The Littlest Survivor

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The preparations made for the journey by my parents were practical. Strong, commodious emigrant wagons were constructed especially for the purpose. The oxen to draw them were hardy, well-trained and rapid walkers. Three extra yoke were provided for emergencies. Cows were selected to furnish milk on the way. A few young beef cattle, five saddle horses, and a good watchdog completed the list of livestock. When she was just three years old, Eliza Donner Houghton left Springfield, Illinois with her family for that golden promised land called California. Who can wonder at my indignation and grief and little girlhood when I was told of acts of brutality, inhumanity and cannibalism attributed to those starved parents who in life had shared their last morsels of food with helpless companions. Of the 87 people who departed on that wagon train, 39 died. Of the 48 survivors, Eliza was the youngest.

I resolve that when I grow to be a woman, I shall tell the story of my party so clearly that no one can doubt its truth. Oh, true weird stuff. Today, you could drive from New York City to San Francisco. It's a distance of 2,902 miles in about 44 hours. Food and a place to sleep, not a problem. Hotels, motels, campgrounds, everywhere. Plenty of fast food, loads of gas stations, even rest stop vending machines strung from coast to coast like grubby pearls. But in 1846, planes, trains and automobiles were far in the future. The only way to cross the vast distance between the Atlantic and the Pacific was the slow, hard way. Horseback, covered wagon, on foot. And people did it. Between 1840 and 1860, as many as half a million people risked everything for the dream of emigrating to the West.

With wagon trains covering maybe 10 to 15 miles per day, it could take as much as six months to distance. As many as one in 10 people died on the journey. Accidents, drownings, harsh weather, disease, think cholera, typhoid, dysentery, pneumonia. Then there was the terrain. There were multiple trails going west. But the one most of us know best is the Oregon Trail, sometimes called the Oregon California Trail. It began in Independence, Missouri and ended in Oregon City, Oregon. The trail was first used by the indigenous peoples for hunting and trading.

Then explorers like mountain man Jim Bridger and Lewis and Clark used it too, expanding it in some places, improving it in others. And though there were other trails west, it was the Oregon Trail that became the most popular route for pioneers heeding the call of Manifest Destiny. Just as a quick reminder, Manifest Destiny was the very widely held belief that Americans had a God-given right to expand their reach from sea to shining sea, bringing with them democracy, their Christian faith, and all that capitalism they could carry. Standing between the would-be pioneers and this golden dream of a new life in the West was the vast, forbidding Rocky Mountains. Stretching 3,000 miles from western Canada to New Mexico, the Rockies divide the Great Plains from the western United States. And for a very long time, people had a wildly ill-informed and optimistic idea about what crossing the Rockies might mean. A medical missionary named Samuel Parker made the journey in 1835. He published a book about it, declaring that if an old preacher could survive the trip, anyone could. The American Biblical Repository ran with the story, saying that the finger of God had obviously carved out a path. A few years later, Missouri Senator Louis F. Lynn was describing the climate in Oregon as tropical, the crossing of the Rockies simple enough for even a delicate female to manage. The truth was a lot more rugged and unforgiving. In fact, part of what Louis and Clark were out there looking for was an easier way to make the trip, a Northwest Passage. They never found it and nearly died in 1805 trying to cross the Bitterroot Range in Montana. Meanwhile, tribes of indigenous people did know of an easier passage, one about 400 miles further south in land that would one day become the state of Wyoming.

Now, the indigenous folks managed to keep their secret until June 1812, when a group of fur led by Robert Stewart left Fort Astoria in Oregon for New York. The trip was snakebit almost from the start. The mosquitoes were a relentless, bloodthirsty horde. At least one man tried to kill himself in despair. Stewart's horse was stolen, though the warrior who took it showed respect to Stewart. He told him that there was a shorter route east, one that crossed through central Rockies. So the men went in search of the fabled shortcut, but bad luck continued to dog them. They encountered a crow war party near the Tetons and all of their horses were taken.

Without horses, the pace was unbearably slow and even traveling some by river left the men staring down a harsh winter in a hostile wilderness, which they survived in a shack they cobbled together near the present day Wyoming Nebraska border, a shack they had to abandon after being discovered there by a band of Arapaho. The group made miserable camp further downstream and somehow finally made it to the city of St. Louis in April 1813. They were ragged, hungry, but jubilant. It exists, said Stewart, a southern pass through the Rockies. And with that, the continent was open to wagon travel. With the approaching winter of 1845, popular interest in the great territory to the west of us spread to our community.

Maps and reports were eagerly studied. The few old letters which had been received from traders and trappers along the Pacific coast were brought forth for general perusal. The course of the reading society, which met weekly at our home, was changed in order that my mother might read to those assembled the publications which had kindled in my father and uncle the desire to migrate to the land so alluringly described. Stories like this one out of Springfield, Illinois.

Our city was in quite an excitement by the number of immigrants about to leave for Independence, Missouri on their way to Oregon. Five or six wagons were in company and about 65 immigrants. They left this city on Monday night on their long and perilous journey. God speed them on their way. If your mental picture of the westward migration involves a handful of covered wagons bumping slowly along the rutted ground, that's not the whole story. Many pioneers were part of enormous wagon trains led by seasoned and experienced guides and drivers. And newspapers of the day printed glowing accounts of these journeys, romanticizing what was the truth, a dangerous and grueling undertaking. But for people dreaming of freedom, of owning their own land, accounts like this one were a siren call. The soil and country from Independence to the Nebraska River is equal in beauty and fertility to any I've seen. That's a wagoneer named W.B. who did at least acknowledge that timber was scarce, but that small groves of trees could be found growing alongside the many streams. The prairies are beautifully rolling, the soil rich, deep. There is something ennobling in the very idea of an expedition so fraught with consequences.

No narrow-minded soul is a fit for Oregon. Those whose minds are congenial to the enterprise present their shoulders to its hardships, their breasts to its dangers, and their means and talents to the accomplishment of its purposes will, I doubt, not be rewarded. The emigrants are all in good health and spirits. Respectfully yours, W.D. Ives. The preparations made for the journey by my parents were practical. Strong, commodious emigrant wagons were constructed especially for the purpose. The oxen to draw them were hardy, well-trained, and rapid walkers.

Three extra yoke were provided for emergencies. Cows were selected to furnish milk on the way. A few young beef cattle, five saddle horses, and a good watchdog completed the list of livestock. Three large, white-covered wagons stood in the yard. The first was packed with items that wouldn't be needed until the group reached their destination in Oregon. The second carried tools and provisions, clothing, everything that might be needed in camp. The third wagon would be the Donner family home, complete with feed boxes bolted to the back of the wagon bed for the two beloved saddle horses, Fanny and Margaret. Early in the day, the first two wagons started, each drawn by three yoke of powerful oxen, whose great moist eyes looked as though they, too, had parting tears to shed. I sat beside my mother with my hand clasped in hers as we slowly moved away from the quaint old house on its grassy knoll from the orchard, the cornland, and the meadows as we passed. The Donner family, the Reed family, and their employees were off, 32 people.

