The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner–Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness.
The Donner Party departed Missouri on the Oregon Trail in the spring of 1846, behind many other pioneer families who were attempting to make the same overland trip. 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 Utah's Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert. 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.
By early November, the migrants had reached the Sierra Nevada but became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran dangerously low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the migrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived the ordeal. Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in California history, and in the entire record of American westward migration.
Background
During the 1840s, the United States saw a dramatic increase in settlers who left their homes in the east to resettle in the Oregon Territory or California, which at the time were only accessible by a very long sea voyage or a daunting overland journey across the American frontier. Some, such as Patrick Breen, saw California as a place where they would be free to live in a fully Catholic culture; others were attracted to the West's burgeoning economic opportunities or inspired by the idea of manifest destiny, the belief that the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belonged to European Americans and that they should settle it. Most wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail route from a starting point in Independence, Missouri, to the Continental Divide of the Americas, traveling about 15 miles (24 km) a day on a journey that usually took between four and six months. The trail generally followed rivers to South Pass, a mountain pass in present-day Wyoming which was relatively easy for wagons to negotiate. From there, pioneers had a choice of routes to their destinations.
Lansford Hastings, an early migrant from Ohio to the West, went to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To encourage settlers, he published The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. As an alternative to the Oregon Trail's standard route through Idaho's Snake River Plain, he proposed a more direct route (which actually increased the trip's mileage) to California across the Great Basin, which would take travelers through the Wasatch Range and across the Great Salt Lake Desert. Hastings had not traveled any part of his proposed shortcut until early 1846 on a trip from California to Fort Bridger. The fort was a scant supply station run by Jim Bridger and his partner Louis Vasquez in Blacks Fork, Wyoming. Hastings stayed at the fort to persuade travelers to turn south on his route. As of 1846, Hastings was the second of two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, but neither had been accompanied by wagons.
Arguably the most difficult part of the journey to California was the last 100 miles (160 km) across the Sierra Nevada. This mountain range has 500 distinct peaks over 12,000 feet (3,700 m) high which, because of their height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean, receive more snow than most other ranges in North America. The eastern side of the range is also notoriously steep. After leaving Missouri to cross the vast wilderness to Oregon or California, timing was crucial to ensure that wagon trains would not be bogged down by mud created by spring rains, nor by massive snowdrifts in the mountains from September onward. Traveling during the right time of year was also critical to ensuring that horses and oxen had enough spring grass to eat.
Families
In the spring of 1846, almost 500 wagons headed west from Independence. At the rear of the train, a group of nine wagons containing 32 members of the Reed and Donner families and their employees left on May 12. George Donner, born in North Carolina, had gradually moved west to Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, with a one-year sojourn in Texas. In early 1846, he was about 60 years old and living near Springfield, Illinois. With him were his 44-year-old wife Tamsen, their three daughters Frances (6), Georgia (4), and Eliza (3), and George's daughters from a previous marriage: Elitha (14) and Leanna (12). George's younger brother Jacob (56) also joined the party with his wife Elizabeth (45), teenaged stepsons Solomon Hook (14) and William Hook (12), and five children: George (9), Mary (7), Isaac (6), Lewis (4), and Samuel (1). 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).
James and Margret Reed
James F. Reed, a 45-year-old native of Ireland, settled in Illinois in 1831. He was accompanied by his wife Margret (32), step-daughter Virginia (13), daughter Martha Jane ("Patty", 8), sons James and Thomas (5 and 3), and Sarah Keyes, Margret Reed's 70-year-old mother, who was in the advanced stages of consumption (tuberculosis) and died on May 28; she was buried by the side of the trail. In addition to leaving financial worries behind, Reed hoped that California's climate would help Margret, who had long suffered from ill health. The Reeds hired three men to drive the ox teams: Milford ("Milt") Elliott (28), James Smith (25), and Walter Herron (25). Baylis Williams (24) went along as handyman and his sister, Eliza (25), as the family's cook.
Within a week of leaving Independence, the Reeds and Donners joined a group of 50 wagons nominally led by William H. Russell. By June 16, the company had traveled 450 miles (720 km), with 200 miles (320 km) to go before Fort Laramie, Wyoming. They had been delayed by rain and a rising river, but Tamsen Donner wrote to a friend in Springfield, "indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started". Young Virginia Reed recalled years later that, during the first part of the trip, she was "perfectly happy".
