Told by the Pioneers - Washington Secretary of State

Told by the Pioneers
the massacre, and after being held at Umatilla for a time, was ransomed
at The Dalles. Through all her experiences she kept her cherished
Bible, which Mrs. Whitman had autographed. The Bible was
given to the daughter (Mrs. Sa,'age), who kept it until recently, when
she presented it to the Whitman College museum.
MA.Y SQCIRES
'Whitman County •
I was ten years old when my father decided that the grasshoppers
were making more headway in Kansas than the farmers could ever
hope to make. Some of our neighbors had come to Washington Territory
and had written back such glow.ing accounts that a group of us
loaded up the prairie schooners and set out across the plains in lR77,
leaving there on the 9th of May.
We drove mules and had no feed for them, so it was necessary to
leave the main trail and follow the grass. Father seldom laid down
his rifle. I remember that a child from the Missouri train died, and
the other men stood guard while father made the coffin. Then the
grave was dug and only the women and children stood by the grave,
the men standing guard at a little distance.
W'e saw several herds of buffalo, but the men never left the train.
Antelopes were near enough to be brought down by our hunters, so we
had plenty of fresh meat, prairie chickens and other wild fowl.
'Ve reached the Blue Mountains in August, and on arriving at Walla
Walla were out of provisions and money, so we stopped there and
father worked in the harvest fields. :Mother dried berries and fruit.
Then we came on to Whitman county, where our neighbors had located.
Father homesteaded here. There were claim shacks scattered
here and there, little one-room affairs. Single men got pretty homesick
and m\' mother made it as pleasant for them as she possibly could.
'We located in the district called "Thousand Springs Taylor,"
so named for the owner of the farm with the many springs. In 1878
we attended school in an old log house, then were transferred to the
Holbraok district, walking three and one-half miles over the bunch
grass hills morning and evening. Hattle Ta~'lor was our first teacher.
and Sandusky Collins taug-ht us the following year.
In 1880 we had a school at what is now Pullman, then called Three
Forks. This school was in a log house. Bessie Fullerton was our
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