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spreading these stories, and that Joe Lewis and Joseph
Stanfield motive for doing this was that they were conspiring to plunder the mission of the considerable resources that had been donated to it by then. On November 29, 1847, Joe Lewis along with a group of Cayuse men attacked the settlement at Waiilatpu. While the men who had been working outside were being attacked, Narcissa Whitman took frequent quick looks out the door, and according to Catherine Sager, "At such times she would exclaim: 'Oh, that Jo Lewis is doing it all!'". Catherine Sager also recorded witnessing Joe Lewis dragging the children at the mission out of hiding to be lined up and shot, and the Cayuse chief deciding to spare them instead, with that chief giving a speech again that night in favor of sparing the lives of the women and children. She described most of the deaths she witnessed as having been done by bullets without identifying who shot those bullets, she said she saw a teacher named Luke Saunders taken captive at knife point by two Cayuse men, and said she said that she looked away right before they killed him, but she also says Narcissa Whitman told her that she was mistaken about her belief about who killed Luke Saunders. The only death that Narcissa attributed to the Cayuse warriors rather than Joe Lewis while she was watching it unfold was Marcus Whitman's. Catherine Sager said that she was told more about the killings during the month she was kept as a prisoner after the attack. She again described almost all of the deaths in the passive voice as having been done with bullets, but says that the Cayuse warriors killed Marcus Whitman with traditional weapons, and that "an Indian" shot one other man. Afterwards, the Oregon Territorial government declared war on the Cayuse people, killing many of them, including according to the leaders of the Cayuse tribe at the time they made peace with the Oregon government, all of the men who had participated in this attack. Nevertheless, the Oregon Territorial government demanded that they turn over five more warriors to be tried and hanged for the attack. Those five warriors repeated at trial that everyone who had been involved in the attack had died in the war, and consistent with Catherine Sage's account specifically only attributed Marcus Whitman's death to their people, and said that he had been killed because their tribal law required bad medicine men to be put to death. John McLoughin (who was also a doctor and considered to be the founder of Oregon City), testified on behalf of those five men at their trial, and said he had repeatedly warned Whitman to quit practicing medicine among the Cayuse because they customarily executed their own healers if they did not have the healing powers they claimed to have. The judge (Orville Pratt) instructed the jury to treat the fact that the Cayuse had turned these five men over for Whitman's death as an admission of guilt, and the jury found them guilty; but the populace of the Oregon Territory considered them sufficiently believable and sympathetic that the recently elected first governor of the territory, Joseph Lane, who had arranged this trial as one of his first acts in office, resigned over the controversy, and his replacement, Kintzing Prichette, vowed to pardon them. However, Orville Pratt scheduled their execution for before Prichette obtained the ability to act on this vow, and overruled U.S. Marshall Joseph Meek's attempt to delay the hanging given the pending pardon. Elizabeth Sager testified at the trial, but she only testified that she had seen one of them attempt to throw down Luke Saunders, in the same incident that Catherine wrote about looking away from while Luke Saunders was still alive.
311:. Amongst those suffering was Henry. After crossing the Green River, two women and a child were already dead. Henry took a turn for the worse and was laid up in the wagon next to Catherine, who said that during his last night, "Captain Shaw found him weeping bitterly. He said his last hour had come, and his heart was filled with anguish for his family. His wife was ill, the children small, and one likely to be a cripple. They had no relatives near, and a long journey lay before them. In piteous tones he begged the Captain to take charge of them and see them through." He was buried on the banks of the Green River in an improvised coffin. His body was later disinterred, and the coyote-gnawed bones were discovered a year later by subsequent travelers.
271:, Catherine caught her dress on an axe handle when she jumped out of the moving wagon. Her left leg, trapped beneath one of the heavy wheels, was broken several times, an event that could have easily been fatal under the medical and sanitary conditions of that situation. But due to the immediate treatment by Henry and Dr. Dagon, a German-born doctor, her leg was eventually saved. She, however, was confined to the wagon for the rest of the journey. From Fort Laramie onward, Dr. Dagon stayed with the Sagers in order to care for her injury. Thus the wagon train moved on and a couple of days later the
415:, and the Sager orphans found a new home with the Whitmans. Narcissa was keen to adopt Henrietta, but not the other children. Marcus wanted to adopt the boys. William Shaw told them that he had promised Naomi that he would try keep her children together in the same family, and made Marcus Whitman sign a contract to keep them together at least until Spring if they were going to adopt the three they wanted. By Spring, Narcissa had bonded with the other girls, and wanted to keep them too. In July 1845 Marcus obtained a court order giving him legal custody of all seven children.
