When they appear, they appear as generic figures: “the wife of” a particular man, or “women of the tribe” who traded specific items, or unnamed figures in background descriptions of Indigenous community life.

Marie Dorion is an exception in this record precisely because she was embedded in the expedition in a specific role that the men’s accounts had to accommodate.

She was “Dorion’s wife.” She was the woman who gave birth during the journey.

She was, after Pierre’s death, the woman whose survival was documented because the documentation served a function — confirming what had happened to the Reed party and to its personnel.

The women of the Indigenous nations the expedition encountered, who were also observing and navigating and making decisions in response to the arrival of these large parties of strange men through their territories — they are almost entirely absent from the documentary record in any form that allows individual recognition.