Shoshone Woman

This Shoshone woman was married to a French-Canadian American Fur Company employee at Fort McKenzie with the surname Marceau. Unions like this, sometimes called "country marriages," solidified kin relations across cultures. Native women were integral to maintaining the fur trade’s intercultural operations. However, non-Indigenous travelers rarely recorded their names, a symptom of a larger disregard for and misunderstanding of women’s important roles. The woman portrayed here had recently given birth and became ill shortly thereafter, a condition Maximilian attributed to a liver ailment that discolored her skin. Despite her illness, she posed for Bodmer wearing a leather dress decorated with blue and white pony beads, expensive items likely acquired through her connection to the fur trade.