Donner Party
Encyclopedia
The Donner Party was a group of American pioneer
s who set out for California
in a wagon train
. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism
to survive, eating those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness.
The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed by following a new route called the Hastings Cutoff
, which crossed Utah
's Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert
. The rugged terrain and difficulties later encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River
, in present-day Nevada
, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons and contributed to divisions within the group.
By the beginning of November 1846 the group had reached the Sierra Nevada where they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee (now Donner
) Lake, high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from Sacramento, California, attempted to reach the emigrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Forty-eight of the 87 members of the party survived to reach Sacramento.
Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in Californian history and in the record of western migration.
, a philosophy that asserted the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belonged to Americans and they should settle it. Most wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail
route from Independence, Missouri
, to the Continental Divide
, traveling at about 15 miles (24.1 km) a day on a journey that usually took between 4 and 6 months. The trail generally followed rivers to South Pass
, a mountain pass
in Wyoming relatively easy for wagons to negotiate. From there, wagon trains had a choice of routes to their destination.
An early emigrant named Lansford W. Hastings
had gone to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To entice settlers he published a guide for pioneers titled The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. He described a direct route across the Great Basin
, which would bring emigrants through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert
. Hastings had not traveled any part of his proposed shortcut until early 1846, on a trip from California to Fort Bridger
. The fort—a scant supply station run by Jim Bridger
and his partner Pierre Louis Vasquez—was located in Blacks Fork
, Wyoming. Hastings stayed at the fort to persuade travelers to turn south on his route. As of 1846, Hastings was the second of two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert and neither had been accompanied by wagons.There are no written records of native tribes having crossed the desert, nor did the emigrants mention any trails in this region. (Rarick, p. 69)
The most difficult part of the journey to California was the last 100 miles (160.9 km), across the Sierra Nevada. This mountain range contains 500 distinct peaks over 12000 feet (3,657.6 m) high, and the eastern side of the range is extremely steep. The mountains' height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean mean they receive more snow than most other ranges in North America. Timing was crucial to ensure that after leaving the civilization of Missouri to cross the vast wilderness to Oregon or California, wagon trains would not be bogged down by mud created by spring rains, or by massive snowdrifts in the mountains from September onwards, and that their horses and oxen would have enough spring grass to eat.
was originally from North Carolina, but had gradually moved west to Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas. In early 1846, he was a 62-year-old farmer in Springfield, Illinois
. Donner brought his 44-year-old wife Tamsen and five daughters ranging in age from three to 13. Donner's older brother Jacob also joined the party, along with his wife, two teenage stepsons, and five children, the eldest of whom was nine.
James F. Reed
was a wealthy Irish immigrant who settled in Illinois in 1831. His wife Margret, daughters Patty and Virginia, sons James and Thomas, and his mother-in-law Sarah Keyes traveled with him. Keyes was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis
, and died on May 28; she was buried by the side of the trail. The Reeds hoped that the climate in the West would help Margret, who had long been sickly. Reed had built an ornate, custom-designed, and unusually large wagon for his family, which Virginia later described as the "Pioneer palace car", likening it to the railroad "palace cars", or luxury carriages. Equipped with a spring seats and a stove, it took eight oxen to pull it. They were accompanied by several young men hired to drive the oxen, and a hired girl.
Within a week of leaving Independence, the Reeds and Donners joined up with a group of 50 wagons nominally led by William H. Russell. By June 16, the company had traveled 450 miles (724.2 km), with 200 miles (321.9 km) to go before Fort Laramie, Wyoming
. They had been delayed by rain and a rising river, but Tamsen Donner wrote to a friend in Springfield, "indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started."Tamsen Donner's letters were printed in the Springfield Journal in 1846. (McGlashan, p. 24) Young Virginia Reed recalled years later that during the first part of the trip she was "perfectly happy".
Several other families joined the wagon train along the way. Levinah Murphy, a widow, headed a family of 13, including her five adolescent children and two married daughters with their families. The Eddy family was headed by a young man with a wife and small child. Patrick Breen brought along his wife Peggy and seven children, all but the youngest of whom were boys. A 40-year-old bachelor named Patrick Dolan camped with the Breens, and a general animal handler named Antonio also came along. Lewis Keseberg, a German immigrant, joined with his wife and daughter; a son was born on the trail. Two young single men named Spitzer and Reinhardt traveled with another German couple, the Wolfingers, who also had a hired driver, "Dutch Charley" Burger. An older man, a Belgian immigrant named Hardkoop, rode with them. Luke Halloran, a young man who seemed to get sicker with tuberculosis every day, was passed from family to family, as none could spare the time or resources to care for him.
To promote his new route, Hastings sent riders to deliver letters to traveling emigrants. On July 12, the Reeds and Donners were given one of these letters. Hastings warned the emigrants that they could expect opposition from the Mexican authorities in California, and advised them therefore to band together in large groups. He also claimed to have "worked out a new and better road to California", and said he would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide the emigrants along the new cutoff.
At the Little Sandy River, the larger wagon train opted to follow the established trail via Fort Hall
. A smaller group, which opted to head for Fort Bridger, now needed a leader. Most of the younger males in the group were European immigrants and not considered to be ideal leaders. James Reed, who had been living in the U.S. for a considerable time, was older and had military experience, but his autocratic attitude had rubbed many in the party the wrong way, and they saw him as aristocratic, imperious, and ostentatious. By comparison, the mature, experienced, American-born Donner's peaceful and charitable nature made him the group's first choice.
Edwin Bryant, a journalist, reached Blacks Fork a week ahead of the Donner Party. He saw the first part of the trail, and was concerned that it would be difficult for the wagons in the Donner group, especially with so many women and children. He returned to Blacks Fork to leave letters warning several members of the group not to take the shortcut. By the time the Donner Party reached Blacks Fork on July 27 Hastings had already left, leading the 40 wagons of the Harlan-Young group. Jim Bridger
, whose trading post would fare substantially better if people used the Hastings Cutoff
, told the party that the shortcut was a smooth trip, devoid of rugged country and hostile Indians, and would therefore shorten their journey by 350 miles (563.3 km). Water would be easy to find along the way, although a couple of days crossing a 30–40 mi (48.3–64.4 km) dry lake bed would be necessary. Reed was very impressed with this information, and advocated for the Hastings Cutoff. None of the party received Bryant's letters warning them to avoid Hastings' route at all costs; in his diary account, Bryant states his conviction that Bridger deliberately concealed the letters, a view shared by Reed in his later testimony.At Fort Laramie, Reed met an old friend named James Clyman who was coming from California. Clyman warned Reed not to take the Cutoff, telling him that wagons would not be able to make it and that Hastings' information was inaccurate. (Rarick, p. 47) J. Quinn Thornton traveled part of the way with Donner and Reed, and in his book From Oregon and California in 1848 declared Hastings the "Baron Munchausen of travelers in these countries". (Johnson, p. 20)
The party turned south to follow Hastings' cutoff. Within days they found the terrain to be much more difficult than described, and the drivers were forced to lock the wheels of their wagons to prevent them from sliding down steep inclines. Several years of migrant traffic on the main Oregon Trail
had left an easy and obvious path, whereas the Cutoff was more difficult to find. Hastings wrote directions and left letters stuck to trees. On August 6, the party found a letter from Hastings, advising them to stop until he could show them an alternative route to that taken by the Harlan-Young Party.While Hastings was otherwise occupied, his guides had led the Harlan-Young Party through Weber Canyon
, which was not the route Hastings had intended to take. (Rarick, p. 61) Reed, Charles Stanton, and William Pike rode ahead to get Hastings. They encountered exceedingly difficult canyons where boulders had to be moved and walls cut off precariously to a river below, a route likely to break wagons. Although Hastings had offered in his letter to guide the Donner Party around the more difficult areas, he rode back only partway, indicating the general direction to follow.
Stanton and Pike stopped to rest, and Reed returned alone to the group, arriving four days after the party's departure. Without the guide they had been promised, the group had to decide whether to turn back and rejoin the traditional trail, follow the tracks left by the Harlan-Young Party through the difficult terrain of Weber Canyon
, or forge their own trail in the direction Hastings had recommended. At Reed's urging, the group chose the new Hastings route. Their progress slowed to about a mile and a half (2.4 km) a day, and all the able-bodied men were required to clear brush, fell trees, and heave rocks to make room for the wagons.The route the party followed is now known as Emigration Canyon. (Johnson, p. 28)
As the Donner Party made its way across the Wasatch Mountains, they were caught up by the Graves family, who had set off to find them. The Graves were an older couple with nine children, plus a son-in-law, and a teamster named John Snyder, traveling together in three wagons. Their arrival brought the Donner Party to 87 members in 60–80 wagons. The Graves family had been part of the last group to leave Missouri, confirming that the Donner Party was at the rear of the year's western exodus.
By the time they had reached a point in the mountains where they could look down and see the Great Salt Lake
, it was August 20. It took almost another two weeks to travel out of the Wasatch Mountains. The men began to argue, and doubts were expressed about the wisdom of those who had chosen this route, in particular James Reed. Food and supplies for some of the less affluent families began to run out. Stanton and Pike, who had ridden out with Reed, had become lost on their way back; by the time the party found them, they were a day away from eating their horses.
Luke Halloran died of tuberculosis on August 25. A few days later the party came across a torn and tattered letter from Hastings. The pieces indicated that there were two days and nights of difficult travel ahead without grass or water. The party rested their oxen and prepared for the trip. After 36 hours they set off to traverse a 1000 feet (304.8 m) mountain that lay in their path. From its peak, they saw ahead of them a dry, barren plain, perfectly flat and covered with white salt, larger than the one they had just crossed, and "one of the most inhospitable places on earth" according to Rarick. Their oxen were already fatigued and their water was nearly gone.
On August 30th, having no alternative, the party pressed on. In the heat of the day, the moisture underneath the salt crust rose to the surface, turned the soil to a gummy mass. The wheels of their wagons sank into it, in some cases up to the hubs. The days were blisteringly hot and the nights frigid. Several of the group saw visions of lakes and wagon trains, and believed they had finally overtaken Hastings. After three days, the water was gone, and some of the party removed their oxen from the wagons to press ahead to find more. Some of the animals were so weakened they were left yoked to the wagons and abandoned. Nine of Reed's ten oxen, crazed with thirst, broke free and bolted off into the desert. Many other families' cattle and horses had also gone missing. The rigors of the journey resulted in irreparable damage to some of the wagons, but no human lives had been lost. Instead of the promised two days journey over 40 miles, the journey across the 80 miles of Great Salt Lake Desert
had taken six.In 1986 a team of archaeologists attempted to cross the same stretch of desert at the same time of year in four-wheel drive trucks and were unable to do so. (Rarick, p. 71)
None of the party had any remaining faith in the Hastings Cutoff as they recovered at the springs on the other side of the desert.The location where the Donner Party recuperated, at the base of Pilot Peak, has since been named Donner Spring. (Johnson, p. 31) They spent several days trying to recover cattle, retrieve the wagons left in the desert, and transfer their food and supplies to other wagons.Reed's account states that many of the travelers lost cattle and were trying to locate them, although some of the other members thought they were looking for his cattle. (Rarick, p. 74, Reed's self-penned "The Snow-Bound, Starved Emigrants of 1846 Statement by Mr. Reed, One of the Donner Company" in Johnson, p. 190) Although his family incurred the heaviest losses, Reed became more assertive, and asked all the families to submit an inventory of their goods and food to him. He suggested two men go to Sutter's Fort
in California; he had heard that John Sutter
was exceedingly generous to wayward pioneers, and could assist them with extra provisions. Charles Stanton and William McCutchen volunteered to undertake the dangerous trip. The remaining serviceable wagons were pulled by mongrel teams of cows, oxen, and mules. It was the middle of September, and two young men who went in search of missing oxen reported another 40 miles (64.4 km) long stretch of desert
lay ahead.
. Despite their near hatred of Hastings, they had no choice but to follow his tracks, which were weeks old. On September 26, two months after embarking on the cutoff, the Donner Party rejoined the traditional trail along a stream that became known as the Humboldt River
. The shortcut had probably delayed them by a month.
Along the Humboldt the group met Paiute
Indians, who joined them for a couple of days, but stole or shot several oxen and horses. By now it was well into October, and the Donner families split off to make better time. Two wagons in the remaining group became tangled, and John Snyder angrily beat the ox of Reed's hired teamster, Milt Elliott. When Reed intervened, Snyder turned the whip on him. Reed retaliated by fatally plunging a knife under Snyder's collarbone.
