As she is the protagonist, the text follows Sarah’s progress into Connecticut and the foundation she helps to lay for her family’s move to that colony from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At age eight, Sarah volunteers to go with her father to be his cook and his company, and her mother warns her that she will need to “keep up” her courage to be successful. Though Sarah fears the wild animals that live in the woods as well as the Indigenous peoples she and her father will encounter, she constantly reminds herself to be brave, and she takes steps that help her maintain her courage, such as keeping her fur-lined cloak nearby and reading her Bible.

Sarah is a dynamic, round character who undergoes a significant change in her worldview as well as her relationship with her native English culture, both changes directly resulting from her exposure to people she initially views as wholly different from herself. Having been raised by a mother who views Indigenous peoples as “savage” and frightened by inaccurate descriptions of Schaghticoke behavior by other white English children, Sarah’s primary response to the Schaghticoke is fear, even though they never offer a threat to her or her family.