Donner Party Archaeology Project

Introduction

The Donner Family Camp Archaeology Team cooperated with the Tahoe National Forest (TNF) during the 2004 field season at the Alder Creek site, three miles north of Truckee, California. This research was made possible by financial support from the University of Montana’s Office of Research and from the Truckee Tahoe Community Foundation.  The latter provided the team with the means to rent a large house in the Truckee-Tahoe area that could sleep eight to ten people at a time and that served as the project’s evening laboratory (Figure 1). 

Figure 1.  Osteologist Guy Tasa of the University of Oregon (left) and Forensic Anthropologist Shannon Novak of Idaho State University (right) examine bone specimens at the research team’s condominium and evening laboratory near Squaw Valley, California.  A generous grant from the Truckee Tahoe Community Foundation provided the funding for this facility.

Tranquility Meets Tragedy: The Donner Family Camp

The lush, mountain meadow of knee-high wildflowers is a destination for tranquility (Figure 2).  This summery scene is a far cry from the stormy landscape witnessed by a courageous group of emigrants during the winter of 1846-1847, when an early winter storm trapped those travelers in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains.  Stranded and snowbound for over four months in that mountain meadow (and at a second camp six miles away), survivors of the well-known “Donner Party” endured inclement weather and starvation.  Worse yet, they became surrounded by the deaths of their companions and loved ones.  Tales that many peoples’ survival depended on their cannibalism of the dead render this story even more somber.

Many visitors to this site are drawn by those tragic events, and the Tahoe National Forest has commemorated the area with an interpretive trail designed under the auspices of Trucke Ranger District Archaeologist, Carrie Smith (Figure 3).  A constant stream of visitors wander through the picturesque place, taking in pine groves and a Sierran backdrop of soft and rugged summit lines.  During the summer of 2004, those visitors noticed archaeologists’ sunhat-covered heads rising from the wildflowers as they sat up from bent stances in excavation pits (Figure 4). 

Figure 2.  Today the Alder Creek meadow appears relatively serene, with the Sierras marking the horizon to the east and pine forests easing down along the wetland’s perimeter (photo by Scott Schneyder).

Figure 3.  The Tahoe National Forest owns and manages the land where the Donner Familes once camped.  The photo shows the starting point of the Forest’s interpretive trail.

Conducting archaeology at the site where the Donner familes camped – much like carrying out archaeology at the site where the Titanic sank – may seem unnecessary because we already know the outcome.  So why bother trying to recover archaeological remains of the Donner Party?  Because such a venture helps us make a something resembling tangible contact with the Donner familes and their fellow emigrants through the subtle, physical traces of their camp site.  These objects bring us closer to the Party’s experiences in the Sierras and can add another dimension to the story that has inspired numerous foreboding tales. 

Archaeology is essential to recover evidence than can help revise and recreate this chronicle of endurance.  Admittedly, much of what has been written on the Donner Party focuses on the tragedy of survival cannibalism, with imagery-evoking ghastly imagery and verbiage such as “forlorn hope,” “ordeal by hunger,” “ill-fated,” “tragic,” and, of course, the multiple references to cannibalism. 

While it is understandable that the taboo topic has stimulated the fame of the Donner Party, much more went on out there.  It is essential, in the words of Donner descendant, Lochie Paige, to reveal the human experiences of “sacrifice and decisions” and to understand how this revised story is significant for California’s history (Paige 2004, pers. comm.).  The archaeological remains of the camp sites can help attain such goals.

Figure 4.  Surrounded by much different surroundings than the people they whose story they seek, the archaeology team is surrounded by a field of wildflowers while excavating the area where at least one of the Donner familes camped during July of 2004.

Past and Present Archaeological Discoveries

People have been collecting relics from the Alder Creek encampments since the fourth rescue party arrived on the scene in the spring of 1847.  By the latter portion of the nineteenth century, people from the region treated those sites as places to practice recreational looting (e.g., Doten 1973; Johnson 2004:4).  In his History of the Donner Party (1879), P.F. McGlashan sought the camp remains, and still others have tried to relocate the Donner Family camp during the early twentieth century, long after there were no discernible traces of the site (e.g., Hardesty 1997:59). 

