More context to my question: Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, a bit of a frontiersman’s version of a renaissance man, is regarded as the son of Toussaint Chabonneau and Sacagawea, and the youngest (an infant) member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. But in his youth, Baptiste was adopted by William Clark and raised as his son in Missouri. Further, Clark, as the territorial governor of Missouri, paid Toussaint for decades as a federal employee, a patronage that abruptly stopped after Clark’s death. It seems like a plausible theory here would be that Baptiste was actually Clark’s biological son, and Charbonneau filled the role to protect Clark’s reputation. Yet I can find nothing speculating this fairly simple theory. Has it been previously considered?