"Pa!" screamed Narcissa. "Help, Pa! It's a bear!"

Narcissa ran. The bear ran. Pa ran to get his gun.

Narcissa looked back. The bear was going the other way! Oh, my! Her brother wanted a bearskin rug. She tore off a piece of the honeycomb she was carrying and threw it back toward the bear. "That will keep you busy, Mr. Bear!" she cried.

The bear got the honey. Pa got the bear. Brother got his rug. And everyone said, "Brave girl, Narcissa!"

Narcissa was a brave girl and a jolly girl as well as a pretty one. She liked to have fun and she liked to do things. There was lots to do, even for little girls, in those pioneer days of the early nineteenth century, but to Narcissa most of it was fun.

It was fun to make dye–even when it ended with a squabble with her brother, and Narcissa in the dye pot with green hair! It was fun to go nutting, to try to spell down the other children at a spelling bee–and to make and wear the first pantalets in the community! It was fun to play school with her younger brothers and sisters, and teach them their letters.

Perhaps it was most fun to take care of babies—Narcissa loved babies. When she was quite little, she went through a dark, lonely wood to help a neighbor who was alone and sick with her tiny baby.

She enjoyed hooking a pretty rug, and making butter—Narcissa made her best butter when the missionaries to the Indians were coming. Perhaps it wasn't fun exactly to listen to their stories, but oh, it was interesting, and every word sank into Narcissa's loving heart! She knew that Indians could be savage and cruel, but they needed the Good News. They needed friends, teachers, doctors, nurses, who would show them how to be good neighbors to red men and white.

When people needed help, Narcissa just had to help them. Someday she was going to help the Indians.

And she did!

With her husband, Dr. Marcus Whitman, she took the long, hard journey over the Oregon Trail—it was the first time a white woman ever crossed the Rockies. Together they built their Mission, and the Indians could not have asked for better friends.

This is a story of Narcissa's childhood in her sturdy, self-help, frontier family in west-central New York. It is full of flavor as an apple from their orchard. It is told with a relish that renders it the best of reading for girls and boys. A new author makes a different and delightful contribution to the the Childhood of Famous Americans Series.

From the dust jacket