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Meanwhile, Reed and McCutchen had headed back up into the mountains
attempting to rescue their stranded companions. Two days after they
started out it began to rain. As the elevation increased, the rain
turned to snow and twelve miles from the summit the pair could go no
further. Caching their provisions in Bear Valley, they returned to
Sutter’s fort hoping to recruit more men and supplies for the rescue. However, the Mexican War has had drawn away the able-bodied men, forcing
any further rescue attempts to wait. Not knowing how many cattle the
emigrants had lost, the men believed the party would have enough meat to
last them several months.
On
Thanksgiving, it began to snow again, and the pioneers at Donner Lake
killed the last of their oxen for food on November 29th. |
Donner
Lake, 1866, courtesy Library of Congress.
This image available for photographic prints
HERE!
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The
very next day, five more feet of snow fell, and they knew that any
plans for a departure were dashed. Many of their animals,
including Sutter’s mules, had wandered off into the storms and their
bodies were lost under the snow. A few days later their last few
cattle were slaughtered for food and party began eating boiled hides,
twigs, bones and bark. Some of the men tried to hunt with little
success.On December 15, Balis
Williams died of malnutrition and the group realized that something
had to be done before they all died. The next day five men, nine
women and one child departed on snow shoes for the summit, determined
to travel the 100 miles to Sutter’s Fort. However, with only
meager rations and already weak from hunger the group faced a
challenging ordeal. On the sixth day, their food ran out and for
the next three days no one ate while they traveled through grueling
high winds and freezing weather. One member of the party,
Charles Stanton, snow-blind and exhausted was unable to keep up with
the rest of the party and told them to go on. He never rejoined
the group. A few days later, the party was caught in a blizzard
and had great difficulty getting and keeping a fire lit.
Antonio, Patrick Dolan, Franklin Graves, and Lemuel Murphy soon died
and in desperation, the others resorted to cannibalism.
Living off the bodies of those that died
along the path to Sutter’s Fort, the snowshoeing survivors were
reduced to seven by the time they reached safety on the western side
of the mountains on January 19, 1847. Only two of the ten men
survived, including William Eddy and William Foster, but all five
women lived through the journey. Of the eight dead, seven had
been cannibalized. Immediately messages were dispatched to
neighboring settlements as area residents rallied to save the rest of
the
Donner Party.
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On February 5, the first relief party of
seven men left Johnson's ranch, and the second, headed by James Reed, left
two days later. On February 19th, the first party reached the
lake finding what appeared to be a deserted camp until the ghostly figure
of a woman appeared. Twelve of the emigrants were dead and of the
forty-eight remaining, many had gone crazy or were barely clinging to
life. However, the nightmare was by no means over. Not
everyone could be taken out at one time and since no pack animals could be
brought in, few food supplies were brought in.
The first relief party soon left with 23
refugees, but during the party's travels back to Sutter's Fort, two more
children died. En route down the mountains the first relief party met the
second relief party coming the opposite way and the Reed family was
reunited after five months.
On March 1st the second
relief party finally arrived at the lake, finding grisly evidence of
cannibalism. The next day, they arrive at Alder Creek to find that
the
Donners had also resorted to
cannibalism. On March 3rd, Reed left the camp with 17 of
the starving emigrants but just two days later they are caught in another
blizzard. When it cleared, Isaac
Donner had died and most of the
refugees were too weak to travel. Reed and another rescuer, Hiram
Miller, took three of the refugees with them hoping to find food they had
stored on the way up. The rest of the pioneers stayed at what would
become known as “Starved Camp.”
On March 12th the third
relief led by William Eddy and William Foster reached Starved Camp where
Mrs. Graves and her son Franklin had also died. The three bodies,
including that of Isaac
Donner, had been cannibalized.
The next day, they arrived at the lake camp to find that both of their
sons had died. On March 14th they arrived at the Alder Creek
camp to find George
Donner was dying from an
infection in the hand that he had injured months before. His wife
Tamzene, though in comparatively good health, refused to leave him;
sending her three little girls on without her. The relief party soon
departed with four more members of the party, leaving those who are too
weak to travel. Two rescuers, Jean-Baptiste Trudeau and Nicholas
Clark, are left behind to care for the
Donners, but soon abandon them to
catch up with the relief party..
A fourth rescue party set out in late March
but were soon stranded in a blinding snow storm for several days.
On April 17th, the relief party reached the camps to find only
Louis Keseberg alive among the mutilated remains of his former companions.
Keseberg was the last member of the
Donner Party
to arrive at Sutter’s Fort on April 29th. It took two
months and four relief parties to rescue the entire surviving
Donner Party.
In the
Donner Party
tragedy, two-thirds of the men in the party perished, while two-thirds of
the women and children lived. Forty-one individuals died, and forty-six
survived. In the end, five had died before reaching the mountains,
thirty-five perished either at the mountain camps or trying to cross the
mountains, and one died just after reaching the valley. Many of
those who survived lost toes to frostbite.
The story of the
Donner
tragedy quickly spread across the country. Newspapers printed
letters and diaries, and accused the travelers of bad conduct,
cannibalism, and even murder. The surviving members had differing
viewpoints, biases and recollections so what actually happened was never
extremely clear. Some blamed the power hungry Lansford W. Hastings
for the tragedy, while others blamed James Reed for not heeding Clyman's
warning about the deadly route.
After the publicity, emigration to
California fell off sharply and
Hastings' cutoff was all but abandoned. Then, in January 1848, gold
was discovered in John Sutter's creek and gold hungry travelers began to
rush out West once again By late 1849 more than 100,000 people had
come to
California in search of gold near
the streams and canyons where the
Donner Party
had suffered.
Donner Lake,
named for the party, is today a popular mountain resort near Truckee,
California
and the Donner Camp has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.
The Donner Camp has been the site of recent archeological excavations.
Sutter's Fort in Sacramento,
California, 1847, photo courtesy Library of
Congress
This image available for photographic prints
HERE!
Kathy Weiser/Legends
of America, © May, 2005
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