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
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