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Spalding, another missionary who worked closely with
Whitman, and was with him the day before he died, claimed that Catholic priests were spreading rumors among the Cayuse people that Whitman was deliberately spreading diseases to them. He also testified on behalf of the five Cayuse men who were eventually hanged for Whitman's death at their trial, saying that the Cayuse had warned Whitman that the consequences for being a fake healer were death, and that they would have to kill him if he remained there, but he had chosen to disregard their warning.
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sometimes counted as having died during the attack. Fifty-four women and children were captured and held for ransom, including the daughters of Joseph Meek and Jim
Bridger and all the Sager girls. Several of the prisoners died in captivity, mostly from the same measles epidemic that was ravaging the Cayuse, including Louisa Sager who died on Dec. 5, 1847, at the age of six, and Helen Mar Meek who had been bedridden with measles on November 29. One month after the massacre, on December 29, 1847,
488:, and raised eight children. About ten years after her arrival in Oregon she wrote an account of the Sager family's journey west. She hoped to earn enough money to set up an orphanage in memory of Narcissa Whitman. She never found a publisher. She died on August 10, 1910, at the age of 75. Her children and grandchildren saved her manuscript without modification, and today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.
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major sources of tension where that the
Whitman's tried to prevent the Cayuse from spending time in their Mission House resulting in them providing lower quality medical care for the Cayuse than the did for white settlers, and the fact that after it became clear that the Cayuse preferred the Catholic missionaries to the Whitmans, Marcus began aggressively preaching damnation.
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Henrietta was originally named
Rosanna, but when the children went to live with the Whitmans, her name was changed to Henrietta Naomi in honor of her parents. She was placed first with the Morgan Kees family, where she remained three years, before joining her older sisters at the Pringles' farm. She
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reached its peak and half the tribe died, including most of the children. Marcus
Whitman and his wife treated both the white settlers and the Cayuse who came to them for medical attention, but the Cayuse had become increasingly wary of trusting the Whitmans for medical attention at this point. Henry
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The adults of the wagon train collectively took care of the Sager children for the rest of the trip, with
William Shaw and his wife Sally taking a particularly active role in caring for and feeding the older six children, and a different woman caring for the baby for the duration of the journey. The
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Francis Sager soon decided to run away and join the settlers in the nearby valley because the
Whitmans were strict disciplinarians, and he didn't like living with them. Others who lived with the Whitmans including Joe Lewis who later participated in the attack against them also left complaining of
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In 1897, more than 3,000 visitors attended the 50th anniversary commemoration of the massacre on the mission grounds. Invited as guests of honor were some of the survivors of the events of 1847, including
Catherine Sager Pringle, Elizabeth Sager Helm, and Matilda Sager Delaney, the last surviving
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and a
Protestant missionary. In 1836 he and Narcissa, together with a group of other missionaries, joined a caravan of fur traders and traveled west, establishing several missions as well as their own settlement. Located in the Walla Walla Valley on the northern end of the Blue Mountains near the
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In the early days, life was peaceful at the Whitman Mission, but within a year, it became clear that Whitman was not going to pay for the land where the mission had been established, as previously promised, and tensions between Whitman and the Cayuse mounted over Whitman's refusal to pay. Other
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In November of 1847, a Cayuse man named Stickas warned Marcus Whitman that Joe Lewis was convincing many of the Cayuse people that Whitman was actively poisoning them. Catherine Sager also believed that a French man named Joseph Stanfield who was an assistant to Doctor Whitman participated in
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Eleven people at the mission died from the attack and had their bodies found, including Marcus, Narcissa, John Sager, and Francis Sager, who was there that day to bring up a cow from the valley for them to slaughter for meat. Three other men from the mission were not seen afterwards; and are
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and started out on the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) journey along the Oregon Trail. The company was under the command of Captain William T. Shaw, a veteran of the war of 1812, who was traveling with his wife, Sally, and six children. The Sagers joined the wagon train at
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Naomi, still weakened from childbirth and mourning Henry, now had all the responsibility for the seven children. She contracted Typhus shortly after Henry died. Suffering from heavy fever she became delirious and finally requested Dr. Dagon to squire the children to
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in November 1847. About 1860 Catherine, the oldest daughter, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.
