WASHINGTON – It’s curious that no matter how many men decide to change the world, the world seems to move in its accustomed course, from conquest to futility, from peak to valley and back again.

But when women commit to change, the world will change. This is not the conventional lesson of history as written by men, but nonetheless it’s a lesson that extends from Eve to Cleopatra, from the women of old Hawaii to Sakakawea.

And if it’s stated a little too grandly here ? well, it was the grandest of occasions that brought Sakakawea’s likeness to the Capitol Rotunda this month. A statue of the young Native woman and her child, installed by North Dakota, will stand in Statuary Hall.

The entire congressional leadership turned out to greet her, along with Gov. John Hoeven of North Dakota, the North Dakota congressional delegation, Chairman Tex Hall of the Three Affiliated Tribes and the National Congress of American Indians, a color guard, a drum and traditional dancers, and a capacity audience that numbered in the hundreds.

Though Sakakawea’s background and motives remain as ambiguous as any mythic presence should, the consensus of remarks was that she indeed changed the world. As a companion to the Lewis and Clark expedition, she served as a guide to the tribal trade routes, an archivist of sorts (by virtue of saving the expedition’s documents from the water when a canoe capsized), a translator and a beacon of peace – tribes knew from her presence that the expedition was peaceful, for war parties didn’t include women.

“She kept that expedition alive,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the Senate Minority Leader, called hers “perhaps the most remarkable American journey of all,” stopping now in Statuary Hall but still not ending.

Fittingly for an ambassador to the world of Native culture, Sakakawea is claimed by several tribes, most famously the Shoshone. But she was among the Hidatsa when the Lewis and Clark expedition came through their lands in what is now North Dakota. The Hidatsa trace her lineage to a treaty-signer. The Hidatsa word for bird woman is phonetically near “Sakakawea,” leading to her frequent mention as “Bird Woman” among the current Three Affiliated Tribes of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara.

The occasion included a horseback parade to the Capitol prior to the ceremony, and a reception afterward.