By January 1814, when the attacks occurred, the post that had been their destination and base was already in British hands.

The political context matters because it shaped the world in which Marie’s survival journey took place.

The fur-trade world of the Columbia Plateau in 1813-1814 was in flux: the American enterprise was withdrawing, the British enterprise was consolidating, the Indigenous nations of the region were navigating the implications of this shifting balance, and the various trapping parties and their personnel were caught in the middle of changes they had not anticipated.

Pierre Dorion’s death was partly a product of this disruption.