author
Matilda Sager
1839–1928
Raised amid one of the Oregon Trail’s most tragic stories, this survivor later turned her memories into a firsthand account of the Whitman massacre. Her writing preserves the voice of someone who lived through loss, migration, and a turning point in the history of the American West.
1 Audiobook
A Survivor's Recollections of the Whitman Massacre
by Matilda Sager
About the author
Born in 1839, she was one of the Sager orphans, a group of seven siblings whose parents died while traveling west on the Oregon Trail. She and her brothers and sisters were later taken in by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman at Waiilatpu Mission in what is now Washington.
As a child, she survived the 1847 Whitman massacre, an event that became central to the history of the Pacific Northwest. Decades later, she wrote A Survivor's Recollections of the Whitman Massacre, published in 1920, offering a rare firsthand narrative of the journey west, life at the mission, and the attack that changed her life.
She is often identified as Matilda J. Sager Delaney in historical records. Her memoir remains the work she is best known for, valued for its personal window into the Oregon Trail era and the experiences of the Sager family.