Marie had raised children in a world where the management of children under difficult conditions was a normal part of life.

The fur-trade frontier was not a child-friendly environment in the modern sense.

Children traveled long distances, endured physical hardship, and were exposed to conditions that would be considered dangerous and inappropriate in contemporary society.

They were also, for the most part, resilient in ways that modern children — insulated by infrastructure, medicine, and material abundance — are not necessarily trained to be.

The specific practices and knowledge that allowed Indigenous communities to keep children alive in cold-climate environments were embedded in the everyday material culture of those communities: the techniques of clothing construction that maintained warmth, the specific foods that sustained children’s energy and health, the ways of keeping children calm and cooperative in frightening situations.