Archaeologists encounter the indiscernible, and by the last two decades of the twentieth century, renowned archaeologist Dr. Don Hardesty turned his attention to the Donner Party.  Working with Dr. Susan Lindstrom, Don Hardesty began the first scientific archaeological research at the Alder Creek Camp in 1990.  This research was part of a University of Nevada, Reno field school and was supported in part by the National Geographic Society (Hardesty 1985; Hardesty and Lindstrom 1990).  Previously, Drs. Hardesty and Lindstrom teamed up in 1985 to excavate one of the cabin sites at Donner Lake, the second camp area that held the Donner Party; this camp site lies over six miles away from the place where the Donner families camped along Alder Creek (Figure 5).  Because there were more people at the Donner Lake encampments than at Alder Creek, there was more suffering, more death, and more documentation associated with this larger population at Donner Lake.  At both sites, Hardesty and Lindstrom’s team discovered tiny fragments of emigrant-era artifacts, such as wagon hardware, lead shot, bone, and decorative, dinner plate sherds. 

Unlike the Donner Lake Cabin sites, the absence of physical remains and paucity of historic accounts of the Donner Family camp’s specific location hindered archaeologists’ ability to verify the site location.  While they confidently located a cabin site that was constructed against a large boulder at Donner Lake, the Donner Family camp remains at Alder Creek proved to be more elusive.  Hardesty’s teamed deemed one concentration of artifacts there as an archaeological site known as the “meadow locale.”  Because the Donner families wandered off of the main trail to the Alder Creek area, and because later emigrants tended to avoid that area, there were not many other explanations for this collection of middle nineteenth-century artifacts other than Donner Party events.  Given this, the meadow locale appeared to be the best candidate in the area as a place that contained the remnants of the Donner family’s camp site (Hardesty 1997).  Despite the collection and identification of emigrant era artifacts, Dr. Hardesty, in his book, Archaeology of the Donner Party, asserts that a fire hearth would solidify the site’s affiliation with the Donner Party (Hardesty 1997:110-111).  Thus, he felt that this mid 19th century campsite could not -- at that time -- be unequivocally linked with the Donner Family campsite (see also Mullen, Jr. 1997:195).  

Figure 5.  This map shows the Donner Party encampments at Donner Lake and Alder Creek; the two were separated by approximately six miles.

One of Don Hardesty’s students, Dr. Kelly Dixon of the University of Montana,  and Dr. Julie Schablitsky of the University of Oregon-Museum of Natural and Cultural History returned to the Alder Creek site to revisit the issue of the site’s affiliation with Donner Party activities and to try to locate a hearth per Hardesty’s (1997:110-111) recommendation (Figure 6).  In just a few days’ time, between August 6 and 10, 2003, this duo was supported b y the Discovery Channel’s Unsolved History to direct metal detecting, ground-penetrating radar, and archaeological testing at the site (Schablitsky and Dixon 2003).  They relocated the area where Drs. Hardesty and Lindstrom closed their excavations, and then they unearthed tiny bone fragments and numerous historic artifacts, such as ceramic teacup shards and a clothing buckle (Figure 7).  Some of these items were buried within a thin deposit of gray-colored ash.  Initially, this appeared to be a hearth, but upon closer inspection, it turned out to merely be residue from a hearth.  While that created a momentary letdown, the residue nevertheless pointed to the presence of a buried hearth somewhere.

Figure 6.  During their August 2003 testing, archaeologists unearthed a tiny clothing buckle, shown here lying alongside a gray-colored concentration of ash; the latter initially appeared to be the edge of a fire hearth but turned out to be residue from a hearth.  During the 2004 fieldwork, the archaeology team returned to this residue and followed it in search of its source.

Inspired by their finds from August 2003, the research team returned to the site in July of 2004.  They hypothesized that, if they could locate the source of the hearth residue (i.e., a hearth), along with artifacts that date to 1846-1847, they would be able to support the premise that the site represented one of the Donner family encampments.  Just over two meters to the south of the hearth residue the team uncovered that which they sought: a definitive fire hearth (Figure 7).  This appeared as a roughly circular, grayish-black stain with a series of layers, including a deposit of burned and calcined bone, which sat atop a concentration of charred wood, which lay on top of fine, powdery ash (Figure 8).  When Don Hardesty examined a photo of the hearth feature, he noted that it appeared similar to the Murphy cabin site at Donner Lake, which, like the Alder Creek camp, was occupied for four months during the winter of 1846-1847 (Hardesty 2004, pers. comm.).  This was a significant observation, because the Murphy Cabin is a definitive Donner site; the similarity of the hearth features at both sites, then, helps solidify the Alder Creek meadow locale’s association with Donner Party events.

