Mr. SCHINDLER: When they committed themselves to cross the Wasatch, when they decided legitimately to enter the great basin, to tackle Emigration Canyon, as we know it, and Echo Canyon, as we know it, they were eating up days that were vital to them and they had no way of knowing it.
NARRATOR: They crawled along, making scarcely two miles a day, fighting their way through a chaos of canyons choked with willow trees, cottonwoods and aspen. Time and again the hostile terrain brought them to a standstill while the men cursed and toiled and hacked a road through the dense undergrowth. It took six days alone to chop their way eight miles up Big Mountain.
VIRGINIA REED: ”Finally we reached the end of the canyon, where it looked as though our wagons would have to be abandoned. It seemed impossible for the oxen to pull them up the steep hill and the bluffs beyond, but we double-teamed and the work was at last accomplished. Worn with travel and greatly discouraged, we reached the shore of the Great Salt Lake. It had taken an entire month instead of a week.”
NARRATOR: On August 22nd the 87 members of the Donner Party spilled out of the mountains exhausted and shaken. Some blamed Reed for the delay, but there was little time for recrimination. Summer was unraveling fast and there were still 600 miles to go.
JAMES REED: ”Tuesday, August 25th. Luke Halloran died of consumption this evening. We made him a coffin and buried him at the forks of the road in a beautiful place.”
NARRATOR: The worried emigrants hurried on, following the track of Hastings’s wagons, west then sharply south for a few miles to a cluster of clear, fresh springs. There they found the tattered remnants of another note.
ELIZA DONNER: ”Mother knelt down and began thoughtfully fitting the ragged edges of paper together. The process was watched with spellbound interest by the anxious group around her. The writing was that of Hastings and her patchwork brought out the following words. ‘Two days …two nights … hard driving … across desert … reach water.’ ”
NARRATOR: Taking on as much water and grass as they could, the emigrants climbed through a range of gnarled hills. Beyond them to the west stretched a glittering plain of salt. On August 30th they started across.
Mr. SCHINDLER: Well, you wouldn’t want to get caught out in the salt desert. Even today it’s a man-killer. But for people who thought they could go through in two days and equip a wagon with grass and water foolishness. In the heat of the day, the moisture under the surface bubbles to the top, turns it into a gumbo. If you’re in a wagon, you can count on going down a couple of feet in some of those things. I’m not saying a few inches, but you can go right up to the hubs.
NARRATOR: On the third day the water ran out. That night, crazed with thirst, the Reeds’ oxen bolted into the desert and could not be found. The family took what belongings they could carry and started out.
VIRGINIA REED: ”Papa carried Thomas and all the rest of us walked. We got to the Donners’ wagon and they were all asleep, so we laid down on the ground. We spread one shawl down and spread another over us and then put the dogs on top. The wind blew very hard and if it had not been for the dogs, we would have frozen.”
NARRATOR: The next day the shattered emigrants stumbled out of the salt desert. It had been a disaster. It had taken them five days to cross the 80-mile desert Hastings had assured them was only half as wide. Several emigrants had almost died of thirst. Thirty-six oxen were lost. Wagons would have to be abandoned, the Reeds’ ”pioneer palace car” among them.
ELIZA DONNER: ”Anguish and dismay now filled all hearts. Husbands bowed their heads, appalled at the situation of their families. Some cursed Hastings for the false statements in his open letter and for his broken pledge at Fort Bridger. They cursed him also for his misrepresentation of the distance across this cruel desert. Mothers in tearless agony clasped their children to their bosoms with the old, old cry, ‘Father, Thy will, not mine, be done.’ It was plain that try as we might, we could not get back to Fort Bridger. We must proceed, regardless of the fearful outlook.”
VIRGINIA REED: ”An inventory of provisions was taken and it was found that the supply was not sufficient to last us through to California. As if to render the situation more terrible, a storm came on during the night and the hilltops became white with snow.
