Sager orphans
The Sager orphans (Sager Orphans, Sager Children) are the seven biological children of Naomi and Henry (Heinrich) Sager. The family set out for Oregon in April 1844 on a settler trek to start a better life in the then largely undeveloped western part of what is now the United States . The journey along the Oregon Trail cost both Naomi and Henry Sager their lives, leaving the seven children between the ages of 4 months and 13 years orphans . This and a number of other strokes of fate made the Sager orphans a synonym for the hardships and sufferings of the American settlers .
The names of the children were (starting with the oldest):
- John Carney Sager (born 1831 in Union County , Ohio )
- Francisco "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 )
- Hanna Louise "Louisa" Sager (born 1841 in Platte County , Missouri )
- Henrietta Marie "Rosanna" Sager (born May 30, 1844 on the Oregon Trail in what is now Kansas )
About ten years after arriving in Oregon, Catherine Sager, then in her twenties, began writing the story of her family and her journey west. Her records, which are still available today in the original from 1860, are considered to be one of the most authentic reports from the time of the great settlers' treks to the west.
The time before the Oregon Trail
Heinrich Sager was a restless man. Before 1843 he moved three times with his wife Naomi and their six children, always looking for more fertile and cheaper land. The family moved steadily westwards: starting from Virginia , they first went to Ohio , then to Indiana , until the family settled in Platte County, Missouri .
From there, the Sagers set out for Oregon in the fall of 1843, then largely undeveloped territory in the northwest of what is now the United States. In late fall, the St. Joseph, Missouri family reached one of the jump-off points on the Oregon Trail . At this point, Naomi Sager was already pregnant with her seventh child. The family stayed in St. Joseph through the winter. In March 1844, Heinrich Sager joined a group of settlers who called themselves Independent Colony (German: Independent Colony or Independent Settlers).
Out and about on the Oregon Trail
At the end of April 1844, the Independent Colony set out on the Oregon Trail with around 300 people and 72 covered wagons . The trek was led by Captain William Shaw, who was traveling with his wife Sally and six children. After five weeks on the trail, Naomi Sager gave birth to her seventh child, a girl. Although the birth went essentially well, Naomi Sager was severely weakened and only recovered very slowly. On July 4, 1844, the travelers celebrated on the banks of the Platte River to Independence .
A few days later, after the settlers first made contact with one of the huge herds of bison , they crossed the South Platte River . Crossing the shallow water seemed to go smoothly as the draft animals on the sagers' wagon passed as they left the river. The car overturned on the river bank and buried Naomi Sager, the newborn and the four other Sager girls under itself. While the girls were able to be rescued unharmed, Naomi suffered severe bruises. She had protected the toddler with her body.
At the end of July 1844, the trek passed Chimney Rock in what is now Nebraska , an important landmark on the Oregon Trail at the time , which said that the prairies were almost crossed and the Rocky Mountains Passage was imminent. A few hours before the trek reached Fort Laramie in what is now Wyoming , nine-year-old Catherine Sager, the eldest of the girls, jumped from the moving covered wagon with her dress hanging on the wagon wheel and was run over by it. She suffered multiple leg fractures , which would normally have been fatal under the medical and sanitary conditions during a trek. Thanks to the swift action of Henry Sager and the physician Dr. But Dagon's leg could be saved. In order to continue looking after Catherine, Dr. Dagon from now on with the Sagers.
Death of Henry and Naomi Sagers
After the Independent Colony to Independence Rock had happened in what is now Wyoming and some of the settlers had carved their names into the granite, the trek finally reached on 23 August 1844 South Pass , a pass in the Rocky Mountains, which is part of the Continental Divide of the United States is. A little later some of the settlers fell ill with Camp Fever (Eng. "Camp fever", presumably a Rickettsia infection), including Henry Sager.
After crossing the Green River , after two women and a child from the Independent Colony had already succumbed to the fever, it became clear that Henry Sager would not survive the night either. Shortly before his death, he asked Captain Shaw to take his wife and seven children to the then very famous mission station of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in what is now Washington state. Shaw gave him his word. Henry Sager died a little later. He was buried by his family in an improvised coffin on the banks of the Green River.
Since Naomi Sager, still not fully recovered from the birth of her youngest child and now also deeply shaken by grief and despair, was increasingly no longer able to take on the responsibility for her family, Dr. Dagon this loophole. The arduous onward journey along the Snake River in what is now Idaho , however, was too much for Naomi Sager: In addition to her debilitated condition, she also died, and near what is now Twin Falls , Idaho. Her last words are said to have been: “Oh Henry, if you only knew how we have suffered!” ( Eng. “Oh Henry, if you only knew how we suffered!”). She was raised by her two sons and Dr. Dagon, wrapped in a sheet, buried. The eldest son carved the words "Naomi Carney Sager, age 37" into a piece of wood and used them to mark the grave. The seven Sager children, between the ages of 4 months and 13 years, had become orphans.
The suggestion of some members of the trek to divide the Sager orphans to other families in the Independent Colony was opposed by Captain Shaw, because he wanted to keep his word . The children should be brought to the Whitman Mission together. In order to care for the youngest daughter Rosanna, Dr. Dagon took breast milk from other nursing mothers on the trek every day and gave it to the toddler.
