The Final Words Of The Documentary Record

The Oregon Encyclopedia’s account of Marie Dorion ends with a note about her death and the subsequent settlement of her children in the Willamette Valley: “Their children married into established Willamette Valley families.

Marie Dorion died on September 3, 1850.”

This is the documentary record’s final word on a woman who was born Ioway, who traveled the second American overland crossing of the continent, who survived a husband’s death and a winter in the Blue Mountains, who raised children who knew to call out in French when they needed help, who formed new partnerships, had more children, settled in a changing valley, and was formally married to her last partner in 1841 when the institutions of European legal life had reached the Pacific Northwest.

The record is sparse.