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Still chasing the American Dream

The story of the Donner-Reed party is one of the greatest of American tragedies. Their history represents the utter failure of every American ideal: perseverance, optimism, risk-taking, procrastination, adventurism, hope, faith, ingenuity, opportunism... If there's a shortcut, should we take it? If we're already rich, should we try to get richer? If we can have sex with it, should we fuck it?

The Canon Corporation makes cameras. In Japan, they sell a certain camera called the “Canon Kiss.” In America, the same exact camera is repackaged and sold as the “Canon Rebel.” Those Japs understand the the psyche of Americans better than most Americans know themselves.

I swear to your God, except for all the sexual innuendos, everything below is entirely factual - the stupidity, the cannibalism - all true. Information is taken from the Donner Party logs. The sexual innuendos are probably true as well.

April 1846 - April 1847

Introduction

When the whole pioneer thing began in the 1840s, fewer than twenty thousand white Americans lived west of the Mississippi River. Financial panic on the east coast, cholera and malaria and lions and tigers and Manifest Destiny. Ten years later, well, half a million had done the whole pioneer thing. Half a million emigrants looking for all the ideals of the American dream, wealth, wide open spaces, a fat piece of the beer-soaked American Pie.

Of the 87 people who survived long enough to camp at Truckee Lake beneath the shadows of the Sierra Nevada, 46 survived and 41 died.

It really started with a man named Lansford W. Hastings, the 27-year old fucker from Mount Vernon Ohio. Get rich quick, found a new country called Hastingslandbergville, score lots of virgin poontang:

March 3rd, 1846. The tide of emigration is unparalleled in the annals of history. The eyes of the American people are now turned westward and thousands are gazing with the most intense interest and anxiety upon the Pacific shores with the full determination to make one more, one last move more, to the far West.

Wandering west, carrying a bagful of promises in one hand and clutching his rubbery dick in the other.

The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California - a book he wrote. West coast was the new Eden, says he. Hoping enough Americans would follow him, start some kind of succession from Mexico, reap in the spoils, score some booty. “Come with me. We get rich quick.”

Chasing the American Dream

George Donner - a 62-year old farmer who had migrated five times before ending up in Springfield Illinois. Together with brother Jacob Donner, the families had become filthy rich.

James Frazier Reed, the businessman of businessmen, wanted what all rich men want: more money. Still wanted to molest the American Dream one more time. This time, he was sure he'd find some ass on the virginal west coast, untouched, untamed. James Reed would go with his wife, Margaret and an mother-in-law, Sarah Keyes, who was consumed with consumption, along with four children Virginia, Patty, James and Thomas. Margaret suffered from constant headaches and hoped that the west coast weather would help.

Patrick Breen - Irish immigrant. Came here on a boat two decades back, but the American Dream wasn't waiting for him in Iowa. Let us gamble with California isntead.

William Eddy - the 28-year old carriage maker. So young, so full of hope, not like these other, older families. The young patriarch is about to make the biggest rookie decision of his life.

Lavinia Jackson Murphy - her husband died. What the hell is a widower supposed to do with her seven children? What would Jesus do? Would Jesus embrace Manifest Destiny? Would he send seven little kids into the unknown to find the American Dream ? William Murphy was 11 at the time, but he recalls several years later:

In 1845 we heard wonderful stories of a wonderful country in the far West, between the Pacific ocean and the Rocky mountains, a country of sulubrious climate, perrenial spring time indeed, of deep and inexhaustible soil, why, they said that wheat grew wild higher than a man's head, and the Mexican Government that exercised some kind of control over it, would grant land to settlers; so my mother, as a widow, with seven children, two sons-in-law and three grand children, suggested that we emigrate to the far off fairy land.

There were other families too: the Kesebergs, the Wolfingers, the McCutchens, the Graves... ha ha, 'Graves,' get it?