That evening the witnesses gathered to discuss what was to be done; United States laws were not applicable west of the Continental Divide (in what was then Mexican territory) and wagon trains often dispensed their own justice. But George Donner, the party's leader, was a full day ahead of the main wagon train with his family. Snyder had been seen to hit James Reed, and some claimed that he had also hit Margret Reed, but Snyder was popular and Reed was not. Keseberg suggested that Reed should be hanged, but an eventual compromise allowed Reed to leave the camp without his family, who were to be taken care of by the others. Reed departed alone the next morning, unarmed,In 1871, Reed wrote an account of the events of the Donner Party in which he omitted any reference to his killing Snyder, although his daughter Virginia described it in a letter home written in May 1847, which was heavily edited by Reed. In Reed's 1871 account, he left the group to check on Stanton and McCutchen. (Johnson p. 191) but a sympathetic member of the party managed to ride ahead and secretly provide him with a rifle and food.
The trials the Donner Party had so far endured resulted in splintered groups, each looking out for themselves and distrustful of the others. Grass was becoming scarce, and the animals were steadily weakening. To relieve the load, everyone was expected to walk. Keseberg ejected Hardkoop from his wagon, telling the elderly man he had to walk or die. A few days later Hardkoop sat next to a stream, his feet so swollen they split open, and he was not seen again. William Eddy pleaded with the others to find Hardkoop, but they all refused, swearing they would waste no more resources on a man who was nearly 70 years old.
Meanwhile Reed caught up with the Donners and went on with one of his teamsters, Walter Herron. Although the two shared a horse, they were able to cover 25–40 miles (40–64 km) per day. The rest of the party rejoined the Donners, but their bad luck continued. Indians chased away all of Graves' horses and another wagon was left behind. With grass in short supply the cattle spread out more, which allowed the Paiutes to steal 18 more during one evening, and several mornings later, shoot another 21. So far the company had lost nearly 100 oxen and cattle, and their rations were almost completely depleted. One more stretch of desert lay ahead. The Eddys' oxen had been killed by Indians and they were forced to abandon their wagon. The family had eaten all their stores, but the other families refused to assist their children. The Eddys were forced to walk, carrying their children and miserable with thirst. Margret Reed and her children were also now without a wagon. The desert soon came to an end, however, and the party found the Truckee River
in beautiful lush country.
They had little time to rest, and the company pressed on to cross the mountains before the snows came. Stanton, one of the two-man party who had left a month earlier to seek assistance in California, found the company and brought mules, food, and two Cosumne Indians Luis and Salvador. He also brought news that Reed and Herron, although haggard and starving, had succeeded in reaching Sutter's Fort, in California. By this point, according to Rarick, "To the bedraggled, half-starved members of the Donner Party, it must have seemed that the worst of their problems had passed. They had already endured more than many emigrants ever did."
Snow began to fall. The Breens made it up the "massive, nearly vertical slope" 1000 feet (304.8 m) to Truckee Lake, 3 miles (4.8 km) from the summit, and camped near a cabin that had been built two years earlier by another group of pioneers.The cabins were built by three members of another group of emigrants known as the Stevens Party, specifically by Joseph Foster, Allen Stevens, and Moses Schallenberger in November 1844. (Hardesty, pp. 49–50) Virginia Reed later married a member of this party named John Murphy, unrelated to the Murphy family who was associated with the Donner Party. (Johnson, p. 262) The Eddys and Kesebergs joined the Breens, attempting to make it over the pass, but they found 5–10 ft (1.5–3 m) drifts of snow, and were unable to locate the trail. They turned back for Truckee Lake and within a day all the families were camped there except for the Donners, who were 5 miles (8 km) half a day's journey below them. On the evening of November 4, it began to snow again.
to gather a team of men to cross the pass and help the company, in return for which Reed promised he would join Frémont's forces and fight in the Mexican-American War. Reed was joined by McCutchen, who had been unable to return with Stanton, as well as some members of the Harlan-Young party. Their wagon train had arrived at Sutter's Fort on October 8, the last to make it over the Sierra Nevada that season. The party of roughly 30 horses and a dozen men carried food supplies, and expected to find the Donner Party on the western side of the mountain, near Bear Valley
, starving but alive. When they arrived in Bear Valley they found only a pioneer couple, emigrants who had been separated from their company and were near starvation.
Two guides deserted Reed and McCutchen with some of their horses, but they pressed on to Yuba Bottoms, walking the last mile on foot. On possibly the same day that the Breens attempted to lead one last effort to crest the pass, Reed and McCutchen stood looking at the other side only 12 miles (19.3 km) from the top, blocked by snow. Despondent, they turned back to Sutter's Fort.
At Truckee Lake, 60 members and associates of the Breen, Graves, Reed, Murphy, Keseberg, and Eddy families set up for the winter. Three widely separated cabins of pine logs, with dirt floors and poorly constructed flat roofs that leaked when it rained, served as their homes. The Breens occupied one cabin, the Eddys and Murphys another, and Reeds and Graves the third. Keseberg built a lean-to
for his family against the side of the Breen cabin. The families used canvas or oxhide to patch the faulty roofs. The cabins had no windows or doors, only large holes to allow entry. Of the 60 at Truckee Lake, 19 were men over 18, 12 were women and 29 were children, 6 of whom were toddlers or younger. Farther down the trail, close to Alder Creek, the Donner families hastily constructed tents to house 21 people, including Mrs. Wolfinger, her child, and the Donners' drivers: 6 men, 3 women, and 12 children in all.
Very little food remained. The oxen began to die of starvation and their carcasses were frozen and stacked. Although Truckee Lake was not yet frozen, the pioneers were unfamiliar with catching lake trout. Eddy, the most experienced hunter, killed a bear, but had little luck after that. The Reed and Eddy families had lost almost everything and Margret Reed promised to pay double when they got to California for the use of three oxen from the Graves and Breen families. Graves charged Eddy $25—normally the cost of two healthy oxen—for the carcass of an ox that had starved to death.
Desperation grew in camp and some reasoned that individuals might succeed in navigating the pass where the wagons could not. In small groups they made several attempts, but each time returned defeated. Another severe storm, lasting more than a week, covered the area so deeply that the cattle and horses—their only remaining food—died and were lost in the snow.
The mountain party at Truckee Lake began to fall. Spitzer, then Baylis Williams (a driver for the Reeds) died, more from malnutrition than starvation. Franklin Graves fashioned 14 pairs of snowshoe
s out of oxbows and hide. A party of 17 men, women, and children set out on foot in an attempt to cross the mountain pass. As evidence of how grim their choices were, four of the men were fathers, and three of the women mothers who gave their young children to other women. They packed lightly, taking what had become six days' rations, a rifle, a blanket each, a hatchet, and some pistols, hoping to make their way to Bear Valley. Historian Charles McGlashan later called this snowshoe party "The Forlorn Hope". Two of those without snowshoes, Charles Burger and 10-year-old William Murphy, turned back early on. Other members of the party fashioned a pair of snowshoes for Lemuel on the first evening from one of the packsaddles they were carrying.
The snowshoes proved to be awkward but effective on the arduous climb. The members of the party were neither well-nourished nor accustomed to camping in snow 12 feet (3.7 m) deep, and by the third day most were snowblind
. On the sixth day Eddy discovered that his wife had hidden a half-pound of bear meat in his pack. When the group set out that morning, December 21, Stanton, who had been straggling for several days, remained behind, saying that he would follow shortly; his remains were found in that location the following year.
The group became lost and confused. After two more days without food, Patrick Dolan proposed that one of them should volunteer to die, to feed the others. Some suggested a duel, while another account describes an attempt to create a lottery to choose a member to sacrifice. Eddy suggested they keep moving until someone simply fell, but a blizzard forced the group to halt. Antonio, the animal handler, was the first to die; Franklin Graves was the next casualty.
As the blizzard progressed, Patrick Dolan began to rant deliriously, stripped off his clothes and ran into the woods. He returned shortly afterwards and died a few hours later. Not long after, possibly because 12-year-old Lemuel Murphy was near death, some of the group began to eat flesh from Dolan's body. Lemuel's sister tried to feed some to her brother, but he died shortly afterwards. Eddy, Salvador and Luis refused to eat. The next morning the group stripped the muscle and organs from the bodies of Antonio, Dolan, Graves, and Murphy and dried it to store for the days ahead, taking care to ensure that nobody would have to eat his or her relatives.
After three days rest they set off again, searching for the trail. Eddy eventually succumbed to his hunger and ate human flesh, but that was soon gone. They began to take apart their snowshoes to eat the oxhide webbing, and discussed killing Luis and Salvador for food; after Eddy warned the Indians they quietly left. During the night Jay Fosdick died, leaving only seven members of the party. Eddy and Mary Graves left to hunt, but when they returned with deer meat, Fosdick's body had already been cut apart for food. After several more days—25 since they had left Truckee Lake—they came across Salvador and Luis, who had not eaten for about nine days and were close to death. William Foster, believing the flesh of the Indians was the group's last hope of avoiding imminent death from starvation, shot the pair. Writer Joseph A. King, however, disagrees that Salvador and Luis were already close to death when Foster shot them, "as Captain Sutter heard the story from other survivors, his 'good boys' [Salvador and Luis] were murdered while gathering acorns".
On January 12, the group stumbled into a Miwok
camp looking so deteriorated that the Indians initially fled. The Miwoks gave them what they had to eat: acorns, grass, and pine nut
s. After a few days, Eddy continued on with the help of a Miwok to a ranch in a small farming community at the edge of the Sacramento Valley. A hurriedly assembled rescue party found the other six survivors on January 17. Their journey from Truckee Lake had taken 33 days.
Margret Reed had managed to save enough food for a Christmas pot of soup, to the delight of her children, but by January they were facing starvation and considered eating the oxhides that served as their roof. Margret Reed, Virginia, Milt Elliott and the servant girl Eliza Williams attempted to walk out, reasoning that it would be better to try to bring food back than sit and watch the children starve. They were gone for four days in the snow before they had to turn back. Their cabin was now uninhabitable; the oxhide-roof served as their food supply, and the family moved in with the Breens. The servants went to live with other families. One day the Graveses came by to collect on the debt owed by the Reeds and took the oxhides which were all the family had to eat.
until February because of regional uprisings and general confusion. He spent that time speaking with other pioneers and acquaintances, and the people of San Jose responded by creating a petition to appeal to the U.S. Navy to assist the people at Truckee Lake. Two local newspapers reported that members of the snowshoe party had resorted to cannibalism, which helped to foster sympathy for those who were still trapped. In Yerba Buena
, residents, many recent emigrants, raised $1,300 ($ as of 2010) and organized relief efforts to build two camps to supply a rescue party for the refugees.
A rescue party, including William Eddy, started on February 4 from the Sacramento Valley. Rain and a swollen river forced several delays. Eddy stationed himself at Bear Valley, while the others made steady progress through the snow and storms to cross the pass to Truckee Lake, caching their food at stations along the way, so they did not have to carry it all. Three of the rescue party turned back, but seven forged on.
On February 18, the seven-man rescue party scaled Frémont Pass; as they neared where Eddy told them the cabins would be, they began to shout. Mrs. Murphy appeared from a hole in the snow, stared at them and asked, "Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven?" The relief party doled out food in small portions, concerned that if the emaciated emigrants overate it would kill them. All the cabins were buried in snow. Sodden oxhide roofs had begun to rot and the smell was overpowering. The bodies of the dead had been loosely buried in snow near the cabin roofs. Some of the emigrants seemed emotionally unstable. Three of the rescue party trekked to the Donners and brought back four gaunt children and two adults. Leanna Donner had particular difficulty walking up the steep incline from Alder Creek to Truckee Lake, later writing "such pain and misery as I endured that day is beyond description." George Donner's arm was so gangrenous
that he could not move, but no one at Alder Creek had died since the last visit. Twenty-three people were chosen to go with the rescue party, leaving seventeen in the cabins at Truckee Lake and twelve at Alder Creek.