George Donner, age 60, his 44-year-old wife, Tamsen, and their three young daughters, Frances, Georgia, and Eliza. Also along were George Donner's three girls from his first marriage, Aletha and Liana. Jacob Donner, 56, and his wife Elizabeth, 45, along with their seven children. The oldest was age 14, the youngest was just one. The Donners hired men, Hiram Miller, Samuel Shoemaker, Noah James, Charles Berger, Augustus Spitzer, and John Denton. James Reed, who was 45, accompanied by his wife Margaret, 32, and their four children, the oldest age 13, the youngest age 3. Also along was Sarah Keyes, 70 years old, the mother of Margaret Reed. The group of nine wagons rolled into Independence, Missouri on May 11, 1846, and this was the first sign of the troubles to come. The Donner party was late, late by at least a month. Wagon trains had to time their journeys with care. They had to leave late enough in the spring so that their horses and livestock would have grass available to eat, but they had to leave early enough to get through the mountain passes before winter struck. Most wagon trains were gone by mid to late April. The Donner party was the last to depart Independence that year. They would need luck and the Lord on their side. There just wasn't any room for error now. A young attorney named Mr. J. Q. Norton informed us that himself and wife and ex-Governor Boggs and family of Missouri were hourly expecting Alfonso Boone, grandson of Daniel Boone, and that as soon as Boone and his family should arrive from Kentucky, they would all hasten on to join Colonel Russell's California Company, which was already on the way, but had promised to await them somewhere on the Kansas River. The party caught up to Colonel Russell's wagon train on May 19th from the journal of one of the men traveling with Russell, Edwin Bryant. We were joined today by nine wagons from Illinois belonging to Mr. Reed and the Mr. Donner, highly respectable and intelligent gentlemen with interesting families. They were received into the company by a unanimous vote. I shall read you now from a letter my dear mother wrote to the of the Springfield Journal. Our journey so far has been pleasant. The roads have been good and food plentiful. Wood is now very scarce, but buffalo chips are excellent. They kindle quickly and retain heat surprisingly. We had this morning buffalo steaks boiled upon them that had the same flavor they would have had upon hickory coals. We feel no fear of Indians. Our cattle graze quietly around our encampment unmolested. Grief was already stalking the dino party though.

On May 29th, Margaret Reed's mother, Sarah Keyes, passed away. They buried her on the side of the why they were risking this journey at all. Margaret's health was poor. James hoped that the California climate would restore his wife's vitality. 650 miles today, that's a distance of nothing. Locking your cruise control at 65, you're there in about 10 or 11 hours or less. For the Donner party, covering 650 miles took six weeks. And by the standards of the day, the Donner party was, as every dad everywhere likes to say, making good time. The wagon train pulled into Fort Laramie, that's in southwestern Wyoming, in July 1846. July in Wyoming can be as seductive and dangerous as the mythical sirens who lured back an explosion of fresh green foliage everywhere. The smell of sage and wildflowers on the breeze. The chilly bite after the sundown feeling more like a welcome relief than a warning. The brutal winter seemed to come. For the Donner party, the journey so far had been as smooth as any pioneer could hope for. Reaching Fort Laramie was a milestone, nearly the halfway point on the Oregon Trail. But for the Donners and the Reeds, Fort Laramie was also the place where fateful and tragic decisions were made. On July 20, 1846, the massive wagon train split up. Most of Colonel Russell's group turned north, continuing on the Oregon Trail. But others, the Donners among them, had been listening to a guide named Lansford Hastings, who claimed that there was a better way. There was a shortcut to California. Hastings was a lawyer from Ohio who'd made the wagon train trip to California himself at age 25. Upon reaching the Golden State, Hastings had become obsessed with the idea of becoming the ruler of a new empire by wresting California from the weak Mexican government and making himself ruler of that wonderful new country, which the world had now begun to hear so much. The problem was, as Hastings saw it, the Oregon Trail. It brought the pioneers too far north, depositing them in Oregon. What he needed was a more southerly route that would lead the pioneers to Sacramento, the future seat of his new empire. During the years 1843 and 1844, Hastings explored this new route to be called the Hastings Cutoff. He worked quickly, riding horseback and mapping the route, but vaguely in 1846, he recommended the route unhesitatingly to all wagon trains. Hastings was in the habit of, well, massaging the facts when it came to the truth of his shortcut. Hastings made the pioneers believe the desert that lay before them was 40 miles wide while it was 80. The salt plain glistened as an endless expanse. Not a drop of was in sight, nor a blade of grass. There's no doubt that all the loss of lives and property, all delays, suffering, and anxiety to the immigrants that went over the salt desert trail can be directly charged to Langsford Hastings in his unscrupulous efforts to get settlers to

northern California to enhance his empire scheme. My father and others deliberated over a new route to California. They were led to do so by an open letter which had been delivered to our company on the 17th by special messenger on horseback. The letter was written by Lansford W. Hastings, author of Travel Among the Rocky Mountains Through Oregon and California. One of the members of the party, James Reed, was doubtful. By sheer chance, an old friend of Reed's, James Clyman, was leaving Fort Laramie as the newcomers arrived.

The man had just completed the west to east trip through the Hastings Cut-Off and he had grave concerns about the route. Clyman's advice? Don't do it. Stay with Colonel Russell. Remain on the Oregon Trail. Hastings Cut-Off was difficult enough to navigate on foot. Clyman thought it would be downright impossible for a wagon. But that open letter included a promise from Lansford Hastings that he himself would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide the train through this new shortcut. Plus, Hastings Cut-Off would shorten their journey by 300 miles.

For a covered wagon capable of averaging maybe 12 miles a day, that meant arriving in California a month ahead of schedule. Reed was said to be weary of traveling with the Donners and worried that all the best land in California would be gone by the time he arrived. Added up, it was a persuasive argument for taking the shortcut. When the Donner-Reed group split off from Colonel Russell, they needed a new leader. The even-tempered and kindly George Donner was selected for the job.