The fire hearth was surrounded by hundreds of tiny artifacts, such as hand painted dinner plate fragments, bottle shards, clothing buttons, wagon hardware, and lead shot (Figures, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14).  These items and the hearth provide collective, physical evidence of an emigrant camp that had a relatively extended occupation.  In other words, it was not a mere two or three-night stop, which would have resulted in a more sparse archaeological record; for example, archaeological excavations of way stations along the Overland Emigrant Trail [and toll roads] that lay within a few miles of Alder Creek yielded a relative paucity of material compared with the discoveries at Alder Creek (e.g., Dixon 1996)  When this archaeological evidence is synthesized with historical accounts and intensively processed bone, there are multiple lines of evidence which suggest that the members of the Donner Party camped at this site. 

Although the preliminary findings build on Don Hardesty’s work to suggest that the meadow locale is the location of a Donner camp site, additional work is needed to further understand the survival experiences of these emigrants.  The research team now plans to analyze the bones and artifacts to understand aspects of the Donner story that are not documented in the popular, sensational historical accounts.  For example, the team will re-create the layout of this starvation camp; they will examine the starvation diet people endured prior to resorting to cannibalism; they will examine the artifacts’ ability to reconstruct the fireside ambience of this camp; and then they will examine how the artifacts, bones, and historical accounts can be synthesized to understand the broader picture of human adaptation to desperate situations.  It will take at least one year to complete these tasks (see attached schedule and budget).  The impetus for such research is the archaeologists’ goal to provide a more holistic interpretation of a story that has been overshadowed by cannibalism. 

Figure 7.  During the 2004 fieldwork, the archaeology team excavates the area near their 2003 tests and they began to expose a fire hearth.

Figure 8.  The fire hearth at the Donner Family camp is visible as a distinct gray, ashy layer in the sediments near Alder Creek.  This is a view of the hearth feature as seen during fieldwork on July 12, 2004.

Figure 9 (left).  A wagon staple emerges during the 2004 excavation of the area near the fire hearth. 
Figure 10 (right) shows a lead shot in the wall of an excavation area adjacent to that hearth.

Figure 11 (left).  This tiny, delicate bead was unearthed during the 2004 excavation – this reminds researchers of the feminine presence at the Donner camp sites. 
Figure 12 (right).  This button, along with several others of a similar style were discovered around the fire hearth.  Historical records suggest that the Donners used raincoats to help waterproof their tent, which makes artifacts like this even more interesting because they may provide evidence of secondary use of clothing materials for architectural purposes (photos by Ronald M. James; scale in centimeters).

Figure 13 (left).  This dinner plate shard provides a material example of the ways in which the Donner families may have normalized their desperate situation, one of several topics that will make up the post-excavation laboratory analysis. 
Figure 14 (right).  This writing slate was found during the 2004 field season.  The surface of this item, along with objects such as serving ware shards, will be examined using a scanning elctron microscope (photos by Ronald M. James; scale in centimeters).

Even with such a righteous goal, researchers still cannot avoid the fact that cannibalism is an inescapable part of the story.  As a result, the final step in the project will include the identification of numerous bone fragments; if some are actually human and if the research team identifies cut and chop marks on those remains, this will shed light on the controversial subject of whether people at this camp actually did resort to survival cannibalism.  For example, one of the teamsters, John Baptiste Trudeau, who had been staying with the Donner family and who survived the ordeal, indicated that, “at no time did the people in the Donner Camps eat flesh” (Hardesty 1997:55).  Trudeau later contradicted himself by arguing, many years after the ordeal in 1884, that the Donner families actually managed to avoid cannibalism (Johnson 2004:30-31).  We may never know why Trudeau told two entirely opposing stories, but we will always wonder which is true.  Other accounts, such as that a rescue party report, observed “butchered” bodies at that camp; on another occasion, Tamsen Donner  (George Donner’s wife) said that the people in her camp might have to commence with eating their dead if they could not find their cattle buried in the snow (e.g., Hardesty 1997:55; Mullen, Jr. 1997:288, 298).  Given the ambiguous nature of historical accounts, the research team has a duty to use their skills to attempt to settle the controversy.  Much like the rest of the analysis, this, too, will at least one year. 

The topic of cannibalism is incorrigible because of controversial accounts from people such as Trudeau.  Even so, the story of Trudeau and of the other teamsters is exceptional, given their efforts to make sacrifices of their own strength to aid people they had only known for a few months.  The teamsters who worked for the Donner family helped construct makeshift tents, searched for food, and tried to find dry wood for fuel.  With the exception of John Baptiste Trudeau, the other Alder Creek camp teamsters -- Joseph Reinhardt, Sam Shoemaker, and James Smith -- along with Jacob Donner were among the first to die.  Thanks to sacrifices made by those able-bodied, male members of the party, most of this ordeal’s heroic survivors were the most dependent members of the emigrant party: women and children. 

