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Marie
Dorian, an Iowa Indian woman, was married to Pierre Dorian. Her story is an example of
incredible courage, mountain savvy and an iron will to survive.
Dorian and his wife were members of Reed’s party, part of John
Jacob Astor’s earliest attempt to seize a monopoly of the fur trade from
the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Reed’s party consisted of nine men plus Dorian’s wife and their
two
children in January of 1814. Dorian
served as both an interpreter as well as a trapper and hunter.
The party had its main camp near the mouth of the Boise River with
several outlying hunting camps in the fall/winter of 1813-1814.
Most of the Shoshone Indians in the area were friendly; however, a band of
“bad Snakes” persistently harassed the Astorians.
Most of Reed’s party was hunting out of the main camp at the
confluence of the Boise River and Snake river, but a smaller party
consisting of Jacob Reznor, Giles LeClerc and Pierre Dorian traveled to a
location several days journey up the Boise River where they set up a small
hunting camp.
Dorian’s wife remained behind in the main camp.
After several incidents with the “bad Snakes” a friendly Indian
alerted Dorian’s wife that there might be trouble at the remote camp. She
took a horse and bundling up her children (one of whom was an infant, and
the other probably not much more than a toddler) set off for her husband's
camp. After three days
of travel through a wintry landscape, she approached the hut of her
husband and his companions. Only
one man was there, Giles LeClerc, badly wounded and bloody.
He told her how the men had been attacked that morning while
working their traps. Both
Dorian and Reznor had been killed and only LeClerc had survived the
attack. The woman boosted the
badly injured man onto the horse along with the infant and turned back
toward the main camp and safety. While
on the return trip, LeClerc fell off the horse twice, and after being
nursed for one full day, finally died in the night.
Placing both children on the horse, the woman hurried the remaining
distance to the main camp. There,
instead of the expected safety, she found fresh horror. The
camp was a shambles and all of the men had been murdered, scalped and
dismembered. Death and
destruction were striking all around her and her little ones, it seemed
only a matter of time before it would find her too. Salvaging what
little food and other supplies that remained in the gutted camp, she
loaded everything onto the horse, including her children and headed to the
west and presumed safety. For
three months she traveled with her children across the snow-choked Blue
Mountains under conditions that might have proved deadly to even an
experienced mountain man. By
springtime she had made her way down to the Columbia River and found
refuge amongst the Walla Walla Indians.
Finally in April 1814, she was rescued by a party belonging to the
Hudson’s Bay Company traveling up the river from Fort Vancouver.
To this woman belongs a remarkable story of endurance, perseverance, survival skill, and an overwhelming will to live and to protect her children.
For more information about Marie Dorian see also: A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific, by Robert M Utley, published 1997 Henry Holt and Company. Kirkpatrick, Jane. A Name of Her Own. 2002, Published by WaterBrook Press, Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Fiction in a historical setting) Kirkpatrick, Jane. Every Fixed Star. 2003, Published by WaterBrook Press, Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Fiction in a historical setting)
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