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The Sagers Go West, part 17

© Mary Trotter Kion

The sorrowful days passed for the prisoners. Christmas came, and passed. Then to relief of everyone word came by courier that they were to be released. Peter Skene Ogden, of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, had purchased with his own funds enough goods to buy the captives' release. Being allowed to take one small bundle of clothing and one blanket the remaining Sager children and all of the other captives were loaded into the three wagons that had not been destroyed. Their destination was Fort Walla Walla, some twenty-five miles away. From there they would continue on to Fort Vancouver.

Even though the memory of the tragedy would surly remain in their hearts and minds for the remainder of their lives, the remaining four Sager children were now free. But the four girls would never again know the comfort of living together again. Oregon settlers were mostly poor. It was a struggle just to make a living for their own families, much less to take in four orphans and provide for them as well. The four girls went to separate homes. Whenever there was a chance they each went to school. They worked had as all settlers on any frontier must. Sometimes life was hard, as they had already learned it could be. Other times life was good. All four Sager girls married young.

Henrietta Sager, the youngest, had no children and died at the age of twenty-six. She had been mistakenly shot by an outlaw in a mining town where she and her husband were living.

Catherine and Matilda Sager both married and each had eight children. Elizabeth Sager married and had nine children.

Ten years after coming to Oregon Catherine wrote an account of the Sager family's journey west. She hoped that, in time, the book might be published and earn enough money to set up an orphanage in the memory of Narcissa Whitman. Catherine, unfortunately, never was able to find a publisher. But her children and her grandchildren saved her account and cherished it. Catherine Sager's story is now one of the most authentic sources of information concerning this episode in America's history.

Catherine, who married Clark Pringle, lived well into old age. She and her husband spent their later years at the home of their youngest child, Lucia Pringle Collins, in Spokane, Washington. Catherine Sager Pringle died August 10, 1910. She was seventy-five years old.

Elizabeth died on July 19, 1925, in Portland, Oregon, a few days after her eighty-eighth birthday.

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