Indeed, the Donner Party was far more anomalous than typical. During the twenty years at the heart of the great overland migration— from 1840 to i860—a quarter of a million people crossed the continent, few with a result similar to that of the Donner Party. The best estimates are that perhaps 4 to 6 percent of emigrants died on the route, and of course some of those would have died back at home. Gauging the number who gave up and turned around is almost impossible, but it is clear that the great majority of those who loaded a wagon and steered westward reached their destination in safety. In the end, of course, the migration peopled California and Oregon with astonishing speed, and thus helped spread the reach of the nation toward the 'manifest destiny' in which so many emigrants fervently believed. Thus the tale of the Donner Party is mismatched with its broader context, for it is a cautionary warning about an enterprise that was largely, from the standpoint of the participants, a splendid success.
Early newspaper accounts often seemed at pains to make the point that most travelers had no trouble. The California Star noted that some companies reached the golden shore in less than four months. Even with time to spare for resting the cattle, no more than four and a half months was needed. All 'candid persons' knew as much. Mere 'ordinary industry and care' ensured a crossing of the Sierra before the first snow.
The real trouble with the Donner Party, according to this line of argument, was not the inherent risks of the journey west but the company's own sloth and foolishness. Even before the first rescuers reached the cabins, the Star blamed the party's delay on 'a contrary and contentious disposition.' Everyone would have completed the trek safely, the paper claimed, if only 'the men had exerted themselves as they should have done.'
It would be specious to claim insight into the motives of long-dead editors, but it's worth noting that this focus on the alleged shortcomings of the Donner Party suited the interests of the emerging American establishment in California, which was eager for more emigrants. If the Donner Party could be at least partly blamed for its own travails, other prospective newcomers might not be discouraged. The last thing anyone in California wanted to suggest publicly was that a harrowing catastrophe was simply an intrinsic—if highly unlikely—risk of westward migration.
In the early years, therefore, the public imagination took on a twofold perception of the Donner Party—first that they were ghouls, second that they bore a substantial responsibility for their own misfortune. Together, these two ideas intertwined into an ugly and depressing perception of the emigrants. Some survivors rarely spoke of the events, almost as if they were hiding a shameful family secret.
But in time, a new tableau emerged. In 1879 the editor of the newspaper at Truckee, near the site of the tragedy, published a history of the Donner Party, downplaying the occurrence of cannibalism and justifying almost everything the emigrants did. The book proved popular and began to change the public perception. By the early years of the twentieth century, the Native Sons of the Golden West were ready to erect a monument to the Donner Party, a grand statue of a pioneer family striding boldly into the future. It was set atop a massive pedestal said in popular legend to reflect the height of the winter snows of 1846. No longer were the men and women of the Donner Party the sad and incompetent counterpoise to the success of the westward migration; now they were the avatars of its glories, symbols of the Pioneer archetype. The Native Sons wanted 'to acknowledge the Donner Party to be typical of the entire race of pioneers, strong, resourceful, self-reliant, fearless, unconquerable spirits—who even in their death added luster to California's name.' Where once 'there was reproach heaped upon it,' now the party's name enjoyed 'a day of renown.' Eventually the head of the society's monument committee went well beyond that, declaring that the Donner Party reflected not only the best of the pioneer spirit but the best of human endeavor generally. The great edifice, he declared, would 'charge the minds of all who behold it with a reverence for those characters who 'gird their armor on,' who square their shoulders to the world and who take the brunt of life.'
If a single day typified the rehabilitation of the Donner Party name, it was the dedication of the monument, on a hot June day in 1918, more than seventy years after the tempest. Eight survivors were still alive, three of them at the dedication: Patty Reed and Frances and Eliza Donner. Eliza had become something of a celebrity, having written a book about the Donner Party in which she attempted to disprove her family's cannibalism, and so she was seated at the head of the honored guests, just to the right of the speaker's podium. There had already been a reception the previous day, an event at which Eliza, attempting to say a few words, had choked up with uncontrollable emotion. At the dedication ceremony, she looked out over the crowd, but the faces dissolved into ghosts. She could see her mother walking away from the cabins at Donner Lake, back toward her dying husband, 'her small figure moving in and out among the pine trees.' Her gaze shifted, and she could see herself and her two little sisters climbing up the massive escarpment hanging above the lake.
