“as far as possible, anticipate them”: “Rules for Wives,” Illinois Gazette, July 25, 1846.
“their wives, mere housekeepers”: “Rules for Husbands,” Illinois Gazette, July 25, 1846.
“to the day of his death”: Lockley, 88.
“that led me to this step”: Charles Stanton to his brother, May 12, 1846, reprinted in Morgan, 533.
along with their husbands and children: The listing of the original Donner Party members and their kinship is derived from the roster in Kristin Johnson’s Unfortunate Emigrants, 294–98.
“selfish adventurer”: Tamzene Donner’s characterization of Hastings is drawn from a diary entry written by Jessy Quinn Thornton, who traveled in loose association with the Donners up until July 20. The entry is reprinted in Kristin Johnson’s Unfortunate Emigrants, 22. As Johnson mentions in her own notes, his comment could be the result of hindsight, as at least parts of his diary seem to have been written after the subsequent tragedy.
“a faint resemblance to habitable houses”: Bryant, 142.
“with plenty of water and grass”: James Reed to Gersham Keyes, July 31, 1846, reprinted in Morgan, 279–80.
“excellent and accommodating gentlemen”: Ibid., 279.
wood, twisted iron, and gore: Details of the difficult passage through Weber Canyon are drawn from an account given in The California Gold Book by William Wallace Allen and Richard Benjamin Avery and reprinted in Morgan, 418–19.
and with their dark destiny: There is some controversy over where and on what date the Graves family overtook and joined the Donner Party. I have chosen to adhere to W. C. Graves’s own account that the meeting occurred on August 10. This date was later reinforced by the recollections of both Mary Ann and Lovina Graves. For a detailed discussion of the arguments surrounding this and alternative dates, including August 12 and August 16, see Kristin Johnson’s article “When Did the Graves Family Join the Donner Party?” in Crossroads, Summer 1996, online at www.utahcrossroads.org/index.html.
Reed’s Gap: The Miller-Reed Diary, reprinted in Morgan, 262. More of Reed’s account of the crossing of the Wasatch can be found in a statement Reed made much later, in two parts, in March and April of 1871, in the Pacific Rural Press.
not working as hard as they ought: Reed’s dissatisfaction with the pace of the roadwork in the Wasatch was reported in the California Star on February 13, 1847: “Mr. Reed and others who left the company, and came in for assistance, informed me that they were sixteen days making the road, as the men would not work one quarter of their time.”
as the grade got steeper: For an account of crossing the steep ridge now known as Donner Hill, see John Breen’s statement in Eliza Farnham’s California, Indoors and Out, reprinted in Kristin Johnson, 142–43.
CHAPTER SIX—SALT, SAGE, AND BLOOD
and of which gender: Laderman, 22.
where they lived, and how well: Ibid., 24.
covered with white cloth: Ibid., 31.
for transport back home: Ibid., 115.
$24 billion a year in the United States: National Casket Retailer Association Web site.
$20,000 mahogany caskets: Forest Lawn Memorial Park general price list.
photographs of the deceased: “Achieve Immortality with Ink After Life.”
salt desert that evening: It was Virginia Reed who reported, in Across the Plains in the Donner Party, that they set out in the evening.
“illusions similar to the mirage”: Bryant, 178.
“made the mothers tremble”: John Breen quoted by Farnham and reprinted in Kristin Johnson’s Unfortunate Emigrants, 144.
“women were mad with anger”: The Miller-Reed Diary, reprinted in Morgan, 267.
some as few as one a year: Larkin, 166.
halitosis and tooth decay: McCutcheon, 162.
not mass-produced until the 1880s: “Everyday Mysteries.”
a nineteenth-century case of road rage: In sorting out the various accounts of what happened between James Reed and John Snyder on October 5, 1846, and trying to arrive at a true version, I have looked for points of consensus among the various reports and discounted any statements that seemed notably slanted, particularly those from members of the Graves or Reed families. That said, however, I do think one observation made by Billy Graves many years later is worthy of note here. Writing to McGlashan on March 30, 1870, he asked rhetorically, “Do you think that a company of over thirty men of a good education and brought up in a civilized country could have been heartless enough to banish and drive out into the wilderness to starve to death a man mearly [sic] for accidentally killing a man in self-defense?” [McGlashan Papers, folder 16]. In the end, I am inclined to attribute a bit more culpability to Reed than to Snyder. Reed was widely reputed to have an inclination toward arrogance, and it was he, after all, who pulled a knife, albeit after Snyder had threatened him with a whip stock.
