[3][4] Smith was born Marie Rose Delorme on October 18, 1861, in Saint François-Xavier in the Red River Colony, British North America (present day Manitoba, Canada) .
[2][5] Her father died while she was young, leaving money for her and her sister to attend the Grey Nuns boarding school in Saint Boniface, Manitoba.
She spoke about missing the annual routine of traversing the western plains with her family in order to hunt and trade with First Nations people.
[1] Marie Rose was married to Charlie Smith, a robe and whiskey trader who was 17 years older than her, in 1877 following an agreement where her mother would receive 50 dollars.
[3] While raising her children, managing the homestead, and working as a midwife and a medicine woman she also wrote her memoirs, which were never published in full.
Historian Doris Jeanne MacKinnon has written multiple works about Smith after first learning about her during her post-graduate studies at the University of Calgary.