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4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL JULY 12, 2017 O PINION Offbeat Oregon: Astorian Party and the river collide By Finn JD John For The Sentinel When Marie and Pierre D orion set out from St. Louis with the Astor Party in the spring of 1811, Ma- rie was probably the only member in a position to re- ally know how awful things could get. For one thing, she was three months pregnant, with two little boys, two-year- old Paul and four-year-old Baptiste, in tow. For anoth- er, she probably had been talking to Sacagawea, who was a fellow Native Amer- ican wife of a French-Ca- nadian interpreter living in St. Louis. And Sacagawea probably would have known about the irresponsi- ble and petty act with which Meriwether Lewis goad- ed the Blackfeet Tribe into declaring war — killing a young Blackfeet man who tried to steal a horse, and hanging a Jefferson Peace Medal around his neck. Lewis and Clark had gone through Blackfeet Coun- try on their expedition. As Marie possibly knew, and as expedition leader Wil- son Price Hunt would soon learn, the Astorian party would have to make other arrangements. Throughout what is now central Mon- tana, the turf was thorough- ly burned. The Astorian Party was one of two that New York magnate John Jacob Astor had fi nanced and sent forth in the wake of the success- ful Lewis and Clark ex- pedition. Astor had made his fortune with an inland fur-trading empire in the Great Lakes region — what was, at that time, known as “the Northwest.” Now there was a new Northwest to explore, on the edge of the Pacifi c Ocean, and As- tor dreamed of making his fur-trading empire world- wide. His plan was to send an overland party to blaze a suitable trail from St. Lou- is up to the Pacifi c Ocean, noting good sites for trading posts along the way, which subsequent parties would later establish and operate. The trail would terminate at the mouth of the Colum- bia River where Lewis and Clark had camped. By the time the trailblazers arrived there, Astor planned to have a base already established; to do this, he was send- ing a second party by sea, “around the horn” at Tierra Del Fuego. These two par- ties would meet up at what is now Astoria, whereupon they would establish over- seas trading routes across the Pacifi c to the Far East, and get busy making enor- mous profi ts selling New World beaver and otter furs worldwide. It was a neat scheme … on paper. Things went somewhat badly amiss, though, with both the land and the sea parties. The sea party ar- rived on schedule in the 94-foot, 290-ton windjam- mer Tonquin, but in a state of near-mutiny; Jonathan Thorn, the captain of the ship, was a Navy offi cer on leave, and expected passen- gers and crew alike to be- have like sailors on a Navy ship. Some of these pas- sengers were investors in Astor’s company, and con- sidered themselves Thorn’s bosses. After dropping the As- torians off to build their trading post, Thorn sailed north, making for the Rus- sian colony of New Arkan- gel (today’s Sitka) to trade for supplies. He stopped on the way on Vancouver Is- land, where in trade nego- tiations he insulted a First Nations V.I.P. The natives, in retaliation, snuck aboard the Tonquin and attacked, killing most of the crew; one of the survivors blew up the powder magazine, killing himself and dozens of the boarding natives and sinking the Tonquin in the bay; and just like that, Fort Astoria was completely on its own. Still, for the surviving members of the sea party, it could have been worse. They were at their destina- tion, there was a suffi cien- cy of food, and the natives, while not super-friendly, were at least not out for scalps. The same would not be true for the overland party. Sixty strong, the overland party left the outskirts of St. Louis in the spring of 1811. With them were two bot- anists to catalog scientifi c discoveries, and, eventual- ly, the Dorion family. Because Astor’s Great Lakes fur empire was large- ly handled by French-Ca- nadian voyageurs, this new expedition was staffed with quite a few of them. And for the fi rst half of the jour- ney, their water skills stood the party in excellent stead. They made fi ne time work- ing their way up the Mis- souri, until it was time to strike out overland to avoid the enraged Blackfeet; then, on horseback, they did as well as anyone might. But then came a time when the party arrived on the banks of a broad and beautiful river, a river fl ow- ing northwest … toward their destination. Correctly they divined that this was a tributary to the mighty Co- lumbia. The voyageurs in the party became very ex- cited. There was some debate. Some members of the party who were not voyageurs felt that the overland