Donner Party Notebook

 
 

Site Name: Donner Family Camp

Site No.: USFS 05-17-57-0001

Smithsonian Trinomial:

USGS 7.5 minute map:

 

Weather Conditions: Partly cloudy

 

Crew members

Crew from the Institute for Canine Forensics

May 28, 2004

This is our first day back at the Donner family’s camp – we haven’t seen this place in a year.

 

The warm spring day and the meadow full of wildflowers (see photo at left) mark a contrast to the usual winter scenes associated with historic events that occurred here. Our visit to the site today represents a new task at the Donner site: the use of human remains detection dogs to narrow down possible camp locations in the vast meadow. The details associated with this task are outlined below, but first it is essential to note that the rest of the research team will not return until July. The smaller group of us has come to the field site early so that we can work with the Institute for Canine Forensics in spring conditions; the Institute for Canine Forensics plans to return when the rest of the team arrives in order to have the dogs survey the area in mid-summer conditions, too.

 

Our plan to return for another season of fieldwork emerged because of our findings in August 2003. We came to the site in August 2003 after being inspired by previous investigations carried out by Dr. Donald Hardesty, along with his team from the University of Nevada, Reno and with the assistance of archaeologist Dr. Susan Lindström. Their research is outlines in Don Hardesty’s Archaeology of the Donner Party (1997). This volume is dog-eared and sitting on the stump next to me while I jot these notes. We have been constantly referring to Hardesty and Lindström’s research in making preparations for last season and our upcoming investigations here.

 

During the summers of 1989, 1990, and 1992 Donald Hardesty, along with field school students and volunteers, set out to locate the George and Jacob Donner shelters in this meadow along Alder Creek, north of Truckee, California. The paucity of physical remains and historic accounts of the Donner Family camp’s specific location in the Alder Creek meadow proved quite a challenge, but Hardesty and Lindström located several concentrations of artifacts that appeared to represent a middle nineteenth-century occupation. One of these areas, the “meadow locale,” appeared to be the best candidate to hold traces of at least one of the Donner family encampments. Despite the collection and identification of emigrant era artifacts, Dr. Hardesty asserted that a fire hearth would solidify the site’s affiliation with the Donner Party (Hardesty 1997:110-111). In 1993, Tahoe National Forest Service Archaeologist Richard Markley attempted to find additional components of the site(s).

 

With the assistance of Drs. Hardesty and Lindström as well as the Tahoe National Forest Truckee Ranger District archaeologists, o ur team returned to the Alder Creek site in 2003 to revisit the issue of the site’s affiliation with Donner Party activities and to try to locate a hearth per Hardesty’s recommendation (e.g., Hardesty 1997:110-111).

 

During our August 2003 testing, the crew exposed a concentration of ash, charred wood, and burned (calcined) bone fragments. Initially, the ash layer appeared to be the edge of a fire hearth, however after closer inspection it turned out to be residue from a hearth. Inspired by the finds from August 2003, our research team is now returning to the site for a second season of work during the summer 2004. We hypothesize that, if we can locate the source of the hearth residue (i.e., a hearth), along with artifacts that date to 1846-1847, it should be possible to unequivocally support the premise that the site represented one of the Donner family encampments.

 

Our initial task this season -- and the main topic of today’s field notes -- employs a rather non-traditional approach: the use of human remains detection dogs. These individuals were called in because of the Donner project’s attempts to locate a campsite that likely contains human bone; private investigator Kenneth Dunn followed the previous field season’s research and helped the team get into contact with the Institute for Canine Forensics.

 

As the working dogs arrived at the site where we would soon be opening up last year’s excavations, I realized that this was a unique survey method requiring one to think outside the box of traditional archaeological field strategies. Working canines are commonly known to assist people with special needs. They also use their acute sense of smell to aid law enforcement officers with the identification of bombs and illegal drugs. These senses are also applied to forensic cases, with cadaver dogs assisting with the location of missing persons. Cadaver dogs are increasingly being cross-trained to locate human remains that have decomposed to nothing more than bones. Known as human remains detection dogs, these canines are able to assist forensic investigations associated with relatively old remains. Much like bomb or drug-sniffing dogs, forensic canines sit or lie down when they detect what it is they are trained to locate (see photos at left).

