This chronicle is a towering tribute to the band of pioneers who struggled over deserts and the High Sierra toward California during the rugged winter of 1846-47. The disasters they endured form a bold contrast to the comfort and safety of the present-day Donner Lake region.

It's very old but quite a good history of this tragedy. ( )

A reprint (2000) of a reprint (1947) of a reprint (1940) of a book originally published in 1880 describing events that occurred in 1846. “Donner Party” is a misnomer, although the Donners contributed a number of people to the group, and at one point George Donner was elected “captain”, they were not in any sense the organizers or leaders. In fact, the major cause of the Donner Party disaster was the group didn’t have any organizers or leaders. However, “Donner Party” is how they went down in history so that’s how they’ll stay.


The core of the Donner Party set out from Springfield, Illinois in April 1846. Note this was well before the discovery of gold in California (in fact, before California was part of the United States); the group was not a collection of clueless gold-seekers but settlers intending to establish themselves as farmers or ranchers (this makes their unpreparedness even more surprising). By May they were at Independence, Missouri; by July 4th at Fort Laramie, and by July 20th at Fort Bridger (in Wyoming, near the Utah border). So far, things had been typical of crossing the plains. The party had picked up and lost various travelers along the way; sometimes they were in a small group on their own, sometimes they were separated by other wagon trains by a mile or so, and once they were part of an enormous 200-wagon train. There were some deaths on the journey but no more – in fact, probably less – than in a random group from 1846. However, at Fort Bridger things began to break down – although the party didn’t realize it yet. There were several possible ways to continue; the established one was by way of Fort Hall in Idaho then into Nevada at the Humboldt River. Most of the group at Fort Bridger took this route and reached California in safety. However, 87 – apparently by vote - decided to try a new route, the Hastings Cutoff, which went by way of the southern shore of Great Salt Lake. On the map – if there was a map – the Hastings Cutoff saved many miles of wagon travel, being much more direct than the Fort Hall route. Unfortunately, on the ground the route was almost impassable; the party sometimes had to disassemble their wagons, lower the parts down a cliff, and put them together again at the base. It took them 30 days to get from Fort Bridger to Great Salt Lake.


By September 6th, they were at a place called “Twenty Wells” and were preparing to cross the Great Salt Desert. They grossly underestimated the amount of water and food they would have to have, and numerous oxen and cattle died of thirst on the way – some families were reduced to walking, carrying as many of their possessions as they could. Two members were sent on ahead to obtain provisions in California; they crossed the Sierras and came back with food and mules, meeting the party again on October 19th in the vicinity of modern Reno. At that point they decided to stop and rest for a few days before starting over the mountains. No particular delay – the few days at Fort Bridger while they decided which route to take; the extra three weeks on the Hastings Cutoff “shortcut”, and the four days at Reno, seemed particularly long, but added together they were murderous. On October 28, they were just over the current California-Nevada line when the first storm hit near what was then called Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) and by the time the snow stopped they were trapped. Even then, one determined effort (including abandoning some possessions) might have got them over the summit, but there was no leader and the various families set up camps or made futile, uncoordinated attempts to press on as the mood struck them. Individual family camps were widely separated and there were apparently no organized efforts to build better shelters or collect food. Finally, on October 31st, the group got together enough to agree to abandon their wagons and stock and cross the Sierras on foot the next day. That night it started snowing again and didn’t stop until November 11th, leaving 15 feet of snow. All the cattle and mules died in the storm; the party found the bodies by making poles and probing the drifts until they hit a frozen cow. These were skinned and eaten; by December 16th they were almost out of food again.


Finally, one party member, raised in Vermont, made some snowshoes, and fifteen of the party took a share of the little food remaining and set out on December 16th in an attempt to reach a settlement and organize a rescue. By December 22nd their food was gone; the first starvation death occurred on the 24th with two more on the 25th. On the 28th another man starved to death, and this time the survivors ate him; on the 29th there was another death (he went uneaten; presumably unappetizing), on January 8th they shot and ate their Indian guides; on the 10th they found an Indian camp (not mentioning the fate of the guides, I assume) and got some food; on the 18th the reached a settler’s ranch. The most fit member of this party headed toward Sutter’s Fort to ask for help, and got there on January 31st.


In the meantime, the group left behind at Truckee Lake was doing marginally better – presumably because they just stayed inside and conserved energy. Nevertheless eleven of them died before the first relief party arrived. The relief party wasn’t in that much better shape than the Donner Group; they had just crossed the Sierras on foot in the dead of winter. They took 18 of the group and headed back across the mountains; three more in this group died before reaching safety.


Meantime, the people left behind began eating their dead. It’s not clear if anyone was deliberately murdered for food; I doubt anybody had the energy to kill. One of the survivors later described human flesh as “insipid”. A second relief party had left Sutter’s on February 22 and reached the lake on March 1st; on March 3rd they began the return, taking 23 people with them; three more of them died on the way back while six of those left behind died. The third and final relief party got to Donner Lake on April 17th, finding the area strewn with partially dismembered bodies; they gathered up the remaining survivors and headed back on April 21st, 1847 – a little more than a year after originally leaving Illinois and with 48 survivors out of the 87 that left Fort Bridger.


The lassitude and unpreparedness of the Donner Party are inexplicable. The popular image of Western pioneers is one of determination and resourcefulness; a good part of the Donner party seems to have been composed of hopeless misfits. For a group of 80-some potential California settlers, there seems to have been only one rifle. Truckee Lake was famous for its trout, but seemingly nobody knew how to ice fish or even tried. (When this account of the disaster was first published in 1880, residents of the then more heavily populated area around Donner Lake were amazed that the group hadn’t been able to survive on fish, or even caught any). Nobody had any animal traps or was able to improvise any (in 1845, a lone traveler caught in almost the same location lived through the winter by trapping and eating foxes). They did, however, have plenty of porcelain and other items of dubious utility.


This is a fascinating read; the author, Charles McGlashan, was a pretty interesting character. He was variously a schoolteacher, gold miner, attorney, newspaper reporter, newspaper publisher, amateur astronomer, geologist, botanist, entomologist (he described a previously unknown species of butterfly) and inventor (he had 20 patents). The writing is in the most florid 19th century style (“Oh! How long and dreary the days were to the hungry children! Even their very plays and pastimes were pathetic, because of their piteous silent allusion to the pangs of starvation. … The poor, little, famishing girls used to fill the pretty porcelain tea-sups with freshly fallen snow, daintily dip it out with teaspoons and eat it, playing it was custard.”) but you get used to it after a while. There are several hand-drawn but very serviceable maps, and an excellent comparative chronology on what was going on at the lake camps, the group that left first, and the various relief parties. The editors have added an excellent bibliography, which includes every book published about the Donner party, either factual or fictional; unfortunately this stops in 1940 when McGlashan’s book was first reprinted.


The big question the book raises, of course, is could I eat somebody to avoid starvation? I expect I probably could. Whether I could kill someone in order to eat them is less clear; I’d have to be there. I do note if I ever find myself travelling where such a situation could come up, I’m going to go with a bunch of vegans. After all, there would be no danger of them eating me and (at least according to their own claims) they should be healthy. And, finally, to avoid the “insipid” problem, I will always stash away a bottle of Worchester sauce. ( )

1931 version -- love it! What a fascinating account of a story I'd never truly known about ! ( )

Not exactly light reading - I struggled with the style of the writing at times and certainly the topic is a serious one. I would recommend the book to someone who truly wants to learn the story of the Donner Party not just as a casual selection of a book to read. I did pick it becuase I wanted to read about this topic in particular and I do not regret it. ( )