Marie Dorion and The Astoria Expedition

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Sacagawea, the 19-year-old Shoshone Indian woman who accompanied Merriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first American expedition across the Continental Divide to the Pacific Coast, might be the most famous American Indian woman of all time. Well, either her or Pocahontas. It’s too close to say. You may as well flip a coin, preferably a ‘Sacagawea dollar. Maybe that’s your answer right there. Pocahontas has never appeared on any currency.

And neither has Marie Dorion. Marie who? you ask?

Her name is hardly known today, but just six years after Sacagawea made her trek, a 21-year-old Iowa Indian woman named Marie Dorion went with the expedition that made the second such crossing to the same destination–the mouth of the Columbia River. The stories of Sacagawea’s trials, courage and endurance during her 1805-06 journey are well known. But Marie Dorion’s nearly forgotten trials were even more difficult.

Marie Dorion was the only woman on the 1811-12 overland expedition financed by John Jacob Astor, to establish a fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River. That second American crossing of the continent was the result of Astor’s competition with the British Hudson’s Bay Company. Astor, after having made a fortune on the fur resources about the Great Lakes, planned to establish a trading post on the coast of Oregon, to control the fur trade with the Orient.

It was Astor’s plan to trade Western furs in the Orient, receiving cargoes to exchange in England for manufactured goods needed in America. The overland expedition was to identify locations where fur trading posts could be established that also would serve as way stations to expedite communications between Astor’s Eastern headquarters and the Western trading posts, a forerunner of the pony express.

The overland expedition was only half of Astor’s detailed plan. The other half was to send the ship Tonquin around Cape Horn, carrying the people and merchandise for the trading post. Tonquin, a strong ship of 290 tons, with 10 guns and a crew of 20 men, was captained by Jonathan Thorn, a navy lieutenant on leave of absence.

Tonquin sailed from New York Harbor on September 8,1810 and arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River seven months later, after passage around Cape Horn and a stopover in the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii). By that time, Thorn, who was a strict disciplinarian, was thoroughly disliked by the entire crew. Feelings for him did not improve after he lost eight seamen when he insisted on trying to cross the sand bar at low tide.

The site selected for the trading post, Astoria, was on Point George on the southern shore of the Columbia. It was not far from the location of Lewis and Clark’s 1805-06 Fort Clatsop winter camp.

Soon, the first major setback to Astor’s plan occurred. After unloading people and supplies in Oregon, Thorn took his ship on a trading mission to Vancouver Island. There disaster overcame him after Salish Indians crawled aboard. The Salish were outraged by his insolence and massacred all but one man, an interpreter, who got away. Another wounded sailor ignited the powder magazine and blew up the ship, himself, and about 200 Salish.

The overland expedition was led by an inexperienced St. Louis merchant named Wilson Price Hunt. He was believed to be about 29 years old in 1811. Although he had become a successful merchant since coming to St. Louis in 1804, he had no experience that would qualify him for the task ahead. Hunt’s party left St. Louis on October 21, 1810, six weeks after Tonquin sailed from New York. After traveling 450 miles up the Missouri River in three boats, they camped a month later 150 miles above Fort Osage, which had been established two years earlier at a site recommended by Lewis and Clark. They were to winter there at the mouth of the Nodaway River to avoid the expense of staying in St. Louis and to remove his crew from the temptations of that city.

Tags: Adventurers & Trail Blazers, Expeditions, People, The Wild West, Wild West, Women's History

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