4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL JULY 26, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: “Oregon’s Revenant”
Marie Dorion’s contri-
bution
to whatever success
For The Sentinel
the Astorian party enjoyed
on its disastrous trip to Or-
egon was considerable, most likely greater than
past historians have conceded. By her presence
with her two small boys, she telegraphed the
peaceful intentions of the party to any nervous
Native Americans they might meet along the way
— who might, understandably, interpret a band of
60 heavily armed, fi ercely bearded mountain-man
types as a war party and react accordingly.
But on that expedition, most of what she did
was amaze everyone with her stoicism and quiet
competence as she took care of the children, for-
aged for food, and even gave birth to a third child
en route.
This third child died eight days after he was
born; it is very diffi cult to keep a newborn baby
alive under conditions of ongoing starvation. But
Marie and her entire family made it alive to Fort
Astoria, which is more than can be said for 25 per-
cent of the men in the party.
Still, stoic competence and surprising surviv-
al are not the sort of feats that inspired historian
Greg Shine and Oregonian writer Joseph Rose to
call Marie “the Revenant of Oregon,” in a nod to
the highly acclaimed 2015 movie about a griz-
zly-mauled mountain man’s 200-mile journey to
get revenge on the men who left him for dead.
It was Marie’s second journey into the Idaho
wilderness that clinched that “Revenant” title for
her.
In July of 1813 — literally the very next year
after she and the 44 other surviving members of
the Astorian overland party straggled, starving
and exhausted, into Fort Astoria at the end of their
epic journey — Marie and her husband, Pierre,
were packing their two children up for another
journey into the wilderness that had nearly killed
them.
This time, the plan was to set up a string of
trading posts and start collecting beaver pelts to
be turned into fetching headgear for well-dressed
European gentlemen.
Under the direction of John Reed, the beaver
trappers and traders spent the summer and early
fall getting trading posts built and establishing re-
By FinnJD John
lationships with Shoshone tribe members in the
Snake River area. Then winter came along. This
time, though, Marie and her kids were ready for
it. With Reed and several other members of the
party, they were holed up in the expedition’s main
trading post, well supplied with everything they’d
need to get through a Blue Mountain winter.
But then came the evening of Jan. 10, when a
friendly Shoshone tribe member came to warn her
that the neighboring Bannock tribe was making
trouble. These “bad Snakes,” as some sources call
them, had started burning the Pacifi c Fur Compa-
ny’s outposts and killing the traders and trappers.
The Bannock war party had just laid waste one of
the camps, and was on its way to another … the
one at which Pierre Dorion was stationed.
Marie, very alarmed, thanked and fed the vis-
itor, sent him on his way home, and packed her
stuff. She and the two boys were going to go out
into the snow, racing with the marauding Ban-
nocks to get to Pierre in time to warn him.
She was three days getting there, trudging
through knee-deep snow and leading her horse
with the two boys sitting on it. And she got there
just a few hours too late.
Trapper Gilles LeClerc met her as she ap-
proached the outpost, staggering in the snow,
weak from loss of blood. He was the only sur-
vivor. Everyone else had been robbed and mur-
dered. Marie was now a widow.
There was nothing to do now but turn around
and follow the trail Marie had broken through
the snow, back to the main outpost. Luckily, the
marauders hadn’t quite managed to catch all the
horses, and Marie was able to capture two of
them; so all four of them were able to ride on the
journey back.
Two days later, LeClerc succumbed to his
injuries. Marie and the boys pressed on. But at
the post, they found not the welcoming fi res and
nourishing food they’d expected, but charred and
blackened walls with a few bones in them. The
main trading post had been wiped out and burned
down. Marie and the boys were on their own, a
good 200 miles away from the nearest source of
help.
Marie set out immediately, going northwest,
making for the Columbia River area where she
knew the Native Americans to be friendly.
They struggled through the snowdrifts to the
Snake River, swam it (presumably 3-year-old
Paul and 6-year-old Baptiste rode across the river
on the horses, but Marie probably had to swim).
They forged on through what’s now eastern Or-
egon. But then, as they reached the Blue Moun-
tains, one of the horses collapsed, unable to con-
tinue.
Marie decided it was time to stop. She built a
rude but cozy shelter and installed her family in it.
She built a fi re to warm the boys, then slaughtered
the horses and started smoking the meat.
The three of them lived in that tight shelter in
the snowy mountains, surrounded by drifts and
battered by blizzards, for 53 days. They lived pri-
marily on smoked horsemeat, of course, augment-
ed by a few frozen berries, the inner bark of trees,
and small rodents that Marie caught in snares
made from horsehair.
