Introduction to How the Donner Party Worked
The story of the Donner Party looms large in American folklore. On April 14, 1846, this group of immigrants embarked on a 2,500-mile journey from Springfield, Ill., to San Francisco -- but, because of bad timing, terrible advice and even worse weather, only a fraction of them reached their final destination. The Donner Party has become legendary because of the extremity of the situation and also because of what the group did to survive a hellish winter in the Sierra Nevada mountains. As food became more and more scarce, and as members of the group began dying from starvation and illness, the rest of the party resorted to cannibalism as a means of survival.
This aspect of the Donner Party's story has been a grotesquely fascinating part of the American consciousness since it happened during the height of westward expansion. History buffs are still intrigued because of our forebearers' will to survive and the risks they took. Today, it's easy to forget the hardships that American trailblazers had to endure -- we don't necessarily think about the possibility of having to devour our fellow travelers when we step on the train for our morning commute or take our seat on a cross-country flight.
But the story of the Donner Party is a frightening reminder of what could be. Were it not for a few wrong turns, a bit of bad directions and a winter storm the likes of which had never been seen, the Donner Party would have been an unremarkably successful wagon train. But as it happened, it became a lesson of what can happen when everything goes wrong, a cautionary tale of manifest destiny and an unforgettable tragedy in American history. How did the Donner Party wind up isolated, in such desperate circumstances?
The Journey
The Donner-Reed Party planned on following a well-traveled route to the California Trail. They would travel west to St. Louis, northwest to Wyoming and Idaho, and then southwest through Utah and Nevada, over the Sierra Nevadas and into California. The trip was supposed to take six months -- but it ended up taking two years.
The Donners and Reeds decided to split up when the group reached Little Sandy River, Wyo., in July 1846. The Reeds stayed on the familiar trail, but the Donners -- 23 wagons strong -- had heard about a new shortcut, the Hastings Cutoff. They decided to travel on to Fort Bridger, Wyo., and meet up with Lanford Hastings, who had discovered the new route. But they arrived in Fort Bridger a few days late and discovered that Hastings had gone without them.
So the Donner Party (87 people plus two American Indian guides) followed the shallow trail blazed a few days earlier by Hastings' group, covering about 12 miles a day. When the trail reached the Red Fork of the Weber River in Utah, they discovered a note from Hastings warning that the route was very bad. The land was so rugged that the group crossed only 16 miles in 36 days -- and then they hit a stretch of desert 80 miles long. Taking the shortcut ended up costing the group four wagons, three weeks and 125 unnecessary miles. They finally reached the California Trail on Sept. 31, 1846.
On the first of November the party reached the eastern border of the Sierra Nevadas as a heavy snow was falling. Bad weather and dwindling supplies conspired to keep them at camp through one of the longest and coldest winters on record -- and they had only 150 more miles to go. The group set up two different camps: Almost two-thirds settled on the banks of a lake; the rest, including the families of Jacob and George Donner, went six miles away to Adler Creek. Little did they know that the worst was yet to come.
Lansford HastingsLansford Hastings made a name for himself as a trailblazer and was particularly fond of one shortcut he envisioned called the Hastings Cutoff. He wrote a book called "The Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California," which describes this shortcut in one brief sentence. His route was supposed to go west from Fort Bridger, Wyo., through the Wasatch mountains, south of the Great Salt Lake and across the Salt Lake Desert, where it would rejoin the familiar California Trail at the base of the Sierra Nevada range.
Hastings wrote a widely circulated open letter to all westward travelers urging them to use this route, even though he hadn't tried it himself. He promised that it would reduce travel by at least 350 miles, cutting three weeks off the journey. He also claimed that the roads were smooth, hard and level, that here was no threat of attack from aggressive local tribes, and that there was plenty of water and grass for animals. This misguidance led directly to the Donner Party's monstrous fate.
The Forlorn Hope
The Donner Party, stranded on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada mountains, hunkered down for the winter of 1846-47, which would turn out to be one of the harshest on record.
As the food supply ran out, the group became more and more desperate. First, they killed and ate their pack animals. When that meat was gone, they hunted deer, rabbits and foxes. Then they ate their dogs, boiled blankets and rawhide into a gluelike soup, and consumed bark and twigs. Families hoarded what little they had, neglecting their starving companions. On Dec. 16, six weeks after they arrived in the foothills, the first person died of starvation.
On that day, a party of the 15 strongest members -- 10 men and five women -- embarked with their Indian guides through the snow and storms, hoping to reach the pass and bring aid to their camps. The group, called the Forlorn Hope, wore homemade snowshoes (and so are sometimes referred to as the Snowshoe Group). They carried almost no food with them as they traveled the 100 miles to Sutter's Fort, Calif., which they reached on Jan. 18, 1847. Ten of them didn't make it.