Of the 84 people [including rescue party members] who were trapped in the Sierras between the end of October 1846 and the middle of April 1847, only 49 lived.  Of those that died, twenty-five (71%) were males and ten (29%) were females.  Among the survivors, 37 (75%) were women and children under the age of 16; only eleven men (22%) survived.  (Johnson 1996:294-298; Hardesty 1997:14-18; Grayson 1997:123-132).  In his research on the demographics of the Donner Party, Don Grayson described this increased longevity of females as a result of the roles of men and women in extreme conditions.  In such conditions, “men acted like men,” exerting and therefore losing more energy.  Their gallantry resulted in the depletion of their energy reserves, which in turn, decreased their longevity (Grayson 1997:132). 

Despite this story’s powerful concurrence of sacrifice of the impervious and survival of the vulnerable, these aspects of this epic are the most overlooked, part of the Donner Party tragedy.  Instead, morbid images are, more often than not, conjured up when this event is mentioned.  While such imagery is an inescapable part of the story, clearly the reason for the popular knowledge of this event, it is necessary to find the balance in this account by underscoring the experiences of those who persevered and lived through such a harrowing experience. 

This archaeology project, then, is not so much an attempt to rewrite the chronicle as it is a mission to revise one of the most widely known events in western history.  This is a story about humans interacting with a new landscape and about the life, death, and the immortality associated with infamous events.  It instigates a consideration of the ways in which grief over lost loved ones tainted the survivors’ endurance.  Emotional wounds deepened as the grievers’ memories became laced with the stigma of cannibalism. 

This is a story that begs an answer to the question: “what happened out there?”  Better yet, what happened during those four grueling months between the party becoming stranded in late October and being rescued in late February?  The common version of this story begins with the party finding itself snowbound and low on supplies at the beginning of the four-month ordeal; it ends with a link between desperation and cannibalism.  By combining our findings with Don Hardesty’s discoveries,  we can now revive the details of that four-month-ling period of extreme survival.  This helps us understand more about human resilience and adaptation, topics that are not part of the usual, more popular version of this epic. 

The archaeological remains of the emigrant-era places where the Donner familes camped hold the keys to go beyond sensational myth by unlocking additional details of the events that took place during that ill-fated winter in the Sierras.  This is, then, also a story about making new discoveries about a segment of history that has been told and re-told ad nauseum.  It is necessary at this point to await the results of those discoveries after archaeologsits conduct their analyses.  While this report has noted the contradictory nature of historical records and called upon archaeology to aid the telling of the Donner story, it is essential to point out that the story would not be possible without the context provided by those historical records.  Artifacts are mere curiousities without provenance and historical context.  To ensure that such a context is included with this document, an abridged version of the Donner Party’s travels is outlined below.

Historical Background

The context for this epic falls within the rather general history associated with the massive stream of families and livestock headed through and into the American West using paths and trails that represented precursors to railroads and highways in that region.  The members of the George and Jacob Donner families found themselves along one of those -- the Oregon-California Trail -- after leaving their home in Springfield, Illinois and making their way to the eastern terminus of the Trail in Indepence, Missouri.  From that point, the Donner’s joined over 2700 other travelers and a train of over 500 wagons.  That mass of people and wagons branched off into smaller parties, and the Donners joined the “Russell Party,” composed of forty-nine wagons making the rugged, long distance migration across the West.  They were among an adventurous group of people seeking new lives in pre-Gold Rush California during the fall of 1846.

By the time the Russell Party made it to Fort Bridger, Wyoming, just over eighty members of the wagon train decided to break away into an even smaller group of twenty-two oxen-drawn wagons.  That group branched off on their own in order to take a shortcut, known as the Hastings Cutoff, while the rest of the emigrants decided to conservatively follow the better established trail.  The George and Jacob Donner families were among this trail-blazing emigrant party.  A mix of teenage teamsters, families, grandparents, widows, and European immigrants joined them.  While the group chose George Donner as its captain, another man, James Reed, was treated as “co-captain” of this wagon train.  It has since been known as the “Donner Party,” the “Donner-Reed Party,” and even the “Reed-Donner Party.”