Several other families joined the wagon train along the way. Levinah Murphy (37), a widow from Tennessee, headed a family of thirteen. Her five youngest children were: John Landrum (16), Meriam ("Mary", 14), Lemuel (12), William (10), and Simon (8). Levinah's two married daughters and their families also came along: Sarah Murphy Foster (19), her husband William M. (30) and son Jeremiah George (1); Harriet Murphy Pike (18), her husband William M. (32) and their daughters Naomi (3) and Catherine (1). William H. Eddy (28), a carriage maker from Illinois, brought his wife Eleanor (25) and their two children, James (3) and Margaret (1). The Breen family consisted of Patrick Breen (51), a farmer from Iowa, his wife Margaret ("Peggy", 40), and seven children: John (14), Edward (13), Patrick, Jr. (9), Simon (8), James (5), Peter (3), and 11-month-old Isabella. Their neighbor, 40-year-old bachelor Patrick Dolan, traveled with them. German immigrant Lewis Keseberg (32) joined, along with his wife Elisabeth Philippine (22) and daughter Ada (2); son Lewis Jr. was born on the trail. 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. An older man named Hardkoop rode with them. Luke Halloran, a young man who seemed to get sicker with consumption every day, was passed from family to family as none could spare the time or resources to care for him.
Hastings Cutoff
To promote his new route (the "Hastings Cutoff"), Lansford Hastings sent riders to deliver letters to traveling migrants. On July 12, the Reeds and Donners were given one of them. Hastings warned the migrants they could expect opposition from the Mexican authorities in California and advised them to band together in large groups. He also claimed to have "worked out a new and better road to California", and said he would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide the migrants along the new cutoff.
On July 20, at the Little Sandy River, most of the wagon train opted to follow the established trail via Fort Hall. A smaller group opted to head for Fort Bridger and needed a leader. Most of the younger men in the group were European immigrants and not considered to be ideal leaders. James Reed had lived in the U.S. for a considerable time, was older, and had military experience, but his autocratic attitude had rubbed many in the party the wrong way, and they saw him as aristocratic, imperious, and ostentatious. By comparison, the mature, experienced, American-born Donner's peaceful and charitable nature made him the group's first choice. The members of the party were comfortably well-off by contemporaneous standards. Although they are called pioneers, most of the party lacked skills and experience for traveling through mountains and arid land. Additionally, the party had little knowledge about how to interact with Native Americans.
Journalist Edwin Bryant reached Blacks Fork a week ahead of the Donner Party. He saw the first part of the trail and was concerned that it would be difficult for the wagons in the Donner group, especially with so many women and children. He returned to Blacks Fork to leave letters warning several members of the group not to take Hastings' shortcut. By the time the Donner Party reached Blacks Fork on July 27, Hastings had already left, leading the forty wagons of the Harlan-Young group. Because Jim Bridger's trading post would fare substantially better if people used the Hastings Cutoff, he told the party that the shortcut was a smooth trip, devoid of rugged country and hostile Native Americans, and would therefore shorten their journey by 350 miles (560 km). Water would be easy to find along the way, although a couple of days crossing a 30–40-mile (48–64 km) dry lake bed would be necessary.
Reed was very impressed with this information and advocated for the Hastings Cutoff. None of the party received Bryant's letters warning them to avoid Hastings' route at all costs; in his diary account, Bryant states his conviction that Bridger deliberately concealed the letters, a view shared by Reed in his later testimony. At Fort Laramie, Reed met an old friend named James Clyman who was coming from California. Clyman warned Reed not to take the Hastings Cutoff, telling him that wagons would not be able to make it and that Hastings' information was inaccurate. Fellow pioneer Jesse Quinn Thornton traveled part of the way with Donner and Reed, and in his book From Oregon and California in 1848 declared Hastings the "Baron Munchausen of travelers in these countries". 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".
On July 31, 1846, the party left Blacks Fork after four days of rest and wagon repairs, eleven days behind the leading Harlan-Young group. Donner hired a replacement driver, and the company was joined by the McCutcheon family, consisting of 30-year-old William, his 24-year-old wife Amanda, 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.
Wasatch Mountains
The party turned south to follow the Hastings Cutoff. Within days, they found the terrain to be much more difficult than described. Drivers were forced to lock the wheels of their wagons to prevent them from rolling down steep inclines. Several years of traffic on the main Oregon Trail had left an easy and obvious path, whereas the Cutoff was more difficult to find. Hastings wrote directions and left letters stuck to trees. On August 6, the party found a letter from him advising them to stop until he could show them an alternate route to that taken by the Harlan-Young Party. Reed, Charles T. Stanton, and William Pike rode ahead to get Hastings. They encountered exceedingly difficult canyons where boulders had to be moved and walls cut off precariously to a river below, a route likely to break wagons. 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.