Joseph Reinhardt and Augustus Spitzer: That Wolfinger was reputed to be carrying a large amount of money was reported by Houghton, in Chapter 6.
significant liberties with the facts: There has been some controversy over whether Reinhardt made a deathbed confession that he had killed Wolfinger as Eddy later reported, because Eddy had presumably already left on the snowshoe expedition when Reinhardt died. However, Leanna Donner, then eleven, was also present at the confession and reported it thirty years later: “Joseph Reinhardt was taken sick in our tent, when death was approaching and he knew there was no escape, then he made a confession in the presence of Mrs. Wolfinger that he shot her husband.”
“finally concluded to take the California road”: George W. Tucker in a letter to McGlashan on April 5, 1879 [McGlashan Papers, folder 51]. Tucker mentions in the same letter that he and his family hoped that the Donner Party had turned around and returned to Truckee Meadows.
the other side of the mountains: See Bryant, 52–53, for details of his meeting with Reed on October 28, 1846.
bent on owning a piece of it: See Mullen, 188, for mention of Reed’s petition to acquire, along with Bryant and Dunleavy, Long Island in the Sacramento River.
in place for three or four days: McGlashan, 55.
bullet entered Pike’s back: That William Pike was shot and died after Stanton rejoined the company, rather than before as has sometimes been reported, is based on McGlashan’s flat-out statement of the fact on page 55.
“more than tongue can tell”: Mary Murphy to Green T. Lee, May 25, 1847, an excerpt from which appears as a note in Kristin Johnson’s Unfortunate Emigrants, 43.
a month earlier than usual: For evidence that it had snowed as early as October 7 at Donner Pass, see the “Diary of James Mathers,” reprinted in Morgan, 243–45. For more about the weather on October 31 and November 1, 1846, see McLaughlin, 3–5.
CHAPTER SEVEN—COLD CALCULATIONS
prairie dogs on a white prairie: McGlashan, 209.
“which they did all night”: Bryant, 59.
difficult for him to use the hand: The exact nature of the wound to George Donner’s right hand is described variously in different accounts. See Rarick, 125, for one version.
hauled the logs to the site: See Elitha Donner’s account, quoted in Hardesty, 59.
sixteen people sharing 450 square feet: The physical description of the Murphy cabin in particular is drawn from the archaeological record presented in Hardesty. Some details about the other two cabins also come from this source.
complete the double cabin: Details about the Graves-Reed double cabin are derived from Mary Ann Graves’s letter to McGlashan, April 16, 1879 [McGlashan Papers, folder 14]. In a letter to McGlashan, April 15, 1879 [McGlashan Papers, folder 38], Patty Reed later insisted vehemently that Franklin Graves did not build the Reeds’ half of the cabin—that the Reeds’ teamsters, Eddy, Stanton, and Luis and Salvador did so. However, her assertion is contradicted by a number of others who were there. Patty’s sharp words here and elsewhere are reflective of hard feelings between the Reeds and the Graveses that lingered through t
he lives of all the survivors and well beyond. For a different point of view, it’s worth considering what Georgia Donner Babcock had to say in a letter to McGlashan on May 26, 1879: “I’m sorry that [the Reeds] could not come nearer doing right by their fellow travelers than they have done by representing themselves as they have. I am willing that their feelings should be spared as far as possible but expected them to consider the feelings of others” [McGlashan Papers, folder 2].
“had minds & wills of their own”: Patty Reed to McGlashan, April 15, 1879 [McGlashan Papers, folder 38].
ox that had already starved to death: Franklin Graves’s sale of the ox to Eddy was reported by Thornton in terms that did not flatter Graves: “He refused to save it for meat, but upon Mr. Eddy’s applying to him for it, he would not let him have it for less than $25.” It’s worth pointing out that Eddy’s veracity in many things was questioned by some of his fellow survivors. That said, it is also true that a number of survivors felt that once the harsh realities of the impending disaster began to become clear, the Graveses grew less generous than their neighbors back in Illinois remembered.
