Most accounts of the fur-trade era give Marie Dorion the briefest possible introduction: the wife of the interpreter Pierre Dorion, a Native American woman who traveled with the Astor overland expedition of 1811 to 1812.

That framing is accurate as far as it goes, but it is inadequate in almost every other way.

Marie Aioe Dorion was born around 1786.

The year is approximate.

The exact circumstances of her early life are poorly documented in the written sources that form the historical record, which reflects the basic fact that the written record of the fur-trade era was created almost entirely by European and Euro-American men for purposes that had nothing to do with preserving the biographies of Indigenous women.

Her name itself carries history.