The Donner party
The donor party was an 1840s incident or a situation whereby Californian bound emigrants found themselves in a middle of snow in Sierra Nevada during the winter that lasted from 1846 to1847. The proposed journey was destined to start at Springfield in Illinois something that indeed happened. The journey involved George Donnor and his brothers James Frazier Reed and Jacob together with their families. Reed had also carried with him two servants. The journey was by road where each of them had packed his belongings in three covered wagons that were pulled by oxen. The trip was to begin after the end of spring rains when the roads were believed to be in good condition and when grass would be plenty for their animals. The trip was approximated to be about four hundred kilometers with their first destination being Independence, Missouri. They anticipated that they would be through with their journey before the Sierra Nevada roads were made impassable by snow but this remained to be nothing more than an empty dream as they found themselves trapped by snow in Sierra Nevada and unable to proceed. Having exhausted the food supplies they had carried, they turned to cannibalism.
This research paper is going to mainly focus on the Donnor party saga and will try to unveil what exactly took place and the ordeal that emigrants faced in the wilderness. The paper will also discuss about the rescue measures that were taken by the Indians after it was discovered that the party had been trapped by snow in the mountains. The paper starts off by giving a short description of what Donnor Party entailed and then proceeds to give an in-depth analysis of the same in its main body. The paper concludes by giving a short recap of the key points that have been discussed and in the last page is a list of all sources that have been cited clearly formatted in accordance with MLA requirements.
The donor party of 19th May 1846 in nucleus involved about thirty three members that is the Donnor’s family members together with their assistants and their belongings were packed in nine wagons destined to California. The trip took two months before arriving at the Little Sandy River, a river which is today known as Wyoming. The trip was well intentioned and each had the expectations that they would make their trip safely and return to their country in one peace but their dream never became a reality. The trip was an idea that belonged to a businessman James Frasier Reed whose main motive was to build a fortune in California. The other reason for the trip was to see whether his wife Margaret would improve health-wise from headaches that were believed to be caused by poor climatic conditions of Illinois. He expected that the weather at California would a bit favorable for her (The legends of America).
He came to this decision after reading the works of Landsford W. Hastings, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California which he took as the gospel truth. This work talked of a short cut in the Great Basin which Hasting claimed would save travelers from making long journeys on harsh terrain. Reed deeming himself a pioneer decided to give the promised shortcut a try but what he forgot was that Hastings had his own ambitions. He knew there were gold deposits in that region that had not yet been tapped and that was why he talked of a route which he knew very well was misleading. He was doing this to ensure that his dream of building himself an empire at Fort Sutter turned true. The claimed shortcut had not been tested by anyone in fact; it is following this misleading information that pronounced doom to a well planned Donnor party. As the trip started, George Donnor was chosen to the Captain and as more people joined, it became a party which came to be known as Donnor party with about eighty seven people and twenty three covered wagons.
Contrary to what they expected, the journey took longer than it was supposed as instead of one week, it lasted for a whole month and was harsher than it was anticipated something that made winter to find then in the region (McGlashan 22). Though the journey took them longer than it was expected, they were almost near the long coveted region, Nevada but their dream was cut short by the snow which started to set in the moment they arrived. They decided to stay for three days there but they were least aware that that was the most grievous mistake they were making in their lives as sooner than later, storm started setting in quickly accompanied by the snow that was seen already forming in the mountains. By the time they reached Prosser Creek on 28th October, the storm was in full scale. It was not the usual occurrence as storm was expected a month later but unfortunately to them, there happened to be a change of weather and the storm came a month earlier.
Despite the fierce storm in the region, Reed and his people continued with their journey through the snow capped ground but the situation turned from worse to worst and left with no other good option they cut short their journey and went back to Donner Lake where they set a camp to save themselves from the deadly storm. At this time they were running out of their supplies something that greatly demoralized the participants. Three quarters of the members decided to camp at what is today known as lake Donnor while the rest particularly the Donnor family camped at Alder Creek Valley, a distance of about ten kilometers from where the other groups had camped. They continued to camp there until their food supplies were exhausted and they turned to their oxen as their source of meal but this could not also sustain them for the period they stayed there. For this reason, fifteen of them who later came to be regarded as Forlorn hope decided to move heading to Fort Sutter in search of help. Many could not make it as the journey in the mountain was a matter of life and death in fact, when one man fell down they would leave him there to die and continue with their journey. The journey continued for many days until they consumed all the food they had carried but unlike in the camp oxen were slaughtered for food, this group turned on each other. Any man who was unable to make it was turned into food. The group soldiered on and luckily enough; the two men and five women who remained were able to find a safe haven on the other side of the mountain on 18th January 1847 (McGlashan 23).
