The oral knowledge that the Indigenous communities around her held about her experience was not systematically recorded.

The records of the Catholic church that formalized her marriage are the closest thing to an official documentary presence in the last decade of her life.

And then the church burned.

What remains is a body of secondary sources, a journal entry from Franchère, a few primary accounts of the Astorian enterprise, historical markers, a statue, and the basic documented facts of what she did.

The documented facts are real.