As the Americans came closer, the Mexican artillery “was so annoying that we halted to silence them,” Emory said, which took about fifteen minutes, but just as they resumed march Flores’s lancers came down simultaneously on their left flank and rear. The soldiers, sailors, and marines opened a terrific fire, emptying many Mexican saddles. Meantime, Stockton’s artillery laid on the grape. “We all considered this the beginning of the fight,” Captain Emory wrote, “but it was the end of it.”
It was also—though they could not know it at the time—the end of Mexican control of California. That night they camped outside Los Angeles and saw about four hundred enemy horsemen and their artillery draw off toward the town, but next morning three prominent Los Angelenos appeared in the American camp with a flag of truce. Flores, realizing that he could not beat the Americans, agreed that Andrés Pico and his cavalry lancers would move north to surrender to Colonel Frémont, who was nearby, at what today is Pasadena.† Flores, concerned about his own fate for having broken parole, headed his force south toward Mexico. Or as Emory understood it: “Towards the close of the day we learned very certainly that Flores, with 150 men, chiefly desperadoes of the country, had fled to Sonora, taking with them four or five hundred of the best horses and mules in the country, the property of his own friends. The silence of the Californians was now changed into deep and bitter curses upon Flores.”
Stockton and Kearny accepted the surrender of the city, the capital of California, and marched the army into town where they were received with a sullen and gloomy silence by the residents. Even if neither of the two final skirmishes rose to the dignity of a battle, it does not diminish their importance. Once more, Old Glory flew from the flagstaff in the Los Angeles plaza, and flies there still today, lo these many years.
* What he meant, apparently, was that there were patches of soft sand on the bottom.
† It has been suggested that Pico, whose family had large land holdings in the area, wished to surrender to Frémont’s contingent because he was concerned that the U.S. Army might hang him for the business at San Pasqual.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Horror
On January 10, 1847, the same day Stockton and Kearny marched victorious into Los Angeles, Luis and Salvador, the two Miwok Indians accompanying the travelers of the Forlorn Hope in their attempted escape from the Sierra, were killed and eaten by starving members of the party.
On New Year’s Eve, two days after they stripped the first flesh from companions who had perished, the snowshoers remained high in the mountains, exhausted, frightened, and out of provisions. Whether from squeamishness or oversight they had not fully butchered the corpses for travel, and as they sat around a common campfire in the snow—five men and five women—they ate the last of the dried human meat and wondered what the next day would bring. So far, there seemed no end in sight, day after day of floundering through drifts in their snowshoes, sometimes crawling or plowing, or sliding down crevasses, then hauling themselves over another hump by the roots of trees or rocky outcroppings. All of them suffered from frostbite of various severity. They had descended far enough that a few live oaks now began to appear, scattered among the usual cedars and pines, but as far as the eye could see there was nothing but a frigid, empty wasteland, an unbearable desolation of rock and snow and ice. A man named Jay Fosdick, twenty-three, was on his last legs, but no one knew when he might die. His new, twenty-one-year-old wife, Sarah, was unable to help as he lagged far behind, crashing over the broken ground, nearly blind and beginning to have delusions.
Starvation is one of the more excruciating ways to die; the pangs of hunger magnify terribly and exponentially with the passing days, then hours, and finally minutes and seconds as the brain and body conspire in crying out for nourishment. Desperation sets in, then panic, along with anguish and pain, before the system begins to shut down for good. Starving people have been known to do bizarre things, eat the unimaginable, do the unthinkable. So it was with the Forlorn Hope of the Donner party. In their extremity they resorted not only to cannibalism but to murder.
It was said that a man named William Foster raised the idea of killing the Indians. The fact that they had risked their lives with Stanton, coming up from Sutter’s to bring food, did not seem to enter into their favor; they were Indians, to the frontiersman’s mind a subspecies not quite so low as game animals but low enough on the human scale to be sacrificed if need be. It did not help that many of their brethren made careers of stealing from and killing white men, but one senses that it wouldn’t have made much difference if they hadn’t.
It was also said that William Eddy was appalled by the notion and suggested that instead everyone draw lots to see who would be killed. When he was overruled, it was later said Eddy warned the Indians what the discussion was about, and they quickly disappeared into the forest.
Meantime, Jay Fosdick died, and his wife, Sarah, wrapped him in a blanket and slept beside him through the night. They had been married only hours before the wagon train left Kansas. Next morning, despite her pleas and protests, the others cut out his heart and liver and stripped his bones for sustenance. But soon they were out of food again. Even though they had descended below the snow line there was still nothing to eat, and they began to boil their shoes, boots, and moccasins for whatever nourishment remained in them. They continued on, wrapping rags around their bare feet, which soon swelled until the skin burst.
On January 10 they came across bloody footprints that could only belong to Luis and Salvador. Foster, with his rifle, tracked them while the others waited. Soon they heard shots. Foster maintained they had been too weak to move. Later, Sutter would claim they were gathering acorns when they were killed.
Two days later, fueled by the flesh of the Indians, they stumbled upon an Indian trail and soon came to a village of Diggers, where, ironically, the astonished inhabitants fed them ground-up acorns, and assisted Eddy—who was on his last legs but the only one capable of further travel—to the home of an American farmer in Bear Valley. It had been a twenty-five-day nightmare since departing the Donner camp.
