"Madame" Marie Aioe Dorion Venier Toupin (ca. 1786 – September 5, 1850) was the only female member of an overland expedition sent by Pacific Fur Company to the Pacific Northwest in 1810. Like her first husband, Pierre Dorion Jr., she was Métis. Her mother was of the Iowa people and her father was French Canadian. She was also known as Marie Laguivoise, a name recorded in 1841 at the Willamette Mission and apparently a variation on Aiaouez, later rendered as Iowa. Missouri It is likely that Dorion and Sacajawea knew one another. Peter Stark notes the similarities between the two women in his book Astoria: both women were originally based in the then-small settlement of St. Louis, and they were both wives of interpreters in the burgeoning Missouri fur trade. Pacific Northwest Her first husband Pierre Dorion Jr. was hired by the Pacific Fur Company to join Wilson Price Hunt and a group on an overland expedition to Fort Astoria. Also present were their two young boys, who were probably two and four years old. Dorion gave birth to another child near what is now North Powder, Oregon, who died several days later. After reaching Fort Astoria, Dorion and her family returned with a trapping party to the Snake River area. While at a trading post in January 1814, Dorion learned from a scout that her husband and a small trapping party were about to be attacked by a band of Bannocks. After traveling three days alone with her two infant children, she found the scene of the attack. Only one of the trappers, LeClarc, was alive, and was moved away from the area on a horse. Despite Dorion's medical attention for LeClarc, he died that evening. There were several horses left by the Bannock warriors and were promptly taken by Dorion back to the small fur trading post. However, upon reaching the post, she discovered the few staff had been killed and scalped. Attempting to reach another safe fur trading station in the Pacific Northwest, one of Dorion's two horses collapsed in the Blue Mountains. She supported her two infants for 50 days during winter. Dorion created snare traps out of the horse manes to provide a supply of mice and squirrels for her family. She additionally smoked the horseflesh, collected frozen berries, and later gathered the inner flesh of trees to prevent her family starving. Near the end