Stanton and Pike stopped to rest, and Reed returned alone to the group, arriving four days after the party's departure. Without the guide they had been promised, the group had to decide whether to turn back and rejoin the traditional trail, follow the tracks left by the Harlan-Young Party through the difficult terrain of Weber Canyon, or forge their own trail in the direction that Hastings had recommended. At Reed's urging, the group chose the new Hastings route. Their progress slowed to about one and a half miles (2.4 km) a day. All able-bodied men were required to clear brush, fell trees, and heave rocks to make room for the wagons.
As the Donner Party made its way across the Wasatch Mountains, the Graves family, who had set off to find them, reached them. They consisted of 57-year-old Franklin Ward Graves, his 47-year-old wife Elizabeth, their children Mary (20), William (18), Eleanor (15), Lovina (13), Nancy (9), Jonathan (7), Franklin, Jr. (5), Elizabeth (1), and married daughter Sarah (22), plus son-in-law Jay Fosdick (23), and a 25-year-old teamster named John Snyder, traveling together in three wagons. Their arrival brought the Donner Party to 87 members in 60–80 wagons. The Graves family had been part of the last group to leave Missouri, confirming the Donner Party was at the back of the year's western exodus.
It was August 20 by the time that they reached a point in the mountains where they could look down and see the Great Salt Lake. It took almost another two weeks to travel out of the Wasatch Mountains. The men began arguing, and doubts were expressed about the wisdom of those who had chosen this route, in particular James Reed. Food and supplies began to run out for some of the less affluent families. Stanton and Pike had ridden out with Reed but had become lost on their way back; by the time that the party found them, they were a day away from eating their horses.
Great Salt Lake Desert
Luke Halloran died of tuberculosis on August 25. A few days later, the party came across a torn and tattered letter from Hastings. The pieces indicated there were two days and nights of difficult travel ahead without grass or water. The party rested their oxen and prepared for the trip. After 36 hours they set off to traverse a 1,000-foot (300 m) mountain that lay in their path. From its peak, they saw ahead of them a dry, barren plain, perfectly flat and covered with white salt, larger than the one they had just crossed, and "one of the most inhospitable places on earth" according to Rarick. Their oxen were already fatigued, and their water was nearly gone.
The party pressed onward on August 30, having no alternative. In the heat of the day, the moisture underneath the salt crust rose to the surface and turned it into a gummy mass. The wagon wheels sank into it, in some cases up to the hubs. The days were blisteringly hot and the nights frigid. Several of the group saw visions of lakes and wagon trains and believed they had finally overtaken Hastings. After three days, the water was gone, and some of the party removed their oxen from the wagons to press ahead to find more. Some of the animals were so weakened they were left yoked to the wagons and abandoned. Nine of Reed's ten oxen broke free, crazed with thirst, and bolted off into the desert. Many other families' cattle and horses had also gone missing. The rigors of the journey resulted in irreparable damage to some of the wagons, but no human lives had been lost. Instead of the promised two-day journey over 40 miles (64 km), the journey across the 80 miles (130 km) of Great Salt Lake Desert had taken six.
None of the party had any remaining faith in the Hastings Cutoff as they recovered at the springs on the other side of the desert. They spent several days trying to recover cattle, retrieve the wagons left in the desert, and transfer their food and supplies to other wagons. Reed's family incurred the heaviest losses, and Reed became more assertive, asking all the families to submit an inventory of their goods and food to him. He suggested that two men should go to Sutter's Fort in California; he had heard that John Sutter was exceedingly generous to wayward pioneers and could assist them with extra provisions. Charles Stanton and William McCutchen volunteered to undertake the dangerous trip. The remaining serviceable wagons were pulled by mongrel teams of cows, oxen, and mules. It was the middle of September, and two young men who went in search of missing oxen reported that another 40 miles (64 km) of desert lay ahead.
Their cattle and oxen were now exhausted and lean, but the Donner Party crossed the next stretch of desert relatively unscathed. The journey seemed to get easier, particularly through the valley next to the Ruby Mountains. Despite their near hatred of Hastings, they had no choice but to follow his tracks, which were weeks old. On September 26, two months after embarking on the cutoff, the Donner Party rejoined the traditional trail along a stream that became known as the Humboldt River. The shortcut had probably delayed them by a month.
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