Marie Aioe Dorion

Background

Dorion was born c. 1786, in Iowa or its vicinity. Her name appears in early Oregon and Washington records as Marie Aioe, sometimes L'Aguivoise, probably an early variant of the name Iowa.

Career

Dorion accompanied her hunter-interpreter husband, Pierre, on the long, hungry and agonizing trek to Fort Astoria, by the Wilson Price Hunt Party. About January 10, 1814, the two sections of he John Reed hunting party to the Boise River country, widely separated, were attacked by Indians, and all the men were killed.  Escaping with her children on a horse, Dorion fled toward the Columbia River, and after nine days' travel, suffering intensely from cold and hunger, found refuge in a lonely spot in the Blue Mountains.  Here she put up a rough hut of pine branches, killed her horse for food, and remained for fifty-seven days. After fifteen days' further travel, again enduring extreme privations, she and her children reached the friendly Walla Wallas. Later in the spring, on the Columbia, she met the last party of the returning Astorians and told them the tragic fate of her comrades.  She lived for a time at Fort Okanagon.

In 1823 she formed a union with Jean Baptiste Toupin, in terpreter for many years at Fort Walla Walla, who in 1841 took up land in the Willamette Valley, near the present Salem, and settled there.  On July 19 of that year her union with Toupin was legalized by a Roman Catholic church ceremony; her two children by Toupin were legitimized, and her son Baptiste Dorion and daughter Marguerite Venier were "acknowledged" by Toupin. Through the publication of Irving's Astoria she became famous.

Dorion died on September 3, 1850, in Saint Louis, Oregon.

Achievements

• The published legendary courage of Marie Dorion may have been overstated but it is certain that she was resourceful, proud, intelligent, and loyal to the needs of her people, though all her husbands were all or part French-Canadian.

Personality

Dr. Elijah White, who visited her in the winter of 1842-1843, found her living in comfort and was "much impressed with her noble, commanding bearing. "

Connections

Dorion's father-in-law, the elder Pierre Dorion, born of a prominent Quebec family before 1750, made his way to Cahokia, Illinois, as early as 1780, lived for a time in St. Louis, and within a year or two established his permanent home with the Yanktons and married a woman of the tribe. In 1804, as an interpreter, he accompanied Lewis and Clark from the vicinity of the present Glasgow, Missouri, to the James, where he was authorized to gather a delegation of Sioux chiefs and take them on a visit to Washington.

The younger Pierre Dorion, a half-breed, for a time kept a trading post for Pierre Chouteau among the Yanktons.  He had a Yankton wife, Holy Rainbow, whom he seems to have abandoned about 1806 for the Iowa girl, Marie. On December 30, near the present North Powder, Oregon, Dorion gave birth to a child, and in the forenoon of the next day overtook the party "looking as unconcerned as if nothing had happened to her" and ready to continue the march.  The child, however, lived but eight days.

About 1819 she married a trapper named Venier, of whom nothing seems to be known. Her son Baptiste,  who was employed as a guide by the naturalist J. K. Townsend in 1835 and as an interpreter by Dr. White in 1842-1843, and who in 1848 was appointed a second lieutenant in the 1st Regiment of Oregon Riflemen, died in 1849.  The other son is said to have been the Paul Dorion of Parkman's The California and Oregon Trail, though the identification is disputed.

Spouse:

Pierre Dorion, Jr.

He was a Métis fur trapper and interpreter who worked across the modern Midwestern United States and later the Pacific Northwest.

Spouse:

Jean Baptiste Toupin

Spouse:

Venier

Daughter:

Marguerite Venier

References

• More than Petticoats: Remarkable Oregon Women (More than Petticoats Series)
• The Perilous West: Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail
• Ten years in Oregon: travels and adventures of Doctor E. White and lady, west of the Rocky mountains, with incidents of two sea voyages via Sandwich ... of the missions and settlement of the...
• Hidden History of Portland, Oregon