The Horrifying History of the Donner Party
Greed, hubris, and plain bad luck led to one of the most gruesome events in American history.
Tempted by tales of a “land of milk and honey,” where the sun always shone and where no sickness could exist, some 500 wagons full of would-be settlers headed west from Independence, Missouri, on May 12, 1846. Wagon trains usually left at a precise time of year — late enough in the spring for there to be grass for their animals to graze on, but early enough to avoid the winter snows in the mountains. The Donner Party’s departure date was well past that sweet spot — the first of what was to be many miscalculations.
Despite another early delay (thanks to heavy rains and a swollen river), the first few months of their journey went roughly according to plan, as they were following the well-established Oregon Trail. Several other wagons joined their party along the way, and the whole party reached the Little Sandy River in what is now Wyoming without any major incidents. But it was here where the most fateful decision of the trip was to be made.
Decision at Ft. Bridger
A few days before they arrived at the fork in the Oregon Trail at Little Sandy River, the party had been given a letter from an explorer named Lansford Hastings. In this letter — which he had sent via riders to westward emigrants on the trail — he claimed to have worked out a southerly shortcut he called “Hastings Cutoff.”
But Hastings had never actually traversed that route with a wagon.
When the party arrived at Little Sandy River on July 20, they decided to split up. Most of them chose to follow the established trail. A smaller group, however, decided to take the southerly route to Ft. Bridger, and from there, Hastings Cutoff.
Little did they know that a journalist by the name of Edwin Bryant had gotten to the cutoff a week earlier and immediately saw that the steep, rocky terrain and lack of water made it impassable by wagons. He sent letters back to Ft. Bridger warning of the dangers and urging wagon trains not to take Hastings Cutoff.
However, Jim Bridger’s trading post at Ft. Bridger stood to gain substantially if more emigrants took the cutoff. So Bridger hid the letters, and when the Donner Party arrived, told them the cutoff would be a smooth trip with plentiful water and no danger from Native Americans.
But Bryant’s letters wouldn’t have been their only warning — time and again, John Reed, the ostensible leader of the party, was told not to trust Hastings. Jesse Thornton, who had traveled with the party for a while, called Hastings “the Baron Munchausen of travelers.” George Donner’s wife, Tamsen, called him a “selfish adventurer,” and, when it was clear that Reed was determined to take the cutoff anyway, was deeply distressed.
So they headed south, following Hasting’s Cutoff into the Wasatch Mountains. Within days, they saw how difficult the terrain was. The narrow trail was hard to discern, and in some places it was so steep, they had to lock the wheels of the wagons to keep them from rolling away. The party’s progress slowed to a mile and a half a day, as the able-bodied men worked ahead of the wagons clearing brush, moving boulders and felling trees.
It was Aug. 20 before they could even see hope — the Great Salt Lake. But it took them two more weeks to get out of the mountains and to the lake. They rested there a bit, but food and supplies were running low, and tempers running high.
Again, the Fates sent another warning in the person of James Clyman, an elderly mountain man and war veteran who had served with Reed. He had also traveled around the Great Salt Lake with Hastings, and warned Reed that Hastings had no idea how dangerous his proposed route was. But again, Reed disregarded his old army buddy’s wisdom and chose to forge ahead.
From there, the party set out. First, they had to scale a 1,000-foot mountain. Once at the peak, they saw what lay ahead of them: the Great Salt Lake Desert, an arid salt flat where nothing grew.
Their oxen were already fatigued, and they were nearly out of water. The surface of the salt desert was a gummy mess where the wagon wheels sunk to the axles. The days were broiling; the nights, frigid. Many of their animals, crazed with thirst, escaped and ran away.
They didn’t reconnect with the established trail until Sept. 26 — the “shortcut” promoted by Hastings and Bridger had delayed them by a month. Now, on the trail following the Humboldt River, they began to be set upon by Native Americans (whose lands they were trespassing on), who shot and stole several of their livestock. Fatigue and resentment simmered close to the surface.
The First Murder
On Oct.5, the Graves family wagon got entangled with the Reed wagon, and the Graves’ driver, enraged, began whipping their ox. Reed attempted to stop him — they had already lost most of their animals to thirst or Native Americans. The driver, James Snyder, responded by striking Reed with the handle of the whip. Reed then drove his hunting knife into Snyder’s chest, killing him.
The other members of the party convened to decide what to do. While a case for self-defense could be made, it’s possible many were still angry with him for leading them down the disastrous cutoff. Some wanted to hang him, but it was decided to banish him instead. Normally, this would be akin to a death sentence, but in this instance, it turned out to be the opposite.
With so many of their livestock dead of hunger or killed by Native Americans, most members of the party had to walk. The group was splintered, each family looking out only for its own, not sharing rations or even allowing the sick to ride in their wagons.