The rescuers concealed the fate of the snowshoe party, informing the rescued emigrants only that they did not return because they were frostbitten. Patty and Tommy Reed were soon too weak to cross the snowdrifts, and no one was strong enough to carry them. Margret Reed faced the agonizing predicament of accompanying her two older children to Bear Valley and watching her two frailest be taken back to Truckee Lake without a parent. She made one of the rescuers, Aquilla Glover, swear on his honor as a Mason
that he would return for her children. Patty Reed told her, "Well, mother, if you never see me again, do the best you can." Upon their return to the lake, the Breens flatly refused them entry to their cabin, but after Glover left more food the children were grudgingly admitted. The rescue party was dismayed to find that the first cache station had been broken into by animals, leaving them without food for four days. After struggling on the walk over the pass, John Denton slipped into a coma and died. Ada Keseberg died soon afterwards; her mother was inconsolable, refusing to let the child's body go. After several days' more travel through difficult country, the rescuers grew very concerned that the children would not survive. Some of them ate the buckskin fringe from one of the rescuer's pants, and the shoelaces of another, to the relief party's surprise. On their way down from the mountains they met the next rescue party, which included James Reed. Upon hearing his voice, Margret sank into the snow, overwhelmed.
After these rescued emigrants made it safely into Bear Valley, William Hook, Jacob Donner's stepson, broke into food stores and fatally gorged himself. The others continued on to Sutter's Fort, where Virginia Reed wrote "I really thought I had stepped over into paradise". She was amused to note that although she was only 12 years old and recovering from starvation, one of the young men asked her to marry him, but she turned him down.
On March 1, a second relief party arrived at Truckee Lake. These rescuers were mostly experienced mountaineers who accompanied the return of Reed and McCutchen. Reed was reunited with his daughter Patty and his weakened son Tommy. An inspection of the Breen cabin found its occupants relatively well, but the Murphy cabin, according to author George Stewart, "passed the limits of description and almost of imagination". Levinah Murphy, who was caring for her eight-year-old son Simon and the two young children of William Eddy and Foster, had deteriorated mentally and was nearly blind. The children were listless and had not been cleaned in days. Lewis Keseberg had moved into the cabin and could barely move due to an injured leg.
No one at Truckee Lake had died during the interim between the departure of the first relief party and the arrival of the second relief party. Patrick Breen documented a disturbing visit in the last week of February from Mrs. Murphy, who said her family was considering eating Milt Elliott. Reed and McCutchen found Elliott's mutilated body. The Alder Creek camp fared no better. The first two members of the relief party to reach it saw Trudeau carrying a human leg. When they made their presence known, he threw it into a hole in the snow that contained the mostly dismembered body of Jacob Donner. Inside the tent, Elizabeth Donner refused to eat, although her children were being nourished by the organs of their father. The rescuers discovered that three other bodies had already been consumed. In the other tent, Tamsen Donner was well, but George was very ill because the infection had reached his shoulder.
The second relief evacuated 17 emigrants, only three of whom were adults, from Truckee Lake. Both the Breen and Graves families prepared to go. Only five people remained at Truckee Lake: Keseberg, Mrs. Murphy and her son Simon, and the young Eddy and Foster children. Tamsen Donner elected to stay with her ailing husband after Reed informed her that a third relief party would arrive soon. Mrs. Donner kept her daughters Eliza, Georgia, and Frances with her.
The walk back to Bear Valley was very slow; at one point Reed sent ahead two of the men to retrieve the first cache of food, expecting the third relief, a small party led by Selim E. Woodworth
, to come at any moment. A violent blizzard arose after they scaled the pass. Five-year-old Isaac Donner froze to death, and Reed nearly died. Mary Donner's feet were badly burned because they were so frostbitten that she did not realize she was sleeping with them in the fire. When the storm passed, the Breen and Graves families, not having eaten for days, were too apathetic and exhausted to get up and move. The relief party had no choice but to leave without them.
Three members of the relief party stayed, one at Truckee Lake and two at Alder Creek. When one, Nicholas Clark, went hunting, the other two, Charles Cady and Charles Stone, made plans to return to California. Tamsen Donner arranged for them to carry three of her children to California, perhaps, according to Stewart, for $500 cash. Cady and Stone took the children to Truckee Lake but then left, alone, overtaking Reed and the others within days. Several days later, Clark and Trudeau agreed to leave together. When they discovered the Donner girls at Truckee Lake, they returned to Alder Creek to inform Tamsen Donner.
William Foster and William Eddy, both survivors of the snowshoe party, started from Bear Valley to intercept Reed, taking with them a man named John Stark. After one day, they met Reed, helping his children, all frostbitten and bleeding, but alive. Desperate to rescue their own children, Foster and Eddy persuaded four men, with pleading and money, to return to Truckee Lake with them. Halfway there they found the crudely mutilated and eaten remains of two children and Mrs. Graves, with one-year-old Elizabeth Graves crying beside her mother's body. Eleven survivors were huddled around a fire that had sunk into a pit. The relief party split, with Foster, Eddy, and two others headed toward Truckee Lake. Two rescuers, hoping to save the healthiest, each took a child and left. John Stark refused to leave the others. Stark picked up two children and all the provisions, and assisted the nine remaining Breens and Graveses to Bear Valley.
Foster and Eddy finally arrived at Truckee Lake on March 14, where they found their children dead. Keseberg told Eddy that he had eaten the remains of Eddy's son, and Eddy swore to murder Keseberg if they ever met in California. George Donner and one of Jacob Donner's children were still alive at Alder Creek. Tamsen Donner, who had just arrived at the Murphy cabin, could have walked out alone, but chose to return to her husband although she was informed that no other relief party was likely to be coming soon. Foster and Eddy and the rest of the third relief left with four children, Trudeau, and Clark.
Two more relief parties were mustered to evacuate any adults who might still be alive. Both turned back before getting to Bear Valley, and no further attempts were made. On April 10, almost a month since the third relief had left Truckee Lake, the alcalde
near Sutter's Fort organized a salvage party to recover what they could of the Donners' belongings. The belongings would be sold, with part of the proceeds used to support the orphaned Donner children. The salvage party found the Alder Creek tents empty except for the body of George Donner, who had died only days earlier. On their way back to Truckee Lake, they found Keseberg alive. According to Keseberg, Mrs. Murphy had died one week after the departure of the third relief. Some weeks later, Tamsen Donner had arrived at Keseberg's cabin on her way over the pass, soaked and visibly upset. Keseberg said he put a blanket around her and told her to start out in the morning, but she died during the night. The salvage party were suspicious of Keseberg's story, and found a pot full of human flesh in the cabin along with George Donner's pistols, jewelry, and $250 in gold. They threatened to lynch Keseberg, who confessed that he had cached $273 of the Donners' money, at Tamsen's suggestion, so that it could one day benefit her children.
, an elder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and journalist, who encountered the salvage party as they came down from the pass with Keseberg. Accounts of the ordeal first reached New York City by sea in July 1847. Reporting on the event across the U.S. was heavily influenced by the national enthusiasm for westward migration. In some papers, news of the tragedy was buried in small paragraphs despite the contemporary tendency to sensationalize stories. Several newspapers, including those in California, wrote about the cannibalism in graphic exaggerated detail. In some print accounts, the members of the Donner Party were made to be heroes, and California a paradise worthy of significant sacrifices.
Emigration to the west decreased over the following years, but it is likely that the drop in numbers was caused more by fears over the outcome of the ongoing Mexican-American War than by the cautionary tale of the Donner Party. In 1846, an estimated 1,500 people migrated to California. In 1847 the number dropped to 450 and to 400 in 1848. The California Gold Rush
spurred a sharp increase however, and in 1849, 25,000 people went west. Most of the overland migration followed the Carson River
, but a few forty-niners used the same route as the Donner Party and recorded descriptions about the site. The areas inhabited by the party were so notorious that they became known as Donner Pass
, Donner Lake
, and Donner Peak.
In late June 1847 members of the Mormon Battalion
under General Steven Kearny
buried the human remains, and partially burned two of the cabins. The few who ventured over the pass in the next few years found bones, other artifacts, and the cabin used by the Reed and Graves families. In 1891 a cache of money was found buried by the lake. It had probably been stored by Mrs. Graves, who hastily hid it when she left with the second relief so that she could return for it later.
Lansford Hastings received death threats. An emigrant who crossed before the Donner Party confronted Hastings about the difficulties they had encountered, reporting "Of course he could say nothing but that he was very sorry, and that he meant well".
A few of the widowed women remarried within months; brides were scarce in California. The Reeds settled in San Jose
and two of the Donner children lived with them. Reed fared well in the California Gold Rush and became prosperous. Virginia, with editorial oversight from her father, wrote an extensive letter to her cousin in Illinois about "our trubels getting to Callifornia" [sic]. Journalist Edwin Bryant carried it back in June 1847, and it was printed in its entirety, with some editorial alterations, in the Illinois Journal on December 16, 1847. Virginia converted to Catholicism in fulfillment of a promise she had made to herself while observing Patrick Breen pray in his cabin. The Murphy survivors lived in Marysville
. The Breens made their way to San Juan Bautista
where they ran an inn and became the anonymous subjects of one writer's story about his severe discomfort upon learning he was staying with alleged cannibals, printed in Harper's Magazine
in 1862. Many of the survivors encountered similar reactions. George and Tamsen Donner's children were taken in by an older couple near Sutter's Fort. The youngest of the Donner children, Eliza, who was three years old during the winter of 1846–1847, published an account of the Donner Party in 1911, based on printed accounts and those of her sisters. The Breen's youngest daughter Isabella, who was one year old during the winter of 1846–1847, was the last survivor of the Donner Party. She died in 1935.
The Graves children lived varied lives. Mary Graves married early, but her first husband was murdered; she cooked his killer's food while he was in prison to ensure the condemned man did not starve before his hanging. One of Mary's grandchildren noted she was very serious; Graves once said, "I wish I could cry but I cannot. If I could forget the tragedy, perhaps I would know how to cry again." Mary's brother William did not settle down for any significant time. Nancy Graves, who was nine years old during the winter of 1846–1847, refused to acknowledge her involvement even when contacted by historians interested in recording the most accurate versions of the episode; Nancy was reportedly unable to recover from her role in the cannibalism of her brother and mother.
Eddy remarried and started a family in California. He attempted to make good on his promise to murder Lewis Keseberg, but was dissuaded by James Reed and Edwin Bryant. A year later, Eddy recollected his experiences to J. Quinn Thornton, who, also using Reed's memories of his experiences, wrote the earliest comprehensive documentation of the episode. Eddy died in 1859.
Keseberg brought a defamation suit against several members of the relief party who accused him of murdering Tamsen Donner. The court awarded him $1 in damages, but also made him pay court costs. An 1847 story printed in the California Star described Keseberg's near-lynching by the salvage party and his actions in ghoulish terms, reporting that he preferred eating human flesh to the cattle and horses that had become exposed in the spring thaw. Charles McGlashan, a historian, amassed enough material to indict Keseberg for the murder of Tamsen Donner, but after interviewing Keseberg concluded that no murder occurred. Eliza Donner Houghton also believed Keseberg to be innocent. As Keseberg grew older, he did not venture outside, for he had become a pariah and was often threatened. He told McGlashan "I often think that the Almighty has singled me out, among all the men on the face of the earth, in order to see how much hardship, suffering, and misery a human being can bear!"
Although the Donner Party episode was insignificant in light of the hundreds of thousands of emigrants to Oregon and California, it has served as the basis for numerous works of history, fiction, drama, poetry, and film. The attention directed at the Donner Party is made possible by reliable accounts of what occurred, according to Stewart, and the fact that "the cannibalism, although it might almost be called a minor episode, has become in the popular mind the chief fact to be remembered about the Donner Party. For a taboo always allures with as great strength as it repels". The appeal according to Johnson, writing in 1996, is that the events focused on families and ordinary people instead of rare individuals, and that the events are "a dreadful irony that hopes of prosperity, health, and a new life in California's fertile valleys led many only to misery, hunger, and death on her stony threshold".
The site of the cabins became a tourist attraction as early as 1854. In the 1880s, Charles McGlashan began promoting the idea of a monument to mark the site of the Donner Party episode. He helped to acquire the land for a monument, and in June 1918, the statue of a pioneer family was placed on the spot where the Breen-Keseberg cabin was thought to have been, dedicated to the Donner Party. It was made a California Historical Landmark in 1934.
The State of California created the Donner Memorial State Park
in 1927. It originally consisted of 11 acre (0.04451546 km²) surrounding the monument. Twenty years later, the site of the Murphy cabin was purchased and added to the park. In 1962, the Emigrant Trail Museum was added to tell the history of westward migration into California. The Murphy cabin and Donner monument were established as a National Historic Landmark
in 1963. A large rock served as the back end of the fireplace of the Murphy cabin, and a bronze plaque has been affixed to the rock listing the members of the Donner Party, indicating who survived and who did not. The State of California justifies memorializing the site because the episode was "an isolated and tragic incident of American history that has been transformed into a major folk epic". As of 2003, the park is estimated to receive 200,000 visitors a year.