The sharp rap of the master of ceremonies' gavel snatched away her reverie. She flashed back to the present, a time when an automobile or a train or even an airplane could carry one across Donner Pass in less time than it might take to walk to the far end of the lake. Two girls dressed in white drew away cords, and a veil fell from the monument.
WAS THE DONNER PARTY, AS THE MONUMENT builders believed, composed of heroes? In the traditional sense of the word hero, some members qualify. Stanton's willingness to return to a company in which he had no family members, especially when McCutchan's illness offered him a ready excuse, offered a sterling example of commitment. Eddy's leadership of the Forlorn Hope notified the California settlements of the party's dire condition and summoned help without which the entire company might have died. Rescuers displayed much valor, especially Stark, whose bullheaded insistence pulled the Breens from certain death.
But more than gleaming heroism or sullied villainy, the Donner Party is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity. The Breens hoarded their larger supply of meat when they deemed it necessary and shared it when they thought they could. Amanda McCutchan abandoned her daughter to the care of near-strangers when she left with the Forlorn Hope, but ultimately it was the Forlorn Hope that summoned help. Jean Baptiste Trudeau stayed to help the Donners as long as he could and left when he thought he might die. Tamzene Donner orphaned her daughters to comfort a husband sure to perish. Margret Reed left behind two of her children to care for the other two. Tojudge such decisions from the comfort of modern life is a fool's errand. The members of the Donner Party did the best they could, which is a form of Everyman's valor.
And therein lies the true lesson and attraction of the tale: They were Everyman. Often, adventure stories feature larger-than-life figures, grand Victorian explorers or indomitable generals or pith-helmeted naturalists resolutely seeking some wondrous discovery. They are tales of men seeking the South Pole or the North, or hunting the fortune of a lifetime at sea, or climbing to the top of the world. Such quests have much to teach us, but so too does the drama of the mundane gone madly wrong. The Donner Party is a narrative of merchants and farmers, of middle-aged parents with children and young couples with dreams, of infants and toddlers and teenagers on the cusp of adulthood. It is a story of American families doing what they have always done—moving west in search of a better life. It is a story of extraordinary deeds born of ordinary devotion.
That is why the most resonant moments of the Donner Party saga are often the quietest, the times when we can see glimpses of normalcy in lives torn asunder. There is no plainer exhibition of that fact than the day Patty Reed finally escaped the interminable snows. She had ridden down out of the mountains on her exhausted father's back and been taken ahead to the camp of one of the relief parties. She was fed a meal such as she had not eaten in months—rich California beef and soft fresh bread, even the almost-forgotten taste of sugar—and then led to a seat by the fire.
No one knew it, but months before, when the family had been forced to abandon one of its wagons on the harsh deserts of Utah, Patty had saved a precious artifact. Her parents told her that nothing could be preserved, but when adult heads were turned, she snuck from the wagon bed a doll that her grandmother had made for her—a tiny wooden figurine three or four inches tall, perfect for the grasp of a small hand, with a white dress and a red shawl and a bun of black hair painted on its head. Patty hid the treasured little item in the folds of her dress, secreting away the talisman through long months of fear and heartbreak, a private friend through an ordeal that called forth from Patty the courage and stamina of an adult more than the playfulness and gaiety of a child.
But now, at the relief camp, the nightmare was over. She pulled the doll from its hiding place and sank back into the lighthearted amusements of youth. She let the firelight shine off the wooden face. She smoothed the dress with her fingers. She laughed and chattered and listened to her companion's imagined replies. 'Oh, what a pleasant little hour,' she remembered decades later. Writing about the ordeal, it was that memory she seemed to treasure most, not her triumph over tragedy, but her return to the commonplace.
'Little Dolly looks old now,' she wrote, 'but she is appreciated by Patty as much today in April 1879 as she