And so, the 65-year-old farmer led his group of 25 men, 14 women, and 47 children to Fort Bridger. The wagons pulled into Fort Bridger on July 28, 1846. To their disappointment, Lansford Hastings had already departed with another group. He left a note, though, suggesting that any later arrivals should follow immediately with every expectation catching up to Hastings' group. None other than legendary mountain man Jim Bridger greeted the Donner-Reed party. He and his partner, Louis Vasquez, voiced their enthusiasm for the Hastings Cut-Off. Jim Bridger told James Reed that the Hastings Cut-Off was a fine level road with plenty of water and grass. What better endorsement could a traveler hope for than that? The party rested a few days, made repairs to their wagons and equipment, and on July 31, left Fort Bridger for what they believed would be a seven-week journey to California. What they didn't realize as they trundled through the gates was that Jim Bridger had an ulterior motive for sending them through Hastings Cut-Off. Fort Bridger was a business, a supply depot. With most wagon trains veering north and bypassing Fort Bridger, the place was becoming a ghost town. The fix seemed simple to Jim Bridger. The more wagon trains that would be persuaded to swap the Oregon Trail for the Hastings Cut-Off, the more traffic Fort Bridger would see, the more money Jim Bridger would make. Which probably doesn't sound all that diabolical to us. We're used to being manipulated in the name of profit. But Jim Bridger, it said, went far beyond that, and it would be the Donner party who would pay the terrible price. The journalist Edwin Bryant, who, remember, was riding with Colonel Russell, had ridden with Lansford Hastings himself, and so he knew that Hastings Cut-Off firsthand. He was appalled at the conditions he found. He knew that the Donner party planned to follow this route, knew that the majority of them were children, and he could see plainly that their wagons simply couldn't manage this route without enormous struggle, if it could be managed at all. So Edwin Bryant wrote a series of letters to Donner and Reed, warning them to avoid the Hastings Cut-Off. Letters that he left in the care of Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez. Letters that neither George Donner nor James Reed ever received. Later, Bryant wrote in his diary that he suspected that Bridger and Vasquez deliberately concealed the letters in hopes of keeping the grim truth about the Hastings Cut-Off from being known. On August 3rd, the Donner party reached the entrance to Webbers Canyon. Here they found a notice posted by Hastings that they should not attempt the canyon as it was impassable. It was decided that three of the men, including Reed, would attempt to follow Hastings' directions for a different route through the canyon, and if possible, return with Hastings himself to guide the wagons. After eight days, Reed rode back into camp, having been separated from his two companions. He said that he had located both blazed trees and landmarks that convinced him that the wagons could get through the new route the Hastings had outlined. We immediately broke camp and resumed travel. The following evening, we were stopped by a thicket of quaking ash through which it required a full day's hard work opening a passageway.

Thence our course lay through a wilderness of rugged peaks and rock-bound canyons until a heavily obstructed gulch confronted us. Believing that it would lead out to the Utah They had toiled six days when another group of teens and cattle overtook and joined our train. With the assistance of these three fresh men, the road eight miles in length was completed two days later, but it carried us out into a pretty mountain dell and not the opening we had expected.

It was then that the two other men who'd gone with Reed in search of Hastings finally returned and the news wasn't good. They informed us that we must turn back over our newly made road and cross a further range of peaks in order to strike the first outlet to the valley. Sudden fear of being lost in the trackless mountains almost precipitated a panic.

And it was with difficulty that my father and other cool-headed persons kept excited families from scattering rashly into greater dangers. The math was simple, if dire. A month delay here, a week there, then eight days, then six more days. Winter was coming and the Donner party would need a miracle to outrun it. We retraced our way and after five days of alternate traveling and road making ascended a mountain so steep that six and eight yoke of oxen were required to draw each vehicle up the grade. And most careful handling of the teams was necessary to keep the wagons from toppling over as the straining cattle zigzagged to the summit. The following day the wagons found the trail, the Hastings party. It had taken 30 days to cover this distance.

They'd hoped to do it in 10. An inventory of supplies revealed more bad news. There simply wasn't enough food to carry the group to California. Two men volunteered to ride on horseback to Fort Sutter, a distance of 700 miles, to gather more provisions. As the two men rode away many anxious eyes watched them pass out of sight. And then a terrible loss. They buried another member of their group, Luke Halloran. The cause of death? Tuberculosis. By nightfall on September 12th they had been on this desert for 64 hours without food or water for the cattle and most of the people had no water for two days. The last day and night oxen gave out nearly every mile. The oxen were so crazed from thirst that the 25 head broke away from the men and only one ox and one cow were found even after a three-day search. And that answers one of the first questions people ask when they learn of the Donner party. Why didn't they just kill and eat their own animals to survive?

Mothers were frantic lest their children and babies die a horrible death in the middle of that salt crust waste. And remember the majority of travelers in the Donner party were children. The little food they carried they could at last not eat for the tongues were swollen and their mouths parched. Some of them had as Mr. Reed and his family abandoned their wagons and walked until they dropped down on the desert of sheer exhaustion. None of the Donner party lost their lives in the desert but... But the Donner party found itself in a valley high in the Sierra Madre mountain range and now the one truly useful piece of advice that Lansford Hastings had offered them felt more like a prophecy of doom. Well now unless you pass over the mountains early in the fall you're very liable to be detained by impassable mountains of snow until next spring or perhaps forever. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, fear. Patience was frayed. Tempers were short. Two of the drivers John Snyder and Milton Elliott had words over how the men were moving cattle and wagons up a steep grade. Reed intervened attempting to calm the men down. This only enraged Snyder who threatened both Reed and Elliott with his whip. Again Reed tried to separate the men but Snyder struck Elliott in the head with the whip opening a deep gash in the man's scalp. Mrs. Reed rushed toward her husband catching a second blow from the whip on her shoulder. Reed yanked out his hunting knife and as he dodged a third strike of Snyder's whip he plunged the blade into the left side of Snyder's chest. Within 15 minutes John Snyder was dead. The majority declared the deed murder and demanded retribution. After heated discussion this compromise was adopted. The assembly voting that Mr. Reed should be banished from the company. Mr. Reed maintained that the deed was not prompted by malice. That he had acted in self-defense and in defense of his wife and that he would not be driven from his helpless dependent family. But driven out he was. The following morning after participating in the funeral rites over the lamented dead Mr. Reed took leave of his friends and sorrowing family and left the camp. Given that some members of the party argued for Reed to be hanged, leaving on horseback seemed like the wiser choice. Now their numbers reduced by the loss of two men, the Donner party slowly continued on. They buried all but the most essential items so as to reduce the load on their remaining animals. They were hungry and tired and dispirited and then lost even more of the remaining oxen to a band of Paiutes. October 23rd 1846 the first snowstorm of the season slammed into the Sierra Madres a month earlier than was typical for the region. That storm closed the door on any remaining hope of escape the Donner party had.

They were locked in now, trapped, frigid temperatures, howling winds, blinding curtains of white snow in all directions. With five feet of snow already on the ground and more falling blocking any chance of progress over the Truckee Pass. They set up camp at the east end of Truckee 13 miles northwest of Lake Tahoe and there they remained for the winter of 1846-1847.

They did what they could for shelter, crude cabins hurriedly slapped together, clumsy teepees hastily erected, covered in clothing and blankets and hides. The teams were hurriedly unhooked, the tents pitched and the men and the women began collecting material for more suitable quarters. Some felled trees, some lopped off the branches and some with oxen dragged the logs into position. There was enough building material on the ground for a good-sized foundation, four logs deep, when night stopped the work.

The moon and stars came out before we went to bed, yet the following morning the ground was covered with snow, two or three feet in depth, which had to be shoveled from the exposed beds before their occupants could rise. I remember well that new day, all plans for log cabins had to be abandoned. As Eliza and the other children watched, shivering beneath the buffalo robes Mrs. Donner had tucked around them, the adults hastily assembled an approximation of a wigwam.