The deaths at Truckee Lake, Alder Creek, and in the snowshoe party, were probably caused by a combination of extended malnutrition, overwork, and exposure to cold. Several members, such as George Donner, became more susceptible to infection due to starvation, but the three most significant factors in survival were age, sex, and the size of family group each member traveled with. The survivors were on average 7.5 years younger than those who died; children aged between 6 and 14 had a much higher survival rate than infants and children under the age of 6, of whom 62.5 percent died, including the son born to the Keseburgs on the trail, or adults over the age of 35. No adults over the age of 49 survived. Deaths among males aged between 20 and 39 were "extremely high" at more than 66 percent. Men have been found to metabolize protein faster, and women do not require as high a caloric intake. Women also store more body fat, which delays the effects of physical degradation caused by starvation and overwork. Men also tend to take on more dangerous tasks, and in this particular instance, the men were required before reaching Truckee Lake to clear brush and engage in heavy labor, adding to their physical debilitation. Those traveling with family members had a higher survival rate than bachelor males, possibly because family members more readily shared food with each other.
Eliza Farnham's 1856 account of the Donner Party was based largely on an interview with Margaret Breen. Her version details the ordeals of the Graves and Breen families after James Reed and the second relief left them in the snow pit. According to Farnham, seven-year-old Mary Donner suggested to the others that they should eat Isaac Donner, Franklin Graves, Jr., and Elizabeth Graves, because the Donners had already begun eating the others at Alder Creek, including Mary's father Jacob. Margaret Breen insisted that she and her family did not cannibalize the dead, but Kristin Johnson, Ethan Rarick, and Joseph King whose account is sympathetic to the Breen family do not consider it credible that the Breens, who had been without food for nine days, would have been able to survive without eating human flesh. King suggests Farnham included this into her account independently of Margaret Breen.
According to an account published by H. A. Wise in 1847, Jean Baptiste Trudeau boasted of his own heroism, but also spoke in lurid detail of eating Jacob Donner, and claimed he had eaten a baby raw. Many years later, Trudeau met Eliza Donner Houghton and denied cannibalizing anyone, which he reiterated in an interview with a St. Louis newspaper in 1891, when he was 60 years old. Houghton and the other Donner children were fond of Trudeau, and he of them, in spite of their circumstances and the fact that he eventually left Tamsen Donner alone. Author George Stewart considers Trudeau's accounting to Wise more accurate than what he told Houghton in 1884, and asserted that he deserted the Donners. Kristin Johnson, however, attributes Trudeau's interview with Wise to be a result of "common adolescent desires to be the center of attention and to shock one's elders"; older, he reconsidered his story, so as not to upset Houghton. Historians Joseph King and Jack Steed call Stewart's characterization of Trudeau's actions as desertion "extravagant moralism", particularly because all members of the party were forced to make difficult choices. Ethan Rarick echoed this by writing, "... more than the gleaming heroism or sullied villainy, the Donner Party is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous".
American pioneer
American pioneers are any of the people in American history who migrated west to join in settling and developing new areas. The term especially refers to those who were going to settle any territory which had previously not been settled or developed by European or American society, although the...
s who set out for California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in a wagon train
Wagon train
A wagon train is a group of wagons traveling together. In the American West, individuals traveling across the plains in covered wagons banded together for mutual assistance, as is reflected in numerous films and television programs about the region, such as Audie Murphy's Tumbleweed and Ward Bond...
. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
to survive, eating those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness.
The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed by following a new route called the Hastings Cutoff
Hastings Cutoff
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternate route for emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings.In 1845, Hastings published a guide entitled The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California...
, which crossed Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
's Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert
Great Salt Lake Desert
The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake in northern Utah between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border which is noted for white sand from evaporite Lake Bonneville salt deposits...
. The rugged terrain and difficulties later encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River
Humboldt River
The Humboldt River runs through northern Nevada in the western United States. At approximately long it is the second longest river in the Great Basin, after the Bear River. It has no outlet to the ocean, but instead empties into the Humboldt Sink...
, in present-day Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons and contributed to divisions within the group.
By the beginning of November 1846 the group had reached the Sierra Nevada where they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee (now Donner
Donner Lake
Donner Lake is a freshwater lake in northeast California on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and about northwest of the much larger Lake Tahoe. A moraine serves as a natural dam for the lake. The lake is located in the town of Truckee, sandwiched between Interstate 80 to the north and...
) Lake, high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from Sacramento, California, attempted to reach the emigrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Forty-eight of the 87 members of the party survived to reach Sacramento.
Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in Californian history and in the record of western migration.
Background
During the 1840s, the United States saw a dramatic increase in pioneers: people who left their homes in the east to settle in Oregon and California. Some, like Patrick Breen, saw California as a place where they would be free to live in a fully Catholic culture, but many were inspired by the idea of Manifest DestinyManifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
, a philosophy that asserted the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belonged to Americans and they should settle it. Most wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail is a historic east-west wagon route that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon and locations in between.After 1840 steam-powered riverboats and steamboats traversing up and down the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers sped settlement and development in the flat...
route from Independence, Missouri
Independence, Missouri
Independence is the fourth largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri, and is contained within the counties of Jackson and Clay. It is part of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area...
, to the Continental Divide
Continental Divide
The Continental Divide of the Americas, or merely the Continental Gulf of Division or Great Divide, is the name given to the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological divide of the Americas that separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those river systems that drain...
, traveling at about 15 miles (24.1 km) a day on a journey that usually took between 4 and 6 months. The trail generally followed rivers to South Pass
South Pass
South Pass is two mountain passes on the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Wyoming. The passes are located in a broad low region, 35 miles broad, between the Wind River Range to the north and the Oregon Buttes and Great Divide Basin to the south, in southwestern Fremont...
, a mountain pass
Mountain pass
A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. If following the lowest possible route, a pass is locally the highest point on that route...
in Wyoming relatively easy for wagons to negotiate. From there, wagon trains had a choice of routes to their destination.
An early emigrant named Lansford W. Hastings
Lansford Hastings
Lansford Warren Hastings is best remembered as the developer of Hastings Cutoff, a shortcut across what is now the state of Utah, a factor in the Donner Party disaster of 1846.-Early life:...
had gone to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To entice settlers he published a guide for pioneers titled The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. He described a direct route across the Great Basin
Great Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America and is noted for its arid conditions and Basin and Range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than away at the...
, which would bring emigrants through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert
Great Salt Lake Desert
The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake in northern Utah between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border which is noted for white sand from evaporite Lake Bonneville salt deposits...
. Hastings had not traveled any part of his proposed shortcut until early 1846, on a trip from California to Fort Bridger
Fort Bridger
Fort Bridger was originally a 19th century fur trading outpost established in 1842 on Blacks Fork of the Green River and later a vital resupply point for wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, California Trail and Mormon Trail. The Army established a military post here in 1858 during the Utah War until...
. The fort—a scant supply station run by Jim Bridger
Jim Bridger
James Felix "Jim" Bridger was among the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides who explored and trapped the Western United States during the decades of 1820-1850, as well as mediating between native tribes and encroaching whites...
and his partner Pierre Louis Vasquez—was located in Blacks Fork
Blacks Fork
Blacks Fork is a tributary of the Green River in Utah and Wyoming. The river rises on the northern side of the Uinta Mountains as the combination of three streams draining the area around Tokewanna Peak near the Utah-Wyoming border...
, Wyoming. Hastings stayed at the fort to persuade travelers to turn south on his route. As of 1846, Hastings was the second of two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert and neither had been accompanied by wagons.There are no written records of native tribes having crossed the desert, nor did the emigrants mention any trails in this region. (Rarick, p. 69)
The most difficult part of the journey to California was the last 100 miles (160.9 km), across the Sierra Nevada. This mountain range contains 500 distinct peaks over 12000 feet (3,657.6 m) high, and the eastern side of the range is extremely steep. The mountains' height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean mean they receive more snow than most other ranges in North America. Timing was crucial to ensure that after leaving the civilization of Missouri to cross the vast wilderness to Oregon or California, wagon trains would not be bogged down by mud created by spring rains, or by massive snowdrifts in the mountains from September onwards, and that their horses and oxen would have enough spring grass to eat.
Families and progress
In the spring of 1846, almost 500 wagons headed west from Independence. At the rear of the train, a group of nine wagons containing 32 members of the Reed and Donner families and their employees left on May 12. George DonnerGeorge Donner
George Donner was the leader of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound American settlers who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847. Nearly half of the party starved to death, and some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism.-Biography:He was born around 1784 near...
was originally from North Carolina, but had gradually moved west to Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas. In early 1846, he was a 62-year-old farmer in Springfield, Illinois
Springfield, Illinois
Springfield is the third and current capital of the US state of Illinois and the county seat of Sangamon County with a population of 117,400 , making it the sixth most populated city in the state and the second most populated Illinois city outside of the Chicago Metropolitan Area...
. Donner brought his 44-year-old wife Tamsen and five daughters ranging in age from three to 13. Donner's older brother Jacob also joined the party, along with his wife, two teenage stepsons, and five children, the eldest of whom was nine.
James F. Reed
James F. Reed
James Frazier Reed was a businessman, soldier and, most notably, an organizing member of the ill-fated 1846 Donner Party emigration to California.-Early life:...
was a wealthy Irish immigrant who settled in Illinois in 1831. His wife Margret, daughters Patty and Virginia, sons James and Thomas, and his mother-in-law Sarah Keyes traveled with him. Keyes was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, and died on May 28; she was buried by the side of the trail. The Reeds hoped that the climate in the West would help Margret, who had long been sickly. Reed had built an ornate, custom-designed, and unusually large wagon for his family, which Virginia later described as the "Pioneer palace car", likening it to the railroad "palace cars", or luxury carriages. Equipped with a spring seats and a stove, it took eight oxen to pull it. They were accompanied by several young men hired to drive the oxen, and a hired girl.
Within a week of leaving Independence, the Reeds and Donners joined up with a group of 50 wagons nominally led by William H. Russell. By June 16, the company had traveled 450 miles (724.2 km), with 200 miles (321.9 km) to go before Fort Laramie, Wyoming
Fort Laramie, Wyoming
Fort Laramie is a town in Goshen County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 243 at the 2000 census. The town is named after historic Fort Laramie, an important stop on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails as well as a staging point for various military excursions...
. They had been delayed by rain and a rising river, but Tamsen Donner wrote to a friend in Springfield, "indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started."Tamsen Donner's letters were printed in the Springfield Journal in 1846. (McGlashan, p. 24) Young Virginia Reed recalled years later that during the first part of the trip she was "perfectly happy".
Several other families joined the wagon train along the way. Levinah Murphy, a widow, headed a family of 13, including her five adolescent children and two married daughters with their families. The Eddy family was headed by a young man with a wife and small child. Patrick Breen brought along his wife Peggy and seven children, all but the youngest of whom were boys. A 40-year-old bachelor named Patrick Dolan camped with the Breens, and a general animal handler named Antonio also came along. Lewis Keseberg, a German immigrant, joined with his wife and daughter; a son was born on the trail. Two young single men named Spitzer and Reinhardt traveled with another German couple, the Wolfingers, who also had a hired driver, "Dutch Charley" Burger. An older man, a Belgian immigrant named Hardkoop, rode with them. Luke Halloran, a young man who seemed to get sicker with tuberculosis every day, was passed from family to family, as none could spare the time or resources to care for him.
To promote his new route, Hastings sent riders to deliver letters to traveling emigrants. On July 12, the Reeds and Donners were given one of these letters. Hastings warned the emigrants that they could expect opposition from the Mexican authorities in California, and advised them therefore to band together in large groups. He also claimed to have "worked out a new and better road to California", and said he would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide the emigrants along the new cutoff.
At the Little Sandy River, the larger wagon train opted to follow the established trail via Fort Hall
Fort Hall
Fort Hall, sitting athwart the end of the common stretch shared by the three far west emigrant trails was a 19th century outpost in the eastern Oregon Country, which eventually became part of the present-day United States, and is located in southeastern Idaho near Fort Hall, Idaho...
. A smaller group, which opted to head for Fort Bridger, now needed a leader. Most of the younger males in the group were European immigrants and not considered to be ideal leaders. James Reed, who had been living in the U.S. for a considerable time, was older and had military experience, but his autocratic attitude had rubbed many in the party the wrong way, and they saw him as aristocratic, imperious, and ostentatious. By comparison, the mature, experienced, American-born Donner's peaceful and charitable nature made him the group's first choice.