A rescue party was quickly organized by Americans in the area who rode out to collect the remaining six members of the Forlorn Hope, five women and one man. Because of the Californio rebellion, however, an immediate rescue of the Donners was out of the question; the valley was virtually destitute of able-bodied men, gone off to fight with Frémont. While he recovered, Eddy learned that his best bet to organize a party of relief would be at Sutter’s, another thirty-five miles south. He sent off an Indian runner with a letter for the American alcalde of the Sutter’s region outlining the urgency of the catastrophe. The first impulse of the alcalde’s wife was to send the Indian back with a bundle of underclothing for the wretched women of the Forlorn Hope, who had been practically naked when they emerged from the wilderness.
Word of the Donners’ plight quickly spread throughout northern California. In San Francisco a money-raising drive produced $700 for horses, pack animals, and food for the stranded sufferers. A party of ten was cobbled together led by James Reed, who had been released from service with the California Battalion.
Likewise, another relief party was organized from the region around Sutter’s, which was closest. Led by a man named Aquilla Glover, and riding either horses or mules, it was composed of fourteen men, about half of them recent American emigrant farmers and the rest a strange assortment of refugees from around the world—European adventurers, ship jumpers, vagrants, gamblers, and would-be artists. Also along, though still weakened by his ordeal, was William Eddy, whose wife, three-year-old son, and one-year-old daughter were among those marooned. These men got under way on February 1, 1847. High in the mountains it had begun to snow again.
On the day Luis and Salvador were killed, Margaret Reed, James Reed’s wife, left her three youngest children with another family and took thirteen-year-old Virginia, her eldest daughter, and began walking toward the pass with another woman and a man. She was ou
t of food, except for boiled hides and bones, and in desperation decided to follow after the Forlorn Hope. Within two days all had returned, exhausted, frostbitten, and famished.
In the beginning, young men died first,* then the elderly and children. Most of the emigrant company were members of families, who took care of their own. Single travelers, or those whose spouses had died, in their distress often sought to attach themselves to one of the families, with differing levels of success. Everyone prayed, even the heathens.
When someone died they were buried in the snow, which also preserved them. So far there had been no cannibalism within the camps atop the mountain, but nearly all the pet dogs had been killed and eaten. Commerce continued in food, principally hides but sometimes pieces of beef or mule. It was often an undignified process. For example, Margaret Reed had apparently borrowed some food from the Graves family and on January 30: “The Graves seized Mrs. Reid’s [sic] goods until they would be paid. Also took the hides that she and her family would live on. She got two pieces of hides from there and the balance they have taken. You may know from these proceedings what our fare is in camp.” So according to Patrick Breen’s diary.
Each day men went out into the fields and poked sticks deep into the snow in hopes of finding their dead cattle or horses, but not a sign. Ever since they had blundered onto the Hastings Cutoff, a kind of curse had hovered over the Donner party, as if they had suddenly begun following the wrong star. The starvation and their miserable living conditions were making them pathetic and depraved. With the exception of their praying, the last vestiges of civilization seemed to be passing them by.
The first relief party, the one from Sutter’s, reached the snow line February 10; soon they would be climbing up on foot in drifts ten to twenty feet deep. The plan was to cache provisions along the way so as to make them available on the trip back down. There was no way to carry sufficient food up to the camp by backpack. At a stopping point named Mule Springs two men were left to guard the provisions against bears and wolves. Two others, including William Eddy, were selected to take the empty pack mules back down the mountain. Everybody could see that Eddy was not up to climbing the mountain; he was still not recovered from the ordeal with the Forlorn Hope. He didn’t know that his wife and year-old daughter were already dead of starvation. (“She had lived until the baby died and then flickered out.”) They were buried together in the snow. Eddy’s three-year-old son was hanging on by a thread, tended to in one of the cabins by old and failing Mrs. Murphy.
Ten men of the rescue party were left to continue climbing upward, not a guide or experienced mountain man among them. It was appalling and dangerous work, wading through the drifts, fighting across freezing streams in bitter cold and with fifty-pound packs on their backs. At one point they came across human remains beside the ashes of a fire and guessed what must have happened there. On the mountain, people continued to die.
Eleven days into it three of the rescuers up and quit, turned around and went back to the valley. The remaining seven continued. Bold men—heroes—they pushed on, straining every sinew against the raw, cold, snow white granite mountain. It snowed again and covered their tracks; above, through holes in the clouds, they could see the jagged, serrated peaks, as if they were climbing toward some monstrous maw. Each day it became steeper and more deadly.
At last on February 18 they reached the pass, still clogged with snow. By superhuman exertions they struggled across it, descending to the lake where Eddy had told them many of the party had encamped. At first they saw nothing but snow and forest but then some stumps and felled trees and unnatural-looking snow-covered lumps in the ground. They called out “hello,” but for the longest time there was no answer; then a woman’s head appeared from one of the lumps and searched the seven unfamiliar faces, wanting to know, “Are you men from California, or from heaven?”
