Western migration through uncharted regions strands a wagon train in the Sierra Mountains leaving little choice for survival.
On April 14, 1846, George Donner and his brother Jacob
packed their families into covered wagons and left Springfield,
Illinois en route to a new life in California. George would later take
the lead of the so-called “Donner Party,” a group of westbound emigrants
who became trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during one of the
most brutal winters on record. The pioneers were forced to spend five
months hunkered down in makeshift tents and cabins with almost no food
or supplies. By the time they were finally rescued in early 1847, nearly
half of them had perished. Many of the rest—including the children—were
forced to cannibalize the bodies of the dead to survive. 170 years
after the Donner Party left on their doomed journey, explore 10 key
facts about one of the most gruesome episodes from the era of Westward
expansion.
1. The Donner Party started its trip dangerously late in the pioneer season.
Travel on the California Trail followed a tight schedule. Emigrants
needed to head west late enough in the spring for there to be grass
available for their pack animals, but also early enough so they could
cross the treacherous western mountain passes before winter. The sweet
spot for a departure was usually sometime in mid to late-April, yet for
unknown reasons, the core of what became the Donner Party didn’t leave
their jumping-off point at Independence, Missouri until May 12. They
were the last major pioneer train of 1846, and their late start left
them with very little margin for error. “I am beginning to feel alarmed
at the tardiness of our movements,” one of the emigrants wrote, “and
fearful that winter will find us in the snowy mountains of California.” Map showing route of the Donner Party. (Credit: Kmusser/Wikimedia Commons)2. They fell behind schedule after taking an untested shortcut.
After reaching Wyoming, most California-bound pioneers followed a route
that swooped north through Idaho before turning south and moving across
Nevada. In 1846, however, a dishonest guidebook author named Lansford
Hastings was promoting a straighter and supposedly quicker path that cut
through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Salt Lake Desert. There
was just one problem: no one had ever traveled this “Hastings Cutoff”
with wagons, not even Hastings himself. Despite the obvious risks—and
against the warnings of James Clyman, an experienced mountain man—the 20
Donner Party wagons elected to break off from the usual route and
gamble on Hastings’ back road. The decision proved disastrous. The
emigrants were forced to blaze much of the trail themselves by cutting
down trees, and they nearly died of thirst during a five-day crossing of
the salt desert. Rather than saving them time, Hasting’s “shortcut”
ended up adding nearly a month to the Donner Party’s journey.
3. The emigrants lost a race against the weather by just a few days.
Despite the Hastings Cutoff debacle, most of the Donner Party still
managed to reach the slopes of the Sierra Nevada by early November 1846.
Only a scant hundred miles remained in their trek, but before the
pioneers had a chance to drive their wagons through the mountains, an
early blizzard blanketed the Sierras in several feet of snow. Mountain
passes that were navigable just a day earlier soon transformed into icy
roadblocks, forcing the Donner Party to retreat to nearby Truckee Lake
and wait out the winter in ramshackle tents and cabins. Much of the
group’s supplies and livestock had already been lost on the trail, and
it wasn’t long before the first settlers began to perish from
starvation.
4. The majority of the Donner Party emigrants were children.
Like most pioneer trains, the Donner Party was largely made up of family
wagons packed with young children and adolescents. Of the 81 people who
became stranded at Truckee Lake, more than half were younger than 18
years old, and six were infants. Children also made up the vast majority
of the Donner’s Party’s eventual survivors. One of them, one-year-old
Isabella Breen, would go on to live until 1935.
5. A few pioneers managed to hike to safety.
On December 16, 1846, more than a month after they became snowbound, 15
of the strongest members of the Donner Party strapped on makeshift
snowshoes and tried to walk out of the mountains to find help. After
wandering the frozen landscape for several days, they were left starving
and on the verge of collapse. The hikers resigned themselves to
cannibalism and considered drawing lots for a human sacrifice or even
having two of the men square off in a duel. Several members of the party
soon died naturally, however, so the survivors roasted and consumed
their corpses. The gruesome meat gave them the energy they required, and
following a month of walking, seven of the original 15 made it to a
ranch in California and helped organize rescue efforts. Historians would
later dub their desperate hike “The Forlorn Hope.”