 

Several representatives from the Institute for Canine Forensics are here today (see the crew roster on today’s first page entry). The Institute for Canine Forensics is a non-profit organization based in Northern California that supports the advancement of research and education associated with forensic evidence and human remains detection dogs.

Their members serve as consultants for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and have participated in search and rescue at Ground-Zero after 9/11. Adela Morris and Eva Cecil of the Institute for Canine Forensics have patiently answered my questions so that I can compile the Institute’s methods into the following description of today’s survey techniques (based on direct observation and discussions with Morris and Cecil):

 

After the dogs and their handlers arrived, the handlers allowed their canines to wander around the project area so that they may become acclimatized to the setting. The handlers took care to ensure that they did not force the dogs to go to work at this point; they handlers signal the canines when it is time to go to work. After the dogs become familiar to the area, a handler gives a signal to his/her respective canine and the work begins. Each dog and its respective handler work independently of the others to prevent dogs and handlers from being biased by others working an area before them. For example, while one dog is working the area where we and Don Hardesty’s crew dug in the past, the others work other surrounding locales; this serves as control testing of the dogs’ abilities.

 

When a dog is at “work” here, it is walking slowly, methodically, with its nose down, sniffing the ground. As a dog becomes more focused on an area, it may produce a variety of subtle signals, such as circling an area before alerting, whimpering, or head-training; usually each dog has its own individual signals leading up to an alert. If a dog alerts (by sitting or lying down), then the handlers ask their canines to approach the area a second time, from anther angle, to see if the dog replicates the alert. It is essential for the handlers to refrain from directing the dog. Rather, they survey the area by allowing the dogs’ own senses to lead them toward buried remains.

If a dog continues to alert in a certain area, then it is taken away and another animal commences to work that area, following the same steps noted above. If the second dog replicates, then the first dog is brought back to see if it continues to replicate the alert in the same place. The Institute for Canine Forensics then produces maps that show their survey coverage and areas where buried remains are likely. These will be placed on file at the U.S. Forest Service Tahoe National Forest.

 

While the canines are going about their work, they end up marking boundaries, or to borrow a remote sensing term, “hot spots.” Hardesty’s meadow locale appears to be one such area according to the dogs testing thus far. As a matter of fact, three dogs, following the above protocol, alerted to one area just outside of the meadow locale. Their alerts were independent of one another. We will ground truth the area when the crew arrives in July. We also plan to have the Institute for Canine Forensics return at that time to have the dogs re-examine the area under different conditions.

According to the handlers, today’s spring conditions at the Donner site are rather good. I asked them what constituted such conditions and then summarized it here:

 

Most soils carry the scent upward. Slightly wet, green grasses are ideal for transmitting buried scents to the surface. Somewhat cloudy conditions with a light breeze are also preferred. More wind is better for forensic cases requiring the identification of fresh bodies, but too much wind is not favored for surveying buried and/or historic remains, such as those that may exist here. Conditions at the Donner Camp today met all of these conditions, with the exception of frequent wind gusts.

 

Speculation: I am curious to see what will come of our excavations in relation to the dog alert areas. In these times of technological marvels and faith in science, dogs seem an unlikely tool to add to an archaeologist’s kit. While commonly known as “cadaver dogs,” the preferred term for canines working with historic burials is “human remains dogs” or “human remains detection dogs.” These canines are equipped with the ability to sense human bones or teeth that may be hundreds of years old. They can detect the minutest elements of such remains, including bone dust and soil or artifacts that have been in contact with burials. While we are employing them here to help us hone in on the center of a long, lost camp site, other archaeologists may want to consider using them to avoid human remains to avert insensitivities associated with NAGPRA issues.

The remaining pages of the Field Notebook are still under construction.