Edwin Bryant, a journalist, reached Blacks Fork a week ahead of the Donner Party. He saw the first part of the trail, and was concerned that it would be difficult for the wagons in the Donner group, especially with so many women and children. He returned to Blacks Fork to leave letters warning several members of the group not to take the shortcut. By the time the Donner Party reached Blacks Fork on July 27 Hastings had already left, leading the 40 wagons of the Harlan-Young group. Jim Bridger
Jim Bridger
James Felix "Jim" Bridger was among the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides who explored and trapped the Western United States during the decades of 1820-1850, as well as mediating between native tribes and encroaching whites...
, whose trading post would fare substantially better if people used the Hastings Cutoff
Hastings Cutoff
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternate route for emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings.In 1845, Hastings published a guide entitled The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California...
, told the party that the shortcut was a smooth trip, devoid of rugged country and hostile Indians, and would therefore shorten their journey by 350 miles (563.3 km). Water would be easy to find along the way, although a couple of days crossing a 30–40 mi (48.3–64.4 km) dry lake bed would be necessary. Reed was very impressed with this information, and advocated for the Hastings Cutoff. None of the party received Bryant's letters warning them to avoid Hastings' route at all costs; in his diary account, Bryant states his conviction that Bridger deliberately concealed the letters, a view shared by Reed in his later testimony.At Fort Laramie, Reed met an old friend named James Clyman who was coming from California. Clyman warned Reed not to take the Cutoff, telling him that wagons would not be able to make it and that Hastings' information was inaccurate. (Rarick, p. 47) J. Quinn Thornton traveled part of the way with Donner and Reed, and in his book From Oregon and California in 1848 declared Hastings the "Baron Munchausen of travelers in these countries". (Johnson, p. 20)
Wasatch Mountains
The members of the party were comfortably well off by contemporary standards. Although they are called pioneers, all but a few lacked specific skills and experience for traveling through mountains and arid land, and had little knowledge about how to deal with Native Americans. Tamsen Donner was, according to fellow emigrant J. Quinn Thornton, "gloomy, sad, and dispirited" at the thought of turning off the main trail on the advice of Hastings, whom she considered "a selfish adventurer". Nevertheless, on July 31, 1846, the party left Blacks Fork after four days of rest and wagon repairs, eleven days behind the leading Harlan-Young group. Donner hired a replacement driver, and the company was joined by the McCutchen family, a young couple with a baby, and a 16-year-old named Jean Baptiste Trudeau from New Mexico, who claimed to have knowledge of the Indians and terrain on the way to California.The party turned south to follow Hastings' cutoff. Within days they found the terrain to be much more difficult than described, and the drivers were forced to lock the wheels of their wagons to prevent them from sliding down steep inclines. Several years of migrant traffic on the main Oregon Trail
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail is a historic east-west wagon route that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon and locations in between.After 1840 steam-powered riverboats and steamboats traversing up and down the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers sped settlement and development in the flat...
had left an easy and obvious path, whereas the Cutoff was more difficult to find. Hastings wrote directions and left letters stuck to trees. On August 6, the party found a letter from Hastings, advising them to stop until he could show them an alternative route to that taken by the Harlan-Young Party.While Hastings was otherwise occupied, his guides had led the Harlan-Young Party through Weber Canyon
Weber Canyon
Weber Canyon is a canyon in the Wasatch Range near Ogden, Utah, through which the Weber River flows west toward the Great Salt Lake. It is fed by 13 tributary creeks and is 40 miles long.- History :...
, which was not the route Hastings had intended to take. (Rarick, p. 61) Reed, Charles Stanton, and William Pike rode ahead to get Hastings. They encountered exceedingly difficult canyons where boulders had to be moved and walls cut off precariously to a river below, a route likely to break wagons. Although Hastings had offered in his letter to guide the Donner Party around the more difficult areas, he rode back only partway, indicating the general direction to follow.
Stanton and Pike stopped to rest, and Reed returned alone to the group, arriving four days after the party's departure. Without the guide they had been promised, the group had to decide whether to turn back and rejoin the traditional trail, follow the tracks left by the Harlan-Young Party through the difficult terrain of Weber Canyon
Weber Canyon
Weber Canyon is a canyon in the Wasatch Range near Ogden, Utah, through which the Weber River flows west toward the Great Salt Lake. It is fed by 13 tributary creeks and is 40 miles long.- History :...
, or forge their own trail in the direction Hastings had recommended. At Reed's urging, the group chose the new Hastings route. Their progress slowed to about a mile and a half (2.4 km) a day, and all the able-bodied men were required to clear brush, fell trees, and heave rocks to make room for the wagons.The route the party followed is now known as Emigration Canyon. (Johnson, p. 28)
As the Donner Party made its way across the Wasatch Mountains, they were caught up by the Graves family, who had set off to find them. The Graves were an older couple with nine children, plus a son-in-law, and a teamster named John Snyder, traveling together in three wagons. Their arrival brought the Donner Party to 87 members in 60–80 wagons. The Graves family had been part of the last group to leave Missouri, confirming that the Donner Party was at the rear of the year's western exodus.
By the time they had reached a point in the mountains where they could look down and see the Great Salt Lake
Great Salt Lake
The Great Salt Lake, located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah, is the largest salt water lake in the western hemisphere, the fourth-largest terminal lake in the world. In an average year the lake covers an area of around , but the lake's size fluctuates substantially due to its...
, it was August 20. It took almost another two weeks to travel out of the Wasatch Mountains. The men began to argue, and doubts were expressed about the wisdom of those who had chosen this route, in particular James Reed. Food and supplies for some of the less affluent families began to run out. Stanton and Pike, who had ridden out with Reed, had become lost on their way back; by the time the party found them, they were a day away from eating their horses.
Great Salt Lake Desert
On August 30th, having no alternative, the party pressed on. In the heat of the day, the moisture underneath the salt crust rose to the surface, turned the soil to a gummy mass. The wheels of their wagons sank into it, in some cases up to the hubs. The days were blisteringly hot and the nights frigid. Several of the group saw visions of lakes and wagon trains, and believed they had finally overtaken Hastings. After three days, the water was gone, and some of the party removed their oxen from the wagons to press ahead to find more. Some of the animals were so weakened they were left yoked to the wagons and abandoned. Nine of Reed's ten oxen, crazed with thirst, broke free and bolted off into the desert. Many other families' cattle and horses had also gone missing. The rigors of the journey resulted in irreparable damage to some of the wagons, but no human lives had been lost. Instead of the promised two days journey over 40 miles, the journey across the 80 miles of Great Salt Lake Desert
Great Salt Lake Desert
The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake in northern Utah between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border which is noted for white sand from evaporite Lake Bonneville salt deposits...
had taken six.In 1986 a team of archaeologists attempted to cross the same stretch of desert at the same time of year in four-wheel drive trucks and were unable to do so. (Rarick, p. 71)
None of the party had any remaining faith in the Hastings Cutoff as they recovered at the springs on the other side of the desert.The location where the Donner Party recuperated, at the base of Pilot Peak, has since been named Donner Spring. (Johnson, p. 31) They spent several days trying to recover cattle, retrieve the wagons left in the desert, and transfer their food and supplies to other wagons.Reed's account states that many of the travelers lost cattle and were trying to locate them, although some of the other members thought they were looking for his cattle. (Rarick, p. 74, Reed's self-penned "The Snow-Bound, Starved Emigrants of 1846 Statement by Mr. Reed, One of the Donner Company" in Johnson, p. 190) Although his family incurred the heaviest losses, Reed became more assertive, and asked all the families to submit an inventory of their goods and food to him. He suggested two men go to Sutter's Fort
Sutter's Fort
Sutter's Fort State Historic Park is a state-protected park in Sacramento, California which includes Sutter's Fort and the California State Indian Museum. Begun in 1839 and originally called "New Helvetia" by its builder, John Sutter, the fort was a 19th century agricultural and trade colony in...
in California; he had heard that John Sutter
John Sutter
Johann Augus Sutter was a Swiss pioneer of California known for his association with the California Gold Rush by the discovery of gold by James W. Marshall and the mill making team at Sutter's Mill, and for establishing Sutter's Fort in the area that would eventually become Sacramento, the...
was exceedingly generous to wayward pioneers, and could assist them with extra provisions. Charles Stanton and William McCutchen volunteered to undertake the dangerous trip. The remaining serviceable wagons were pulled by mongrel teams of cows, oxen, and mules. It was the middle of September, and two young men who went in search of missing oxen reported another 40 miles (64.4 km) long stretch of desert
Lahontan Valley
The Lahontan Valley is in Churchill County in the U.S. state of Nevada. The valley is a landform of the central portion of the prehistoric Lake Lahontan's lakebed of 20,000-9,000 years ago. The valley and the adjacent Carson Sink represent a small portion of the lake bed, and Humboldt Lake is to...
lay ahead.
Reed banished
Their cattle and oxen now exhausted and lean, the Donner Party crossed the next stretch of desert relatively unscathed, and the journey seemed to get easier, particularly through the valley next to the Ruby MountainsRuby Mountains
The Ruby Mountains comprise one of the many mountain ranges of the Great Basin in the western United States. They are the predominant range in Elko County, in the northeastern section of the state of Nevada. To the north is Secret Pass and the East Humboldt Range, and from there the Rubies run...
. Despite their near hatred of Hastings, they had no choice but to follow his tracks, which were weeks old. On September 26, two months after embarking on the cutoff, the Donner Party rejoined the traditional trail along a stream that became known as the Humboldt River
Humboldt River
The Humboldt River runs through northern Nevada in the western United States. At approximately long it is the second longest river in the Great Basin, after the Bear River. It has no outlet to the ocean, but instead empties into the Humboldt Sink...
. The shortcut had probably delayed them by a month.
Along the Humboldt the group met Paiute
Paiute
Paiute refers to three closely related groups of Native Americans — the Northern Paiute of California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon; the Owens Valley Paiute of California and Nevada; and the Southern Paiute of Arizona, southeastern California and Nevada, and Utah.-Origin of name:The origin of...
Indians, who joined them for a couple of days, but stole or shot several oxen and horses. By now it was well into October, and the Donner families split off to make better time. Two wagons in the remaining group became tangled, and John Snyder angrily beat the ox of Reed's hired teamster, Milt Elliott. When Reed intervened, Snyder turned the whip on him. Reed retaliated by fatally plunging a knife under Snyder's collarbone.
That evening the witnesses gathered to discuss what was to be done; United States laws were not applicable west of the Continental Divide (in what was then Mexican territory) and wagon trains often dispensed their own justice. But George Donner, the party's leader, was a full day ahead of the main wagon train with his family. Snyder had been seen to hit James Reed, and some claimed that he had also hit Margret Reed, but Snyder was popular and Reed was not. Keseberg suggested that Reed should be hanged, but an eventual compromise allowed Reed to leave the camp without his family, who were to be taken care of by the others. Reed departed alone the next morning, unarmed,In 1871, Reed wrote an account of the events of the Donner Party in which he omitted any reference to his killing Snyder, although his daughter Virginia described it in a letter home written in May 1847, which was heavily edited by Reed. In Reed's 1871 account, he left the group to check on Stanton and McCutchen. (Johnson p. 191) but a sympathetic member of the party managed to ride ahead and secretly provide him with a rifle and food.
Disintegration
Meanwhile Reed caught up with the Donners and went on with one of his teamsters, Walter Herron. Although the two shared a horse, they were able to cover 25–40 miles (40–64 km) per day. The rest of the party rejoined the Donners, but their bad luck continued. Indians chased away all of Graves' horses and another wagon was left behind. With grass in short supply the cattle spread out more, which allowed the Paiutes to steal 18 more during one evening, and several mornings later, shoot another 21. So far the company had lost nearly 100 oxen and cattle, and their rations were almost completely depleted. One more stretch of desert lay ahead. The Eddys' oxen had been killed by Indians and they were forced to abandon their wagon. The family had eaten all their stores, but the other families refused to assist their children. The Eddys were forced to walk, carrying their children and miserable with thirst. Margret Reed and her children were also now without a wagon. The desert soon came to an end, however, and the party found the Truckee River
Truckee River
The Truckee River is a stream in the U.S. states of California and Nevada. The river is about long. Its endorheic drainage basin is about , of which about are in Nevada. The Truckee is the sole outlet of Lake Tahoe and drains part of the high Sierra Nevada, emptying into Pyramid Lake in the Great...
in beautiful lush country.