Departure date: the sixteenth of April, 1846, from Springfield Illinois - nine shiny new pioneer-style covered wagons, encasing 32 hopeful souls, including two hired servants, seven teamsters. Then 12-year old Virginia Reed began keeping a diary.

My father, with tears in his eyes, tried to smile as one friend after another grasped his hand in a last farewell. Mama was overcome with grief. At last we were all in the wagons. The drivers cracked their whips. The oxen moved slowly forward and the long journey had begun....

The first destination was where everyone goes, to Independence, Missouri, beneath the serpentine glow of a wrathful God. Along for the ride was Hasting's book, which talked of a faster route to California dreaming.

Tamsen Donner, wife of George Donner:

Independence. May 11th, 1846. My dearest only sister: I can give you no idea of the hurry of this place at this time. It is supposed there be 7,000 wagons this season. We go to California to the Bay of San Francisco, a four months trip. I am willing to go and have no doubt it will be an advantage to our children and to us. Farewell, my sister. You shall hear from me as soon as I have an opportunity.

Opportunity.

Let the Donner Party -ing Begin

The trick to making the 'Westward Migration' is to leave late enough to miss the spring rains, but early enough to escape the winter. Leaving during the second week of May is considered fine, but of course it rains a lot and the trail for the Donner party is super muddy. Difficult to travel by covered wagon. 27 May - Couldn't make it past the Big Blue River - too much rain, cannot be forded. Margaret's mommy dies. The first to die.

Virginia Reed:

Grandma became speechless the day before she died. We made a neat coffin and buried her under a tree. We miss her very much. Every time we come into the wagon, we look at the bed for her.

Now Tamsen will open up a can of whoop-ass irony on us:

June 16th. We are now on the Platte, 200 miles from Fort Laramie. I never could have believed we could have traveled so far with so little difficulty. Indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started.

The Donner Party was making decent progress. They made it to Fort Laramie on June 27th, only about a week behind schedule. There, James Reed runs into crazy mountain man James Clyman, who had just come back from California using Hasting's cutoff.

He's James Clyman
He's such a loner
He's a Mountain Man
He's got no boner

Testimony from James Clyman:

I told him about the great desert and the roughness of the Sierras and that a straight route might turn out to be impracticable. I told him to take the regular wagon track and never leave it. It is barely possible to get through if you follow it and it may be impossible if you don't.

But oh, it truly is the American Way to take the shortcuts, cut corners, to hump anything that has a vagina. James Reed did not take the advice. Why play it safe? Where's your sense of adventure?

James Clyman continues east, pauses over the grave of Sarah Keyes on July 15th:

This stone shows us that all ages and all sects are found to undertake this long, tedious and even dangerous journey for some unknown object never to be realized, even by those the most fortunate. And why? Because the human mind can never be satisfied, never at rest, always on the stretch for something new, some strange novelty.

Crazy mountain mem make for good poets.

Coming Down after the Drug High

The Donner Party had traveled together with many others, and on July 20, the emigrants reached the Little Sandy River. Most heeded Clyman's Warning and took the old route. But earlier, a traveling horseman gave the party the message that Hastings himself would be waiting at Fort Bridger, to guide everyone over the new trail. But Hastings was long gone by the time the party got there. Reed got information that Hasting's cutoff is supposed to save almost 400 miles, safer, more grass, more water.

Depart Fort Bridger on 31 July with nine families and 16 single men. Cockfest. Arrive at Echo Canyon on 6th August to find a note from Hastings stuck on a sage branch: “whoops you guys. It turns out the road ahead is virtually impassable. Well shit, you've passed the halfway point anyway.”

It took them two weeks to get out of the mountains. Luke Halloran dies of consumption on a quiet blue Tuesday the 25th, buried at the forks of the road. Flowers and wreaths, a spice of life beneath the dirt.

Hastings' cutoff leads through the Great Salt Flats. The Great Salt Flats has a lot of... salt. And not much else. No wild animals for human food. No grass for the oxen. No water to quench our horny souls.