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Catherine was placed with the Rev. William and Mrs. Roberts. In October 1851, she married Clark Pringle, a Methodist minister, at which time Elizabeth and Henrietta went to live with the Pringles. They had a farm of about 640 acres near
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arranged an exchange of sixty-two blankets, sixty-three cotton shirts, twelve rifles, six hundred loads of ammunition, seven pounds of tobacco, and twelve flints for the return of the forty-nine surviving prisoners. They were brought to
248:. A couple of days later, while crossing its south fork, Naomi was severely injured as the Sager wagon overturned in the shallow waters along the bank. But the pioneers pressed on. At the end of July 1844 the wagon train passed
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then left to join her uncle Solomon Sager's traveling troupe of entertainers. Henrietta was married twice (unhappily) and died at the age of 26, having been mistakenly shot in a gunfight by someone aiming at her husband.
399:, having gone there to fill her cup with water. In an attempt to regain some sense of family she began taking care of other children. Soon four were in their custody, including the daughters of mountain men
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Catherine Sager also recorded a fight between a man she said was named Tam-a-Has and Marcus Whitman in which Tam-a-Has struck Whitman with a wooden club and Whitman struck Tam-a-Has with a metal rod.
90:(sometimes referred to as the Sager children) were the children of Henry and Naomi Sager. In April 1844 the Sager family took part in the great westward migration and started their journey along the
185:, a jump-off point for the Oregon Trail, where they stayed the winter. By then Naomi was pregnant with her seventh child. In March 1844 Henry joined a group of pioneers who called themselves
335:. Her last words were "Oh Henry, if you only knew how we have suffered". As there was no lumber available, she was buried wrapped in a bedsheet. John, the oldest child, carved the words
225:. After five weeks on the trail Naomi gave birth to their seventh child, a girl named Henrietta. Due to the delivery, she was weakened and only slowly regained her strength.
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Matilda had five children by her first husband, who was a miner. After his death, she married Matthew Fultz, a farmer, by whom she had three more children. They lived in
510:. After the death of Fultz, she married a man named Delaney. She spent her later life with a daughter in California, where she died on April 13, 1928, at the age of 89.
565:. In the story line, the Sager orphans head to the Whitman mission after the death of both parents. They are assisted along the way by the famous frontier scout
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In 1837 Narcissa Whitman, aged 29, gave birth to a daughter, Alice Clarissa. Two years later, she was distracted for a moment and Alice drowned in the nearby
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out of a wooden headboard and thus marked the shallow grave. The children, the youngest three months and the oldest fourteen years, were left orphaned.
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Henry Sager was described as a "restless one" by his daughter, Catherine. Before 1844 he had moved his growing family three times. Starting in
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train ran out of food besides meat during the journey, and the Shaws split even their last loaf of bread with the Sager children.
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177:. In 1839 they settled on a farm in Platte County, Missouri. Sager also worked as a blacksmith. The couple decided to head for
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Catherine, Elizabeth, and Matilda Sager meet at the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Whitman massacre in November 1897.
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Henrietta, the baby, was severely ill at the time they reached the Whitman mission, and they did not expect her to survive.
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Native American tribes. The latter called it Waiilatpu (Why-ee-lat-poo, the 't' is half silent), which means "place of the
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carried west with an emigrant train swept through the Cayuse villages. In the cold and damp weather of November 1847 the
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In 1855, Elizabeth married farmer William Fletcher Helm and had nine children. She lived in
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The 1974 film ‘’Seven Alone’’ starring Stewart Petersen documents the Sager family story.
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played John and Francis Sager in the 1958 episode, "Head of the House", of the
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Catherine Carney Sager (born April 15, 1835, in Union County, Ohio)
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Elizabeth Marie Sager (born July 6, 1837, in Union County, Ohio)
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Whitman Mission. November 11, 1841. Accessed September 8, 2015.
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National Park Service - Whitman Mission National Historic Site
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Henrietta Naomi "Rosanna" Sager (born May 30, 1844, along the
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valley some of the travelers fell ill due to an outbreak of
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Diaries, Memoirs, Letters and Reports Along The Trails West
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Who were the Cayuse Five, hanged in Oregon City in 1850?
