User:Jwmc2077/Marie Aioe Dorion

Pacific Northwest
Her first husband Pierre Dorion Jr. was hired by the Pacific Fur Company to join Wilson Price Hunt and a group on an overland expedition to Fort Astoria. Also present were their two young boys, approximately two and four years old. Dorion gave birth to another child near what is now North Powder, Oregon, who died several days later. After reaching Fort Astoria, Dorion and her family returned with a trapping party to the Snake River area. As the months got colder part of the party stayed to build a cabin on the Snake River while the rest, including Giles Le Clarc and the Dorion family, continued to travel to a better trapping area. Maria and the children stayed at a hut that the men had built processing the animals. It was one of these days when her husband and a small trapping party were attacked by a band of Bannocks and killed. Only Giles Le Clarc lived long enough to travel back to the hut and warn Dorion of the attack.

There were several horses left by the Bannock warriors and were promptly taken by Dorion back to the small fur trading post. However, upon reaching the post, she discovered the few staff had been killed and scalped. Attempting to reach another safe fur trading station in the Pacific Northwest, one of Dorion's two horses collapsed in the Blue Mountains. She supported her two infants for 50 days during winter. Dorion created snare traps out of the horse manes to provide a supply of mice and squirrels for her family. She additionally smoked the horseflesh, collected frozen berries, and later gathered the inner flesh of trees to prevent her family starving. Near the end of March, Dorion was able to progress west, eventually reaching a Walla Walla village, exhausted and short of food. The village leadership provided material support and aided while she waited for the arrival of the Astorians who would be in the region for spring trade and would have missed her and her children if her youngest hadn't spotted their canoes and called for them to stop.

Dorion married twice more and had three more children. Her second husband was Louis Venier. With her third husband, Jean Toupin, she settled near Saint Louis, Oregon, on the French Prairie. It was here that she began to be known as "Madame" or "Madame Iowa". One of her two eldest sons, Jean Baptiste, joined the Oregon Rifles and fought in the Cayuse War.