A Survivor's Recollections of the Whitman Massacre

by Matilda Sager

We were directed to cook a supply of food as provision for the trip. Fifty Nez Perce warriors escorted the Spalding family through the hostile country and an Indian brought Miss Bewley to the immigrant house where the rest of us were. They took us down to Fort Walla Walla in ox wagons. Among other things which I remember we left behind was a pair of pigeons the Canfield family had brought with them from Iowa. The cage was set in the window on leaving, the door knocked off, and the pigeons were still sitting in their cage—the last glimpse we had of them. After we had been some time on our way, an Indian woman came out of her lodge and motioned for us to go fast—and we did! It seemed that some of the Indians regretted their bargain and wanted to take us all prisoners again. This woman knew they might soon attempt to do so. I was in the last wagon to arrive. We could see the wagons ahead of us going into the Fort gates when they were opened and it seemed as if ours would never get there; but when the last one came up "pel mel" and we were safe inside, the Indians concluded it was too late to make an attack and capture us again. The day they were to receive the goods promised for our release, we were put into rooms out of sight of the Indians and told to remain there. Of course the Indians were inside the fort grounds that day, and McBaine was afraid they might repent the agreement to give us up and try to take us captive again. Mr. Ogden made the speech and delivered the goods and as soon as possible they were gotten away from the Fort. But they would not let the Indian boy go. The Hudson's Bay men claimed him as belonging rightfully to them. "He didn't belong to the Doctor," they said, "but had Indian blood in him." The last I ever saw of him he was standing on the bank of the river crying as though his heart were breaking as his friends floated away from him. He was about six years old. There were three boats that started down the river the day we left the Fort, eight oarsmen to a boat, and we pulled out into the stream pretty fast once we started. Indians were along the bank riding and talking, and it was necessary to travel fast. At night we landed and camped. It was cold, windy and sandy. Our belongings were left for the settlers to bring down in the spring, though, of course, we children had little to concern ourselves about. Before we left the Mission Mrs. Sanders had told one of the chiefs that the Doctor's children had no clothes—that everything was gone. "No clothes, no blankets, no nothing," so he went over to the other house and brought a comfort and gave that to my oldest sister and gave me a thin quilt and my other sister a blanket or quilt. It was the custom in those days to quilt so fine; I mean, with the stitching very close and usually the quilts were made of two pieces of cloth and a thin layer of cotton batting between. My quilt got afire on our trip down the river and most of it was burned. The chief also got us a few undergarments of Mrs. Whitman's.

Mr. Spalding looked after us on the trip and Mr. Stanley, who went along also, took especial pains to care for us. He would do all he could to make the hardships a little easier to bear, taking pains to wrap us up when in the boat and to see that we got to camp and back to the boat securely. When we got to Vancouver, Mr. Stanley bought some calico to make each of us a dress. I think my portion was five yards and they made me a dress and bonnet out of it after I went to Mrs. Geiger's. I do not know what we would have done without Mr. Stanley. He was so good and kind to us and Mr. Ogden was very kind, too.

We had to make two portages. Once the men had to take the boats entirely out of the water and carry them around on their shoulders and let them down the steep banks with ropes, while we carried the provisions and such small belongings as we were allowed to take with us. We finally came to Memmaloo's island, which Mr. Stanley told us was the Indian burying ground. It took us about eight days to go down the Columbia river. As we traveled, we came to a place they called St. Helens, then to another called Linn City and on to Fort Vancouver. We staid over Sunday there and the Spalding family was entertained at the Post by Mr. Ogden and James Douglas and finally we were taken to Portland. Some of the volunteers were on the bank of the Willamette river and the Governor was also standing there as we rowed up. Mr. Ogden went to the Governor, shook hands and said to him, "Here are the prisoners and now I will turn them over to you. I have done all I could." He also asked that we be taken to Oregon City, which was agreed upon and later, done. Some of the volunteers were camped across the river and when they saluted the boats we children thought we were going to be shot. Captain Gilliam, a brother-in-law of the Captain Shaw who was our protector on the plains after our own father and mother had died, rowed across the river and asked which were the Sager children and on our being pointed out to him, shook hands with us. Some of our forlorn party had friends to meet them and Governor Abernathy kept the others until places were found for them.

I remember going to Dr. McLaughlin's house in Oregon City. Mr. Stanley had a room there and was painting portraits and he came to take us down to see his pictures. He wanted to paint my picture, but I was entirely too timid and would not let him. We enjoyed the pictures, however. When we came down stairs Dr. McLaughlin and his son-in-law, Mr. Ray, were in the lower room. As we came down stairs the Doctor, thinking to play a little practical joke, locked the door on us and told us we were prisoners again and, of course, we were frightened almost to death. When he found that he had frightened us, he assured us he was just fooling and let us go. We took everything in earnest and were afraid of white people as well as the Indians. One can hardly realize at this day, in what a tortured state our nerves were.

