What is established is that multiple camps of the Reed party were attacked within a short period, that most of the men in those camps were killed, and that Marie Dorion received warning before the attack on her husband’s camp.

The party’s structure during the winter of 1813-1814 involved a main camp, where Marie and the children stayed and where the party’s base operations were conducted, and a series of outlying trapping camps where smaller groups of men worked specific sections of the Boise River and its tributaries.

Pierre was working one of these outlying locations with Giles LeClerc and possibly others.

Marie was not a passive figure at the main camp.