Luckily, Charles Stanton, one of two men who had split off earlier to ride ahead, returned with some mules and supplies he had obtained from Ft. Sutter in California. He also brought with him two Miwok Indians, Luis and Salvador, who could serve as guides. To the hungry, tired party, they must have seemed like a ray of hope, a sign that they were close to their destination, and the worst must surely be behind them. After resting a short while, they forged ahead into the Sierra Nevadas.
Into the Maelstrom
The Sierra Nevada Mountain range was the most difficult part of the journey. Five hundred of its peaks are over 12,000 feet high, and their eastern faces are particularly steep. Because of their height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean, they also see significantly more snow than most other mountains in North America.
Family by family, the party members headed into the mountains in late October. Then, on Oct. 28, an early snowstorm hit, blocking all the passes with snow. The first family, the Breens, made it up the steep slope to Truckee Lake. They stayed and made camp in one of three ramshackle cabins that had been built by earlier emigrants. The cabins’ roofs leaked, and the floors were dirt.
As the other families made it up the mountain, they realized they could go no further either, and they all came to stay at the winter camp. Those not staying in the cabins were relegated to hastily-constructed tents.
The camp now comprised 81 people, half of which were under 18. Six of those were infants. The food Stanton had brought them was nearly gone, and though Truckee Lake wasn’t frozen, no one knew how to fish it. At one point, a hunter was able to kill a bear, but that was the last of the game — most animals were either hibernating or had moved to lower elevations.
The oxen began to die, so the people stacked their frozen carcasses in the snow.
Then, on Nov. 4, another snowstorm hit — this one lasting eight days. In some places, the snow was 22 feet deep. They had to tunnel holes just to get in and out, though mostly, the snow kept them trapped inside the cold, filthy, crowded cabins.
After the food ran out, they began eating their pack animals. Then they ate their dogs. They gnawed on bones and boiled their ox-hide wagon coverings into a glue-like jelly. They killed and ate mice. Some even tried eating tree bark.
Desperate with hunger, some thought that maybe a few individuals might be able to make it out without the burden of a wagon or livestock. A few attempted it, but were forced to turn back before getting too far.
Meanwhile, the bones of the animals had been boiled into broth so many times, they crumbled to dust. The children had picked apart the ox-hide rug, piece by piece, and roasted it in the fire before eating it too. Most people were so weakened by starvation they could barely move. Two people — who would be the first of many — died of starvation.
“Forlorn Hope”
Finally, a group of 17 men, women and children fashioned snowshoes in one last attempt to reach Ft. Sutter. Two of the party — those without snowshoes — turned back right away. But the others — weak from malnutrition and unaccustomed to camping in such deep snow — forged ahead. Within three days, they were snowblind and lost.
After two days without food, it was Patrick Dolan who first suggested cannibalism. The party debated if they should hold a lottery or a duel to determine who should die, so that the others could live. But no one had the courage — yet — to go through with it.
Soon another blizzard forced the party to a halt and make camp, where two of their members died. Still, they could not bring themselves to eat the bodies.
Then Dolan became delusional from hypothermia, stripping off his clothes and running headlong into the blizzard. He returned, but died soon after.
Considering it had been Dolan’s idea to begin with, the remaining members of the party carved him up and ate him. Twelve-year-old Lemuel Murphy died shortly afterwards.
The next day, they stripped the meat and organs from the bodies of Lemuel and the two who had fallen earlier, and dried them to eat later.
The only ones who would not eat human flesh were William Eddy (who had brought a secret stash of bear meat) and the Indian guides, Luis and Salvador (who, remember, had only arrived at Truckee Lake later on, and so had not been hungry for as long as the original party).
After three days’ rest, they set off again in search of the trail. Soon hunger got the better of Eddy, and he began to eat human flesh, too.
Once that meat was gone, the group began boiling and eating the ox-hide laces from their snowshoes. They began to talk about killing and eating Luis and Salvador, the only ones who still hadn’t eaten human flesh. Eddy secretly warned them of this plan, allowing them to get away.
Later, while some of party were out hunting, yet another member died. His body was already cut apart for food before the hunters returned with deer meat.
Several days later, the party came across Luis and Salvador, lying in the snow, near death from starvation. William Foster shot them, and the party (except Eddy) carved the meat from their bones.
Finally, on Jan. 12, 33 days after leaving the winter camp at Truckee Lake, the group stumbled into a Miwok camp. They were so haggard and emaciated that the frightened Miwoks fled at the sight of them. But once they realized the group were just starving people, they shared their own meager food with them. Once they had regained some strength, one of the Miwoks led them to a white settlement at the edge of the Sacramento Valley. There they assembled a rescue party and were able to find the other six members of their party — of the 17 who had set out, only seven survived. Historians would later name their party “Forlorn Hope.”
