Inventing Sacagawea: Public Women and the Transformative Potential of Epideictic Rhetoric

Abstract

The 1905 commemoration of Sacagawea at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon was a form of epideictic rhetoric that promoted identification with an alternative vision of community. Through epideictic in praise of the “invented great” Sacagawea, disfranchised women reinforced some public precepts but challenged others in order to expand the number and type of people considered members of the community. This analysis of the 1905 commemoration illustrates the capacity of epideictic to engage speakers and audiences in the process of imagining and actualizing alternative public norms.