NARRATOR: Someone would have to ride ahead to California and bring back relief. A big Missouri farmer named William McCutcheon and Charles Stanton, a bachelor from New York, volunteered. Finally, on September 26th, the Donner Party reached the Humboldt River where the shortcut rejoined the old trail. Hastings’s cutoff had proved not only more treacherous than the older route, it was 125 miles longer, as well.
Mr. STEGNER: They did seem to be doomed. Everything went wrong for them and they had started so blithely, with such big expectations and such loads of possessions and everything. They were going into the new country and win it by storm. But they made the great mistake of listening to Lansford Hastings. He was the one who caused all their trouble because they lost their way in the Wasatch and they lost half of their animals and a lot of their hope, crossing the desert south of Great Salt Lake.
NARRATOR: In early September Lansford Hastings rode into Sutter’s Fort at the head of a battered train of 80 wagons. Except for the Donner Party, all the emigrants of 1846 had made it safely through to California.
Fall
Mr. BUCK: By the time they get certainly onto the Humboldt River, tempers are pretty frayed, very easy to trigger off, and there’s a lot of incidents, anger. Again, I think that’s a human condition. When we’re under an enormous amount of stress, very often that can bring out the most heroic in us and it can also bring out, you know, the worst in us.
NARRATOR: On October 5th, the emigrants were doubling their teams up a steep, sandy hill when the Graves family wagon became entangled with the Reed wagon. Tempers flared and the Graves driver, John Snyder, began beating the oxen with the butt of his bullwhip. James Reed hurried over to stop it, but only enraged Snyder further, who struck him savagely on the head with his whip. Reed drew his hunting knife and, as Snyder raised his arm to strike again, drove it into the teamster’s chest just below the collarbone. Snyder staggered a few yards up the hill and died.
TAMSEN DONNER: ”Mr. Reed and family were taken to their tent and guarded by their friends. An assembly was convened to decide what should be done. The majority declared the deed murder and demanded retribution.”
NARRATOR: A German emigrant named Lewis Keseberg propped his wagon tongue on end and demanded that Reed be hanged from it. When Margaret Reed begged for mercy, the company chose banishment instead. At first Reed refused to go, but there was no choice. The next day he helped bury John Snyder, then rode west out of camp.
VIRGINIA REED: ”We traveled on, but the hours dragged slowly along. Every day we would search for some sign of Papa, who would leave a letter by the wayside. But a time came when we found no letter and no trace of him.”
NARRATOR: The Donner Party limped down the Humboldt as fast as it could go. Everyone who still could walked beside the wagons now to spare the exhausted oxen. They were racing against time and the weather, desperate to get over the mountains and into California before snow blocked the heights. There was no sign of Stanton or McCutcheon or of the relief they promised to bring from Sutter’s Fort. With the death of Snyder and the banishment of James Reed, the Donner Party was coming apart. On October 7th, Lewis Keseberg turned an aging Belgian emigrant named Hardkoop out of his wagon. No one else would take him in. The old man fell farther and father behind and was last seen sitting by the road, unable to walk. On the night of October 12th, Paiute Indians killed 21 oxen with poisoned arrows. The company had now lost more than 100 head of cattle. From the bluffs above the river, they could hear the Paiutes laughing at their plight. On October 16th the battered party finally reached the Truckee, the narrow, rushing river that served as gateway to the Sierra.
JOHN BREEN: ”The weather was already very cold and the heavy clouds hanging over the mountains to the west were strong indications of an approaching winter. Some wanted to stop and rest their cattle. Others, in fear of the snow, were in favor of pushing ahead as fast as possible.”
NARRATOR: On October 19th, their food was nearly all gone when Charles Stanton finally returned from Sutter’s Fort with seven mules loaded with food, two Indian guides and news that the high pass of the Sierra wouldn’t be blocked by snow for another month. The emigrants’ hopes rose. They were going to make it, after all. They camped for five days 50 miles from the summit, resting their oxen for the final push.
The party started up the river again. On October 31st, the front axle of George Donner’s family wagon broke. Cutting timber for a new one, George gashed his hand and the family fell further behind. The rest of the party hurried on towards the summit.