The Hastings Cuttoff proved to be a troublesome, alterative route.  The group ended up blazing a new trail, which exhausted the adult males and caused the group to lose time.  Subsequently, the slow pace caused by this shortcut caused the group’s late crossing of the rugged, Sierra Nevada range.  Additionally, James Reed was banished from the group for killing one of the train’s teamsters in a disagreement that led to a fatal scuffle.  This left George Donner as the sole, figurehead leader of the fatigued party.  By the time the group reached the eastern Sierras, it had lost a lot of its original social cohesion, with small cliques forming and traveling separately along the trail (Hardesty 1997:10-11). 

The George and Jacob Donner families comprised one such clique.  When the party began to cross the Sierras in late October of 1846, the dissipated group was strung out along the trail; the Donner families were behind the group and alone.  Whatever their sequence along the trail, all members of the party met an early winter storm on October 28, 1846.  As if that did not give the emigrants enough trouble, George Donner’s wagon broke an axle just as they reached a rugged section of trail in what is known today as Dog Valley.  While making repairs, Donner cut his hand, an injury that soon became infected and that rendered the patriarch of his family and the leader and namesake of the entire emigrant party an invalid.  While his brother, Jacob Donner and his family, along with three teamsters, stopped with him while he repaired the wagon, the Donner families fell several miles behind the main party, resulting in the 81-member party’s full separation into two groups just before camping for the winter.

Despite the fact that they surged ahead of the Donner families and their teamsters (21 people), the rest of the party (60 people) did not get far.  The group of sixty, including the Murphy, Graves, and Reed families, among many others, wintered in three rustic cabins and an attached lean-to in the vicinity of what is today known as Donner Lake. 

By the time Jacob and George Donner and their teamsters repaired George Donner’s broken wagon axle, the storm prevented them from catching up with the main party.  So the Donner families continued along the trail for a few miles until they observed an area that was not entirely snow-covered – yet.  This area was located about one mile off the Emigrant Trail.  There, in a Meadow near Alder Creek, they stopped to set up what they thought would be a temporary camp, erecting tent-like shelters instead of cabins (Figure 15).   

Figure 15.  In her memoirs, Eliza Donner Houghton (1911) sketched the lean-to (shown above) to illustrate the type of tent-like shelter that harbored her family at the Alder Creek encampment.

The group of 21 people who camped at Alder Creek consisted of the Jacob and George Donner families, the widow Doris Wolfinger, and several young male teamsters, all of whom camped along Alder Creek just southwest of Prosser Creek Reservoir.  The population of this camp consisted of 12 children, 6 adult males, and 3 adult females.  While the 60 individuals at Donner Lake spent four, snowbound months in cabins, the group at Alder Creek weathered the winter in less permanent shelters.  This is presented by teamster John Baptiste Trudeau:

it was snowing when we stopped, and I told [George Donner] best to build a hut like the Indians Wigwam with an opening at the top for the smoke to escape.  We all helped with the hut.  Short posts were driven into the ground on the insides across which sticks were laid, and on them pine boughs were thickly spread.  This arrangement served as comfortable beds when they could be kept dry (King and Steed 1995:168-169; see also Hardesty 1997:54-55).

The last phrase in the above quote underscores the fact that these “wigwams” were not entirely watertight, a point that is further supported by another account from December 11, 1846, which describes people huddled in “soaked tents and brush shelters” at the Donner Family camp; within a few days, Jacob Donner and three teamsters (Reinhardt, Shoemaker, and Smith) were described as being malnourished, cold, and damp on their deathbeds (Mullen, Jr. 1997:224-226).  By December 20, 1846, those four men finally succumbed (Hardesty 1997:54; Mullen, Jr. 1997:232). 

By the time his brother and the three teamsters died, George Donner’s hand injury had become infected, which this affected his lower arm and rendered him an invalid (Mullen, Jr. 1997:218).  As a result, Trudeau was left to fend for the women and children.  By January 19, 1847, he was desperately probing the snow drifts in search of buried cattle, but found nothing (Mullen, Jr. 1997:260).  Despite the shroud of discouragement, he continued to search for wood and food: 

I cut the wood above the snow, I used to climb trees to saw off the limbs, and to gather the pine cones to start the fire…when it rained hard at night we used to cover the coals…first with ashes and then [with] a large camp kettle.  We were often without fires for days and meat was beyond reach at times, then we ate hides, and strings or went hungry (King and Steed 1995:168-169; see also Hardesty 1997:55).