They had little time to rest, and the company pressed on to cross the mountains before the snows came. Stanton, one of the two-man party who had left a month earlier to seek assistance in California, found the company and brought mules, food, and two Cosumne Indians Luis and Salvador. He also brought news that Reed and Herron, although haggard and starving, had succeeded in reaching Sutter's Fort, in California. By this point, according to Rarick, "To the bedraggled, half-starved members of the Donner Party, it must have seemed that the worst of their problems had passed. They had already endured more than many emigrants ever did."
Snowbound
Faced with one last push over mountains that were described as much worse than the Wasatch, the ragtag company had to decide whether to forge ahead or rest their cattle. It was October 20 and they had been told that the pass would not be snowed in until the middle of November. William Pike was killed when a gun being loaded by William Foster discharged accidentally, an event that seemed to make the decision for them; family by family, they resumed their journey, first the Breens, then Kesebergs, Stanton with the Reeds, Graves, and Murphys. The Donners waited and traveled last. After a few miles of rough terrain, an axle broke on one of the Donners' wagons. Jacob and George went into the woods to fashion a replacement. George Donner sliced his hand open while chiseling the wood, but it seemed a superficial wound.Snow began to fall. The Breens made it up the "massive, nearly vertical slope" 1000 feet (304.8 m) to Truckee Lake, 3 miles (4.8 km) from the summit, and camped near a cabin that had been built two years earlier by another group of pioneers.The cabins were built by three members of another group of emigrants known as the Stevens Party, specifically by Joseph Foster, Allen Stevens, and Moses Schallenberger in November 1844. (Hardesty, pp. 49–50) Virginia Reed later married a member of this party named John Murphy, unrelated to the Murphy family who was associated with the Donner Party. (Johnson, p. 262) The Eddys and Kesebergs joined the Breens, attempting to make it over the pass, but they found 5–10 ft (1.5–3 m) drifts of snow, and were unable to locate the trail. They turned back for Truckee Lake and within a day all the families were camped there except for the Donners, who were 5 miles (8 km) half a day's journey below them. On the evening of November 4, it began to snow again.
Reed attempts a rescue
James Reed was safe and recovering in Sutter's Fort, but each day he became more concerned for the fate of his family and friends. He pleaded with Colonel John C. FrémontJohn C. Frémont
John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...
to gather a team of men to cross the pass and help the company, in return for which Reed promised he would join Frémont's forces and fight in the Mexican-American War. Reed was joined by McCutchen, who had been unable to return with Stanton, as well as some members of the Harlan-Young party. Their wagon train had arrived at Sutter's Fort on October 8, the last to make it over the Sierra Nevada that season. The party of roughly 30 horses and a dozen men carried food supplies, and expected to find the Donner Party on the western side of the mountain, near Bear Valley
Bear Valley, California
Bear Valley is a census-designated place in Alpine County, California. The population was 121 at the 2010 census, down from 133 at the 2000 census. The town is accessible by State Route 4. Bear Valley is within the Stanislaus National Forest...
, starving but alive. When they arrived in Bear Valley they found only a pioneer couple, emigrants who had been separated from their company and were near starvation.
Two guides deserted Reed and McCutchen with some of their horses, but they pressed on to Yuba Bottoms, walking the last mile on foot. On possibly the same day that the Breens attempted to lead one last effort to crest the pass, Reed and McCutchen stood looking at the other side only 12 miles (19.3 km) from the top, blocked by snow. Despondent, they turned back to Sutter's Fort.
At Truckee Lake, 60 members and associates of the Breen, Graves, Reed, Murphy, Keseberg, and Eddy families set up for the winter. Three widely separated cabins of pine logs, with dirt floors and poorly constructed flat roofs that leaked when it rained, served as their homes. The Breens occupied one cabin, the Eddys and Murphys another, and Reeds and Graves the third. Keseberg built a lean-to
Lean-to
A lean-to is a term used to describe a roof with a single slope. The term also applies to a variety of structures that are built using a lean-to roof....
for his family against the side of the Breen cabin. The families used canvas or oxhide to patch the faulty roofs. The cabins had no windows or doors, only large holes to allow entry. Of the 60 at Truckee Lake, 19 were men over 18, 12 were women and 29 were children, 6 of whom were toddlers or younger. Farther down the trail, close to Alder Creek, the Donner families hastily constructed tents to house 21 people, including Mrs. Wolfinger, her child, and the Donners' drivers: 6 men, 3 women, and 12 children in all.
Very little food remained. The oxen began to die of starvation and their carcasses were frozen and stacked. Although Truckee Lake was not yet frozen, the pioneers were unfamiliar with catching lake trout. Eddy, the most experienced hunter, killed a bear, but had little luck after that. The Reed and Eddy families had lost almost everything and Margret Reed promised to pay double when they got to California for the use of three oxen from the Graves and Breen families. Graves charged Eddy $25—normally the cost of two healthy oxen—for the carcass of an ox that had starved to death.
"The Forlorn Hope"
| Members of "The Forlorn Hope" | |
|---|---|
| Name | Age |
| Antonio* | 23‡ |
| Luis* | unk |
| Salvador* | unk |
| Charles Burger† | 30‡ |
| Patrick Dolan* | 35‡ |
| William Eddy | 28‡ |
| Jay Fosdick* | 23‡ |
| Sarah Fosdick | 21 |
| Sarah Foster | 19 |
| William Foster | 30 |
| Franklin Graves* | 57 |
| Mary Ann Graves | 19 |
| Lemuel Murphy* | 12 |
| William Murphy† | 10 |
| Amanda McCutchen | 23 |
| Harriet Pike | 18 |
| Charles Stanton* | 30 |
| * died en route † turned back before reaching pass ‡ estimated age |
|
Desperation grew in camp and some reasoned that individuals might succeed in navigating the pass where the wagons could not. In small groups they made several attempts, but each time returned defeated. Another severe storm, lasting more than a week, covered the area so deeply that the cattle and horses—their only remaining food—died and were lost in the snow.
The mountain party at Truckee Lake began to fall. Spitzer, then Baylis Williams (a driver for the Reeds) died, more from malnutrition than starvation. Franklin Graves fashioned 14 pairs of snowshoe
Snowshoe
A snowshoe is footwear for walking over the snow. Snowshoes work by distributing the weight of the person over a larger area so that the person's foot does not sink completely into the snow, a quality called "flotation"....
s out of oxbows and hide. A party of 17 men, women, and children set out on foot in an attempt to cross the mountain pass. As evidence of how grim their choices were, four of the men were fathers, and three of the women mothers who gave their young children to other women. They packed lightly, taking what had become six days' rations, a rifle, a blanket each, a hatchet, and some pistols, hoping to make their way to Bear Valley. Historian Charles McGlashan later called this snowshoe party "The Forlorn Hope". Two of those without snowshoes, Charles Burger and 10-year-old William Murphy, turned back early on. Other members of the party fashioned a pair of snowshoes for Lemuel on the first evening from one of the packsaddles they were carrying.
The snowshoes proved to be awkward but effective on the arduous climb. The members of the party were neither well-nourished nor accustomed to camping in snow 12 feet (3.7 m) deep, and by the third day most were snowblind
Snow blindness
Photokeratitis or ultraviolet keratitis is a painful eye condition caused by exposure of insufficiently protected eyes to the ultraviolet rays from either natural or artificial sources. Photokeratitis is akin to a sunburn of the cornea and conjunctiva, and is not usually noticed until several...
. On the sixth day Eddy discovered that his wife had hidden a half-pound of bear meat in his pack. When the group set out that morning, December 21, Stanton, who had been straggling for several days, remained behind, saying that he would follow shortly; his remains were found in that location the following year.
The group became lost and confused. After two more days without food, Patrick Dolan proposed that one of them should volunteer to die, to feed the others. Some suggested a duel, while another account describes an attempt to create a lottery to choose a member to sacrifice. Eddy suggested they keep moving until someone simply fell, but a blizzard forced the group to halt. Antonio, the animal handler, was the first to die; Franklin Graves was the next casualty.
As the blizzard progressed, Patrick Dolan began to rant deliriously, stripped off his clothes and ran into the woods. He returned shortly afterwards and died a few hours later. Not long after, possibly because 12-year-old Lemuel Murphy was near death, some of the group began to eat flesh from Dolan's body. Lemuel's sister tried to feed some to her brother, but he died shortly afterwards. Eddy, Salvador and Luis refused to eat. The next morning the group stripped the muscle and organs from the bodies of Antonio, Dolan, Graves, and Murphy and dried it to store for the days ahead, taking care to ensure that nobody would have to eat his or her relatives.
After three days rest they set off again, searching for the trail. Eddy eventually succumbed to his hunger and ate human flesh, but that was soon gone. They began to take apart their snowshoes to eat the oxhide webbing, and discussed killing Luis and Salvador for food; after Eddy warned the Indians they quietly left. During the night Jay Fosdick died, leaving only seven members of the party. Eddy and Mary Graves left to hunt, but when they returned with deer meat, Fosdick's body had already been cut apart for food. After several more days—25 since they had left Truckee Lake—they came across Salvador and Luis, who had not eaten for about nine days and were close to death. William Foster, believing the flesh of the Indians was the group's last hope of avoiding imminent death from starvation, shot the pair. Writer Joseph A. King, however, disagrees that Salvador and Luis were already close to death when Foster shot them, "as Captain Sutter heard the story from other survivors, his 'good boys' [Salvador and Luis] were murdered while gathering acorns".
On January 12, the group stumbled into a Miwok
Miwok
Miwok can refer to any one of four linguistically related groups of Native Americans, native to Northern California, who spoke one of the Miwokan languages in the Utian family...
camp looking so deteriorated that the Indians initially fled. The Miwoks gave them what they had to eat: acorns, grass, and pine nut
Pine nut
Pine nuts are the edible seeds of pines . About 20 species of pine produce seeds large enough to be worth harvesting; in other pines the seeds are also edible, but are too small to be of great value as a human food....
s. After a few days, Eddy continued on with the help of a Miwok to a ranch in a small farming community at the edge of the Sacramento Valley. A hurriedly assembled rescue party found the other six survivors on January 17. Their journey from Truckee Lake had taken 33 days.
Truckee Lake
Patrick Breen began keeping a diary in November, a few days before the snowshoe party left. He primarily concerned himself with the weather, marking the storms and how much snow had fallen, but gradually began to include references to God and religion in his entries. Life at Truckee Lake was miserable. The cabins were cramped and filthy, and it snowed so much that people were unable to go outdoors for days. Diets soon consisted of oxhide, strips of which were boiled to make a "disagreeable" glue-like jelly. Ox and horse bones were boiled repeatedly to make soup, and became so brittle they would crumble upon chewing. Sometimes they were softened by being charred and eaten. Bit by bit, the Murphy children picked apart the oxhide rug that lay in front of their fireplace, roasted it in the fire and ate it. After the departure of the snowshoe party, two-thirds of the emigrants at Truckee Lake were children. Mrs. Graves was in charge of eight, and Levinah Murphy and Eleanor Eddy together took care of nine. Emigrants caught and ate mice that strayed into their cabins. Many of the people at Truckee Lake were soon weakened and spent most of their time in bed. Occasionally one would be able to make the full day trek to see the Donners. News came that Jacob Donner and three hired men had died. One of them, Reinhardt, confessed on his death bed that he had murdered Wolfinger. George Donner's hand had become infected, which left four men to work at the Donner camp.Margret Reed had managed to save enough food for a Christmas pot of soup, to the delight of her children, but by January they were facing starvation and considered eating the oxhides that served as their roof. Margret Reed, Virginia, Milt Elliott and the servant girl Eliza Williams attempted to walk out, reasoning that it would be better to try to bring food back than sit and watch the children starve. They were gone for four days in the snow before they had to turn back. Their cabin was now uninhabitable; the oxhide-roof served as their food supply, and the family moved in with the Breens. The servants went to live with other families. One day the Graveses came by to collect on the debt owed by the Reeds and took the oxhides which were all the family had to eat.
Rescue
Much of the military in California, and with them the able-bodied men, were engaged in the Mexican-American War. Throughout the region roads were blocked, communications compromised, and supplies unavailable. Only three men responded to a call for volunteers to rescue the Donner Party. Reed was laid over in San JoseSan Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
until February because of regional uprisings and general confusion. He spent that time speaking with other pioneers and acquaintances, and the people of San Jose responded by creating a petition to appeal to the U.S. Navy to assist the people at Truckee Lake. Two local newspapers reported that members of the snowshoe party had resorted to cannibalism, which helped to foster sympathy for those who were still trapped. In Yerba Buena
Yerba Buena (town)
Yerba Buena was the original name of San Francisco when in the Spanish Las Californias Province of New Spain, and then after 1822 in the Mexican territory of Alta California, until the Mexican American War ended with the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when California became a territory of the...