The snow was falling faster and in larger flakes, it made pictures upon the branches of big and little trees, it gathered in a ridge beside us upon the log, it nestled in piles upon our buffalo robe. Everything within our new quarters was cold, damp and dreary, until our tired mother and elder sisters built the fire, prepared our supper and sent us to bed, each with a lump of loaf sugar as comfort. For the next eight days, snow blanketed Truckee Pass, making the world an icy cathedral of shrieking winds, biting cold and endless impenetrable white. There was nothing to be done but trudge into the eternal storm for firewood and try to keep the fires lit, even as...

Hope, well nigh died within us. Three of our men became dispirited, said that they were too weak and hungry to gather wood and did not care how soon death should put an end to their miseries. The women, however, hid their fears from their children, even from each other, and helped to gather fuel, hunt cattle and keep camp. The remaining cattle fared no better in the storm.

Some froze to death beneath bushes they tried to use for shelter. Some became disoriented in the blinding white of the storm and wandered off. Some had walked in circles around the trees, carving pits in the snow, where they'd then fallen. The merciful thing that was decided was to shoot the poor creatures, to spare them further suffering, in hopes that their flesh and bones might sustain the camp. But why, you might be wondering, why? Why did they just stay there waiting to die? Different parties, both with and without children, had repeatedly endeavored to force their way out of that wilderness of snow. But each in turn had become confused and unconsciously moved in a circle back to camp. Several persons had become snow-blind.

Every landmark was lost to us. Now the party's hope was pinned on the return of James Reed, who promised he'd come back with food. Word had reached the struggling pioneers that Reed, along with another man named McCutcheon, had made it all the way to Fort Sutter safely. Surely he would appear any moment now. We could not know that at the very time we were so anxiously awaiting their arrival. Those two men, after struggling desperately to cross the snows, were finally compelled to abandon the attempt, bury the precious food they had striven to bring us, and return to the settlement. If November was bad in terms of weather, December was even worse. The month began with a roaring blizzard of snow, sleet, and freezing rain.

Six days of frigid but clear skies followed, until the night of December 9th, when another blizzard tore through the pass, freezing every drop of water in the camp's solid end, shut us off from the light of heaven. The death toll was beginning to climb now. Jacob Donner, Eliza's uncle, was the first to die, followed by Samuel Shoemaker, who passed in a state of happy delirium, thinking himself a child again at his parents' fireside. Then came Joseph Reinhart, raving till his last breath that he was guilty of committing murder.

James Smith died gently, drifting off into a sleep from which he'd never awaken. Then Milton Elliott, who'd helped bury the dead, with no notion that he'd soon be in need of a grave for himself. The little field mice that had crept into camp were caught and used to ease the hunger. Also, pieces of beef hide were cut into strips, singed, scraped, boiled to the consistency of glue, and swallowed with an effort, for no degree of hunger could make the saltless, sticky substance palatable. Marrowless bones, which had already been boiled and scraped, were now burned and eaten. Even the bark and twigs of pine were chewed in the vain effort to soothe the gnawings which made one cry for bread and meat. The children were kept confined to bed during the worst weather, with the youngest, Eliza, tucked between siblings Francis and Georgia. There was one moment, Eliza recalled, that's heartbreaking in ways that have nothing to do with cold or hunger. Heartbreaking, because it's a reminder that children experience the world with such innocence, taking delight in the simplest of things, even at the worst of times.

Just one happy play is impressed upon my mind. It must have been after the first storm, for the snowbank in front of the cabin door was not high enough to keep out a little sunbeam that stole down the steps and made a bright spot upon our floor. I saw it and sat down under it, held it on my lap, passed my hand up and down through its brightness, and found that I could break its ray in two. In fact, we had quite a frolic. I fancied that it moved when I did, for it warmed the top of my head, kissed first one cheek and then the other, and seemed to run up and down my arms. Finally, 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. The camp had shrunk by 17 souls, with the departure of a group calling themselves the Forlorn Hope. Two turned back and returned to camp before nightfall. As for the other members of Forlorn Hope, they became lost and disoriented, and then were caught in a blizzard.

An animal handler named Antonio was the first to die. Then came Franklin Graves and then Patrick Dolan. Dolan's flesh was the first to be consumed, though many in the group refused to eat it. The next day, the survivors stripped the organs and muscle from the corpses of Antonio, Dolan, Graves, and William Murphy, who died in the night. They dried the flesh to store for the coming days, and they were careful, careful to be sure that none of the living was made to eat the dead flesh of their own kinfolk. Then, John Baptiste, who'd left with the Forlorn Hope group, arrived back in camp with good news. The wagon party camped on the opposite side of Truckee Lake, wasn't faring much better, but they convinced Baptiste that relief was imminent.

Spirits were lifted until days passed, and there was no sign of rescue, nor was there an ounce of food, and though the men searched and searched for the snow-buried bodies of the dead cattle, they found nothing. In dread unspeakable, they said, we shall go mad, we shall die. It is useless to hunt for the cattle, but the dead, if they could be reached, their bodies might keep us alive. No, replied father and mother, speaking for themselves, no, part of the hide still remains. When it is gone, we will perish, if that be the alternative.

The melancholy, and in some respects the horrible details of their sufferings, compose a chapter of human misery for which there are but few parallels in fact or fiction. Now, George Donner, already weakened from malnutrition, was down with a badly infected wound in his hand. He didn't know the fate of the forlorn hope, and he could never have dreamed that not one, but three rescue parties were fighting to make their way through the winter starved terrain to Truckee Lake. The first rescue party appeared on February 18th, 1847, and emaciated Mrs. Murphy, unaware that she was now the widow Murphy, asked them if they were from California or from heaven. The rescuers found 13 dead, their bodies loosely covered by snow, the living gone, and seemingly not in their right minds, and George Donner, nursing an arm gone rank with gangrene. The rescuers took 23 people with them, leaving 21 at Truckee Pass and 12 more at the Lakeside Camp. Three of the rescued died before making it to safety, including young William Hook, stepson of Jacob Donner, who in his extreme hunger broke into a cache of food and gorged himself to death. The second rescue party arrived at Truckee Lake on March 1st, to a shocking scene.

Listless and skeletal children, the mutilated corpse of Milton Elliott. Upon reaching the camp and the Truckee Pass, one member of the search party saw a man carrying a human leg. Startled, the man tossed the leg into a pit and ran. Inside the pit were the dismembered remains of Jacob dead father's organs. Three more dismembered bodies were found, the remains showing clear signs of butchery. That second rescue party took 17 people, 14 of them children. More could have left, but they were too weak, just too exhausted to move more than a few steps. Not long after the second rescue party left, Elizabeth Graves and her son Franklin died, their bodies becoming food for those remaining behind. And what of Eliza, our guide in this tale, just three years old, the youngest member of the Donner party? Well, that was one more betrayal of trust and of hope. Tamsen Donner made a choice that was drawn from a mother's nightmare.

