She had been crossing difficult country since 1811.

She kept crossing it.

She died in September 1850, in the Willamette Valley, in a world very different from the one she had been born into.

The church burned.

The burial location was lost.

The story survived because Franchère stopped.

Because a child called out in French.

Because the facts of what she did are real, and facts have a way of persisting even when the narratives built around them fail to notice.