, residents, many recent emigrants, raised $1,300 ($ as of 2010) and organized relief efforts to build two camps to supply a rescue party for the refugees.
A rescue party, including William Eddy, started on February 4 from the Sacramento Valley. Rain and a swollen river forced several delays. Eddy stationed himself at Bear Valley, while the others made steady progress through the snow and storms to cross the pass to Truckee Lake, caching their food at stations along the way, so they did not have to carry it all. Three of the rescue party turned back, but seven forged on.
First relief
| Members rescued by first relief | |
|---|---|
| Name | Age |
| Elitha Donner | 14 |
| Leanna Donner | 12 |
| George Donner, Jr. | 9 |
| William Hook* | 12 |
| Margret Reed | 32 |
| Virginia Reed | 12 |
| James Reed, Jr. | 6 |
| Edward Breen | 13 |
| Simon Breen | 8 |
| William Graves | 17 |
| Eleanor Graves | 14 |
| Lovina Graves | 12 |
| Mary Murphy | 14 |
| William Murphy | 10 |
| Naomi Pike | 2 |
| Philippine Keseberg | 23 |
| Ada Keseberg* | 3 |
| Doris Wolfinger | 20 |
| John Denton* | 28 |
| Noah James | 20 |
| Eliza Williams | 31 |
| * died en route | |
On February 18, the seven-man rescue party scaled Frémont Pass; as they neared where Eddy told them the cabins would be, they began to shout. Mrs. Murphy appeared from a hole in the snow, stared at them and asked, "Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven?" The relief party doled out food in small portions, concerned that if the emaciated emigrants overate it would kill them. All the cabins were buried in snow. Sodden oxhide roofs had begun to rot and the smell was overpowering. The bodies of the dead had been loosely buried in snow near the cabin roofs. Some of the emigrants seemed emotionally unstable. Three of the rescue party trekked to the Donners and brought back four gaunt children and two adults. Leanna Donner had particular difficulty walking up the steep incline from Alder Creek to Truckee Lake, later writing "such pain and misery as I endured that day is beyond description." George Donner's arm was so gangrenous
Gangrene
Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood...
that he could not move, but no one at Alder Creek had died since the last visit. Twenty-three people were chosen to go with the rescue party, leaving seventeen in the cabins at Truckee Lake and twelve at Alder Creek.
The rescuers concealed the fate of the snowshoe party, informing the rescued emigrants only that they did not return because they were frostbitten. Patty and Tommy Reed were soon too weak to cross the snowdrifts, and no one was strong enough to carry them. Margret Reed faced the agonizing predicament of accompanying her two older children to Bear Valley and watching her two frailest be taken back to Truckee Lake without a parent. She made one of the rescuers, Aquilla Glover, swear on his honor as a Mason
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
that he would return for her children. Patty Reed told her, "Well, mother, if you never see me again, do the best you can." Upon their return to the lake, the Breens flatly refused them entry to their cabin, but after Glover left more food the children were grudgingly admitted. The rescue party was dismayed to find that the first cache station had been broken into by animals, leaving them without food for four days. After struggling on the walk over the pass, John Denton slipped into a coma and died. Ada Keseberg died soon afterwards; her mother was inconsolable, refusing to let the child's body go. After several days' more travel through difficult country, the rescuers grew very concerned that the children would not survive. Some of them ate the buckskin fringe from one of the rescuer's pants, and the shoelaces of another, to the relief party's surprise. On their way down from the mountains they met the next rescue party, which included James Reed. Upon hearing his voice, Margret sank into the snow, overwhelmed.
After these rescued emigrants made it safely into Bear Valley, William Hook, Jacob Donner's stepson, broke into food stores and fatally gorged himself. The others continued on to Sutter's Fort, where Virginia Reed wrote "I really thought I had stepped over into paradise". She was amused to note that although she was only 12 years old and recovering from starvation, one of the young men asked her to marry him, but she turned him down.
Second relief
| Members rescued by second relief | |
|---|---|
| Name | Age |
| Isaac Donner* | 5 |
| Patty Reed | 9 |
| Thomas Reed | 4 |
| Patrick Breen† | 51 |
| Margaret Breen† | 40 |
| John Breen† | 14 |
| Patrick Breen, Jr.† | 9 |
| James Breen† | 5 |
| Peter Breen† | 3 |
| Margaret Breen† | 1 |
| Elizabeth Graves* | 45 |
| Nancy Graves† | 9 |
| Jonathan Graves† | 7 |
| Franklin Ward Graves, Jr.* | 5 |
| Elizabeth Graves† | 1 |
| Mary Donner† | 7 |
| Solomon Hook | 15 |
| * died en route † came out with John Stark |
|
On March 1, a second relief party arrived at Truckee Lake. These rescuers were mostly experienced mountaineers who accompanied the return of Reed and McCutchen. Reed was reunited with his daughter Patty and his weakened son Tommy. An inspection of the Breen cabin found its occupants relatively well, but the Murphy cabin, according to author George Stewart, "passed the limits of description and almost of imagination". Levinah Murphy, who was caring for her eight-year-old son Simon and the two young children of William Eddy and Foster, had deteriorated mentally and was nearly blind. The children were listless and had not been cleaned in days. Lewis Keseberg had moved into the cabin and could barely move due to an injured leg.
No one at Truckee Lake had died during the interim between the departure of the first relief party and the arrival of the second relief party. Patrick Breen documented a disturbing visit in the last week of February from Mrs. Murphy, who said her family was considering eating Milt Elliott. Reed and McCutchen found Elliott's mutilated body. The Alder Creek camp fared no better. The first two members of the relief party to reach it saw Trudeau carrying a human leg. When they made their presence known, he threw it into a hole in the snow that contained the mostly dismembered body of Jacob Donner. Inside the tent, Elizabeth Donner refused to eat, although her children were being nourished by the organs of their father. The rescuers discovered that three other bodies had already been consumed. In the other tent, Tamsen Donner was well, but George was very ill because the infection had reached his shoulder.
The second relief evacuated 17 emigrants, only three of whom were adults, from Truckee Lake. Both the Breen and Graves families prepared to go. Only five people remained at Truckee Lake: Keseberg, Mrs. Murphy and her son Simon, and the young Eddy and Foster children. Tamsen Donner elected to stay with her ailing husband after Reed informed her that a third relief party would arrive soon. Mrs. Donner kept her daughters Eliza, Georgia, and Frances with her.
The walk back to Bear Valley was very slow; at one point Reed sent ahead two of the men to retrieve the first cache of food, expecting the third relief, a small party led by Selim E. Woodworth
Selim E. Woodworth
Selim E. Woodworth was a commander in the United States Navy, prominent San Francisco businessman, and member of the Woodworth political family.-Early years:...
, to come at any moment. A violent blizzard arose after they scaled the pass. Five-year-old Isaac Donner froze to death, and Reed nearly died. Mary Donner's feet were badly burned because they were so frostbitten that she did not realize she was sleeping with them in the fire. When the storm passed, the Breen and Graves families, not having eaten for days, were too apathetic and exhausted to get up and move. The relief party had no choice but to leave without them.
Three members of the relief party stayed, one at Truckee Lake and two at Alder Creek. When one, Nicholas Clark, went hunting, the other two, Charles Cady and Charles Stone, made plans to return to California. Tamsen Donner arranged for them to carry three of her children to California, perhaps, according to Stewart, for $500 cash. Cady and Stone took the children to Truckee Lake but then left, alone, overtaking Reed and the others within days. Several days later, Clark and Trudeau agreed to leave together. When they discovered the Donner girls at Truckee Lake, they returned to Alder Creek to inform Tamsen Donner.
William Foster and William Eddy, both survivors of the snowshoe party, started from Bear Valley to intercept Reed, taking with them a man named John Stark. After one day, they met Reed, helping his children, all frostbitten and bleeding, but alive. Desperate to rescue their own children, Foster and Eddy persuaded four men, with pleading and money, to return to Truckee Lake with them. Halfway there they found the crudely mutilated and eaten remains of two children and Mrs. Graves, with one-year-old Elizabeth Graves crying beside her mother's body. Eleven survivors were huddled around a fire that had sunk into a pit. The relief party split, with Foster, Eddy, and two others headed toward Truckee Lake. Two rescuers, hoping to save the healthiest, each took a child and left. John Stark refused to leave the others. Stark picked up two children and all the provisions, and assisted the nine remaining Breens and Graveses to Bear Valley.
Third relief
| Members rescued by third relief | |
|---|---|
| Name | Age |
| Eliza Donner | 3 |
| Georgia Donner | 4 |
| Frances Donner | 6 |
| Simon Murphy | 8 |
| Jean Baptiste Trudeau | 16 |
Foster and Eddy finally arrived at Truckee Lake on March 14, where they found their children dead. Keseberg told Eddy that he had eaten the remains of Eddy's son, and Eddy swore to murder Keseberg if they ever met in California. George Donner and one of Jacob Donner's children were still alive at Alder Creek. Tamsen Donner, who had just arrived at the Murphy cabin, could have walked out alone, but chose to return to her husband although she was informed that no other relief party was likely to be coming soon. Foster and Eddy and the rest of the third relief left with four children, Trudeau, and Clark.
Two more relief parties were mustered to evacuate any adults who might still be alive. Both turned back before getting to Bear Valley, and no further attempts were made. On April 10, almost a month since the third relief had left Truckee Lake, the alcalde
Alcalde
Alcalde , or Alcalde ordinario, is the traditional Spanish municipal magistrate, who had both judicial and administrative functions. An alcalde was, in the absence of a corregidor, the presiding officer of the Castilian cabildo and judge of first instance of a town...
near Sutter's Fort organized a salvage party to recover what they could of the Donners' belongings. The belongings would be sold, with part of the proceeds used to support the orphaned Donner children. The salvage party found the Alder Creek tents empty except for the body of George Donner, who had died only days earlier. On their way back to Truckee Lake, they found Keseberg alive. According to Keseberg, Mrs. Murphy had died one week after the departure of the third relief. Some weeks later, Tamsen Donner had arrived at Keseberg's cabin on her way over the pass, soaked and visibly upset. Keseberg said he put a blanket around her and told her to start out in the morning, but she died during the night. The salvage party were suspicious of Keseberg's story, and found a pot full of human flesh in the cabin along with George Donner's pistols, jewelry, and $250 in gold. They threatened to lynch Keseberg, who confessed that he had cached $273 of the Donners' money, at Tamsen's suggestion, so that it could one day benefit her children.
Response
News of the Donner Party's fate was spread eastward by Samuel BrannanSamuel Brannan
Samuel Brannan was an American settler, businessman, and journalist, who founded the "California Star" newspaper in San Francisco, California...
, an elder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and journalist, who encountered the salvage party as they came down from the pass with Keseberg. Accounts of the ordeal first reached New York City by sea in July 1847. Reporting on the event across the U.S. was heavily influenced by the national enthusiasm for westward migration. In some papers, news of the tragedy was buried in small paragraphs despite the contemporary tendency to sensationalize stories. Several newspapers, including those in California, wrote about the cannibalism in graphic exaggerated detail. In some print accounts, the members of the Donner Party were made to be heroes, and California a paradise worthy of significant sacrifices.
Emigration to the west decreased over the following years, but it is likely that the drop in numbers was caused more by fears over the outcome of the ongoing Mexican-American War than by the cautionary tale of the Donner Party. In 1846, an estimated 1,500 people migrated to California. In 1847 the number dropped to 450 and to 400 in 1848. The California Gold Rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
spurred a sharp increase however, and in 1849, 25,000 people went west. Most of the overland migration followed the Carson River
Carson River
The Carson River is a northwestern Nevada river that empties into the Carson Sink, an endorheic basin. The main stem of the river is long....
, but a few forty-niners used the same route as the Donner Party and recorded descriptions about the site. The areas inhabited by the party were so notorious that they became known as Donner Pass
Donner Pass
Donner Pass is a mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevada, located above Donner Lake about nine miles west of Truckee, California. It has a steep approach from the east and a gradual approach from the west....