She paid three members of the rescue party to take her daughters to California. She gave them a sum of $500, that's nearly $20,000 in today's money. The men agreed to the deal. And they took the little Donner girls, Eliza, Georgia and Francis, and dumped them in a cabin at Truckee Lake. Tamsen had no idea. She'd remained behind, refusing to leave George Donner side so long as he lived. We listened to the sound of her voice, felt her goodbye kisses, and watched her hasten away to father over the snow through the pines and out of sight, and knew that we must not follow. George Donner succumbed to gangrene on March 13, 1847.

His body was found carefully laid out and wrapped in a sheet. Tamsen Donner died two weeks later. Her body was never found. What's astonishing is that all five of the Donner children somehow survived the ordeal. My sisters and I survived. For how else could I recount this tale? The three small Donner girls were among the very last to be rescued. They were taken to Sutter's Fort, where six-year-old Francis went to live with the Reed family. Georgia and Eliza were taken in by a Swiss couple until their older sister Aletha was able to take custody of Eliza.

She attended an all-girls Catholic school for a year, and in 1861, at age 17, married a widowed politician named Sherman Otis Houghton. His late wife had been another survivor of the Donner Party tragedy, Mary Martin Donner. Houghton went on to represent California in the U.S. Congress, and as for Eliza, we have her to thank for so much of what we know about the Donner Party, because in 1911, she published The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate.

That little girl, who'd known unthinkable hardship and horror, went on to live a long, rich life, dying at age 78 in February 1922. She is a reminder of a generation which endured almost incredible hardships in making its way across the plains to what was only a short while ago a wilderness in the West. Cannibalism is the sort of thing that, when it shows up in a story, tends to overshadow everything else. Our deep inborn revulsion at the thought of consuming human flesh is a good thing, because honestly, some of y'all look absolutely delicious.

But to reduce the tragedy of what happened to the Donner Party to a sensational and grizzly tale told around the fire, misses every point. These were people who dreamed of a better life, who believed what they were told about the westward track, who trusted Lansford Hastings and Jim Bridger and their own hearts. They were blinded by the very idea of California, dazzled at the prospect of being part of helping to build a new nation. And when everything went wrong, when Hastings and Bridger and even the weather itself betrayed them, they did what they had to do in order to survive. They ate their dead. The acts of the survivors were condemned by many who had never suffered any deprivation of consequence in their lives. They ate human flesh and they did right. It was the necessity that was deplorable and not the act. The few who had prompting of stomach or conscience who refused the revolting food deserve no special commendation. Eliza Donner lived long enough to see her family honored with the Donner Monument, which was placed on the old emigrant trail near the beautiful lake that used to be called Truckee, but is now known as Donner Lake. And Truckee Pass, the site of the gruesome and events that claimed the lives of Eliza's parents, that's now called the Donner Pass.

Chair of the committee responsible for the Donner Monument wrote to Eliza telling her, the Donner Party has been selected by us as the most typical and as the most varied and comprehensive in its experiences of all the wagon trains that made these wonderful journeys of thousands of miles so unique in their daring, so brave, so worthy of the admiration of man.

And maybe, I don't know, maybe we could agree that this makes a more fitting epitaph than the yarn we all grew up with. The one about incompetent, hapless pioneers who in their ignorance and arrogance were driven to monstrous acts of cannibalism, feasting on the flesh of their own dead simply because they didn't have enough sense to make a better plan.

Next time on True Weird Stuff, he was a preacher who owned a whole city. It was supposed to be a utopia, a utopia where movies, music, lipstick, and even chewing gum were illegal. A utopia with its own school system where every child learned one big lesson, that the earth is flat. We're heading to Zion City on the next True Weird Stuff. Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode, Sherry's mom Fran as Eliza Donner, Carrie Dark Bowser and Don Morgan.

Sherry, I've heard of this story. Why is it that you decided to do this right now? Well, as you know, Max, I'm so utterly obsessed with the Donner Party. I've been wanting to do a Donner Party episode for a while because it infuriates me that people are like, oh, they were stupid. They had to eat each other. It's so much more complicated than that. And at the time that I was researching and writing this, I was staying at my mom's house out in Utah, looking after her because she had a fall. And I thought, you know what? It would be fun to get my mom involved in a True Weird Stuff episode while I'm here. It'll be like a little adventure, you know, because she's kind of housebound right now. I mean, I can drive her, but she's really limited to what she can do. So I had been looking and looking and looking for a way to tell the story of the Donner Party that wasn't the same old, then they ate each other that you grew up hearing, because there's more to it than that. And I'll be damned if I was looking for something else, and I stumbled across Eliza Donner Houghton's memoir in the archives of the Library of Congress.

And I went, wait, Houghton? Don't know that. Donner? No. And sure enough, it was. So when Eliza died, she was 78. That's just a couple of years younger than my mom. So I went to her and said, Mom, because my mom, you know, I grew up out West. You live and breathe the Westward Crossing and Pioneers and Manifest Destiny and all that out here. So I said, Mom, if I write an episode, will you play Eliza Donner? My mom was like, Oh, okay, do I have to be? She thought it was live live. And I was like, No, no, no. If you need more time or make a mistake, you know, Max will help you with that. Because she was a little nervous about not being, you know, an actor about doing this live. So as soon as she realized that she could work with you ahead of time, she was all in. She did a wonderful job. And I said, you know, when the episode is produced, like we can listen to it and send it to everybody in the family. And they'll be like, go girl, look at you being Eliza Donner Houghton. So it was just the timing worked out. And this is a story that has always just so troubled me and made me so sad. And I remember learning about it in the fourth grade at an elementary school in Aetna, Wyoming. And being so taken aback at how these very good, honest, decent, hardworking people whose motives and intentions were nothing but honorable and good. All the little ways where a mistake was made, a bad decision was made, trust was given to someone unworthy of trust. And how it all like to, sorry for the pun, but it all snowballed. And the momentum of one bad decision piled on top of the next.

Because had the Donner, they needed a couple of things to go their way, not even everything, right? Had they not, had they stayed with Colonel Russell's enormous wagon train, did you even know that you would have wagon trains with 100 wagons going across the Oregon Trail? Safety in numbers, right? And Daniel Boone's freaking nephew or grandson or whatever was on Russell's wagon train. Had they stayed with Colonel Russell, we wouldn't have this story, none of this would have ever happened. But think about it, James Reed's wife was in poor health, he was desperate to get her to California. And he had this wacky idea that all the good land would be gone like Sir, California is enormous. So you can see these were all very honest and innocent mistakes. And why wouldn't they trust Lansford Hastings? You guys, why wouldn't they trust Jim Bridger at Fort Bridger? Before you judge these people, you have to ask yourself, have I made one perfect decision after another? And have I always been lucky?

No. And what's fascinating about this story is that I think that you hear about the mythology that's connected with this, but I never knew what the specifics were. And I think that it's made the story a lot realer. And I think it helps to make you understand the desperation of the situation. I think to your point, Max, that that's why this one got its hooks into me in childhood and never let go. Because, I mean, you know, we had our own hapless adventures as a family crisscrossing the Chevy Nova in Malibu. But I just think that it's so easy for one mistake to lead to the next to the next. And that's really all this was here. And these people, they were fine in Springfield, Illinois. And by the way, we talked in a previous episode when we were teasing this coming up about how Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln almost were part of the Donnelly party.

