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07/15/2005

The Transcontinental Railroad - Detour

I’ll admit, what follows has absolutely zero to do with “Wall
Street History,” as commonly defined, but it does have a bit to do
with our series on the Transcontinental Railroad. The last few
pieces, after all, have dealt with the Central Pacific’s massive
problems in building the railroad from Sacramento across the
Sierra Nevada Mountains and much of the action transpires close
to present-day Truckee, California, near the peak of the Sierras.
Truckee (now Donner) Lake is where the Donner Party was
caught by a blizzard in 1846. And now, the gruesome story that
is part of American folklore.

---

George Donner was a prosperous 62-year-old farmer from
Illinois who decided, along with wife Tamsen, to head west,
following the Oregon Trail. They helped put together a wagon-
train of 74 people (some accounts say 87, be careful as I’ll
explain in a bit) and immediately made a pile of mistakes,
including the fact they were leaving Illinois too late in the year
and the wagons were overloaded.

The trip was rather uneventful until they got into Utah where
they decided to try a shortcut through the Wasatch Mountains
(here, they picked up 13 more travelers). Well, they got lost
and had to backtrack before finally finding their way across the
range and into the desert leading to the Great Salt Lake. Crossing
the desert then exacted a big toll as they lost 100 oxen and were
forced to abandon several wagons and precious supplies.
Tempers rose and one of the leaders killed a young worker, after
which he was expelled, leaving his wife and children behind.

By the time they reached Truckee, just east of the Sierra summit,
late October, the group was outright surly. They knew they
needed to cross the pass before the snows came but it was too
late. A blizzard hit on Oct. 31 and they were stranded.

After a two-week-long snowfall trapped them in two separate
camps, and following the first death due to the conditions, 81
settlers remained, half children, with only enough meat to last
them through the month of December.

It was decided at this point that 17 of the stronger, including five
women, would set out across the pass, only they were trapped on
the western slope with two then dying of starvation and
exposure. Here, just before he died, Uncle Billy Graves urged
his daughters to eat his body. While appalled, they consumed.
Finally, after about 33 days, seven reached the Sacramento
Valley. The others had died or were murdered.

Four search teams were then dispatched to find the group that
was left behind. Back at the main camps at Alder Creek and
Truckee Lake, the survivors had slaughtered their last livestock.
One family killed their dog. When the first rescue party reached
them, they discovered a grisly scene. 13 people had died and
cannibalism was so widespread one pioneer noted casually in his
diary that “Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she
would commence on Milt and eat him. It is distressing.
Saturday the 27th a beautiful morning.”

In all 47 survived, though George Donner himself was too weak
to move on and stayed behind to die. His wife remained with
him. One chronicler of the times noted:

“Although the trek westward reveals many examples of personal
sacrifice and sharing, the Donner Party’s fate highlights the
ambitiousness, recklessness, and ruthlessness that also marked
the westward movement.”

Ric Burns wrote, directed and co-produced the film “The Donner
Party” for PBS’ “American Experience” a number of years ago.
Here are some of his own thoughts and conclusions.

“The year the Donner party went West, 1846, was the year that
historian Bernard DeVoto much later called the year of decision.
It was really the big year of the American immigration west.
Before 1846 began, California, Oregon, the entire Southwest,
weren’t part of America, and Americans tended to think of their
country as really going up to the Great Plains and not extending
beyond that. But beginning in the early ‘40s and then
crescendoing in the Donner party year is this fantastic
immigration to Oregon, to California and into the Southwest.
The Donner party was part of a movement that was not just one
wagon train that went wrong, but part of the whole country kind
of looking to expand itself, looking to first, dream its own future,
and then make it a reality. And so much of what the Donner
party is about is a very tragic sense of how very potent dreams
led people astray .

“One of the most striking and often noted statistics from the
Donner party, which had 87 people in it, is that two thirds of the
people who survived were women. There are many theories that
have been put forward as to why that was, ranging from biology
like more subcutaneous fatty tissue so you have more calories on
board to burn, to psychological theories that women do not panic
as quickly under adversity, and that men, two sort of parallel
psychological theories, that men for many reasons, most of them
biological and psychological, wish to dig themselves out of any
emergency they find themselves in, therefore, burnt more
calories by exerting themselves too strenuously in a circumstance
they couldn’t actually do that much to change.

“In the end the most striking reason why women survived in
much greater number is actually, to me, much more moving –
which is that single women didn’t tend to go across the Oregon /
California trail. Almost all the women were in family units in
one kind or another. In the Donner party, of the 22 single men
out of the 87 people – who were attached as teamsters, servants,
drivers, hired help of one kind or another – 19 died. So that
pretty much accounts in and of itself for that disparate survival
statistic between men and women. What it means is that if you
didn’t have a family to help you, you fell by the wayside.”