, Donner Lake
Donner Lake
Donner Lake is a freshwater lake in northeast California on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and about northwest of the much larger Lake Tahoe. A moraine serves as a natural dam for the lake. The lake is located in the town of Truckee, sandwiched between Interstate 80 to the north and...
, and Donner Peak.
In late June 1847 members of the Mormon Battalion
Mormon Battalion
The Mormon Battalion was the only religiously based unit in United States military history, and it served from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican-American War. The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saints men led by Mormon company officers, commanded by regular...
under General Steven Kearny
Stephen W. Kearny
Stephen Watts Kearny surname also appears as Kearney in some historic sources; August 30, 1794 October 31, 1848), was one of the foremost antebellum frontier officers of the United States Army. He is remembered for his significant contributions in the Mexican-American War, especially the conquest...
buried the human remains, and partially burned two of the cabins. The few who ventured over the pass in the next few years found bones, other artifacts, and the cabin used by the Reed and Graves families. In 1891 a cache of money was found buried by the lake. It had probably been stored by Mrs. Graves, who hastily hid it when she left with the second relief so that she could return for it later.
Lansford Hastings received death threats. An emigrant who crossed before the Donner Party confronted Hastings about the difficulties they had encountered, reporting "Of course he could say nothing but that he was very sorry, and that he meant well".
Survivors
Of the 87 people who entered the Wasatch Mountains, 48 survived. Only the Reed and Breen families remained intact. The children of Jacob Donner, George Donner, and Franklin Graves were orphaned. William Eddy was alone and most of the Murphy family had died. Only three mules reached California; the remaining animals perished. Most of the Donner Party members' possessions were discarded.A few of the widowed women remarried within months; brides were scarce in California. The Reeds settled in San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
and two of the Donner children lived with them. Reed fared well in the California Gold Rush and became prosperous. Virginia, with editorial oversight from her father, wrote an extensive letter to her cousin in Illinois about "our trubels getting to Callifornia" [sic]. Journalist Edwin Bryant carried it back in June 1847, and it was printed in its entirety, with some editorial alterations, in the Illinois Journal on December 16, 1847. Virginia converted to Catholicism in fulfillment of a promise she had made to herself while observing Patrick Breen pray in his cabin. The Murphy survivors lived in Marysville
Marysville, California
Marysville is the county seat of Yuba County, California, United States. The population was 12,072 at the 2010 census, down from 12,268 at the 2000 census. It is included in the Yuba City Metropolitan Statistical Area, often referred to as the Yuba-Sutter Area after the two counties, Yuba and...
. The Breens made their way to San Juan Bautista
San Juan Bautista, California
San Juan Bautista is a city in San Benito County, California, United States. The population was 1,862 at the 2010 census, up from 1,549 at the 2000 census. The city of San Juan Bautista was named after Mission San Juan Bautista...
where they ran an inn and became the anonymous subjects of one writer's story about his severe discomfort upon learning he was staying with alleged cannibals, printed in Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
in 1862. Many of the survivors encountered similar reactions. George and Tamsen Donner's children were taken in by an older couple near Sutter's Fort. The youngest of the Donner children, Eliza, who was three years old during the winter of 1846–1847, published an account of the Donner Party in 1911, based on printed accounts and those of her sisters. The Breen's youngest daughter Isabella, who was one year old during the winter of 1846–1847, was the last survivor of the Donner Party. She died in 1935.
The Graves children lived varied lives. Mary Graves married early, but her first husband was murdered; she cooked his killer's food while he was in prison to ensure the condemned man did not starve before his hanging. One of Mary's grandchildren noted she was very serious; Graves once said, "I wish I could cry but I cannot. If I could forget the tragedy, perhaps I would know how to cry again." Mary's brother William did not settle down for any significant time. Nancy Graves, who was nine years old during the winter of 1846–1847, refused to acknowledge her involvement even when contacted by historians interested in recording the most accurate versions of the episode; Nancy was reportedly unable to recover from her role in the cannibalism of her brother and mother.
Eddy remarried and started a family in California. He attempted to make good on his promise to murder Lewis Keseberg, but was dissuaded by James Reed and Edwin Bryant. A year later, Eddy recollected his experiences to J. Quinn Thornton, who, also using Reed's memories of his experiences, wrote the earliest comprehensive documentation of the episode. Eddy died in 1859.
Keseberg brought a defamation suit against several members of the relief party who accused him of murdering Tamsen Donner. The court awarded him $1 in damages, but also made him pay court costs. An 1847 story printed in the California Star described Keseberg's near-lynching by the salvage party and his actions in ghoulish terms, reporting that he preferred eating human flesh to the cattle and horses that had become exposed in the spring thaw. Charles McGlashan, a historian, amassed enough material to indict Keseberg for the murder of Tamsen Donner, but after interviewing Keseberg concluded that no murder occurred. Eliza Donner Houghton also believed Keseberg to be innocent. As Keseberg grew older, he did not venture outside, for he had become a pariah and was often threatened. He told McGlashan "I often think that the Almighty has singled me out, among all the men on the face of the earth, in order to see how much hardship, suffering, and misery a human being can bear!"
Legacy
The site of the cabins became a tourist attraction as early as 1854. In the 1880s, Charles McGlashan began promoting the idea of a monument to mark the site of the Donner Party episode. He helped to acquire the land for a monument, and in June 1918, the statue of a pioneer family was placed on the spot where the Breen-Keseberg cabin was thought to have been, dedicated to the Donner Party. It was made a California Historical Landmark in 1934.
The State of California created the Donner Memorial State Park
Donner Memorial State Park
Donner Memorial State Park is a US state park located near Truckee, California. The park is named after the ill-fated Donner Party, and contains the Emigrant Trail Museum and the Pioneer Monument dedicated to them. The Donner Camp site at Alder Creek, where the Donner families were trapped by...
in 1927. It originally consisted of 11 acre (0.04451546 km²) surrounding the monument. Twenty years later, the site of the Murphy cabin was purchased and added to the park. In 1962, the Emigrant Trail Museum was added to tell the history of westward migration into California. The Murphy cabin and Donner monument were established as a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
in 1963. A large rock served as the back end of the fireplace of the Murphy cabin, and a bronze plaque has been affixed to the rock listing the members of the Donner Party, indicating who survived and who did not. The State of California justifies memorializing the site because the episode was "an isolated and tragic incident of American history that has been transformed into a major folk epic". As of 2003, the park is estimated to receive 200,000 visitors a year.
Mortality
Although most historians count 87 members of the party, Stephen McCurdy in the Western Journal of Medicine includes Sarah Keyes—Margret Reed's mother—and Luis and Salvador, bringing the number to 90. Five people had already died before the party reached Truckee Lake: one from tuberculosis (Halloran), three from trauma (Snyder, Wolfinger and Pike), and one from exposure (Hardkoop). A further 34 died between December 1846 and April 1847: 25 males and 9 females.Grayson in his 1990 mortality study stated that the one-year-old Elizabeth Graves was one of the casualties, but she was rescued by the second relief. Several historians and other authorities have studied the mortalities to determine what factors may affect survival in nutritionally deprived individuals. Of the 15 members of the snowshoe party, 8 of the 10 men who set out died (Stanton, Dolan, Graves, Murphy, Antonio, Fosdick, Luis and Salvador), but all 5 of the women survived. A professor at the University of Washington stated that the Donner Party episode is a "case study of mediated natural selection in action".The deaths at Truckee Lake, Alder Creek, and in the snowshoe party, were probably caused by a combination of extended malnutrition, overwork, and exposure to cold. Several members, such as George Donner, became more susceptible to infection due to starvation, but the three most significant factors in survival were age, sex, and the size of family group each member traveled with. The survivors were on average 7.5 years younger than those who died; children aged between 6 and 14 had a much higher survival rate than infants and children under the age of 6, of whom 62.5 percent died, including the son born to the Keseburgs on the trail, or adults over the age of 35. No adults over the age of 49 survived. Deaths among males aged between 20 and 39 were "extremely high" at more than 66 percent. Men have been found to metabolize protein faster, and women do not require as high a caloric intake. Women also store more body fat, which delays the effects of physical degradation caused by starvation and overwork. Men also tend to take on more dangerous tasks, and in this particular instance, the men were required before reaching Truckee Lake to clear brush and engage in heavy labor, adding to their physical debilitation. Those traveling with family members had a higher survival rate than bachelor males, possibly because family members more readily shared food with each other.
Claims of cannibalism
Although some survivors disputed the accounts of cannibalism, Charles McGlashan, who corresponded with many of the survivors over a 40-year period, documented many recollections that it occurred. Some correspondents were not forthcoming, approaching their participation with shame, but others eventually spoke about it freely. McGlashan in his 1879 book History of the Donner Party declined to include some of the more morbid details such as the suffering of the children and infants before death, or how Mrs. Murphy, according to Georgia Donner, gave up, lay down on her bed and faced the wall when the last of the children left in the third relief. He also neglected to mention any of the cannibalism at Alder Creek. The same year McGlashan's book was published, Georgia Donner wrote to him to clarify some points, saying that human flesh was prepared for people in both tents at Alder Creek, but to her recollection (she was four years old during the winter of 1846–1847) it was given only to the youngest children: "Father was crying and did not look at us the entire time, and we little ones felt we could not help it. There was nothing else." She also remembered that Elizabeth Donner, Jacob's wife, announced one morning that she had cooked the arm of Samuel Shoemaker, a 25-year-old teamster. Eliza Donner Houghton, in her 1911 account of the ordeal, did not mention any cannibalism at Alder Creek. Archaeological findings at the Alder Creek camp proved inconclusive for evidence of cannibalism.None of the bones tested at the Alder Creek cooking hearth could be conclusively identified as human. According to Rarick, only cooked bones would be preserved, and it is unlikely that the Donner Party members would have needed to cook human bones. (Rarick, p. 193)Eliza Farnham's 1856 account of the Donner Party was based largely on an interview with Margaret Breen. Her version details the ordeals of the Graves and Breen families after James Reed and the second relief left them in the snow pit. According to Farnham, seven-year-old Mary Donner suggested to the others that they should eat Isaac Donner, Franklin Graves, Jr., and Elizabeth Graves, because the Donners had already begun eating the others at Alder Creek, including Mary's father Jacob. Margaret Breen insisted that she and her family did not cannibalize the dead, but Kristin Johnson, Ethan Rarick, and Joseph King whose account is sympathetic to the Breen family do not consider it credible that the Breens, who had been without food for nine days, would have been able to survive without eating human flesh. King suggests Farnham included this into her account independently of Margaret Breen.
According to an account published by H. A. Wise in 1847, Jean Baptiste Trudeau boasted of his own heroism, but also spoke in lurid detail of eating Jacob Donner, and claimed he had eaten a baby raw. Many years later, Trudeau met Eliza Donner Houghton and denied cannibalizing anyone, which he reiterated in an interview with a St. Louis newspaper in 1891, when he was 60 years old. Houghton and the other Donner children were fond of Trudeau, and he of them, in spite of their circumstances and the fact that he eventually left Tamsen Donner alone. Author George Stewart considers Trudeau's accounting to Wise more accurate than what he told Houghton in 1884, and asserted that he deserted the Donners. Kristin Johnson, however, attributes Trudeau's interview with Wise to be a result of "common adolescent desires to be the center of attention and to shock one's elders"; older, he reconsidered his story, so as not to upset Houghton. Historians Joseph King and Jack Steed call Stewart's characterization of Trudeau's actions as desertion "extravagant moralism", particularly because all members of the party were forced to make difficult choices. Ethan Rarick echoed this by writing, "... more than the gleaming heroism or sullied villainy, the Donner Party is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous".
Further reading
- The Donner Party Chronicles: A Day-by-Day Account of a Doomed Wagon Train, 1846–1847 by Frank Mullen Jr.
- The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate by Eliza P. Donner Houghton
- Excavation of the Donner-Reed Wagons: Historic Archaeology Along the Hastings Cutoff by Bruce R. Hawkins and David B. Madsen
- American Experience: Donner Party (video), a 1992 documentary film directed by Ric BurnsRic BurnsRic Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries for nearly 20 years, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War , which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey C...
- The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown
- Searching for Tamsen Donner by Gabrielle Burton
- "The Year of Decision: 1846" by Bernard DeVoto
External links
- List of Donner Party Resources compiled by Kristin Johnson
- Statement of Daniel Rhoads regarding the relief of the Donner Party, 1846, by Daniel RhoadsDaniel RhoadsDaniel Rhoads was a California, USA, pioneer and rancher who helped rescue the Donner Party....
, a member of the first rescue party