http://qui.live.mediaspanonlinen.com/rss/ Quincy Herald Whig en-us PROBABLY MORE than any other person in America, a boy named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau got to watch history being made firsthand without actually contributing to it. Best of all, he got to do this by the time he was 3 years old. But like most 3-year-olds, Charbonneau's story doesn't end there. About 1797, eight years before his son, Jean, was born, Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian explorer and trader, had purchased two captured Shoshone Indian women and taken them as his wives. One was known as Bird Woman, while the other was known as Otter Woman. Bird Woman gave birth to Jean Baptiste Charbonneau in 1805 at Fort Mandan, N.D. Fort Mandan was the place where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stayed in the winter of 1804-05. In fact, Lewis and Clark hired Toussaint Charbonneau to serve as an interpreter to the Hidatsa Indians, and they allowed him to bring along his pregnant wife. http://qui.live.mediaspanonline.com/new_story/Niemann-Column-110209