The years with the Whitmans
During the onward journey, one of the Sagers' draft animals perished. Since the other ox couldn't pull the heavy wagon alone, Captain Shaw decided to convert the covered wagon into a two-wheeled cart . As a result, almost all the family heirlooms had to be left behind, which was another major loss for the children.
In early October 1844, the Independent Colony finally reached the Whitman Mission. Narcissa Whitman had a baby daughter, Alice Clarissa, of her own in 1837 at the age of 29. However, at the age of two, the toddler drowned in the nearby Walla Walla River when Narcissa was inattentive for a moment. The young woman could not cope with this loss for a long time. But other children needed their help. Within a few years, Narcissa had custody of four children, including the Mountain Men ( Trapper ) daughters Joe Meek and Jim Bridger . When the Sager orphans arrived at the mission, after initial hesitation it quickly became clear that these seven children would also stay with Narcissa. As early as July 1845, Marcus Whitman reached a court order according to which custody of the seven children passed to him and Narcissa. The Sager orphans had found a new mother and a new father.
Death of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
Dr. Marcus Whitman , a doctor and Protestant missionary , founded the station in 1837 with a group of other missionaries in the Walla Walla Valley, at the northern end of the Blue Mountains. It was in the tribal area of the Nez-Percé and the Cayuse Indians. The latter called the settlement Waiilatpu , which translates as "land of rye grass". While Marcus took care of medical care and agricultural instruction for the Indians, Narcissa opened a school. The initially peaceful coexistence between the missionaries and the Indians was, however, in an unstable state of equilibrium, which slowly began to overturn in 1847, three years after the arrival of the Sager orphans. A number of reasons led to growing suspicions and incipient hostilities.
The number of settlers passing through had increased from year to year. With them came diseases against which the local Indians had no defenses. In the autumn of 1847, a train of settlers that passed through brought the measles in . During the damp, cold weather of November 1847, the epidemic peaked among both the missionaries and the Cayuse. But while the whites recovered relatively quickly, adults and children died in unimaginable numbers among the Indians. More than half the Cayuse people fell victim to the epidemic.
On November 29, 1847, the catastrophic situation erupted into violence. A drifter named Joe Lewis saw possible unrest between the Indians and the whites as a prospect of stealing valuables from the mission station. He told the Cayuse that Marcus Whitman only cured the whites of the disease and poisoned the Cayuse. This explanation seemed to confirm the picture the Indians had of the course of the epidemic. Together with Indians from the Umatilla tribe , the Cayuse attacked the Whitman mission under the leadership of the five Indians Tiloukaikt, Tomahas, Kiamsumpkin, Iaiachalakis and Klokomas.
The Whitman massacre ended with the deaths of 14 mission members. The dead included both John and Frank Sager and Narcissa and Marcus Whitman. The surviving Sager children were orphans for the second time.
Another 54 women and children were captured and held hostage in the massacre, including Helen Mar Meek, Mary Ann Bridger and all of the surviving Sager orphans. The health of the white measles sufferers deteriorated rapidly while in captivity. The five people who died while in captivity with the Cayuse also included Helen Mar Meek and Hannah Louise Sager.
One month after the Whitman massacre, on December 29, 1847, Peter Skene Ogden , a fur trader for the Hudson's Bay Company , arranged for the 49 surviving hostages to be released in exchange for 62 blankets, 63 cotton shirts, 24 rifles, 600 cartridges and seven pounds Tobacco. All survivors were taken to Fort Vancouver .
The time after the Whitman massacre
From then on, family life was over for the Sager orphans. The girls were placed in the care of four different families and grew up separately from one another. All four Sager girls married young.
- Rosanna had no children. She died at the age of 26 from a stray bullet from a criminal.
- Matilda gave birth to eight children. She lived in the house of one of her daughters in California until her death on April 13, 1928, at the age of 89 .
- Elizabeth had nine children. She lived in Portland, Oregon , where she died on July 19, 1925 at the age of 88.
- Catherine, then the oldest survivor of the Sager orphans, had eight children. She lived in Spokane, Washington with her husband . Ten years after arriving in Oregon, Catherine Sager began writing the story of her family and their fateful journey west. She hoped to earn enough money to start an orphanage in memory of Narcissa Whitman, whom she admired. However, she never found a publisher for her story. Catherine Sager died on August 10, 1910 at the age of 75.
Catherine Sager's children and grandchildren kept the records. Catherine Sager's story is now considered to be one of the most authentic reports from the time of the great settlers' treks west.
In 1897, 50 years after the Whitman massacre, more than 3,000 people attended a memorial service on the grounds of the former mission station. The guests of honor included Catherine Sager-Pringle, Elizabeth Sager-Helm and Matilda Sager-Delaney, the last surviving Sager orphans.
Aftermath
In 1949 the Dutch writer An Rutgers processed the story of the Sager children from the beginning of their journey to their arrival at the Whitmans in her book “ The Children's Caravan ”.
Web links
- Catherine Sager-Pringle: Across the Plains in 1844
- The Oregon Trail (collection of historical sources on the Oregon Trail)
- http://www.over-land.com/diaries.html Large catalog of online diaries and records of settlers, pioneers and emigrants
- The True Story of the Sagers National Park Service - Whitman Mission National Historic Site
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- Catherine Sager-Pringle Across the Plains in 1844
- National Park Service - Whitman Mission NHS, The True Story of the Sagers
- Mary Trotter Kion The Sagers go West
- Ken Burns The West , Transscript of the PBS documentary