“very good dog”: McGlashan, 123. Reed and McCutchen later engaged in a very pubic argument with Frances H. McDougall, writing on behalf of Mrs. Curtis, about what exactly had happened during and following the dog dinner. This exchange, published in a series of articles in 1871 in the pages of the Pacific Rural Press, can be found in Kristin Johnson’s Unfortunate Emigrants, 181–208.
the profile of just such a leader: For more on the qualities that make for good leadership in survival situations, see Leach, 140.
and every ounce of them is lethal: “Grizzly Bear Recovery.”
“on the 31st of last month”: Breen, 5. Patrick Breen’s diary is probably the single most compelling document to come out of the Donner Party tragedy. Working in the cold and dark of his cabin at the lake camp, Breen wrote the original on eight sheets of paper folded and trimmed to make thirty-two small pages. I have used a facsimile edition of the version produced by Frederick J. Teggart in 1910.
“returned after an unsuccessful attempt”: Ibid.
“the eve of a snow storm”: Ibid.
processes then begin to kick in: For a good overview of the physiological effects of hunger, see chapters 2–5 of Russell.
greater amounts of salt and other seasonings: For much more about the hunger experiment at the University of Minnesota, see Tucker.
“no hopes of finding them alive”: Breen, 6.
apparent permanent harm to themselves: See Russell, 3–8, for more on “starvation artists” and other survivors of long-term fasts.
it looks like this for women: For more about the Harris-Benedict equation and a handy online calculator, “Basal Energy Expenditure: Harris-Benedict Equation,” see Cornell University’s Web site www-users.med.cornell.edu/~spon/picu/calc/beecalc.htm.
simply to maintain her weight: The nutritional value of a Big Mac® can be found on McDonald’s Web site at www.mcdonalds.com.
2,679 calories per day: “Dietary Quality and Food Consumption: Dietary Trends from Food and Nutrient Availability Data.”
2,158 calories in 1970: Ibid.
CHAPTER EIGHT—DESPERATION
“Yours Very Respectfully C.T. Stanton”: Charles Stanton to the Donners, December 9, 1846, reprinted in Morgan, 450.
“It is our only choice”: Mary Murphy quoted in Steed, 15.
for Elizabeth Graves to care for: Mary Ann Graves, in a letter to McGlashan dated April 16, 1879, said it was she who convinced Amanda McCutchen to go with the snowshoe party [McGlashan Papers, folder 14].
“8 feet deep on the level”: Breen, 7.
dried beef for each of them: Both Sarah and Mary Ann, in letters written in May 1847, said the snowshoe party carried eight pounds of dried beef each. Sarah’s letter first appeared in the Western Republican (Lawrenceburg, Indiana) on November 25, 1847.
stiff body of Baylis Williams: W. C. (Billy) Graves describes shaving and washing Baylis Williams’s body in a letter to McGlashan dated April 1, 1879. However, he incorrectly says Baylis died “about the first of January” [McGlashan Papers, folder 16]. Patrick Breen had by then already noted Baylis’s death on December 17, saying, “Bealis died night before last,” which would be the night before the snowshoe party left.
precious calories at a furious rate: Mary Ann Graves describes the difficulty the snowshoe party had learning to walk in snowshoes in her letter of April 15, 1879 [McGlashan Papers, folder 14].
the sun’s unrelenting rays: My information about snow blindness is taken from a variety of online sources, most notably from www.emedicine. com/EMERG/topic759.htm and related pages.
if we are to remain alive: The information about hypothermia and hyperthermia comes from the Mayo Clinic’s Web site at www.mayoclinic.com/health/hypothermia/DS00333.
into a kind of death spiral: A discussion of Dr. Hackett’s experiments on Denali can be found at the PBS Web site at www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/denali.
“Norwegian fur company among the icebergs”: McGlashan, 71–72.
who began to fall the farthest behind: My chronology for the snowshoe expedition is based on a variety of sources, including Mary Ann Graves Clarke’s account in the Truckee Republican of May 17, 1879; additional elements of Mary Ann’s account as published in McGlashan; a statement authored by John Sinclair in 1847 and reprinted in Morgan, 294–95, based on William Eddy’s notes and discussions with other survivors; James Reed’s account, based again on Eddy and used in J. H. Merryman’s “Of a Company of Emigrants in the Mountains of California,” in the Illinois Journal on December 9, 1847; J. Quinn Thornton’s account in Camp of Death, 24–39, again based mostly on Eddy; and Patrick Breen’s diary, which I have used to correlate weather events observed at the lake camp with those observed by the snowshoe party.