JOHN BREEN: ”We pushed on as fast as our failing cattle could haul our almost empty wagons. At last we reached the foot of the main ridge near Truckee Lake. It was sundown. The weather was clear, but a large circle around the moon indicated an approaching storm.”
NARRATOR: That night they camped 1,000 feet beneath the dark, granite summit, waiting anxiously for the Donner wagons to catch up, praying that the weather would hold. The Donners didn’t come and up on the summit during the night, it began to snow. The next morning the party made a frantic dash for the pass, but five feet had already fallen higher up and the wagons began to slip on the steep, rocky ascent.
VIRGINIA REED: ”Despair drove many nearly frantic. The farther we went up, the deeper the snow got. The wagons could not go. The mules kept falling down in the snow head foremost and the Indian said he could not find the road. The women were so tired carrying their children that they could not go over that night.”
NARRATOR: Stanton and one of the Indians made it as far as the summit, then turned back. The exhausted emigrants they were guiding could go no farther. As darkness came, they sat or lay huddled against the side of the mountain. The wind picked up. The temperature dropped and the snow and sleet came lashing down.
VIRGINIA REED: ”We made a fire and got something to eat. Ma spread down a buffalo robe and sat up by the fire. The Indians knew we were doomed and one of them wrapped his blanket about him and stood all night under a tree.”
NARRATOR: When they awoke next morning, the pass was completely blocked. They had come 2,500 miles in seven months to lose their race with the weather by one day, only 150 miles from safety at Sutter’s Fort in California. They retraced their steps to the lake and started building a winter camp. Down by the lake and up on the dark summit above them it snowed and it snowed and it snowed.
GEORGE McKINSTRY: ”November 6th, Sutter’s Fort. All things remain quiet here. The weather is bad. I am fearful the snow is too deep for the last company of emigrants to cross the mountains.”
NARRATOR: For weeks, the Americans at Sutter’s Fort had waited anxiously for the Donner Party to come in. They were shocked when, in late October, James Reed stumbled out of the mountains more dead than alive. Desperate to save his family, Reed pressed John Sutter for horses and supplies and rushed back up into the mountains. Two days out it started to rain. Higher up the rain turned to snow. Twelve miles from the summit Reed could go no further and turned back again to Sutter’s Fort for help.
This time Sutter had none to give. Every able-bodied man in the valley had gone south to fight the Mexicans. The relief effort would have to wait.
Winter
On November 20th, 1846, an Irish emigrant named Patrick Breen began to keep a diary.
PATRICK BREEN: ”Friday, November the 20th, 1846. Came to this place on the 31st of last month that it snowed. We went out to the pass, the snow so deep we were unable to find the road, then turned back to the shanty on the lake. We now have killed most of our cattle, having to stay here until next spring. It snowed during the space of eight days with little intermission.”
NARRATOR: The 81 members of the Donner Party 25 men, 15 women and 41 children, including six nursing infants were now huddled miserably in two makeshift winter camps. The Breens and their seven children took over an abandoned shack not far from Truckee Lake. Peggy Breen did what she could to calm the younger children. Lewis Keseberg built a rough lean-to for his family against one side of the Breen shack. Nearby, the Eddys crowded into a hastily constructed log cabin with the Murphys, the Fosters and the Pikes. A second drafty cabin housed the family of Franklin Graves at one end and Margaret Reed and her four children at the other.
Six miles away, on Alder Creek, the two Donner families huddled in tents where the storm had caught them.
TAMSEN DONNER: ”We had not the first thing to eat. We seldom thought of bread, for we had not any since I remember. Ma made arrangements for some cattle and the cattle was so poor they could not get up when they laid down.”
NARRATOR: During breaks in the storm, they scanned the summit, hoping to see a relief party inching its way down. No one came. Two more attempts to get over the pass ended in failure, the emigrants floundering in the 20-foot drifts. Thin and pale with hunger, three-year-old Eliza Donner whiled away the short winter days.
