History
The true story
The Utter–Van Ornum Massacre was real. In September 1860, an emigrant wagon train of more than forty men, women, and children was attacked over several days near Castle Creek, along the Snake River in what is now southwestern Idaho — one of the deadliest emigrant disasters on the Oregon Trail. Of the family of twelve who set out with Emeline, she alone survived.
Emeline Trimble Fuller lived to tell it. Around 1885, from a quiet life in Wisconsin, she wrote her account as a letter to the Columbus Republican. It is from that letter — now in the public domain — that this film is drawn, faithful to what she saw, heard, and endured as a girl of thirteen.
What became of them
- The Van Ornum parents were killed pressing on toward the Malheur country; four of their children were carried into captivity.
- Reuben Van Ornum, a boy of about eight, was recovered by soldiers in 1862 — and years later chose to return to the Shoshone who had raised him.
- Emeline's brother Christopher, eleven, gave himself to the Indians' camp to keep the others fed. He did not come back.
- Emeline was carried to Fort Walla Walla by the soldiers who found her, and later to relatives in Oregon. She was thirteen.