I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. I mean, they lived in Springfield, Illinois. Honest Abe, you know, that's familiar, right? Oh, yeah. So the only reason the Lincolns, because they waited, you know, people were so excited to go west and have homesteads and start new lives and build this great nation. Like there was a lot of publicity and hype and propaganda around it. But they had a baby and a toddler and Mary Todd Lincoln. Not with your legs, Abe Lincoln, am I walking across this country? So they stayed behind and the rest is history. But the Donners and the Reeds, these were not people that needed a fresh start. These were people that so believed in the golden promise of the West.

And George Donner was not a young man when they left. He was 65. Yeah. At a time when life expectancy was considerably less. So you can start there. You can go, come on, dude, what were you thinking? What were you thinking? And, you know, the thing is, you have to understand that, especially when you're going through those mountains, even in the summertime, the weather can change rather quickly. I can remember when I was a kid, we drove cross country. We went through Wyoming and we stayed somewhere, Jackson Hole, as a matter of fact. And I can remember the next day my father read in the paper that they had gotten a freak snowstorm and this was in July or the end of June. And so you didn't just have to have winter for the weather conditions to become really dangerous rather quickly.

It was brutal. And keep in mind, too, that when they when they left Colonel Russell's party and departed Fort Bridger for the Hastings Cut-Off, there weren't roads. They spent eight days hacking a road only to discover that what was waiting for them on the other side was worse than they could have ever imagined. They didn't see clear ahead to the promise of the West.

They were in they were in the mountains and they were trying to move covered wagons led by cattle over impossible terrain. And that's not even talking about the Salt Desert, where so many, so many pioneers, not just in this group, so many pioneers full stop perished, because here's the thing about the Salt Desert. There's no water. I've been through it. I've been through it. Yeah.

You can go some without food, but you and your animals can't go very far without water. It was horrific. If there's a hell or a purgatory, Lansford Hastings has clocked in and has done some time because think about his motives. He wanted to be the emperor of California. So he was going to redirect these pioneers so that they flowed into California instead of Oregon.

And and he he knew he knew perfectly well how unlikely it was for those those wagon trains to be able to cross that terrain at all, much less as quickly as they would have to. Like what that body? Come on. He doesn't I don't think he gets nearly enough of a beating from history for the that he played in this. What do you think? Oh, I think you're right about that. You know, I'll tell you what I was struck by. I was rather than the dastardly guy was the fact that it reached a point of such desperation and the women carried them through because of the desire to take care of their children. That was the part of the story where I went, hmm, that's very interesting what happened with that. And it's also interesting that all five of the Donner children survived this when both of their parents passed away. Most of the survivors, well, most of the Donner party were children, which is a whole other thing to wrap your head around. You know, most of the Donner party was children of the Donner children survived. And you can probably come up with reasons for that. You can maybe say, well, their bodies were smaller. They need it less. Right.

And as children, they didn't have, you know, maybe chronic or congenital health issues, arthritis, high blood pressure, whatever that the adults had. I, you know, I want to be um, polite to men with what I'm about to say, but it's so true that the men fell apart. The men, the men fell apart. Um, when things got really dire and the women tried their best to hold it together. And that is, you know, because they were, they were mothers. Those are your kids. I speak as a mother myself, like I'm going to eat a shoelace if I have to, so that my kid can survive. And I suppose at that time, men were men and didn't take care of the children. You know what I mean? The men had to go out and forage or do whatever.

And it was the women who took care of the children. And so they, they had a sense of, I can't allow myself to succumb to this because I have to take care of my children. And women are strong. Women are strong. And the, this, you know, we've been fed a line of bullshit. There's, there's nothing dainty about a pioneer woman on the Oregon trail. You, you, that's an indulgence. You don't get to have these people. They didn't ride in those covered wagons, which would have been a miserable experience. Anyway, they walked alongside and behind a lot of the trip. They were incredibly strong. They were incredibly committed to making sure their children survived. And the fact that like all of the Donner kids did it now, the leaders, the leaders of these parties didn't survive. Um, George Donner of course died, went a little, a little injury to his hand. Look at what we take for granted.

There was no neosporin. No, there's, there was no medical care. I mean, that infection turned into gangrene and that's how he died. Um, both the Donner brothers, both their wives died. Um, the Reed family made it out with all their members alive because remember, James Reed was banished, right? Being banished is probably what, what kept him going.

And then the people, the, the group that called themselves the forlorn hope, how did we miss naming our show that I didn't even know, our radio show? And there, there are other, I mean, we always have to leave all sorts of, um, we always have to leave all sorts of things out of these episodes unless we want to do a whole season on it. But the forlorn hope included two native men who were named Luis and Salvador.

And, um, Luis and Salvatore refused to participate in any cannibalism, any eating of human flesh. They were afraid that if they participated in this, that they would be next. So they didn't, they, they ran away. You were like, we won't eat human flesh. Karma would make them next. Not that somebody was going to kill them, but karma would mean that that they would be next.

Yeah. So, but listen to what happened. So these two Miwok men, Salvador and Luis, they ran away. They took their chances in a desperate wilderness rather than remain with the Donna Reed party, but they got caught. And they are the only two members of that entire party that were intentionally murdered to be eaten. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, I try.

Oh, if this story wasn't cheery enough. Oh, that's awful. So let me tell you about the third. Let me tell you something else about, and I left that out intentionally. And here's why, because I'm trying to show you, I'm trying to flip the lens on this story and make it not about, and then they killed people and ate them.

Yeah. Okay. So let me tell you a little story about the third rescue mission where they found 11 survivors and nine of those 11 were children. So two of the rescuers grabbed a child each, but a man named John Stark, who was in that third rescue mission, he simply would not leave a child behind. And he had, he had all his like gear and supplies. There's no, there's no holiday in y'all. You have to, everything you need to survive, you have to carry on your back.

But he, he said, well, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving these kids. So he took two children. And what he would do is he would take two children, one in each arm, he would carry them for a few yards, set them down, wait here. And then he would go back for more. He would carry two more children, wait here, back, he would go to more children back here. And he did that the entire way to safety.

Two at a time, wait here, he'd go back and get two more right here. And by doing that, by continuously sort of going back to rescue, he moved in like this sort of hopscotch way with these kids. And he was able to save all nine children. Wow. And one of those survivors was a little girl named Peggy Breen, who said that I survived thanks to nobody but God.

Um, this man, John Stark and the Virgin Mary. So when you think about when you think about this story, yes, it's a story about people resorting to cannibalism. But it's also a story about courage and resilience and fortitude, and the price of the American dream. And what a what a mother will do to protect a child. Those things are all here too. And I think they should be at least they should weigh at least as much on the scales as the eating of human flesh.