It is these people who broke the news to the people of California who mobilized themselves to save the Donnor party. Four search parties were formed and by the time the first relief group they reached where a camping site had been set up, they found out that fourteen members of the Donnor party had already succumbed to the ordeal while the remaining few were very weak to walk in fact they were surviving on boiled skin of the oxen they had slaughtered but unlike the other group, this one had not yet resorted to cannibalism. They rescued twenty one of them leaving thirty one of them behind. They set a camp for them where they would wait for the next rescue group to arrive but a week later when the second relief group arrived, it was found that no more deaths had occurred but the immigrants had resorted to cannibalism (McGlashan 24). The relief camp decided to take seventeen of them leaving fourteen alive but when the third relief group went in March to rescue the remaining group, they found that five people were missing. It is this group that saved Donner’s family where their four children were rescued but Donner was too weak to walk and was left to die. His wife refused to leave him and instead chose to die with him in the wilderness. In short, the rescue group managed to rescue the four children who were there leaving five of them behind and by the time the fourth relief squad came, only one man, Kaseberg was alive. Kaseberg had been left in the lake cabins camp together with other three immigrants among them Lavinia Murphy who was by then very ill to survive because the third rescue team considered them too weak to walk and thus had to wait for the next search team if they would still be alive but unfortunately, it was only Kaseberg who survived and was found by the fourth group which was led by William Fallon, a Snowshoe survivor who wanted to rescue her misses Murphy, his mother in-law, lying in the midst of the dead bodies. They ransacked the camp and salvaged any valuables that they came across and carried the remaining man, Lewis Keseberg with them leaving the Alder Creek camp empty and headed for Sutter’s Fort where they arrived on 29th April 1847 (Nevada County Gold).
Of all the 87 members who originally started the journey, thirty nine of them perished in the wilderness while forty eight of them survived the ordeal. Five of the immigrants died before reaching to Sierra Nevada, fourteen perished in the lake camp while another twelve immigrants died on their search for help in the mountains. Unfortunately, there were two Indians who got trapped in the mountains together with the emigrants by snow while ferrying supplies to the trapped immigrants making the total to be 41 (McGlashan 25).
Mary Graves who was one of the Forlorn Hope survivors narrates the story how they survived in the mountains. She says they would stay there dreaming that something good to eat would turn up only to wake up to a bitter reality that there was nothing to eat. They set fire using the flint lock gun which was carried in turns lest it got lost and that was what their live depended on. As they moved on, they came to the other side of the mountain where they came across an Indian territory and sought for help from them. Their bodies were bony and they looked like skeletons something that astonished the Indians to an extent of running away (McGlashan 148).
Though some sources claim that only the weak emigrants were turned to food by others, this claim has been disputed by other sources that show that some people were mutilated while still strong for example Kaseberg mutilated the bodies of William Eddy’s’ family at the lake camp he threatened to kill him if they crossed paths. Some people who were victims of mutilations survived the ordeal until they were saved by the Indian rescue teams. These people though they ate other people’s meat, they were cautious not to eat the meat of their family members (McGlashan 148).
The shocking story of Donnor party instilled fear to people and they would not emigrate to California to avoid meeting the same fate for example it is only 850 people who went there in 1847 and 48 compared to 1846 where about 1500 traveled there but people were able to forget about this ordeal when gold was discovered in Sutter’s Mill, New Jersey. Driven by this discovery, California registered about 70,000 emigrants in the period between 1849 and 1850 (Calabro 132).
Donor party is a sad story that took many by surprise. It was an adventure that was believed that it would bring good fortune to the participants but it ended to be a disaster where people lost lives and others turned their friends to be their meal. It took the kindness of the Californians to rescue the donor party although many perished. It is an incident that cannot be erased from people’s minds easily.
Works cited.
Calabro, Marian. The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999
Lewis Daniel. Forensic of the Donor Party. Accessed from http://raiboy.tripod.com/Donner/id14.html
Nevada County Gold. The Donor Party. Available at http://www.ncgold.com/History/donner.html
McGlashan, C. F. History of the Donner Party. Plain Label Books, 2003.
The legends of America. Old West Legends: The Donor Party Tragedy. Accessed from http://www.legendsofamerica.com/CA-DonnerParty.html
