Donner Party
Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, mainly eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, or extreme cold, but in one case two Native American guides were murdered and eaten.
The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed after electing to follow a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which bypassed established trails and instead crossed the Rocky Mountains' Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake Desert in present-day Utah.
The desolate and rugged terrain, and the difficulties they later encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and divisions soon formed within the group.
[2] During the 1840s there was a dramatic increase in settlers leaving the east to resettle in the Oregon Territory or California, which at the time were accessible only by a very long sea voyage or a daunting overland journey.
Some, such as Patrick Breen, saw California, then a part of Mexico, as a place where they would be free to live in a fully Catholic culture;[3] others were attracted to the West's burgeoning economic opportunities or inspired by manifest destiny, the belief that the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belonged to European Americans and that they should settle it.
[4] Most wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail route from a starting point in Independence, Missouri, to the Continental Divide, traveling about 15 miles (24 km) a day[5] on a journey that usually took between four and six months.
[17] Also traveling with the Donner brothers were teamsters Hiram O. Miller (29), Samuel Shoemaker (25), Noah James (16), Charles Burger (30), John Denton (28) and Augustus Spitzer (30).
[27] Two young single men named Spitzer and Reinhardt traveled with another German couple, the Wolfingers, who were rumored to be wealthy; they also had a hired driver, "Dutch Charley" Burger.
[36] Tamsen Donner, according to Thornton, was "gloomy, sad, and dispirited" at the thought of turning off the main trail on the advice of Hastings, whom she considered "a selfish adventurer".
Donner hired a replacement driver, and the company was joined by the McCutchen family, consisting of William (30), his wife Amanda (24), their two-year-old daughter Harriet and a 16-year-old named Jean Baptiste Trudeau from New Mexico, who claimed to have knowledge of the Native Americans and terrain on the way to California.
In his letter Hastings had offered to guide the Donner Party around the more difficult areas, but he rode back only part way, indicating the general direction to follow.
From its peak they saw ahead a dry, barren plain, perfectly flat and covered with white salt, larger than the one they had just crossed,[46] and "one of the most inhospitable places on earth" according to Rarick.
"[72] Faced with one last push over mountains that were described as much worse than the Wasatch Range, the Donner Party had to decide whether to forge ahead or rest their cattle.
Three widely separated cabins of pine logs served as their homes, with dirt floors and poorly constructed flat roofs that leaked when it rained.
[86] 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.
[104] Though the murder was not kept secret, Kristin Johnson notes that "Foster was not greatly blamed" for it and spent the rest of his life without being troubled by the authorities[105]—this can be attributed to the general attitude, as expressed by Lewis Petrinovich, that the lives of Native Americans "seemed to matter little".
Reed and McCutchen stood looking up at Emigrant Gap, only 12 miles (19 km) from the top, blocked by snow, possibly on the same day the Breens attempted to lead one last effort to crest the pass from the east.
Residents of Yerba Buena, many of them recent migrants, raised $1,300 ($42,500 in 2023) and organized relief efforts to build two camps to supply a rescue party for the refugees.
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".
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.
[128][129] After those rescued migrants made it safely into Bear Valley, William Hook, Jacob Donner's stepson, broke into food stores and fatally gorged himself.
At one point, Reed sent two men ahead to retrieve the first cache of food, expecting the third relief, a small party led by Selim E. Woodworth, to come at any moment.
On April 10, almost a month after the third relief left Truckee Lake, the alcalde near Sutter's Fort organized a salvage party to recover what they could of the Donners' belongings.
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.
He helped to acquire the land for a monument, and in June 1918 the statue of a pioneer family, dedicated to the Donner Party, was placed on the spot where the Breen-Keseberg cabin was thought to have stood.
[193] Most historians count 87 members of the party, although Stephen McCurdy in the Western Journal of Medicine includes Sarah Keyes—Margret Reed's mother—and Luis and Salvador, bringing the number to 90.
Several members became more susceptible to infection due to starvation,[198] such as George Donner, but the three most significant factors in survival were age, sex and the size of family group that each traveled with.
[195] Men metabolize protein faster; women do not require as high a caloric intake and store more body fat, which delays physical degradation caused by starvation and overwork.
[207] Kristin Johnson, on the other hand, 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"; when older, he reconsidered his story, so as not to upset Houghton.
[208] Historians Joseph King and Jack Steed call Stewart's characterization "extravagant moralism", particularly because all members of the party were forced to make difficult choices.
