The central protagonists of Irving’s “Astoria” are men: Astor, Hunt, the various traders and partners who led the enterprise.

Marie appears in the margins.

In the twentieth century, as the history of women and of Indigenous people in the American West became a more explicit subject of scholarly inquiry, Marie’s story began to receive more attention.

But the attention has been uneven.

Popular accounts sometimes sensationalize the survival journey in ways that sacrifice accuracy for drama.

Scholarly accounts sometimes focus so heavily on the structural context of the fur trade that the individual human at the center of the story recedes from view.

The comparison to Sacagawea, which appears in almost every account of Marie Dorion, has the unintended effect of always positioning her as secondary.