An early Spring thaw hit their camp in March,
just as their horsemeat supply was almost ex-
hausted. Marie packed up the children and the
remaining horse meat and the three of them left
their little shelter.
But two days later a blizzard struck. Trying
to forge on, Marie became snow-blind, and was
forced to stop, rig up another shelter (even cruder
this time) and convalesce for three days.
Finally, the food exhausted, she ventured out
with the boys for a fi nal desperate push. And, fi f-
teen days after they left their little shelter, they
reached the plains — and Marie saw campfi re
smoke.
Unsure if it was friend or foe, she cached the
boys behind a rock and approached the village.
By the time she reached it, her strength was gone
and she was literally on her hands and knees.
Luck was with her. It was a friendly tribe of
Walla Wallas.
Perhaps because she lacks a charismatic name
like “Sacagawea,” Marie Dorion is not much talk-
ed about today, and has never appeared on U.S.
currency or anything like that. But her feat of sur-
viving over the winter in some of the most hostile
wilderness in the continent with two small boys in
tow made her famous in her day.
The Astorian project ended the following year
as a casualty of the War of 1812. Out on the edge
of the known world, with British rivals just across
the river from them, John Jacob Astor’s traders
knew their best bet was to sell Fort Astoria to the
British and call it quits. The fort was promptly re-
named Fort George.
Dr. Fuhrman: Do I need vitamin K2? Or is K1 enough?
Vitamin K is essential for the process of blood
clotting. In fact, vitamin K was named for this im-
portant function; the scientists who discovered the
vitamin named it using the fi rst letter of the Ger-
man word ‘koagulation.’ In addition, we now know
that vitamin K also promotes bone health and heart
health via interactions with calcium. Vitamin K al-
lows the body to utilize the calcium needed for bone
and tooth formation. Many studies have associated
low vitamin K status with a higher risk of hip frac-
ture or low bone mineral density.
There are two forms of vitamin K; Vitamin K1 is
easy to obtain when following a high-nutrient (Nu-
tritarian) diet, since it is abundant in leafy green veg-
etables. Kale, collards, spinach and mustard greens
C ottage G rove
are some of the richest sources of K1. Vitamin K2,
on the other hand, is produced by microorganisms
and scarce in plant foods; high K2 foods include
dark meat chicken, pork and fermented foods like
cheese, so K2 is more diffi cult to get from a Nutri-
tarian diet. The human body can synthesize some K2
from K1, and intestinal bacteria can produce some
K2, but these are very small amounts.
Studies report that a causative factor of the low
hip fracture incidence in Japan was natto, a fer-
mented soy food, rich in K2. Following this obser-
vation, several studies found supplementation with
vitamin K2 to be particularly effective at improving
bone health. A review of randomized controlled tri-
als found that vitamin K2 reduced bone loss and re-
duced the risk of fractures; vertebral
fracture by 60 percent, hip fracture
by 77 percent and all non-vertebral
S entinel
fractures by 81 percent. In women who already had
osteoporosis, Vitamin K2 supplementation was also
shown to reduce the risk of fracture, reduce bone
loss, and increase bone mineral density.
A vitamin K-dependent protein binds up calcium
to protect the soft tissues—including the arteries—
from calcifi cation. Vitamin K2 in particular helps to
prevent the artery wall from stiffening and maintain
elasticity. Coronary artery calcifi cation is a predic-
tor of cardiovascular events, as is arterial stiffness.
Higher vitamin K2 intake has been linked with a
lower likelihood of coronary calcifi cation; howev-
er, the same association was not found for K1. In
2004, the Rotterdam Study revealed that increased
dietary intake specifi cally of vitamin K2 signifi cant-
ly reduced the risk of coronary heart disease by 50
percent as compared to low dietary vitamin K2 in-
take. In this study, Vitamin K1 had no effect. Simi-
lar results were found in another study conducted in
2009. Furthermore, a systematic review of several
studies in 2010 also found no association between
vitamin K1 intake and coronary heart disease, but
higher K2 intake was associated with lower risk.
Therefore taking in vitamin K2 in addition to K1
is likely benefi cial to help protect against vascular
calcifi cation.
There is some evidence that vitamin K is in-
volved in insulin metabolism, and higher intake
of vitamins K1 and K2 are associated with lower
risk of type 2 diabetes.
Remember, leafy green vegetables provide
generous amounts of vitamin K1, and getting K2
from a supplement is likely benefi cial if your diet
is low in K2.
*Column fi rst appeared on July 27, 2016.
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