anti_bella | Anti-Bella: Marie Aioe Dorion

It seems that these days, there are two Native American women who are remembered by the general public -- Pocahontas (thanks to the Disney movie part-based off of a fictitious account and part-made up) and Sacagawea (thanks to her being featured on the gold dollar coin and as a lead in the Night at the Museum series). Obviously there were many more awesome Native American women in history though, and one in particular stands out as an unsung badass: Marie Aioe Dorion.

(Marie Dorion -- Escape 1814, by John Clymer

I'm willing to bet most of you good readers never heard of her. Really, the reason I know about her was because I wrote a report on her for my seventh grade history class. Each unit, my teacher let us write a report on any relevant topic, which we presented to the class along with some sort of visual aid. I'm not sure why Marie Dorion caught my attention that unit, but I ended up giving my presentation on her, with my visual aid being a journal of her time in the Pacific Fur Company's Pacific Northwest expedition (more on that in a minute). It did very well, earning me an A+ and a Kudos bar (the prize for being voted "best visual aid" by the class, a contest held after every round of presentations -- really, my seventh grade history teacher was the best), but more importantly, it taught me about a woman who I feel has gone pretty unappreciated in her awesomeness. And that's why I'm going to pass along what I learned to you.

In a lot of ways, Marie Dorian's story starts off similar to that of Sacagawea's. She was a Native American woman (her mother was of the Iowa tribe and her father was French Canadian) though, unlike Sacagawea, Marie was evidently baptized at birth and has no known Native American name attributed to her (Wikipedia gives "Wihmunkewakan" or "Holy Rainbow" as her Native American name, but the Iowa tribe's note clarifies that Wihmunkewakan was actually her husband's first wife and seems to be a Lakota translation of the name, not Ioway).

Like Sacagawea, she married a French Canadian man. Her husband (it's unclear if they were formally married or if she was his common-law wife) was Pierre Dorion Jr., himself the child of a Yankton Sioux woman and a French Canadian trader from Quebec. The two met when Marie was a teenager and lived in the region of South Dakota near present-day Yanktown, with Pierre Dorion being considered there first white person to settle in the area (erm… bragging rights for any South Dakota residents then, I guess?) The couple had two sons, Jean Baptiste and Paul, who were respectively five and two when the family packed up for an expedition that ended with shit hitting the fan in the most colossal way imaginable.

Yeah, nine years before Hugh Glass infamously survived his grizzly mauling (see also: The Revenant), Marie Dorion ended up on her own nightmarish trek of survival across the wilderness.

Here's how it went down: John Jacob Astor (yes, the patriarch of the Astors and, to play ten degrees of Kevin Bacon, was the great-grandfather of John Jacob Astor IV, who died on the sinking of the RMS Titanic, which was another "based on a true story" megahit movie Leonardo DiCaprio) was a man with a simple plan -- he'd send an overland expedition to the mouth of the Colorado River to sniff out good spots for fur trading posts, so he could have control over fur trade across the Pacific. That there were already British and Canadian trading groups who claimed stakes in the area didn't deter him, because well, like I said, Man With a Plan.

In September of 1810, Astor had already sent the ship Tonquin from New York Harbor to scout for locations. A site on Point George became Fort Astoria (yes, this is where Astoria, Oregon now stands -- to any readers from that city, you're welcome for the history lesson). Unfortunately, Tonquin came to a violent end when a trading mission on Vancouver Island literally crashed and burned -- a group of pissed-off Salish Natives boarded the slip, slaughtering everyone except for one interpreter, who escaped, and a wounded sailor, who set the powder magazine on fire, sending the ship, himself, and 200 Salish up like Roman candles.

In hindsight, this was pretty good foreshadowing about how the follow-up overland expedition of 1811 would end. But we'll get to that soon enough. When the overland expedition set off, they brought along Pierre Dorion Jr., who they hired as their Sioux translator, along with Marie and the kids. Apparently it was common for Marie to accompany Pierre on translating expeditions (between the two of them, it seems they knew English, French, Spanish, and several Native American dialects, which is a pretty respectable language spread). I'm not sure how usual it was for them to bring the kids along, but it seems Pierre's condition for taking the job was that his entire family join them.

"The entire family", it later turned out, included the unborn child Marie was three months pregnant with, which she may or may not have been aware of when they set out. Early on in the expedition, Marie initially changed her mind and wanted to stay behind in Fort Osage, prompting Pierre to hit her and physically put her in one of the boats -- an article I read suggested that her pregnancy was the reason for her protests.