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Who were the Cayuse Five, hanged in Oregon City in 1850?
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Francis "Frank" Sager (born 1833 in Union County, Ohio)
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The Sager family at the beginning of their journey west
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The Cayuse were considerably more susceptible to the
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The children's names were (from oldest to youngest):
858:(Collection of historic sources of the Oregon Trail)
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the settlers brought with them. In the fall of 1847
252:, a famous landmark along the trail in what is now
846:Catherine Sager-Pringle: Across the Plains in 1844
537:is a fictionalized account of the Sager children.
475:The four remaining Sager orphans were brought to
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331:. She died 26 days after Henry near present-day
823:Stewart Petersen, ‘’Seven Alone’’ (1974) film.
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795:National Park Service – Whitman Mission NHS,
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134:Matilda Jane Sager (born October 6, 1839, in
811:Shallow Grave at Waiilatpu: The Sagers' West
295:On August 23, 1844, the wagon train reached
141:Hannah Louise "Louisa" Sager (born 1841 in
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697:, vol. 37, no. 4, 1936, pp. 354–360. JSTOR
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66:Learn how and when to remove this message
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29:This article includes a list of general
616:"The True Story of the Sagers", nps.gov
573:played the wagon master, Captain Shaw.
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693:“Letter of Catherine Sager Pringle.”
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501:, on July 19, 1925, at the age of 88.
232:Independence Rock State Historic Site
820:, Transcript of the PBS documentary.
299:, a high plains pass that is on the
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291:The deaths of Henry and Naomi Sager
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629:To Rev. Greene: November 11, 1841.
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35:it lacks sufficient corresponding
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828:The Whitman Massacre Trial: 1850
647:The Whitman Massacre Trial: 1850
118:John Carney Sager (born 1831 in
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901:People of the American Old West
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256:. It was the reminder that the
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303:. During the descent into the
208:At the end of April 1844, the
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407:. In early October 1844, the
797:The True Story of the Sagers
569:(Morgan Jones) (1928–2012).
327:of what is now southeastern
267:A few hours before reaching
260:were almost crossed and the
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876:public domain audiobook at
695:Oregon Historical Quarterly
508:Siskiyou County, California
353:Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
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708:Pringle, Catherine Sager.
664:, pp. 8-10, Public Library
660:Pringle, Catherine Sager.
598:Pringle, Catherine Sager.
463:After the Whitman massacre
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337:Naomi Carney Sager, age 37
873:Across the Plains in 1844
790:Across the Plains in 1844
788:Catherine Sager Pringle,
710:Across the Plains in 1844
662:Across the Plains in 1844
600:Across the Plains in 1844
136:Buchanan County, Missouri
712:, pp. 14, Public Library
765:Internet Movie Database
723:Morrow, Honoré (1946).
370:Walla Walla, Washington
161:Before the Oregon Trail
143:Platte County, Missouri
50:more precise citations.
757:"Head of the House on
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187:The Independent Colony
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452:Hudson's Bay Company
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244:on the banks of the
183:St. Joseph, Missouri
832:Raymond Rendleman,
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802:Mary Trotter Kion,
675:Rendleman, Raymond
645:Lansing, Ronald B.
212:, 300 people in 72
193:On the Oregon Trail
804:The Sagers go West
679:, Clackamus Review
649:, encyclopedia.com
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397:Walla Walla River
333:Twin Falls, Idaho
277:Independence Rock
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297:South Pass
104:Washington
31:references
450:from the
384:" in the
382:rye grass
374:Nez Percé
365:physician
878:LibriVox
818:The West
432:epidemic
424:diseases
376:and the
275:reached
254:Nebraska
167:Virginia
813:(1969).
783:Sources
428:measles
323:in the
285:granite
281:Wyoming
175:Indiana
44:improve
733:
542:actors
378:Cayuse
287:rock.
179:Oregon
154:Kansas
96:Marcus
33:, but
772:2018
731:ISBN
540:The
403:and
319:, a
171:Ohio
98:and
86:The
533:by
897::
763:.
685:^
637:^
608:^
588:^
555:,
459:.
189:.
806:.
799:.
792:.
774:.
761:"
745:.
156:)
145:)
138:)
122:)
69:)
63:(
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40:.
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