The reached the Humboldt River on 26th September, the place where the cutoff met with the old trail. With the cutoff as 125 miles longer. Hastings' group had already made it to California. Doesn't Murphy's Law say something about shortcuts - they're always longer?

Stupid fight: the Graves family wagon bumps into the Reed wagon. Graves driver John Snyder beats the oxen, James Reed tries to calm him down, John smacks James upside the head with the bullwhip, James stabs John. The group democracy convicts murder, but Margaret begs mercy. James Reed is banished, sent off on a horse.

Paiute Indians kill 21 oxen with poisoned arrows on October 12th. Reach the Truckee River on 16 October, the river that leads to the Sierra. But there was hope: a scout from the Donner party had come back from Sutter's Fort with mules carrying food and two Indian guides. So let us camp for 5 days before continuing. Once we pass the summit of the Sierra Nevada, it won't be much further to California.

Five days in idyllic summer.

Procrastination

Start over the mountains, 31 October, and it starts snowing. It snows harder, faster, harder, faster! Five feet on the ground. The wagons cannot move, cannot make it to the summit... only one thousand feet away.

To travel two thousand, five hundred fucking miles in seven months, only to lose to the weather by one day. One fucking day.

(Alright God, we learned our lesson. We'll stop being so painfully American now. Please let us live, please. We still haven't gotten rich richer yet.)

Back down the mountain to camp at Truckee Lake. 81 members remaining: 25 men, 15 women, and 41 children, of which included six infants. Patrick Breen, his wife Peggy, and seven children took an abandoned shack. Lewis Keseberg built a lean-to on one side of the Breen shack. The Eddys, Murphys, the Fosters, and the Pikes build a log cabin nearby. The family of Franklin Graves and Margaret Reed's family build another. The axle of the Donner's wagon had broken and they were behind. They never tried to climb the summit. Not that they had to. They were camped six miles away.

James Reed stumbles out of the mountains late October. Goes to Sutter's Fort, tries to organize a rescue party, but it's too late and he's snowed in. Nobody can help him because, just his luck, their was fighting with Mexico and defending pioneer land was more important.

Eliza Donner writes,

After the first storm, a little sunbeam stole down the steps and made a bright spot upon our floor. I sat down under it, held it on my lap, passed my hand up and down in its brightness. I gathered up a piece of it in my apron and ran to my mother. Great was my surprise when I carefully opened the folds and found that I had nothing to show.

It was starting to get desperate. Most of the cattle were killed for food. The first in the Donner Party Cookbook: make boiled hides, charred bones, plants and twigs more edible by mixing with a little bit of meat. Balis Williams, one of the Reed's hired men, dies of indigestion... or malnutrition.

Now it starts.

Body Counting

In mid-December, 15 emigrants: five women, nine men, and a boy make an attempt to cross the mountains, each carrying six days of starvation rations. They called themselves “The Forlorn Hope.” William Eddy and the Indians, Lewis and Salvadore take the lead. On the sixth day, the strength of Charles Stanton escapes.

“Go on without me,” he says. He was last seen relaxing in the snow, calmly smoking his pipe.

The snow drifts are twenty feet high, the road has disappeared, The Forlorn Hope is hopelessly lost. Wrote Eliza Donner:

Even the wind seemed to hold its breath as the suggestion was made that were one to die, the rest might live. Then the suggestion was made that lots be cast and whoever drew the longest slip should be the sacrifice. The slips of paper were prepared and Patrick Dolan drew the fatal slip.

No one had the heart to kill him.

The group huddles around together beneath a blanket, which is quickly buried under snow. Antonio, a Mexican teamster, dies. Then Franklin Graves. He died in the arms of his daughters, Mary and Sarah. Patrick goes insane and had to be held down, until he slipped into a coma and died. Lern Murphy died as well. Finally it stopped snowing. William Eddy digs the group out and someone cuts the flesh from the arms and legs of Patrick Dolan.