6. A Donner Party member murdered two people for use as food.
During the “Forlorn Hope” expedition, the hiking party included a pair
of Indians named Salvador and Luis, both of whom had joined up with the
Donner emigrants shortly before they became snowbound. The natives were
the only members of the group who refused to engage in cannibalism, and
they later ran off out of fear that they might be murdered once the
others ran out of meat. When the duo was found days later, exhausted and
lying in the snow, an emigrant named William Foster shot both of them
in the head. The Indians were then butchered and eaten by the hikers. It
was the only time during the entire winter that people were murdered
for use as food.
7. Not all of the emigrants engaged in cannibalism.
As their supplies dwindled, the Donner emigrants stranded at Truckee
Lake resorted to eating increasingly grotesque meals. They slaughtered
their pack animals, cooked their dogs, gnawed on leftover bones and even
boiled the animal hide roofs of their cabins into a foul paste. Several
people died from malnutrition, but the rest managed to subsist on
morsels of boiled leather and tree bark until rescue parties arrived in
February and March 1847. Not all of the settlers were strong enough to
escape, however, and those left behind were forced to cannibalize the
frozen corpses of their comrades while waiting for further help. All
told, roughly half of the Donner Party’s survivors eventually resorted
to eating human flesh.
8. The rescue process took over two months.
Of the five months the Donner Party spent trapped in the mountains,
nearly half of it took place after they had already been located by
rescuers. The first relief parties reached the settlers in February
1846, but since pack animals were unable to navigate the deep
snowdrifts, they only brought whatever food and supplies they could
carry. By then, many of the emigrants were too weak to travel, and
several died while trying to walk out of the mountains. Four relief
teams and more than two-and-a-half months were eventually required to
shepherd all the Donner Party survivors back to civilization. The last
to be rescued was Lewis Keseberg, a Prussian pioneer who was found in
April 1847, supposedly half-mad and surrounded by the cannibalized
bodies of his former companions. Keseberg was later accused of having
murdered the other emigrants for use as food, but the charges were never
proven.
9. One rescuer singlehandedly led nine survivors out of the mountains.
Perhaps the most famous of the Donner Party’s saviors was John Stark, a
burly California settler who took part in the third relief party. In
early March 1847, he and two other rescuers stumbled upon 11 emigrants,
mostly kids, who been left in the mountains by an earlier relief group.
The two other rescuers each grabbed a single child and started hoofing
it back down the slope, but Stark was unwilling to leave anyone behind.
Instead, he rallied the weary adults, gathered the rest of the children
and began guiding the group singlehandedly. Most of the kids were too
weak to walk, so Stark took to carrying two of them at a time for a few
yards, then setting them down in the snow and going back for others. He
continued the grueling process all the way down the mountain, and
eventually led all nine of his charges to safety. Speaking of the
incident years later, one of the survivors credited her rescue to
“nobody but God and Stark and the Virgin Mary.” James F. and Margaret (Keyes) Reed, who were members of the Donner Party. (Credit: Public Domain)10. Only two families made it through the ordeal intact.
Of the 81 pioneers who began the Donner Party’s horrific winter in the
Sierra Nevada, only 45 managed to walk out alive. The ordeal proved
particularly costly for the group’s 15 solo travelers, all but two of
whom died, but it also took a tragic toll on the families. George and
Jacob Donner, both of their wives and four of their children all
perished. Pioneer William Eddy, meanwhile, lost his wife and his two
kids. Nearly a dozen families had made up Donner wagon train, but only
two—the Reeds and the Breens—managed to arrive in California without
suffering a single death.
...yes, having to walk away from the beauty you have seeded. Nobody can hear the whispers from the pines, as they sway in the night breeze saying thank you, Mariyah
Anything having to do with dinners, bread and breakfasts at Niagara On The Lake, observing a play at The Stratford Festival, observing a ballet At Shea's Performing Arts Center, watching the Cubs try to play baseball!!!!
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