The Donner Family Name: Cannibalism Myth vs. Evidence

Introduction

This paper presents an examination of the largely factual account of the deeds of the Donner Party and, by extension, the Donner family. Among the events that led to widespread speculation and factual inaccuracies about the Donner Party — and the Donner family itself — were three key factors:

First, an unfortunate decision was made to name the entire traveling party after the Donner family after George Donner was elected captain. Second, the improbable survival and rescue of the Donner Party touched off a media firestorm. Third, far-fetched reports on how the Donner Party survived became regrettably accepted as fact.

Donner: The Name of Tragedy

The collaboration of these three factors allowed for the wide dissemination of factually inaccurate information about the Donner Party, which led members of the Donner family to be unfairly maligned in their time and, to a certain extent, to this day.

In order to fully understand how the Donner family name became officially linked to a crisis-stricken band of westward travelers, we must take a closer look at this group's journey and how the Donner family became the face of the group.

In 1846, George and Jacob Donner made the fateful decision that was being made by scores of American families at the time: they decided to head west for a new life in California. In April of that year, the Donner families teamed up with wealthy entrepreneur James F. Reed, and the entire group headed to Independence, Missouri, which was a common starting point for groups heading west (Burns, 1997). It is worth noting that, at this point, the group was not known as the Donner Party and that Reed, as the most financially successful of the travelers, was arguably the head of the group (Burns, 1997).

In Independence, the Donners and Reeds joined an even larger group of wagons heading west, and by late June had reached Fort Laramie at the base of the Rocky Mountains — a week behind schedule, owing mostly to poor weather (Johnson, 2006). Eager to make up time, Reed convinced the group to take a shortcut that was being promoted at the time by famous western traveler Lansford Hastings, even though a friend of Reed's who was familiar with the route warned him that it was treacherous and inhospitable for wagons (Burns, 1997).

Part of the larger traveling group, including the families of George and Jacob Donner, decided to take the shortcut with Reed, while the rest stayed on the main trail. Reed's victory, however, was far from complete. Some members of the group had grown tired of Reed's aristocratic attitude, and the group instead elected George Donner captain (Burns, 1997). The Donner Party was born.

Now, anything that happened to the Donner Party — good or bad — would have the Donner family name attached to it, due to George Donner's captaincy. However, it is worth noting that the vast majority of the Donner Party's members were not part of the Donner family. Of the 91 members of the party, only 16 belonged to the families of George or Jacob Donner; 12 other families and a variety of teamsters comprised the remaining 75 members (Johnson, 2006).

But George Donner had made himself the face of a group that, unbeknownst to him at the time, was headed into a snowy and frigid ordeal. The shortcut that was supposed to take a week instead took a month, and when the Donner Party reached an area near modern-day Truckee, California, they found that there was too much snow for the mountain passes to be passable. With dwindling food supplies and limited fuel, the Donner Party was forced to settle in for the winter and do whatever they had to in order to survive. And everything they did was going to have their captain George Donner's name attached to it.

For a century and a half, historians and descendants of the Donner Party have hotly debated how the group survived during the dreadful winter of 1846–1847 and whether the sensational media reports of the time were accurate. Some facts, however, are more or less undisputed.

A Media Firestorm Erupts

As could have been predicted, the Donner Party found itself buried under several feet of snow as the winter wore on, using makeshift shelters and whatever fuel members could find to stave off the numbing cold. Donner Party member Edwin Bryant's diary entry from December 1, 1846, describes the harrowing circumstances as the snow accumulated:

"Snow about six or six and a half feet deep; very difficult to get wood, and we are completely housed up; our cattle all killed but two or three, and these, with the horses and Stanton's mules, all supposed to be lost in the snow; no hopes of finding them alive" (Bryant, 1848).

The party quickly depleted their available food rations and even slaughtered their oxen and the Donner family dog for meat. When that ran out, members of the Donner Party tried everything from boiling ox hides to chewing leather shoelaces in order to provide some sustenance for their weak and increasingly sickly group (Bryant, 1848). Men, women, and children alike were starving to death, and in mid-December the Donner Party dispatched a 17-person crew to try to break through the snowed-in passes and find help (The Donner Party, no date). Two returned, but 15 pressed on, and a little more than a month later they reached Johnson's Ranch, where a relief party was dispatched.

It had been nearly two months from the time the 17 members left to get help to the time the first relief party arrived (The Donner Party, no date). As additional relief parties reached the camps, what they encountered was a scene out of their worst nightmares. Dozens of party members were dead. Forty-two members of the Donner Party would die in all, including eight of the sixteen members of the Donner family — George and Jacob Donner among them (Johnson, 2006).

The horrors suffered by the Donner Party created a media firestorm in a nation obsessed with westward migration. News of this doomed party, which lost nearly half its members, was eagerly consumed by the American public, who were enticed by lurid details.

The travails of the Donner Party were compelling news in their own right, but the story became quickly sensationalized as reports surfaced that the group had resorted to eating dead members of the party to survive. Rescuers, and even some party members, reported seeing disturbing scenes such as dead bodies with limbs hacked off, presumably for eating, and even boiling pots of human flesh (Johnson, 2006). For example, a story published in the California Star in 1847 described accounts of party members eating body parts of their family members and of one woman boiling and eating her husband's heart (Distressing news, 1847). The story went on to say that what occurred at the Donner Party camps was "more suitable for a hangman's journal than the columns of a family newspaper" (Distressing news, 1847).

The degree of cannibalism committed by members of the Donner Party — and, in particular, the Donner family — has long been the subject of debate. However, as stories of possible cannibalism were widely reported in the American press, the Donner family name became inextricably linked to the events, and a wave of shame spread to their descendants (Candiotti, 1996). Never mind that most of the group's members were not Donners; or that the family itself camped approximately six miles away from most of the other families; or that the route that led to the party's despair was not chosen by the Donners, but by James F. Reed — who, coincidentally, survived the tragedy.

Conclusion

The story of the Donner Party has the power to elicit emotions of both admiration and dread. On one hand, it is a story of great loss and survival under unbelievably difficult odds. At the same time, the extremity of the Donner Party's struggles may have led some members to desperate acts, such as cannibalism.