Sources:

“America: A Narrative History,” George Brown Tindall and
David E. Shi
“The Oxford Companion to United States History,” Jared
Diamond and Joseph A. Kind
PBS.org

Wall Street History continues next week as I finally wrap up the
story of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Brian Trumbore



AddThis Feed Button

 

-07/15/2005-      
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Wall Street History

07/15/2005

The Transcontinental Railroad - Detour

I’ll admit, what follows has absolutely zero to do with “Wall
Street History,” as commonly defined, but it does have a bit to do
with our series on the Transcontinental Railroad. The last few
pieces, after all, have dealt with the Central Pacific’s massive
problems in building the railroad from Sacramento across the
Sierra Nevada Mountains and much of the action transpires close
to present-day Truckee, California, near the peak of the Sierras.
Truckee (now Donner) Lake is where the Donner Party was
caught by a blizzard in 1846. And now, the gruesome story that
is part of American folklore.

---

George Donner was a prosperous 62-year-old farmer from
Illinois who decided, along with wife Tamsen, to head west,
following the Oregon Trail. They helped put together a wagon-
train of 74 people (some accounts say 87, be careful as I’ll
explain in a bit) and immediately made a pile of mistakes,
including the fact they were leaving Illinois too late in the year
and the wagons were overloaded.

The trip was rather uneventful until they got into Utah where
they decided to try a shortcut through the Wasatch Mountains
(here, they picked up 13 more travelers). Well, they got lost
and had to backtrack before finally finding their way across the
range and into the desert leading to the Great Salt Lake. Crossing
the desert then exacted a big toll as they lost 100 oxen and were
forced to abandon several wagons and precious supplies.
Tempers rose and one of the leaders killed a young worker, after
which he was expelled, leaving his wife and children behind.

By the time they reached Truckee, just east of the Sierra summit,
late October, the group was outright surly. They knew they
needed to cross the pass before the snows came but it was too
late. A blizzard hit on Oct. 31 and they were stranded.

After a two-week-long snowfall trapped them in two separate
camps, and following the first death due to the conditions, 81
settlers remained, half children, with only enough meat to last
them through the month of December.

It was decided at this point that 17 of the stronger, including five
women, would set out across the pass, only they were trapped on
the western slope with two then dying of starvation and
exposure. Here, just before he died, Uncle Billy Graves urged
his daughters to eat his body. While appalled, they consumed.
Finally, after about 33 days, seven reached the Sacramento
Valley. The others had died or were murdered.

Four search teams were then dispatched to find the group that
was left behind. Back at the main camps at Alder Creek and
Truckee Lake, the survivors had slaughtered their last livestock.
One family killed their dog. When the first rescue party reached
them, they discovered a grisly scene. 13 people had died and
cannibalism was so widespread one pioneer noted casually in his
diary that “Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she
would commence on Milt and eat him. It is distressing.
Saturday the 27th a beautiful morning.”

In all 47 survived, though George Donner himself was too weak
to move on and stayed behind to die. His wife remained with
him. One chronicler of the times noted:

“Although the trek westward reveals many examples of personal
sacrifice and sharing, the Donner Party’s fate highlights the
ambitiousness, recklessness, and ruthlessness that also marked
the westward movement.”

Ric Burns wrote, directed and co-produced the film “The Donner
Party” for PBS’ “American Experience” a number of years ago.
Here are some of his own thoughts and conclusions.

“The year the Donner party went West, 1846, was the year that
historian Bernard DeVoto much later called the year of decision.
It was really the big year of the American immigration west.
Before 1846 began, California, Oregon, the entire Southwest,
weren’t part of America, and Americans tended to think of their
country as really going up to the Great Plains and not extending
beyond that. But beginning in the early ‘40s and then
crescendoing in the Donner party year is this fantastic
immigration to Oregon, to California and into the Southwest.
The Donner party was part of a movement that was not just one
wagon train that went wrong, but part of the whole country kind
of looking to expand itself, looking to first, dream its own future,
and then make it a reality. And so much of what the Donner
party is about is a very tragic sense of how very potent dreams
led people astray .

“One of the most striking and often noted statistics from the
Donner party, which had 87 people in it, is that two thirds of the
people who survived were women. There are many theories that
have been put forward as to why that was, ranging from biology
like more subcutaneous fatty tissue so you have more calories on
board to burn, to psychological theories that women do not panic
as quickly under adversity, and that men, two sort of parallel
psychological theories, that men for many reasons, most of them
biological and psychological, wish to dig themselves out of any
emergency they find themselves in, therefore, burnt more
calories by exerting themselves too strenuously in a circumstance
they couldn’t actually do that much to change.

“In the end the most striking reason why women survived in
much greater number is actually, to me, much more moving –
which is that single women didn’t tend to go across the Oregon /
California trail. Almost all the women were in family units in
one kind or another. In the Donner party, of the 22 single men
out of the 87 people – who were attached as teamsters, servants,
drivers, hired help of one kind or another – 19 died. So that
pretty much accounts in and of itself for that disparate survival
statistic between men and women. What it means is that if you
didn’t have a family to help you, you fell by the wayside.”

Sources:

“America: A Narrative History,” George Brown Tindall and
David E. Shi
“The Oxford Companion to United States History,” Jared
Diamond and Joseph A. Kind
PBS.org

Wall Street History continues next week as I finally wrap up the
story of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Brian Trumbore