The Donner Family Name: Cannibalism Myth vs. Evidence

Introduction: A Name Linked to Tragedy

In Truckee, California, there stands a large stone and metal statue depicting the famous Donner Party — one of the great survival stories in the expansive history of America's westward expansion. The monument represents the spirit of adventure and perseverance that have become synonymous with the ill-fated Donner Party, but perhaps it should represent more. In fact, perhaps the statue stands as a symbol of one of the most unfairly maligned family names in American history.

To this day, when many people think of the Donner Party, their thoughts travel beyond survival and perseverance to a much darker concept: cannibalism. For more than a century and a half, stories have circulated about how the snow-bound Donner Party, in a battle for its very survival in the winter of 1846–1847, turned to acts of cannibalism when food supplies were exhausted.

Now, research has shown that these stories of cannibalism — which have caused a painful black mark on the Donner family name — may be completely false as they pertain to the Donners themselves. Perhaps cannibalism did occur among the Donner Party, which consisted of several different families, but the evidence seems to suggest that the Donner family itself never took part.

How did this story get so out of hand, and why did the Donners go on to bear the brunt of the public's disgust when reports of cannibalism surfaced? The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how a series of events collaborated to create a sensational, and not entirely factual, account of the deeds of the Donner Party and, by extension, the Donner family. Three factors contributed to this outcome:

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 about how the Donner Party survived became regrettably accepted as fact. The collaboration of these three factors allowed for the wide dissemination of inaccurate information about the Donner Party that led members of the Donner family to be unfairly maligned in their own time and, to a certain extent, to this day.

How George Donner Became Captain

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 the group's journey and how the Donner family became its public face.

In 1846, George and Jacob Donner made the fateful decision 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 prosperous of the travelers, was arguably the head of the group (Burns, 1997).

In Independence, the Donners and Reeds joined an even larger wagon train 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 promoted by the well-known 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 chose to stay on the main trail. Reed's leadership victory, however, was far from complete. Some members of the group had grown tired of Reed's aristocratic attitude, and the party instead elected George Donner captain (Burns, 1997). The Donner Party was born.

Anything that happened to the Donner Party — good or bad — was now going to have the Donner family name attached to it, by virtue of George Donner's captaincy. However, it is worth noting that the vast majority of the party's members were not Donners. Of the 91 members of the Donner 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, 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 too much snow had accumulated 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 bear their captain's name.

A Media Firestorm Erupts

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

As could have been predicted, the Donner Party found itself under several feet of snow as the winter wore on, relying on makeshift shelters and whatever fuel they could find to stave off the numbing cold. Donner Party member Edwin Bryant's diary entry from December 1, 1846, conveys 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 leather shoelaces in order to provide sustenance for their weak and increasingly sickly companions (Bryant, 1848). Men, women, and children alike were starving to death, and in mid-December the Donner Party finally dispatched a 17-person crew to try to break through the snowbound passes and find help (The Donner Party, no date). Two members returned, but 15 pressed on and a little more than a month later reached Johnson's Ranch, where a relief party was organized.

It had been nearly two months from the time those 17 members left to find help and the time the first relief party arrived (The Donner Party, no date). As additional relief parties reached the stranded travelers, what they found was a scene from a nightmare. 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 — among them George and Jacob Donner themselves (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 had lost nearly half its members, was eagerly consumed by the American public, enticed by lurid details. The travails of the Donner Party were remarkable news in their own right, but the story became quickly sensationalized as reports surfaced that the group had resorted to eating dead members of their party to survive. Rescuers, and even party members, reported scenes such as dead bodies with limbs hacked off — presumably for eating — and boiling pots containing human flesh (Johnson, 2006).

For example, a story that ran in the California Star in 1847 described accounts of party members eating body parts of their relatives, 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 acts, and a wave of shame spread to their descendants (Candiotti, 1996). Never mind that most of the group's members were not Donners; that the family camped approximately six miles away from most of the other families; or that the route that had led to the party's despair was chosen not 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 against unbelievably difficult odds; on the other, the extremity of those struggles may have led some to acts as drastic as cannibalism.

It may be the fate of the Donner family to have its name forever linked to both the best and the worst of what the Donner Party represents. This is a striking circumstance, given that the party could just as easily have been named the "Reed Party." After all, James Reed was arguably the party's leader, and it was certainly his idea to pursue a shortcut that had dreadful consequences (Burns, 1997). Had it not been for Reed's off-putting demeanor, he might well have been elected captain and would have had his family name forever linked to the events of that terrible winter.

Instead, the decision to elect George Donner captain forever made the Donners the face of a story that was simultaneously heroic and horrifying. Donner's captaincy, combined with sensational media coverage that was eventually accepted as historical fact, conspired to link the Donner family with acts of cannibalism it may never have committed.

The evidence so far is not conclusive. What we do know is that Donner family members have steadfastly maintained that they never resorted to cannibalism, regardless of what any other families may have done — and at this point, science supports their claims. Until it can be definitively proven that the Donner family resorted to cannibalism, it remains, to some degree, an injustice that the family name is linked to these infamous acts. It is an injustice that history, science, and time may one day resolve, undoubtedly with thanks from this famous — and, to some degree, notorious — American family.

Works Cited

Bailey, Eric (2006). "No proof found of Donner cannibalism." Los Angeles Times. Jan. 13, 2006.

Burns, Ric (1997). "American Experience: The Donner Party." Retrieved Oct. 9, 2006 at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/donner/maps/index.html

Distressing news (1847). The California Star. Feb. 13, 1847. Retrieved Oct. 10, 2006 at

"Donner cannibalism remains unproven" (2006). Retrieved Oct. 10, 2006 at

Houghton, Elizabeth Poor Donner (2005). The Expedition of the Donner Party. Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, Montana.

Johnson, Kristin (2006). "New light on the Donner Party." Retrieved Oct. 9, 2006 at

The Donner Party (no date). Retrieved Oct. 10, 2006 at