It reflects the categorical assumptions of the era about whose experiences constituted “history” in the sense that merited extended narrative treatment.

The same assumptions structured the reception of the Lewis and Clark journals, which included the observations of all the expedition’s participants but centered the narrative on the two captains.

The contributions of Sacagawea, of the Corps’s Indigenous guides, of the enslaved man York who traveled with the expedition, are present in the documentary record but require active recovery and interpretation to be seen clearly.

Marie Dorion’s case is more extreme because the primary documentary record for her survival journey is even thinner than the record for Sacagawea’s role in the Corps of Discovery.