and provokes the mind . . . .