The Story of Caty Sage

January 15, 2021·35 min·3 clips

"The man who kidnapped me did me no harm. He sold me to a group of Cherokee who treated me like a princess."

1. Real Stories Podcast hosts Graham and Brian tell the true story of Katie Sage, a girl kidnapped from Virginia in 1792 who was later found living among the Wyandotte in Ohio and Kansas. 2. Graham narrates the story throughout the episode while Brian asks questions and adds historical context about their home region, Wyandotte County, Ohio. 3. The episode's core hook is a decades-old local mystery: how a kidnapped five-year-old ended up married to two prominent Wyandotte chiefs before being found by her family 56 years later. 4. Katie Sage was five years old in 1792, living with her parents and brother Charles in a frontier cabin on Elk Creek in what was then western Virginia. 5. While her mother boiled laundry water by the creek and her father and brother hunted nearby, Katie vanished without a trace, prompting a valley-wide search. 6. The only lead was a horse thief who had attempted to steal horses from a neighboring farm the week before and was seen fleeing the area. 7. Katie's father never recovered from the loss and consulted a fortune teller who told him he would never see his daughter again but that she was alive. 8. The horse thief had kidnapped Katie for money and sold her to a group of Cherokee, who eventually gave her as a gift to the Wyandotte near Upper Sandusky, Ohio, around 1796. 9. Katie learned the Wyandotte language, took the name Yarlaquins, and eventually married Chief Tarhe, one of the most significant Wyandotte leaders in the region's history. 10. After Tarhe's death, she married Between the Logs, a Methodist preacher who spread Christianity in the Wyandotte language. 11. In 1843 the Wyandotte were forcibly removed from Upper Sandusky, marching through Ohio before relocating to a reservation in Kansas. 12. Around 1848 to 1850, Katie's brother Charles, now a merchant trading with Native Americans in Kansas, was told by an Indian agent that a woman resembling him lived on the Wyandotte reservation. 13. Charles traveled to meet her; she no longer spoke English, and her identity was confirmed by a childhood burn scar and a birthmark on her lower back. 14. Katie, elderly and nearly blind, told Charles she had no interest in returning to Virginia despite his insistence. 15. She explained that her kidnapper had done her no harm, that the Cherokee treated her like royalty, and that she had lived a life married to two of the most significant Wyandotte leaders known. 16. Katie died five years after the reunion of pneumonia, having chosen to remain with the Wyandotte community for the rest of her life. 17. The hosts periodically break from the narrative to discuss local landmarks named after Tarhe and to caution listeners about cultural sensitivity in retelling Native American history. 18. The tone is casual and conversational, with the hosts drinking beer, joking, and citing specific historical sources like an 1871 Abingdon, Virginia newspaper article and genealogical books. 19. Listeners interested in local Ohio and Virginia history, Native American history, or true frontier stories would enjoy this episode. 20. Listeners seeking polished, tightly edited narration rather than a casual two-host conversational format may find the tangents distracting.

As heard by us

A kidnapped child becomes a woman who chooses the life she made over the home she lost.

Real Stories Podcast follows Katie Sage from her childhood kidnapping in 1792 Virginia to the Wyandot community where she made a life so rooted that returning home no longer felt like the obvious ending.

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Why you'd press play

Press play when a little-known kidnapping story turns into a sharper question about where home finally belongs.

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