Whatever the case, Marie continued with the expedition throughout her pregnancy, carrying her children on her back for much of it and being forced to walk a respectable portion of the way (William Price Hunt, the leader of the expedition, rather foolishly assumed they could get away with abandoning their horses and sail the Snake RIver to the mouth of the Colorado River. This was not possible and it was not until about a month later that more horses could be purchased, including one for Marie to ride. All of the horses were forced to be used as food near the end of November, and near-starvation and poor weather in December forced the group to scare away a camp of Shoshone Native Americans to steal five horses). Marie gave birth December 30, 1811, with the expedition going on without her(!) and forcing her to catch up. Tragically, the baby died eight days later, despite care received from a tribe of friendly Umatillas.

The party reached Fort Astoria sans 45 of their original 60 members (Hunt wasn't a very good expedition leader, it would seem) on May 11th, 1812. In July of 1813, the Dorions all set out with a party on a beaver-trapping expedition at the mouth of the Boise River. A small group consisting of Pierre Dorion, Guiles Le Clerc, and Jacob Reznor were sent trapping along the river, while Marie and her kids remained at the base camp.

This, dear readers, is where shit truly became real.

See, over the course of the winter of 1813-1814 (of course this took place in winter), the party got on very well with the local Shoshone natives. In January of 1814, the Shoshone warned Marie that a group of Bannock natives (referred to as "Bad Snakes", which should give you an idea about them) were burning camps in the area. Marie took the kids and rode out to warn her husband… but it was too late. The camp was ambushed that morning, and the only survivor was the heavily-wounded Le Clerc.

Marie did her best to tend to Le Clerc and have him survive the three-day trip back to the base camp, but sadly, he perished two days later. Even worse, when she returned to the camp, she found that it had also been attacked and nobody was there but the mutilated corpses of the rest of the party.

At this point, it was the middle of winter and Marie was in the middle of nowhere with few resource and two very small children relying on her. After seeking shelter from the friendly natives, she spent nine days fighting through the snow before building a lean-to shelter. She and her kids lived there for 53 days, eventually resorting to killing their horses and living off of that meat and melted snow.

Mid-March, Marie and her kids tried again. Now on foot, they set out and, because some force of nature has a sick sense of humor, got caught in another blizzard. Marie finally resorted to digging a hole, lining it with furs, and storing her children in it so she could set out on her own to find help. Fortunately, a nearby tribe of Walla-Walla natives found her wandering, partially snow-blind, and saved her and her children.

Marie was reunited with members from the Fort Astoria group in April, and they brought her to Fort Okanogan, a Canadian fur station in Washington. There, she lived with a French-Canadian trapper named Louis Joseph Venier, giving birth to his daughter, Marguerite, in 1819. After Venier was also killed by Native Americans (dear lord!), Marie became the lover and, eventually, the wife of Jean Baptiste Toupin, a French-Canadian interpreter at Fort Nez Perce. With him, Marie gave birth to two more children, Francoise and Marianne.

The rest of Marie's life played out quite peacefully. She and Toupin spent the rest of their lives in St. Louis, where she was considered an admirable woman by their white neighbors, who referred to her as "Madame" or "Madame Iowa". Her oldest two sons, Jean Baptiste and Paul, went on to be the first settlers in the French Prairie in Oregon's Willamette Valley and served as guides, escorts, and interpreters to several people. Jean Baptiste also went on to participate in the Cayuse War and the Battle of Spring Hollow, as well as work for the Hudson Bay Trading Company. Marie herself died in 1850 and she was buried in the original log Roman Catholic Church in Saint Louis.

While Marie became something of a legend in her lifetime, today she and her amazing tale of survival aren't known by most people. Still, she remains honored for her bravery and strength. Several books, including Lenora Lee-Rain Good's Madame Dorion: Her Journey to Oregon County and Jane Kirkpatrick's historic fiction Tender Ties trilogy. Madame Dorion Memorial Park, by the Walla-Walla River in Washington, was of course named in her honor, and a plaque now stands at the point in the trail where she was believed to have given birth. In the House and Senate chamber of the Oregon State Capitol, you can find her name among 158 people important to the state's history.

Marie Dorion was a woman of immense bravery and strength who, despite so many losses, fought for the lives of herself and her children. When choosing an appropriate topic to write about for the month of November, I thought her life was one appropriate for a month in which we give thanks for what is good in our lives -- our family, our friends, our homes, and our safety. Marie was able to live out her life with all of those things and for that, I am sure, she was very thankful.