312 Documents. The unthinking mind may value too lightly the emigrant to west of the Rocky mountains, but like the pioneers in the Mississippi valley, they are laying up for their posterity a treasure and a name engraven upon the everlasting tablets of their country's recollection. Even upon the top of the highest mountains of Switzerland the proud bard of England sung of the immortality of "Gen. Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky," and other generations are destined to read to some mighty Daniel in the farthest west that which will add to the galaxy of heroes already departed. Independence, Mo., February 15, 1847. Appointment of Dr. Marcus Whitman as Guardian of the Sager Children. (While examining the earliest probate records of Clackamas county, Oregon, recently, I found the following relating to the appointment of Dr. Marcus Whitman as guardian of the Sager children, the parents of whom died on the plains in the summer of 1844, while on the way to Oregon. Capt. William Shaw and his wife, notwithstanding they had a large family of their own, took charge of the seven orphan children, and provided for them as best they could until the Whitman Sta- tion, near Walla Walla, Washington, was reached, and placed them in the care of Dr. Whitman and wife, who took care of them until the fearful massacre of November 29-30, 1847, occurred. Then Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve others were killed and fifty-three women and children taken prisoners, from which condition they were rescued through the instru- mentality of Peter Skene Ogden, the head of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver. — George H. Himes, Assist- ant Secretary, Oregon Historical Society.) Klackamas District, 3d June, 1845. J- W. Nesmith, Judge. Now on this day came Marcus Whitman, of this district, and represents as follows : That Henry Sager, late of the State of