journey, while not as easy and pleas- ant, was more of a bird in the hand; while who knew where this river might lead? For all they knew it could pour into a colossal sink- hole and run underground for hundreds of miles. The argument was be- coming heated, so party leader Hunt put it to a vote. The result was an over- whelming mandate to take to the water. The party camped there by the river for a few days while the voyageurs felled cottonwood trees and shaped them into canoes. Then, leaving their horses in the care of some near- by Native Americans, they took to the water. They should have asked the locals fi rst. Or, perhaps they did; but the voyageurs, born to the open water and the fl ashing paddle, had high confi dence in their ability to handle any kind of river. Even if the Na- tive Americans had warned them about what was in store, they likely would have assumed they could handle it. The fi rst several days the party made thrilling prog- ress: 60 miles one day, 40 miles the next (some rapids had to be portaged around), another 50 … but the riv- er was getting rougher and rougher. By the time the river re- vealed its true colors, they were in what we know to- day as Hells Canyon, hun- dreds of miles downstream from where they had left the horses, and the river had a new name: La Rivière En- ragée – Mad River. Today we know it as the Snake. It was not navigable. Not even for voyageurs. The party split into two groups before striking out cross-country, hoping thereby to be better able to feed themselves as late autumn ripened into early winter. Even so, all of them soon were on the brink of starvation. They depended greatly on the Shoshone tribes in the area, but the high plateau terrain there is not fruitful, and the popula- tion was scant and had little to share. Nonetheless, all would have died of starva- tion and exposure if not for Shoshone charity. Throughout this time, Marie Dorion was preter- naturally stoic, never com- plaining, always keeping up, while becoming more and more visibly pregnant. Finally, she went into la- bor; Hunt and the party forged ahead, leaving her and Pierre and the two boys behind. A day or two later they rejoined the party, and Marie had her new baby in her arms. The baby died eight days later. It seems likely that there simply wasn’t suffi - cient nourishment for Marie to nurse him. Finally, on Jan. 7, the Shoshone guides whom Hunt had bribed and shamed into braving the winter weather to help them brought the fi rst group into the Grand Ronde Valley, the little banana-belt pocket of lush grasslands and plen- tiful game tucked into the otherwise inhospitable Blue Mountains of Eastern Ore- gon. There they stayed with the charitable Native Amer- icans, gorging on deer and elk meat and starchy roots, as the other members of the overland party straggled in. Then they set out for the short journey to the banks of the Columbia, down which they would fi nd their destination. It was January 18, 1812, when the traders at Fort Astoria looked up and saw two canoes coming down the river toward them. The overland party had made it at last – or, rather, most of them had; of the original complement of 60 (61 if one includes Marie’s baby), just 45 survived. And a case could be made – based on circumstantial evidence, but lots of it – that that number would have been much smaller had Ma- rie and her two boys not been with the party. The de- cision to abandon the hors- es and follow an unknown river should have been a fatal one. The main reason it was not was the charity of Shoshone and other Na- tive American tribes. Would those tribes have been as re- sponsive, as willing to share their own limited resources, without the faces of the children and Marie among the group of bedraggled, dirty, scraggly-bearded scary men? Or would they have left them all alone to starve? As for Marie, she may have thought her troubles were over when her hus- band and the boys arrived at the fort. She may also have thought that nothing could ever induce her to go back into that barren Snake River wilderness that had slain her baby and come so close to taking the rest of her family as well. But if she did think that, she was wrong. We’ll talk about Marie’s return to Shoshone and Bannock Indian country, and her second winter in the Snake River wilderness, in next week’s column. C ottage G rove S entinel (541) 942-3325 Administration James Rand, Regional Publisher Gary Manly, General Manager ................................................. Ext. 207 gmanly@cgsentinel.com Aaron Ames, Marketing Specialist ........................................... Ext. 216 aames@cgsentinel.com Tammy Sayre, Marketing Specialist ......................................... 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