Soon other scarecrow apparitions began to appear, rising raggedly and agog from their snowbound hovels as if they were leaving their own tombs. At first there was shock and disbelief, which quickly turned to joy and tears of relief. By then, of the original eighty-one there were only thirty-three left on the mountain; twenty-four had died, including seven with the Forlorn Hope. “Some were so broken by long suffering,” wrote their chronicler George Stewart, “that they seemed to have lost all sense of self-respect, pride, or principle.” What they did not know was that it was going to get a lot worse.
The rescuers carefully distributed what little food they had been able to carry up the mountain and sized up the situation. The condition of the Donner group was shocking; most were emaciated beyond words. Many were so weak they could scarcely walk or even rise, their skin hanging down from drawn faces and hollow, vacant eyes. There were those who raved and cursed and others who simply cried or whimpered. It took the rescuers, who themselves were in great need of recuperation, three days to get it sorted out. There were some, including children, far too weak to attempt a move off the mountain. Some of the stronger would have to stay and care for them. Among the weak were the Donners themselves. George was too feeble to move and Tamsen refused to leave him. She would also try to fend for the children. The rescuers promised that another relief party was right behind (though they had no way of knowing it). Nor did they provide details of the gruesome fate of the Forlorn Hope.
On February 21 they started down the mountain and had not gone far when it became apparent that Patty Reed, James and Margaret’s nine-year-old, and their son Thomas, three, were too weak to continue and there was nothing else but to return them to the camp. Margaret went on, brokenhearted, with daughter Virginia and five-year-old James. As they parted, Patty said to her mother, “Good-bye, Ma. If I don’t see you again, do the best you can.” That night when they reached the spot where they’d cached a bale of food, they found it was broken open and saw bear tracks leading into the forest. The next food was four days down the mountain.
Back at the lake, Patrick Breen killed his pet dog, the last one in camp. Others left behind were not so fortunate, if that is the word. Breen wrote in his diary: “Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that [she] thought she would commence on Milt [Milt Elliott, who had died two weeks earlier] & eat him. I don’t [believe] she had done so yet, it is distressing. [The Donners] told the California folks that they commenced to eat the dead people 4 days ago. I suppose they have done so ere this time.” As the first relief party feebly ground its way down the mountain several of the survivors finally succumbed to starvation. But on February 27 the second relief party, led by James Reed, met up with the first just above the snow line. Here Reed was reunited with Margaret, Virginia, and James, whom he had not seen since his banishment from the wagon train after the Snyder killing.
Next day Reed and his people continued up the mountain, in hopes of finding his two remaining children alive. The survivors, strengthened somewhat by provisions they received from the second relief, trudged down toward Bear Valley, in the process losing a twelve-year-old boy to starvation sickness. Reed’s party arrived at the lake camp March 2 and were even more appalled then their predecessors by what they saw. Milt Elliott’s body was butchered, lying in the snow. Other areas of the camp “looked like a battlefield,” with human parts strewn about. They found the body of Jacob Donner, brother of George, with the head cut off, faceup, “the snow and cold having preserved all his features unaltered.” The arms and legs had been severed and the heart and liver cut out; “the leg and thigh had been thrown back, upon [learning] of the party of relief coming up.” It was a scene out of Dante’s worst nightmares: sitting on a log, one man reported, were several Donner children, “their faces and breasts smeared bloodily as they innocently tore and ate the half-roasted heart and liver.”
At least there was this: Reed, overjoyed, came across his daughter Patty “sitting on a cabin roof with her feet dangling in the snow.” His son Tommy, he quickly learned, was in the good care of the Breen family.
A triage again had to be conducted to see who was strong enou
gh to make it down the mountain and who must be left behind for a third relief party, which this time they believed was close behind them. George Donner had only been getting worse, and a cut he received on his arm months earlier repairing a wagon had never healed and was now gangrenous. He was still too weak to travel and again Tamsen would not leave him. When all was said and done seventeen of the survivors were judged strong enough to try an escape down the mountain. Those remaining were either too enfeebled to go or decided to stay and care for their kin.
Reed’s group left camp March 3 in a vaguely lighthearted mood. They camped across the pass and atop a twenty-five-foot snowdrift, and around the campfire that night diarist Patrick Breen played a fiddle. Tomorrow, they were told, there would be a cache of food five miles below. But that night the temperature dropped and it began to snow. It did not quit for two days.
What hit Reed’s people was one of the severest snowstorms of the year. Shrieking winds reached hurricane force and the thermometer plummeted. The snow was blinding and the children began to wail in terror, caught out in the open. Two days later they were still there and out of food. They had built a platform around the fire pit but, as time wore on, the fire and the platform began to melt into the drift and sink. They barely were able to keep the fire going and some of the party began to blame Reed for taking them from the relative safety of their camps. On the second day Isaac Donner, age five, died on a blanket between his sister Mary and Patty Reed.
On March 7 the sun finally reappeared and Reed prepared his family to move out. But the Breens and their five children, Elizabeth Graves and her four, and seven-year-old Mary Donner and her dead brother decided not to expose themselves to the elements again, but opted to wait for the third party of relief, which was supposed to be coming up any time.