The First Rescue
Meanwhile, Reed, who had been exiled and assumed to be dead by the Donner Party, had made his way to Ft. Sutter in late October. As the days, and then weeks, went by with no sign of the party (which included his family), he began to worry. Then his worry turned to action.
He tried organizing a rescue party, but it proved to be extremely difficult. The US was fighting the Mexican-American War — and California was, at that time, still part of Mexico. Almost all able-bodied men were fighting, many roads were blocked, supplies were hard to come by and communication difficult.
He was finally able put together a rescue party of a dozen men and twice as many horses. However, they could only make it as far as the western side of the mountains before conditions forced them to turn back.
Later, the surviving members of Forlorn Hope arrived. Their tales of desperation and cannibalism spurred another attempt at rescue. On Feb. 4, another party set out, this time with clear directions to the Donner Party’s winter camp.
Two weeks later, they arrived in the place where Eddy had said the cabins would be, but they saw nothing but snow. They shouted, and a woman popped up from the snow, asking them if they were from California or heaven.
The scene they walked into was bad: 13 people had died, and their bodies were buried in snow near the cabin roofs.The remaining people were filthy and emaciated, and many were emotionally unstable or even delusional. The ox-hide roofs (what were left of them) were rotting; the stench was overpowering.
Many of the survivors were too weak to make the journey out, so the rescue party took 23 people with them, leaving 21. Two of those who went out with the rescue party had to turn around and come back. One man slipped into a coma and died; shortly afterwards, an infant died as well.
The situation was dire, no doubt. But no one could predict that it would get much, much worse.
A Scene Beyond Imagination
The second rescue party, mostly experienced mountain men along with Reed and fellow Donner Party member William McCutcheon, arrived at the winter camp on March 1. Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.
At the camp, they came upon Milt Elliot’s disturbingly mutilated body. As they walked up to the Donners’ cabin, they saw Jean Baptiste Trudeau carrying a human leg. When he saw the rescuers, Trudeau tossed the leg into a hole in the snow — a hole which contained the dismembered body of Jacob Donner.
Inside, Jacob Donner’s children were eating their father’s organs. The rescuers also found the remains of at three other people who had also been eaten.
Horrified, the rescuers evacuated 17 people, leaving only a very few behind. Yet, while on the way back to safety, another blizzard blew in, taking several more lives.
Another rescue party was dispatched, this time with former Donner Party members Eddy and William Foster. Halfway to the winter camp, they came across the mutilated bodies of two children and one woman. Eleven survivors — mostly children — were huddled around a sunken fire pit. There the party split, with three men taking the survivors back down the mountain to safety, and the others — Foster and Eddy — continuing on to Truckee Lake.
They arrived only to find their children dead. Lewis Keseberg, one of the few remaining survivors, claimed to have eaten them.
The rescue party left with three of the Donner children, Trudeau and Simon Murphy. In addition to Keseberg, Tamsen and George Donner and their niece stayed behind.
Two more rescue efforts were attempted, but neither could make it through the snow-covered mountains. Finally, in April, a salvage party was sent to bury the dead and gather whatever belongings they could find.
At the winter camp, they found George Donner’s body in his bed, having died only days earlier. None of the others were to be found, dead or alive. Except Keseberg, who was alive, but “half mad.” When asked about the whereabouts of the others, he gave vague and conflicting answers. They searched his cabin and found cash and valuables belonging to George Donner. Keseberg swore he was only holding these items to be given to the Donner children. But his cookpot was full of human flesh. This, even though the bodies of the oxen were now exposed by snowmelt.
Of the 90 emigrants who entered the Wasatch Mountains, only 48 survived. Thirty-four died between December of 1846 and April of 1847 due to some combination of starvation and cold.
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Soon after the last rescue, a battalion of Mormon soldiers rode to the site and buried the remains in a mass grave. They then collected all the party’s belongings into the cabins and burned them down.
Because of the US’ support of expansionism, newspaper accounts tended to focus on the bravery and heroism of the party, downplaying or outright deleting their cannibalism. Some California papers, however, took the opposite approach, recounting it in gruesome detail.
The survivors had managed to escape with their lives, but nothing else. Most were treated as pariahs, and Keseberg, facing particular scorn, became a recluse. Hastings, the man who had indirectly caused so much misery and death, faced death threats. He eventually died at sea while leading a group of emigrants to Brazil.
Today the site of the Donner Party’s winter camp is a lovely state park, the cabins memorialized with a statue and plaque. The lake and pass were renamed “Donner.” Archeological digs have not uncovered definitive evidence of cannibalism (such as cut marks or smoothed edges on human bones), but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Accounts by multiple survivors and rescuers include the horrible things done by desperate people. Not heroes, not monsters; just desperate, hungry people.
