The Sager orphans (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, taking the Oregon Trail. During the journey both Henry and Naomi died, leaving their seven children orphaned. Later adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, they were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents, as well as brothers John and Francis Sager, were killed during the Whitman massacre 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.
The children's names were (from oldest to youngest): John Carney Sager (born 1831 in Union County, Ohio) Francis "Frank" Sager (born 1833 in Union County, Ohio) Catherine Carney Sager (born April 15, 1835, in Union County, Ohio) Elizabeth Marie Sager (born July 6, 1837, in Union County, Ohio) Matilda Jane Sager (born October 6, 1839, in Buchanan County, Missouri) Hannah Louise "Louisa" Sager (born 1841 in Platte County, Missouri) Henrietta Naomi "Rosanna" Sager (born May 30, 1844, along the Oregon Trail in present-day Kansas)
Before the Oregon Trail Henry Sager was described as a "restless one" by his daughter, Catherine. Before 1844 he had moved his growing family three times. Starting in Virginia they moved to Ohio, and later to Indiana. In 1839 they settled on a farm in Platte County, Missouri. Sager also worked as a blacksmith. The couple decided to head for Oregon, which Naomi thought had a more healthful climate. In late autumn 1843, they sold the farm and moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, a jump-off point for the Oregon Trail, where they stayed the winter. By then Naomi was pregnant with her seventh child.Pringle, Catherine Sager. Across the Plains in 1844, Public Library In March 1844 Henry joined a group of pioneers who called themselves The Independent Colony.
On the Oregon Trail
At the end of April 1844, the Independent Colony, 300 people in 72 covered wagons, crossed the Missouri River and started out on the journey along the Oregon Trail."The True Story of the Sagers", nps.gov 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 Weston, Missouri. 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.
On July 4, 1844, the Independent Colony celebrated Independence Day on the banks of the Platte River. 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 Chimney Rock, a famous landmark along the trail in what is now Nebraska. It was the reminder that the Great Plains were almost crossed and the Rocky Mountains lay right ahead.
A few hours before reaching Fort Laramie, 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 Independent Colony reached Independence Rock in present-day Wyoming, where some of the travelers carved their names into the granite rock.
The deaths of Henry and Naomi Sager On August 23, 1844, the wagon train reached South Pass, a high plains pass that is on the Continental Divide. During the descent into the Green River valley some of the travelers fell ill due to an outbreak of camp fever. 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.
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 Marcus Whitman, a missionary in the Walla Walla Valley of what is now southeastern Washington. She died 26 days after Henry near present-day Twin Falls, Idaho. 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 Naomi Carney Sager, age 37 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.
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 train ran out of food besides meat during the journey, and the Shaws split even their last loaf of bread with the Sager children.
Henrietta, the baby, was severely ill at the time they reached the Whitman mission, and they did not expect her to survive.
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
Marcus was a physician 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 present day city of Walla Walla, Washington, it was in the territory of both the Nez Percé and the Cayuse Native American tribes. The latter called it Waiilatpu (Why-ee-lat-poo, the 't' is half silent), which means "place of the rye grass" in the Cayuse language. Marcus farmed and provided medical care, while Narcissa set up a school for the Native American children.
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.Whitman, Marcus. To Rev. Greene: November 11, 1841. Whitman Mission. November 11, 1841. Accessed September 8, 2015. Other major sources of tension were that the Whitmans tried to prevent the Cayuse from spending time in their Mission House resulting in them providing lower quality medical care for the Cayuse than they 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.
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 Walla Walla River, 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 Joseph Meek and Jim Bridger. In early October 1844, the Independent Colony reached the Whitman Mission, 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.
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 ill treatment.
The Cayuse were considerably more susceptible to the diseases the settlers brought with them. In the fall of 1847 measles carried west with an emigrant train swept through the Cayuse villages. In the cold and damp weather of November 1847 the epidemic 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 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.Lansing, Ronald B. The Whitman Massacre Trial: 1850, encyclopedia.com
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.