My chronology differs slightly from some others, beginning in particular with December 20. In examining Mary Ann Graves’s chronology published in the Truckee Republican, I note that she has compressed the events of three days under the heading of a single day, her “Third day.” For this one day, in fact, she refers to the passage of the day of December 18, the evening of the eighteenth, the morning of the nineteenth, the evening of the nineteenth, and the morning and day of the twentieth. Therefore, I take her “Fourth day” to be in fact the sixth day, December 21. If so, and if her recollection is otherwise accurate, Stanton was left behind on the Yuba on the morning of December 20. This date is also borne out by Eliza Farnham’s account based on interviews with Mary Ann sometime before 1856, and it is also stated explicitly by John Sinclair in his statement of 1847, based on his discussions with survivors not long after the disaster. Mary Ann’s chronology grows more confusing as she recounts the subsequent days, when she again compresses multiple days under the headings for single days. Nevertheless, by carefully correlating the survivors’ recollections of weather conditions with those recorded contemporaneously by Patrick Breen, it is possible to parse her narrative and arrive at the chronology that I have used. Although it was written some thirty-two years after the events recorded, it is important to note that Mary Ann’s is the only detailed, surviving account actually written by a member of the snowshoe party and therefore merits considerable respect despite its obvious deficiencies.
hollow stump near the same spot: W. C. (Billy) Graves describes finding Stanton’s remains in a hollow stump “about 15 miles along Dutch Flat [Donner Lake Road]” in his March 30, 1879, letter to McGlashan [McGlashan Papers, folder 16]. Assuming that Graves was measuring the distance from the cabins at Donner Lake, this reinforces the notion that Stanton died along the Yuba River before the snowshoe party turned southwest away from the river.
his brain would have died: The Mayo Clinic’s Web site at www.mayoclinic.com/health/hypothermia/DS00333.
“through no organic cause”: Leach, 168.
life the exception: Parrado, 200.
epic blizzards in the high Sierra: For more on the M
adden-Julian oscillation, see “Monitoring Intra-seasonal Oscillations” at the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Web site, www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal.
tempers began to flare: For a good summary of the “City of San Francisco” incident, see Rasmussen, B-2.
sat motionless until he died: The description of Jacob Donner’s death is drawn from McGlashan, 95.
CHAPTER NINE—CHRISTMAS FEASTS
sisters starve at the lake: Mary Ann Graves’s account in the Truckee Republican of May 17, 1879.
“Your own dear Eleanor”: Thornton, 25.
were all failing them: For more about the short-term physical and psychological effects of starvation, see Russell, 29–51, and Tucker, 96–127.
in Oregon’s Coast Range: My information about the James Kim tragedy is drawn from a number of contemporaneous news accounts, all of them online. See Katz, Simon, Yardley, and “Kim Family Search: A Timeline.”
“What can we do?”: Mary Ann Graves’s account in the Truckee Republican of May 17, 1879.
beginning to eat at their minds: For more on the psychology of getting lost, see Gonzales, 162–70.
had become permanently deranged: Philbrick, 171–75.
he did not care: Thornton, 27.
they, too, must eat human flesh: Mary Ann Graves’s account in the Truckee Republican of May 17, 1879.
with his daughters at his side: My chronology asserts that Antonio and Franklin Graves died on the day and the night of December 24, respectively. Some published accounts and some primary sources place these events on December 25. Mary Ann Graves, in a letter dated May 22, 1847, states that “Father died on Christmas night at 11 o’clock.” I believe that Mary Ann either meant Christmas Eve or was understandably mistaken as to the date. James Reed (based on Eddy’s notes) also places these deaths on December 25. Thornton also places them on “Christmas night,” but the date he meant by this term seems to be December 24 according to the logic of his narrative. John Sinclair, who talked to Eddy and other survivors after the tragedy, on the other hand, places the deaths, as I do, on December 24. For me, here as in many places, Patrick Breen’s meticulous weather observations carry particular weight in reconciling the discrepancies. Most of the accounts mention in one way or another that Franklin Graves died late at night just as the weather suddenly turned colder and stormier and the rain turned to snow—“in the commencement of the snow storm,” as Mary Ann put it herself; “in the beginning of the storm, of cold,” as Sarah put it; or as “a most dreadful storm of wind, snow, and hail, began to pour down,” as Thornton, based on Eddy, put it.