That could just be me. I don't know, you know, it's a part of the story. And it's the part of the story that everyone wants to talk about. But there's so much more to it. And I think that's the thing that sort of amazed me about this as we went through the different kinds of struggles that they had other than the winter, you know, that was just that was the the last and worst of the other struggles that they had to go through during that and and all the particulars in the story and the ways in which selfishness and money played a part in in the reasons that Donner Party ended up where they did. And there's something else that happened. And I don't know if you caught it. But this was no one's fault. It couldn't have been predicted or prevented. And it was the final nail in the coffin of the Donner read party.

Not only were they late leaving Independence, Missouri, not only were they stalled on the things cut off, eight days here, six days there, five days here, it adds up pretty fast. Winter came a month early that year in the Sierra Madres a month early. What kind of dark misfortune is that? They might have had a chance. They might have had a chance. You can't know for no. But once they were snowbound and locked in, that was it. Now the clock is just running out a month early, Max. I have seen I've seen things where meteorologists have talked about this.

And they say that they were caught in a once in a generation snow event when they were there. So it wasn't just that it was winter. It was winter times 10, you know, that they were dealing with in that situation. And how do you even how do you even make sense of that? Like, because all of the people that are like, well, it was their own fault. They were stupid. They didn't prepare. They didn't plan. I think I think you can level some of that.

They should have known to get their asses on the trail when they were supposed to not a month late. I'll grant you that. But I think they might have made it without the Hastings cut off and that bizarre winter coming early. Of course, at that time, things were not mapped out as well as they are now. I mean, it's very easy to look at this and go, well, they should have this or they should have that. You know, I kept on I kept on thinking to myself, stay in Springfield. Stay in Springfield.

It's it. You feel one of the things that I mean, one of the things I felt reading Eliza's memoir, I felt such creeping dread and panic because I knew like Eliza, how the story ended. But when, you know, now they're now they've got every able bodied person on the wagon train, spending eight days trying to hack a path through the ash trees for their wagons. I was I just felt the dread. And then here comes the snow and here comes more snow and then the cattle. And if you're saying, well, what do you mean they couldn't find the dead cattle? Tell me you've never lived in a winter without saying it out loud. I mean, you were not talking. You just can't even imagine.

Yeah, we're not talking about inches of snow. We're talking about five feet at a time. For starters. Yeah. And and no, there were there. There were no maps. There was the Oregon Trail and then there was these rumors of shortcuts. And yes, the Stewart party of traders coming in from Fort Astoria. OK, they made it on foot from Wyoming to St. Louis. Hello. Yeah, they floated on a river some. But can you even believe what they went through there?

It wasn't that people were guessing, you know, they had the stars or what have you. And I don't know, they could smell the wind. But you would know east and west. However, that's not enough. And not only are you going over mountains, you're forging rivers as well. I mean, that part of it. I mean, that was what I was thinking. How do they how do they know where to go to get across whatever the river is? Well, and that first debacle on the Hastings Cutoff when they spent eight days hacking their way through the quaking ash only to discover that there was nothing on the other side but more mountains and impassable terrain.

I can't. That tells you there were no maps that tells you that it was a big, giant freaking guess. I can't begin to think how depressing that was when they realized that. Because there's no part of this that was easy. I mean, really, there's no part of it. No, it's easy. And if you look at what happened to them, what happened to them, there's I think there's I can't remember off the top of my head, but there's a term for it, where everything gets worse bit by bit, and then all at once.

Yeah, think about it got, you know, they had the delay and they had this and they had that. And before you know it, the animals are going mad with thirst and charging off losing their minds. And then they spend eight days discovering that the road they've been cutting leads to nowhere. Then the snow comes. It was little by little and then all at once and then irrevocable.

And I think it is a miracle that we have Eliza's words to think of. I mean, I think of the three year olds I know. Yeah, they're tough. But this is this is so much, so much to ask a little tiny body to endure. And they didn't have Gore-Tex and they didn't have North Face jackets. The Wi-Fi was the Wi-Fi was terrible, terrible.

And the other thing is, everything was wet from the snow and sleet and freezing rain. And the fact that they were sheltering in these half-assed wigwam things that they slapped together. Everything was wet and couldn't get dry. There were things in Eliza's memoir that I left out about the women trying desperately to dry blankets and clothing by nightfall.

But it just it was terrible. Everything was misery. How these kids didn't die of like pneumonia. I don't know. The story that you had about Eliza with the sunbeam is one of my other little favorite parts of this, because it's it's such a simple thing. And yet she was so entranced by it and thought enough of it that she tried to show her mother.

It was like it was like the child was looking for something positive in all this. Look, look, I can bring this to you. Maybe make you feel better. And of course, it wasn't there. That's my favorite moment in the whole story. And it shows you I think it shows you how Eliza survived. Kids are and I speak as someone who once was a very resilient, imaginative kid in very harsh circumstances. But kids. That's the magic of childhood is that it's magical. And Eliza, hungry and cold and crouched under a frozen freaking buffalo hide. Is playing with a sunbeam.

And and is as saddened to open her apron and not find that sunbeam as she was by anything else that happened on that trip. That's, I think, the secret of Eliza's survival is that her focus, she was a child and her focus was on the wonder of things. Listen to how she described the way the snow and the ice looked on the branches of the trees.

Yes. So she was she was noticing the beauty of it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you're a parent and you've not been in a covered wagon and you haven't had to eat your brother in law, of course, but if you're a parent and you've had to protect your children through difficult times or experiences, whatever those may be, you have already lived through how how easily children make magic out of even horror.

And what a blessing and magical protective shield that is for those children. That was my favorite, favorite part of the story. When I first read it, it made me cry. My heart just broke for that now. There's something there's something about humans that in in the worst of situations, they've been able to find they've been able to find some sort of light. She was she was finding actual light. I think about the people that were in the death camps in all around in Europe during the Nazi occupation that was there, that there was a there was a humor that went around among the people who survived that, that even in the worst of their conditions when they were starving and treated so poorly and not sharing if they were facing death and everything else, they found a way to find humor in that situation. And I think that that's what I was reminded of when I heard about Eliza playing with the sunbeam. It's the idea that as humans, we do have coping mechanisms to be able to get through. And I think that it's inspiring. You know what it made me think of when I read that section in her memoirs, I kind of sat there and I was like, I'm really feeling this. I flashback to the movie Life is Beautiful, which I have only been able to watch one time because it completely destroyed me.

And that's the story of a father who he and his children, his child are in a concentration camp during World War Two. And to protect his child, he puts on this whole like make believe so that his child will be spared the horrors. Max, was that not one of the most soul destroying movies you've ever seen? Haunting. It's haunting in that way.

But I want to say that at the time, so this idea that the idea that we have of the Donner Party is not what the people of the time thought about the Donnery Party. Because I went looking, were these people chewed up and spit out? And they weren't. I mean, you had the one there's one press account in there where it says it wasn't the act of eating human flesh that was deplorable. It was the need to eat.

