Even had she not had the unfortunate fate of being a witness and survivor of the Whitman Massacre in 1847, Matilda Delaney's life was full of adventure from beginning to end. In this rare volume, she left her account of that tragic event in the pioneer west.Only a child when her parents headed west in 1844, she and her siblings were orphans before they reached Washington. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman adopted and cared for them at the Whitman Mission until the sad day in 1847 when Matilda witnessed their murders.Married at sixteen, she went on to a life that she describes in this memoir, published shortly after her death. Three times widowed, she raised a large brood of children, was an entrepreneur, and a noted pioneer of Washington Territory. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the westward expansion that changed the country forever.