[Twenty-Eight][OREGON CITY—AFTER THE MASSACRE]

My father was born in Virginia, had lived in Ohio, then in Indiana. Both father and mother dying on the way to Oregon and the two oldest members of the family then remaining, having been cruelly torn from us by the massacre, we girls had little knowledge of any relatives in the East, save that they lived somewhere in Ohio. Time rolled on. My oldest sister made her home with the Rev. William and Mrs. Roberts until she married. Mr. Roberts was a Methodist minister. His sons, in writing a letter to their grandparents in New Jersey, told of their father and mother taking an orphan girl by the name of Catherine Sager to live with them. An extract of this letter was published in the Advocate and was read by an uncle of mine, who, seeing the name of Catherine Sager and knowing that his brother Henry had a daughter by that name, wrote a letter and addressed it to "Miss Catherine Sager, Somewhere in Oregon." He gave it to a man who was crossing the plains; he carried it some months and finally put it in a postoffice near Salem, Oregon, and the postmaster gave it to my sister. In that way we found our relatives.

I was with the Spaldings for, I think, four months, and I attended Mrs. Thornton's private school in the Methodist church. Then Mr. Spalding decided to go and live in Forest Grove and the Rev. Mr. Griffin and Mr. Alvin T. Smith came with their ox teams and moved us out.

Miss Mary Johnson came to the Whitmans in '45, wintered there and went to the Spalding's mission in '46 and was there at the time of the massacre and came down the river with us. She came with the Spalding family to Forest Grove when we moved. We were taken to the Smith home until the Spalding family could get a house and settle down.

It was decided, however, that I should go and live with Mr. and Mrs. Geiger, living on a farm adjoining the Smith's. The Geigers were a young married couple without children. Mr. Geiger came on horseback after me the day after we reached the Smiths, but I cried so hard at the prospect of leaving Mary Johnson that he went away without me. A day or so later he came back again and still I would not go, but clung to Mary. It seemed to me she was my only friend. The third time he came, I had to go and all my belongings were tied up in a little bundle. A large bandana handkerchief would have held them all. I rode behind him. His home was a one-room log house with a fireplace to cook by. I took up my life there, lonely and isolated. The nearest neighbor was a mile away. Life was primitive. If the fire was not carefully covered to keep the coals alive, we would have to go to a neighbor's to borrow fire. There were no matches in the country and sometimes I would be sent a mile across the prairie to bring fire on a shovel from the neighbor's. If there were no coals, the flint and steel had to be used and if that was not successful we would have to do without. It was not always possible to obtain dry sticks in order to make the flint and steel serve their purpose. Supplies were to be had only from the Hudson Bay Posts, for people had had to leave most of their things behind in crossing the plains. That summer a baby came to the home of the Geiger's and I had to take care of it and a good deal of the time be nurse and help with the housework. I had been taught to sew and iron and repair my own clothes and must have been a really helpful young person. In the fall of '48 discovery of gold in California made a great change. All were eager to go to the gold mines. Mr. Geiger got the gold fever and moved us away up to his father-in-law's, the Rev. J. Cornwall. This family had moved onto the place in the spring and had just a log cabin to house a large family. They did not raise much of a crop the first year and Mr. Cornwall traveled around and preached over the valley most of the time. That fall he took a band of sheep in the valley and the winter being very hard, a good many of them died and his wife had to card and spin wool, knit socks and sell them to the miners at a dollar a pair in order to help make the living. She knit all the time and a part of my work was to help pull the wool off the dead sheep and wash it and get it ready for her to use. We had to carry water quite a distance from the river, as it seemed that many of the early settlers of Oregon had a great habit of building as far from the river as possible, so we children would have more to do to pack the water and stamp the clothes with our feet. We wintered there and in the spring Mrs. Gieger, baby and I went to their farm thirty-five miles down into the valley to look after some of their belongings, as the Rev. Spalding, who had wintered there, had gone to a house of his own. Mr. Geiger returned unexpectedly from California, went up to get their things left on the Yamhill, and we settled down on the farm and life went on. I didn't attend school that year, for there was no school. The Reverend Eels came down in the spring of 50 to teach private school. I went three months, walking three and a half miles each way. Mr. Geiger paid five dollars for three months' schooling.

There were large herds of Mexican cattle owned in the valley and they would chase everything except someone on horseback. Everyone owned a few of the domestic cattle with them and they proved very useful, as the tame cattle stood guard until the others were chased away. I was in continual fear of being chased by them. They would lie down to watch you all day and I would skirt along in the bushes, working my way along tremblingly to get out and away to school without their seeing me. If these long-horned Spanish cattle chased a person up a tree they would lie under the tree all day on guard. Wolves chased the cattle, trying to get the little calves. Pigs would have to be bedded right up against the house on account of the coyotes and wolves.