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The Tragedy of the Donner Party. Introduction:. Who: The group was organized by George and Jacob Donner along with James Reed. All three men were from Illinois. What?: Set Out for California via the Truckee Route.
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Introduction: • Who: The group was organized by George and Jacob Donner along with James Reed. All three men were from Illinois. • What?: Set Out for California via the Truckee Route. • Where?: The organizers of the party were from Illinois, and the party crossed half the nation trying to get to California. The group experimented with a shortcut promoted by Lansford Hastings through Utah, but the route ended in disaster.
Introduction Continued: • When?: The group set out in April of 1846, and did reasonably well until they reached South Pass. • How: By foot and wagon. • Why? Lured by rumors of cheap land and lenient laws. The Donner Party expected a better, more optimistic life in California.
Donner Party • The Donner party, setting out from Illinois, was among the thousands of people who attempted to cross the plains to California and Oregon in 1846. Half of the eighty-seven members of the Donner party were women and children. Poorly led, they dawdled along the way, quarreled viciously, and refused to help one another. Worse, they chose a supposed shortcut through Utah that held them up for a month. By the time they reached the Sierra it was late November and snow was already falling.
Is There Hope?? • A month after two men had left for California, one returned with the desperately needed provisions as well as two Indian guides to help lead the party on the final stage of the trip through the Sierras. But by then it was already late October. Hastings' "shortcut" had cost the Donner group so much time that they now risked being trapped in the high mountains if an early snowstorm chanced to fall. Unfortunately for the luckless emigrants, just such a snowstorm arrived on the night of October 28. The next day the Donner party was snowbound in the Sierras.
Tragedy Strikes… • When a blizzard stopped them just short of the summit, they threw up hasty shelters of wood and hides. Several attempts to force the pass failed. Finally, fifteen men and women trudged off on improvised snowshoes to bring help. Most starved to death, and their companions ate their bodies to survive. The campers on the crest of the Sierra also ate the bodies of the dead. One man finally reached a settlement in California. Heavy snow hampered rescue efforts; when the last of the Donner party was brought down from the summit in April, forty were dead. The San Francisco press sensationalized the tragedy, which passed into American myth.
Tragedy Continues… • As the Donner Party approached the summit of the Sierra Mountains near what is now Donner Lake (known as Truckee Lake at the time) they found the pass clogged with new-fallen snow up to six feet deep. It was October 28, 1846 and the Sierra snows had started a month earlier than usual. They retreated to the lake twelve miles below where the hapless pioneers were trapped, unable to move forward or back. Shortly before, the Donner family had suffered a broken axle on one of their wagons and fallen behind. Also trapped by the snow, they set up camp at Alder Creek six miles from the main group.
Cannibalism • Each camp erected make-shift cabins and horded their limited supply of food. The snow continued to fall, reaching a depth of as much as twenty feet. Hunting and foraging were impossible and soon they slaughtered the oxen that had brought them from the East. When this meat was consumed, they relied on the animals' tough hides. But it was not enough. Starvation began to take its toll. With no other remedy at hand, the survivors resorted to cannibalism.
Rescue Mission • In mid-December a group of fifteen donned makeshift snowshoes and trudged through blizzard conditions in an attempt to break through the pass and into California. Seven (five women and two men) survived to alert the community at Sutter's Fort of the Donner Party's plight. A series of four rescue parties were launched with the first arriving at the Donner camp in late February. Between them, the rescuers were able to lead the forty-eight of the original eighty-seven members of the party to safety in California. Disease and hypo-thermia also set in on the Donner Party.
