The period between Marie’s encounter on the Columbia River in spring 1814 and her death in the Willamette Valley in 1850 covers thirty-six years that were among the most transformative in the history of the Pacific Northwest.

When Marie arrived at Fort Okanogan in 1814, the region was a fur-trade world organized around Indigenous sovereignty and the commercial interests of the British and Canadian companies that dominated the trade.

The United States had nominal claims to the Oregon Country, but the actual political and economic reality was British and Indigenous.

By 1850, when Marie died, the Willamette Valley was American territory that had been reached by wagon-train caravans for nearly a decade.

The Oregon Treaty of 1846 had settled the northern boundary of American territorial claims.