Trudeau’s story about the camp conditions is corroborated by one of George Donner’s daughters, Georgia, who was only four years old at the time her family was snowbound:

The [Donner] families shared with one another as long as they had anything to share.  Every one’s portion was very small.  The hides were boiled, and the bones were burned brown and eaten.  We tried to eat a decayed buffalo robe but it was too tough, and there was no nourishment in it.  Some of the few mice that came into camp were caught and eaten.  Some days we could not keep a fire, and many times during both days and nights, snow was shoveled from off of our tent and from around it so that we might not be buried alive.  Mother remarked one day that it had been two weeks [since] our beds and clothing upon our bodies had been wet (Stewart 1936:259). 

Christmas Day 1846 was described as “just another day,” and the few people with enough energy tackled the task of preventing snow from crushing the tents.  Even so, people inside were soaked to the bone while wrapped in quilts and buffalo robes.  By January 22, 1847, the Donner family encampments were reportedly in worse shape than the [Donner] Lake camps and they also had less food than the lake camps (Mullen, Jr. 1997:262). 

The miserable conditions of the camp atmosphere certainly made this harrowing experience even more trying, a fact that makes this story even more remarkable from the standpoint of human capabilities.  Perhaps one of the more commonly told stories of valor is that of Tamsen giving up the opportunity to leave the Alder Creek camp, even when this meant being separated from her three daughters, to whom she bade a tearful farewell when the third relief party left on March 14, 1847 (Johnson 2004:3).  She refused to leave her dying husband, George, and chose to stay behind to care for him and her nephew, Samuel.  Sometime between March 14, 1847 and April 17, 1847, when the fourth and final relief party arrived, little Samuel and then, George, had died.  At this point, Tamsen laid out her husband’s body, wrapped him in a sheet, and made her way -- alone -- over the rugged and snowy terrain to the Donner Lake camp.  She died and was likely cannibalized by the last survivor of that camp, Lewis Keseberg (Johnson 2004:3, 25).  Tamsen’s story is one of quintessential sacrifice.  Before that, she had given up the opportunity to leave with the other Donner children and the first and second relief parties.

The first relief party arrived on February 20, 1847.  At that time, the people in the Donner camp admitted that cannibalism was their only choice if John Baptiste Trudeau could not find cattle buried in the snow (Mullen, Jr. 1997:288).  Wishing to save whoever was able-bodied enough to travel, the first relief took away four Donner children (Elitha and Leanna, who were George’s daughters from a previous marriage; Jacob and Elizabeth’s son, George; and William Hook from Elizabeth’s previous marriage) as well as the widow Doris Wolfinger and teamster Noah James.  Before they left the 12 remaining survivors at the Alder Creek camp, the first relief purportedly cut down the pine tree that had been sheltering the George Donner tent so those remaining in camp would have fuel (Johnson 2004:2). 

By March 1, 1847, when the second rescue party [led by James Reed] arrived at the Donner camp, they reported that the Donners had resorted to cannibalism (Mullen, Jr. 1997:298; Johnson 2004:2).  George and Tamsen’s three remaining children were described as “stout” and “harty” [sic] and three of Jacob and Elizabeth’s children (Isaac Donner, Mary Donner, and Solomon Hook) were healthy enough to travel and were taken out of the mountains by that rescue party.  Even though some members of the camp were relatively fit for travel, Mrs. Jacob Donner, Elizabeth, was in frail condition (Mullen, Jr. 1997:296).  Then, around March 9, 1847, Jacob and Elizabeth’s three-year-old son, Lewis died, along with their son, Lewis.  This left feeble Elizabeth in a hysterical state of mind, and within a few days, just before the third relief party arrived, she, too died (Mullen, Jr. 1997:304; Johnson 2004:3). 

The third relief found George Donner dying from the infection in his hand.  Tamsen was at his side, along with their three remaining daughters, and their nephew, Samuel.  As noted above, Samuel, together with George and Elizabeth, were the three remaining survivors at the Alder Creek camp when the third relief party left that location.  As tragic as this tale is, with many people becoming ever-weaker and dying, there is a notable pattern: despite the trying conditions, the Donners clearly made sacrifices in the name of their children’s survival.

Current and Future Research

A society can be judged by the treatment of its most vulnerable members (e.g. Blakey 1998).  It is clear that the Donner adults made sacrifices in such despondent conditions.  By making the most defenseless members of their camp a priority, those people exhibited valor in a desperate situation.  This is clearly a story that goes beyond mere survival cannibalism.  The archaeological remains of the camp are being analyzed to tell a more dynamic narrative. 

References

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Markley, Richard

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McGlashan, C.F.

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McShane, Jack C.

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