Sherry, that was the one quote that I heard from this that really stood out as well. The people of the time had compassion for what happened to the Donnery Party. You know why that is? Because the people of the time, many of them had taken that trip. Like by the time the survivors made it to California, the people waiting for them, many of them had crossed on the Oregon Trail and they knew what it was and they understood the risk and the hardship and they understood how you needed so much luck to survive and the Donners had none. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And so instead of judging these people as monsters, they welcomed them with gratitude for those who had survived, appreciation for the rescuers that had gone into that mountain pass and an understanding that what had happened on the Donner-Reed wagon train was tragic and awful and completely understandable. It's the modern people that have made them into a scary bedtime story. Right. I'm sorry about the barking dog. I'm sorry about the barking dog. She just heard us talking about eating people. I know. She's jumping in to let us know that we will not be eating her. That's the hope. So, yeah. I mean, I just, of course, I love these people. Like, I love all these people that we dig up. Sherry, I do too. When you tell these stories, I do, I get a compassion for them and I feel a connection to them. And you know what else?

I feel a certain responsibility to help to tell their story well, to honor them with that. You know, I mean, because for a lot of people, they won't normally, they won't be able to find out this sort of information unless they seek it out anyplace else. And so there is a, that was the feeling that I had about that. Let us honor them by telling this well. I, you know, this is one, I guess we should ask our true weirdos. We struggle with what to take out, what to include.

And because I'm a hyper fixated info dumping obsessive, like I feel like there are certain things you just need to know in order to make the story make sense. I put a lot of stuff into this story that I hoped would help you see that these were not reckless, arrogant fools. You know, they weren't, they just weren't. They were like you, if everything that could go wrong, went wrong for you. They were just people who got caught in one set of shitty circumstances after another, and then had to do the absolute unthinkable in order just to survive it.

So, you know, there was some stuff I took out because I thought it was too lurid. And I can't tell you, I want, I want to tell you a story about the Donner party that isn't about eating people 100%. So if I left that stuff in, it changes the, I don't know, well, you have to, you have to have episodes are too long already, probably, I don't know, Sherry, it, you had to put it in. But at the same time, I didn't feel like the story was about that.

Do you know what I mean? I just didn't want it to be and I didn't feel like that it was. And so this is about this is about the people. This is about the people who passed away. This is the people that survived. And so, so, well, sometimes Max, I hear consultants in my head, and I hear them going, Sherry, nobody needs to know that they had three covered wagons and what was in them. But I'm over here going, but but they but don't you want to know how that worked?

Don't you want to know what they what they put in those wagons and how that don't you want to know about that? I think doesn't that make the story make more sense? I don't know. It's it. Those are fascinating details to me. They are because those are things that I would wonder. To me, too. But I you know, we've got there are a million consultants in our businesses, and they're always like, you know what, I didn't need to know any of that. And you could have left out all of that about Jim Bridger. Well, no, I can't. Because Jim Bridger has a national forest named after him and my husband named our dog after him. Okay. He's been all kinds of Wild West TV shows and movies. He's considered legendary mountain man Jim Bridger, the hero.

And he was those things. But like all of us, he wasn't just those things. He was also a dick who who gambled an entire wagon train full of people, mostly children, so that he could continue to make money. I felt like you needed to know that. Because otherwise, you're going well, these hapless donors, they deserve what they got.

Did they? You think they deserved what they got? No, because why they shouldn't have trusted legendary mountain man Jim Bridger, or Lansford Hastings? What? What is it? How did they deserve what they got? Thank you, Annie. It's just not fair. Annie's the dog for dogs. I'm sorry. No, she's right. I mean, Max, doesn't that infuriate you?

It does, because, but it's very typical of people when they they get half baked information, they get a kernel of information, and then they decide to fold it into whatever their philosophy is about it, so that they can tear people down. It's it's that's an easy thing to do. In fact, that may be the easiest thing to do. To not understand somebody, tear them down without the information. It's one of the easiest things to do in the world.

It's just this could happen to you, just in a different way, right? Because you're not in a covered wagon. Have you ever had your car break down on a lonely stretch of road, and you really don't have any, any car fixing money? You're lucky you have gas, and it's dark, and maybe you don't have a cell phone signal, and you're kind of screwed. If you're lucky, if you're lucky, a good Samaritan will come along. But Max and I are both here to tell you that statistically, it's not always a good Samaritan who comes along. And there are people who come to a tragic end when their covered wagon runs into a glitch on an American highway.

Yeah. So we need we need each other. We need to help each other cross the Donner Pass. And we need so much luck. We need so much luck. We need the luck of good weather. We need the luck of cattle not wandering off. We need drinking water. We need all of the things that snowballed into a nightmare for these people. And I think it's extraordinary that Eliza Donner lived to tell us. And there's another little detail in there that's super interesting. So she married the widowed congressman and went on to have just an absolutely spectacular life. His first wife was a Donner Party survivor. And I don't think that's a coincidence. The survivors kind of stayed, not all together, like in one place. But they were people who'd had a unique experience that no one could understand except another survivor.

They all kept in touch. They all stayed like on in the orbit of each other's lives. And when Martha Donner died and left Haughton widowed, there was Eliza who already knew him and knew his late wife. And she knew that he understood her. He didn't look at her as some tabloid freak, that he understood her. It really makes perfect sense. It really does. Because there would be such understanding with that. Yeah. So there you go. Maybe we'll do another Donner Party episode down the road because there's a lot more to the story. But I feel like with Eliza, I wanted her to tell it and have the last word. And the fact that we have Eliza Donner's words, that's a miracle.

It is. Because women and children are often silent in these narratives because we don't have... I don't want to make up words for them and we don't have their words. So I thought it was miraculous that we had Eliza. My mom had a blast doing it. She did a great job. She really did. And I'll add one more interesting little fact to this, and that is to tell you how recent this is, she died when my father was a year old.

That's how recent this is. Think about that. It sounds like so dusty in a million years ago, right? But your dad was walking and learning to talk when the youngest member of the Donner Party passed. So on the next episode of True Word Stuff, I tell you, if I had a dollar for every charlatan wingnut who uses religion to run a cult and profit from it, I could pay Max for his work here. There's so many of them. So listen, listen, listen.

Next week, we are going to meet the man who took control over another man's religion. End religious utopia right there in the American heartland, a place where it was illegal to whistle, chew gum, wear lipstick or pants if you were a woman. There were no movie theaters. There was no music outside of church hymns. There was no dancing. This man owned this entire city.

And he built a school system. And he required the schools to teach the thing he believed in most. And that was that the earth is flat. Max, you know, I love me a flat earth. So we're gonna pay a little visit to Zion City, which is a real place that still exists. It's just no longer a lockdown, religious utopia, theocracy that makes the Puritans look like an after hours gentleman's club in Las Vegas. That's how tight and strict and insane this place was. The earth, the flat earth, and this crazy dude running his own city on the next True Word Stuff. And if you listen to us on Apple podcast, hit the plus button in the top right corner. And it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website true weird stuff dot com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content. Everything true weird is waiting for you at true weird stuff dot com and follow true weird stuff on Instagram. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash.

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