ELIZA DONNER: ”After the first storm, a little sunbeam stole down the steps and made a bright spot upon our floor. I sat down under it, held it on my lap, passed my hand up and down in its brightness. I gathered up a piece of it in my apron and ran to my mother. Great was my surprise when I carefully opened the folds and found that I had nothing to show.”
NARRATOR: On Thanksgiving it began snowing again.
PATRICK BREEN: ”Sunday, November the 29th. Still snowing, now about three feet deep. Killed my last oxen today.
Monday, November the 30th. Snowing fast, about four or five feet deep. Looks as likely to continue as when it commenced. No living thing without wings can get about.
December the 1st, Tuesday. Our cattle all killed but three or four of them. The horses and Stanton’s mules gone, supposed lost in the snow. No hopes of finding them alive.”
NARRATOR: They began to mix what little meat remained with anything they could chew and swallow boiled hides, charred bones, twigs, bark, leaves. On December 15th one of the Reeds’ hired men, Balis Williams, died of malnutrition.
The Forlorn Hope
In mid-December, 15 of the strongest emigrants five women, nine men and a boy of 12 resolved to make another attempt to break out. An old Vermont farmer, Franklin Graves, fashioned crude snowshoes from oxbows and rawhide. On December 16th, with William Eddy and the Indians Lewis and Salvadore in the lead, they started out for the summit. They took six days’ starvation rations apiece. They called themselves ”the forlorn hope.” With each step, they sank a few inches into the 20-foot drifts, but the crude snowshoes buoyed them up. It took two grueling days to scale the summit. Once over the pass, the sun began to blind them. On the sixth day their food ran out. Charles Stanton, too blind and weak to carry on, urged his exhausted friends to go on without him. He was last seen sitting in the snow, calmly smoking his pipe.
By the ninth day out, they were hopelessly lost high in the California mountains. On Christmas Eve it began to snow again.
MARY GRAVES: ”What to do we did not know. Some of those who had children and families wished to go back, but the two Indians said they would go on. I told them I would go, too, for to go back and hear the cries of hunger from my brothers and sisters was more than I could stand. I would go as far as I could, let the consequences be what they might.”
NARRATOR: Darkness came and somehow they managed to light a fire. They had been three days without food of any kind and most of them were far gone. Even in their delirium they knew they were dying.
ELIZA DONNER: ”Even the wind seemed to hold its breath as the suggestion was made that were one to die, the rest might live. Then the suggestion was made that lots be cast and whoever drew the longest slip should be the sacrifice. The slips of paper were prepared and Patrick Dolan drew the fatal slip.”
NARRATOR: No one had the heart to kill him.
JESSE QUINN THORNTON: ”About 11:00 o’clock, the storm increased to a perfect tornado and in an instant blew away every spark of fire. The company were now engaged in imploring God for mercy and relief. That night’s bitter cries, anguish and despair never can be forgotten.”
NARRATOR: Somehow William Eddy got his dying companions to sit together in a ring and pulled blankets over them. A canopy of snow quickly covered the starving group. Antonio, a Mexican teamster, died. Franklin Graves was next. He died in the arms of his daughters Mary and Sarah. Patrick Dolan went insane and had to be held down by his companions. At last he slipped into a coma and died. Twelve-year-old Lem Murphy lay shuddering, all but dead. It stopped snowing. William Eddy crawled out of the white tomb where the dead and dying emigrants lay and managed to relight the fire. Someone cut the flesh from the arms and legs of Patrick Dolan. They roasted the meat and ate it, averting their faces from each other and weeping. Only the two Indians, Lewis and Salvadore, refused to eat. The hideous food revived them. The 10 surviving members of the ”forlorn hope” butchered what remained of their four dead friends, wrapped and carefully labeled the pieces so that no one had to eat their kin, and staggered on through the wilderness, cursing Lansford Hastings. Three days later there was again nothing left to eat. William Foster proposed murdering the Indians for food. William Eddy tried to talk him out of it, then told Lewis and Salvadore of the white man’s plan. The Indians stood disbelieving for a moment, then silently disappeared into the snowy woods.