Six days into the Forlorn Hope's trek, Charles Staton, overwhelmed by starvation and exhaustion, begged the others to leave him there to die. It wasn't until the ninth day of the expedition that the topic of cannibalism was brought up for the first time, and the group discussed the proper circumstances for it. They thought about drawing straws or dueling, but eventually they agreed that they'd just wait for someone to die -- and that no one would consume the flesh of a relative. That night, a traveler named Antoine (or Antonio) died of starvation. The remaining members of the party cut off his flesh and roasted it over a campfire. Others soon followed -- the Forlorn Hope ate three more men, and things started turning violent.
Jay Fosdick, a 23-year-old traveling with his family, died of starvation (see How long can you go without food or water?). A Mrs. Foster, following the (however horrific) rules for the situation, cut up the body and boiled it, and the two Indian guides ate it. Jay Fosdick's father then hunted down the guides and shot them dead. The original group had dwindled to seven people when they limped into the settlement at Sutter's Fort. The harrowing journey lasted for 33 days.
Now we know that the smaller expedition was forced to resort to cannibalism because they brought so little food with them, but were those who stayed at the original encampments forced into the same fate?
The Donner Party in BriefSuccessful farmer George Donner and his brother Jacob, along with their families, agreed to travel west with the family of James Reed, an Irish-born businessman. When they departed, they were known as the Donner-Reed Party, and George Donner was the official leader.
The party that left Springfield, Ill., had 33 members, but more joined up along the way. When the group decided to split up at Little Sandy River, Wyo., 89 people -- including two American Indian guides -- took an ill-fated shortcut and ended up stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Only 48 of them survived.
The Donner Party Legend
Although the Forlorn Hope was successful in reaching the outside world for help, that help came too late. The first of four rescue parties was sent out on Jan. 31, 1847, but, because of bad weather and a lack of supplies, the rescuers were continually delayed. By the time they arrived at the settlements at Donner Lake and Adler Creek on Feb. 22, many more had died. And people continued to die as the succession of rescuers arrived.
The first rescue mission was able to bring 21 survivors to safety. The second rescued 17, the third saved four, and the final party brought back one last survivor. Of the 87 people who took the Hastings Cutoff, 39 died. Everyone older than 50 perished, and most of the young children did, too.
And so, the tragedy came to an end. The hideousness of the ordeal quickly passed from truth to legend. Myths abounded and inflated, newspaper accounts exaggerated the truth, and much of it went unchecked for years. The California Star, a San Francisco newspaper, was the first to print the Donner Party's story, on Feb. 13, 1847. By today's standards, the piece reads like a tabloid article, full of shocking and grisly details.
The survivors went their separate ways and didn't communicate much for the rest of their lives. Some published their diaries, some wrote memoirs, and some made official statements to the press and courts. Many, understandably, wanted to forget the whole thing and refused to talk about it. Nevertheless, the story was quickly cemented into the imagination of a country caught in the grips of a rush for gold and land. It was a cautionary tale that could slow down even the most gung-ho pioneer.
Teams of archaeologists have examined the two campsites for evidence of what really happened. Some claim that there's no physical evidence to prove that cannibalism took place -- they've found hearths filled with the bones of deer, oxen and rabbits, but no human remains were left behind. It's been argued that the survivors and rescue teams did what they could to give the deceased a proper burial, and that's why there is no forensic evidence of cannibalism. But the written word and testimonies of the survivors that attest to the brutal lengths that survivors went to.
After word got out about the Donner Party, emigration to California dropped severely. Hastings' Cutoff was deserted, and Lansford Hastings' reputation as a trailblazer was lost forever. The flow of westward immigrants all but stopped until early 1848, when gold was discovered in California. By 1849, more than 100,000 people had decided to put the Donner tragedy in the back of their minds and move west.
To learn more about the Donner Party, take a gander at the links on the next page.
The Case of Lewis KesebergA number of families accused party member Lewis Keseberg of murdering in order to cannibalize. When the third rescue party left the campsite, four people were alive. By the time the fourth rescue team arrived on April 17, 1847, Keseberg was the only person left. Many reports at the time said that the rescuers had found Keseberg surrounded by disfigured corpses, a kettle of cooking human flesh, buckets of human blood, and a large frying pan filled with fresh human livers and lungs. On the ground were three uneaten ox legs. Keseberg allegedly said his fellow pioneers had died natural deaths and that he ignored the ox meat because it was too tough and lacked a good flavor.
Keseberg insisted until his death that he had not murdered anyone and only reluctantly ate human flesh. "It makes my blood curdle to think of it!" he told Charles McGlashan, a local newspaper publisher who wrote a book about the Donner Party. "It has been told that I boasted of my shame -- said that I enjoyed this horrid food … It is a horrible, revolting falsehood" [source: McGlashan].