01Biography
Catherine Sager was nine when her family left Missouri for Oregon in the spring of 1844, in Captain William Shaw's company. On August 1 her dress caught as she climbed out of the moving wagon, and a wheel crushed her leg. A German doctor in the train set it, and she spent the rest of the journey in the wagon. Her father died of fever on the Green River, and less than a month later her mother died too, leaving seven children.
In October 1844 Captain Shaw persuaded Marcus Whitman to take all seven into the mission at Waiilatpu, and Catherine grew close to Narcissa Whitman. When the mission was attacked on November 29, 1847, the Whitmans and her brothers John and Francis were among the 13 killed. Catherine and her sisters were held captive for a month.
02Why they matter
Her memoir is the main firsthand account of the Sager family's crossing and of daily life at the Whitman mission, written by a girl who lived through both.
03How they died
Catherine married Clark Pringle, a Methodist minister, in October 1851, and they raised eight children. She died in Spokane, Washington, in August 1910, aged 75.
04Legacy
Her account appeared in S. A. Clarke's Pioneer Days of Oregon History in 1905 and is still read today as Across the Plains in 1844. The novel On to Oregon! (1926) and the film Seven Alone (1974) are looser retellings of the Sager story.