by Terry Lidral
Marie Dorion, like her contemporary Sacajawea, is a highly celebrated pioneer woman, honored for her legendary strength and courage. Dorion was of the Iowa tribe and moved to St. Louis, Missouri with her French-Canadian husband Pierre Dorion. Her 1811-1812 trek from Missouri across the Continental Divide to Oregon followed a somewhat similar route taken by Sacajawea, who traveled with the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Although both women faced hardships on their journeys west, Dorion’s circumstances were far more dire. The Pacific Fur Company Expedition, with which Dorion traveled, was poorly organized and ill led. She was the only woman in the group, made even more disadvantageous by her two young sons, Paul and Jean Baptiste (thought to be 2 and 5 years old at the start of the journey) who accompanied her. And, when she left Missouri for the grueling trek across the Continental Divide to the Oregon Coast, she was pregnant with her third child.
Pierre Dorion had brought Marie to live in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a hard drinking man who wasn’t one to pay his liquor bills. To escape his debt, Dorion joined up as an interpreter to head west with the Pacific Fur Company group being led by the fur merchant William Price Hunt. Dorion also signed up his wife for the expedition as she could speak several Native languages, as well as English, French and Spanish.
William Price Hunt, had no experience with wilderness travel, and his ineptitude led to poor decisions and grave problems. Hunt planned to make a good share of the journey by river following the route that Lewis and Clark took. Hunt’s party started west in April 1811 with 60 men, mostly river men hired to navigate the anticipated journey by water, and one woman with 2 small boys.
Shortly after the party’s departure, Hunt was fortunate to cross paths with 3 veteran hunters who he convinced to join him on his western trek. The hunters warned of a hostile Blackfoot tribe, encouraging Hunt to abandon his plans of following the route of Lewis and Clark and instead turn south. It meant leaving the boats and traveling over land.
The expedition was delayed in order to find horses and the party did not get underway again until July. This put the party behind schedule to reach their destination in Oregon before winter hit the mountains they would be crossing. With 82 horses, most of them pack animals, the men, woman and children set off once again. Hunt, Pierre Dorian and his children had horses to ride. But Marie was forced to walk until a horse for her could be bought later along the way from the Crow or Cheyenne Indians.
Marie’s marriage with Pierre was stormy and Pierre was said to argue violently with his wife. When it was time to leave St. Louis to start the expedition, Marie and her children had left him after a nasty disagreement. Marie returned willingly, but 3 days later, after an up-river journey, she asked to stay behind with friends. This was not to Pierre’s liking and he physically placed her in the boat, forcing Marie and their children to accompany him on the trek to the Oregon Coast.
The party made it through South Dakota and Wyoming without incident. They traveled through the Powder River Pass in the Big Horn Mountains to cross the Continental Divide at Union Pass. All the while, Marie was becoming more burdened with her pregnancy.
In September 1811, the Pacific Fur Company Expedition reached Henry’s Fork, a tributary of the Snake River in what is now southeastern Idaho. The Snake River runs into the Columbia River and Hunt concluded that the party could make the remaining 1,000 miles of the journey by river. It was a disastrous decision.
In the area of current-day Twin Falls, Idaho, the party encountered raging rapids. A man was lost as well as a good share of their food and supplies. A survey of the river revealed that it was unnavigable and the route of the journey would have to be made over land.
Hunt broke the party up into small groups going by different routes to make it easier for them to find enough food to survive. Pierre, Marie and their boys were included in Hunt’s group. Without horses, they were forced to travel on foot and, too small to keep up, little Paul most likely was carried on Marie’s back even though she was nearing her eight month of pregnancy.
In November, Hunt was able to purchase a horse for himself to ride and eventually Pierre was able to buy one so that his wife and child could ride. But by the end of that month, the party faced starvation and were forced to kill their horses for food.
Winter snows forced the party to twice take shelter in Shoshone Indian camps. One camp had a herd of horses and the desperate travelers drove the Shoshone away and stole several animals. Heavily pregnant, Marie was given one to ride.
After a grueling day of travel, Marie went into labor near current day North Powder, Oregon. It is said that she gave birth alone on December 30, 1811 and joined the party the next day. Unfortunately, the toll of the harsh conditions on pregnant Marie were too extreme for the baby to be strong enough to survive. The infant died a week after its birth.
It was another five weeks before Marie, her sons and the party arrived at their destination in Astoria, Oregon in February 1812. But Astoria was not to become home for the Dorian family.
In July of 1812, Pierre, along with Marie and the boys, joined a beaver trapping trip that took them back east to the mouth of the Boise River in what is now known as the Treasure Valley in southwest Idaho. There the group established a base lodge which Marie and several men from the Astoria party maintained. The other men set out to set up individual fur trapping camps in the outlying area.
The trapping operations continued successfully through the winter of 1813 and into the winter of 1814. The Shoshone tribe that lived in the area was friendly, but the trapping party was constantly being harassed by a group known as the Bad Snakes. Despite the trouble makers, the trapping party was able to remain in their camps at the mouth of the Boise River.
In January 1814, the trapping party was set upon by a hostile group from the Bannock tribe. A Shoshone party came to warn Marie that the camps of the fur trappers were under attack and being burned. Marie immediately saddled a horse, and with the two boys, rode to warn her husband of the danger.
For more history of the Snake River Valley in Southwestern Idaho, visit the Old Fort Boise website here: https://www.cityofparma.org/things-to-do-in-parma
It took three days through the winter terrain for Marie to reach her husband’s camp. By the time she got there, the Bannocks had already been there. Pierre and another man were dead. The lone surviving trapper was gravely injured. Managing to load the wounded man on the horse, Marie set off for the base camp. In spite of Marie’s best efforts, the wounded trapper died before they arrived.
Upon her return to the base, Marie found a total massacre of the men inside. The camp was looted and only a few knives were left. Marie gathered the knives, a few hides and what supplies she could carry. Her only option was to take her boys and attempt the 500-mile journey to Fort Astoria.
It was the dead of winter and Marie faced what should have been insurmountable odds. To cross the Snake River, she made an improvised float to keep the supplies dry. For more than a week, Marie struggled against snowdrifts, following along the Burnt River and then going north along the Powder River.
At the base of the Blue Mountains near what is now La Grande, Oregon, exhaustion forced Marie to stop. She built a crude shelter under an overhang of rocks where she and her 2 boys spent 53 days. The horses were killed and the meat was smoked. But food became extremely scarce and Marie caught mice in horsehair traps and gathered what frozen berries she could find in order to survive.
What supplies Marie had became depleted by March and she was forced to leave the shelter and push on or starve to death. She had hoped to find familiar landmarks from her trip east from Fort Astoria, but everything was covered in white, blinding snow. After wandering around in circles, Marie was forced to once again seek shelter, too snow blind and exhausted to go on.
It took 3 days for Marie to regain her sight and she and the boys had no food. Paul was so weak he could not walk and Marie no longer had the strength to carry him. Seeing the smoke from a camp in the distance, Marie fashioned a hidden shelter in the brush to hide her boys and determinedly went in search of help.
The camp was that of a group of Walla Walla Indians. Some of them remembered Marie from when she had passed through with the group from Fort Astoria two years earlier. They welcomed her in, rescued her sons and provided her with food and shelter.
A group from Fort Astoria eventually passed through the camp and took Marie and her children back to the fort on the Oregon coast. Marie lived out the rest of her years in the Northwest. She married twice more. She and her last husband had a farm in Willamette Valley, Oregon where Marie died in 1850. She was said to be 64 years old at the time of her death.