They roasted Patrick Dolan. They ate Patrick Dolan.

The Indians refused to eat. The other members cut up all the other dead, and carefully labeled each piece so that no one had to eat their own kin. The food runs out in three days. William Foster proposes eating the Indians, but William Eddy, ever the young rookie, tells the Indians of the agenda. The Indians disappear.

Sarah Foskick had to watch her husband die; then see his heart roasting on a stick. They found the two Indians, too weak to move. William Foster got his way and killed the two. They were eaten as well.

Beneath the shadows of a setting sun on January 10th, 1847, beneath the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Harriet Ritchie hears a knock on the door of her family's cabin. She opens the door to find a skeleton of a man, bleeding, wretched, asking for bread. She helps William Eddy into bed. The five women also survive. Six out of fifteen.

Till Death Do Us Part

The first rescue party crosses the Sierra in February 19th. They find that twelve emigrants had died. Margaret Reed, Peggy Breen, and Tamsen Donner had managed to keep all their children alive. Nobody had eaten human flesh yet. The rescuers could only take 24 of the emigrants. The Breens had volunteered to stay. George Donner was too sick to move, and Tamsen refuse to leave her husband's side. Patty Reed also volunteered to stay behind, because three-year old Thomas was too small to walk through the snow. “Well Ma,” she said to her mother, “if you never see me again, do the best that you can.”

31 remained at Truckee Lake.

On the way back the first relief party runs into a second relief party, headed by none other than James Reed:

Here I met my own wife and two of my little children. Two still in the mountains. I cannot describe the death-like look of them. 'Bread, bread, bread' was the begging of every child and grown person.

By the time James Reed reached the camp, the survivors had begun eating the dead:

Among the cabins lay the fleshless bones and half-eaten bodies of the victims of the famine. There lay the limbs, the skulls and the hair of the poor beings who had died from want and whose flesh preserved the lives of their surviving comrades who, shivering beneath their filthy rags and surrounded by the remains of their unholy feast, looked more like demons than human beings. They had fallen from their high estate, though compelled by the fell hand of dire necessity.

A member of a third relief party found Mrs. Graves' body lying in the snow, with almost all the flesh cut away from her arms and limbs. Her breasts were cut off, along with her heart, her liver... lying next to her was her 13th month old child, arms on the body of her mangled mother, crying, “ma! ma! ma!”

There were only seven left alive. Tamsen Donner still refused to leave her husband's side, who remained too ill to move. Here was her one chance, possibly her last chance, to leave and save herself, but she simply could not. Hope, faith... love prevailed.

Till death do us part.

The fourth relief party came delayed by a month, after the ninth and final blizzard of what was to be recorded as the worst winter ever in the Sierra Nevada. They only found one person alive, Lewis Keseberg in his cabin, delirious, surrounded by a fort of half eaten bodies and bones. The lone king of a mountain of human sacrifices in his name. He ate Tamsen Donner. The rescue party made it to California on April 25, one year after the Donner Party had started.

Of the 87, 41 died: five women, 14 children, and 22 men. All of the Reeds survived. All off the Breens survived. All four adults and four of the children of the Donners died.

The Breens settled in San Juan Bautista and became prominent ranchers. Lewis Keseberg spoke openly about his cannibalism and was hated by everyone. He made a fortune during the Gold Rush. The Reed family settle in San Jose; James Reed made himself a fortune as well, in real estate and gold. Margaret Reed's chronic headaches all but stopped. James Reed fulfilled his wish of molesting the American Dream one more time. The American Dream at last.

The Donner children were split up and adopted by various families.

“Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can,” wrote Virginia Reed.

Written by Dinah Cheshire
Exclusive property of www.applesanity.com

It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor Americans pursue prosperity. Ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach as if they expected to stop living before they had relished them. Death steps in, in the end, and stops them before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them.
  - Alexis de Tocqueville