May 1846. Thousands of American families, driven by the promise of the American dream and an unyielding pioneer spirit, embarked on an epic journey west. This mass migration saw men, women, and children risk everything for a new life, crossing two thousand five hundred miles of rugged wilderness. It was a time that truly defined the character of a nation, demanding immense ingenuity and grit, often at an unimaginable human cost. Among the countless tales of courage and sacrifice from America’s westward expansion, one story stands out for its chilling notoriety and enduring power: the devastating ordeal of the Donner Party.
In June of that year, George Donner and his family, along with eighty-six other American pioneers, joined this great movement, aiming for prosperity in California. But a fateful decision to follow a supposed shortcut – Hastings Cutoff – would tragically lead them down a path of unparalleled suffering. As the harsh Sierra Nevada winter swiftly approached, these families, including young children, found themselves trapped, battling starvation, isolation, and the brutal elements. Their incredible struggle for survival against impossible odds remains a stark reminder of the extreme challenges and ultimate sacrifices made during America’s push west, a defining moment forever etched into American memory.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor Americans pursue prosperity, ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world, as if assured that they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach, as if they expected to stop living before they had relished them. Death steps in in the end and stops them before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit, of that complete felicity which always escapes them. Alexis de Tocqueville.
I remember.
May 1846, thousands of men, women, and children riding, walking, pushing. They’re heading for a new life, two thousand five hundred miles away. Germans, French, Catholics, Presbyterians, Mormons. One of the world’s great mass migrations begins. The pioneer spirit is moving West. In this colossal migration to Oregon and California, America will finally define its character. When the pioneer movement began, fewer than twenty thousand white Americans lived West of the Mississippi River. Ten years later, half a million pioneers stepped off into the Western wilderness. It’s the American dream then, as now. The people want an already good life to get better. They can walk ten miles a day for up to six months straight. Some go through ten pairs of boots each. Half are children en route. One in five of the women are pregnant. But these aren’t America’s poor. Families sell farms, save for five years to join the exodus, risking it all. Here’s bestselling author Jeannette Walls.
I think if there is one episode that encapsulates the American spirit, I think it is probably the move West with those mules and horses and cross those rivers and cross over those mountains to the unknown and say, “I’m leaving everything behind. I’m leaving everything that I know behind to reinvent myself.”
A wagon and oxen cost a minimum of $5,000 in today’s money, but it buys a complete life support machine. The wagons carry a precious cargo: one thousand pounds of supplies and a grubstake for their journey—your entire new life in the West. The pioneering spirit is ingenious: drinking water captured from rain on the wagon canvas. Even the oxen’s dung is fuel for fires. And like today, there are tolls. The Indians charged $10 for road and $100 for river crossings in modern money. But the greatest toll of all: human lives. In all, twenty thousand Americans will die reaching the West—ten graves for every mile. But of all the stories to come out of the West, none has cut more deeply into the imagination of the American people than the tale of the Donner Party. This one story of suffering and death will show just how far the pioneers will go to conquer the West. Here’s historian Joseph King.
“I think we’re curious to know about people who have experienced a hardship, who’ve gone through terrible ordeals. And certainly, the Donner Party. You know, eighty-seven people went through with a crisis the like of which few human beings have ever faced, and we’re curious about that. It can tell us something, I think, about ourselves, about the limits of human experience.”
June 1846, nine brand new covered wagons rattle out of Springfield, Illinois and head West. One of their leaders is sixty-two-year-old George Donner. His wife, Tamsen Donner, is a schoolteacher. But on the trail, women must be ready to do anything.
Another girl. Welcome to the world.
But these women were made up of the strongest fiber possible. The journey is tough, but the going is good. Tamsen Donner writes in her journal:
“I could never have believed we could have traveled so far with so little difficulty. Indeed, if we do not experience anything worse, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started.”
But as leader of the wagon train, Tamsen’s husband George Donner is aware there’s one final obstacle to their journey: The Sierra Nevada peaks—up to 14,000 feet. Failure to clear the mountain passes before the first snowfalls, the consequences are terrifying. But as the Donner Party approaches Utah, George Donner makes a fateful decision, leading a splinter group off the main party. The group now consists of eighty-seven people, nine families, and sixteen single men. George Donner’s two brothers, Jacob and James Reed, follow with their families. Donner has read one of the many popular new trail guide books by Lansford Hastings. Hastings was trying to garner support from the government for his so-called shortcut to the West. Hastings Cutoff claimed to shave two weeks off the journey time.
“Lansford Hastings would not publish this immigrant’s guide showing us the first route to California, if he did not travel every step of it himself.”
Problem was, he never traveled it himself—let alone with a trail of wagons.
“Tomorrow, I turned my wagons to the Hastings Cutoff. I—who will follow?”
George Donner’s brother James Reed wrote in his diary on July 31, 1846:
“Hastings Cutoff is said to be a saving of 400 miles.”
“We are informed it as a fine level road with plenty of water and grass.”
But Donner’s information is wrong. In fact, the shortcut adds 100 miles to the journey.
“Should be clear. Let’s hope to God the snow will close the passes in the fall, whether we are through or not.”
High in the Sierra Nevada, the Donner Party enters the Truckee Pass. They’re only 30 miles from the California Plains. Then this happened:
“It was sundown, the weather was clear, but a large circle around the moon indicated an approaching storm.”
John Breen.
Supplies are dangerously low. Their water supply is gone. Eighty crazed and dehydrated oxen have run away. Twenty-one other oxen are killed with poisoned arrows by Paiute Indians from the bluffs above the river. They could hear the Paiutes laughing at their plight. Then a broken front axle. Party stops to make repairs near Truckee Lake, cutting timber for a new axle. George Donner gashes his hand. That night, five feet of snow falls.
“Five feet doesn’t need snow up there.”
“We’ve lost the road.”
Soon the drifts are 60 feet deep.
“Can we get through?”
“No.”
“Not anymore.”
The pass is completely blocked. The Donner Party will be stranded for five months.
“We made a fire and got something to eat. Most spread down a buffalo rope and set up by the fire. The Indians knew we were doomed, and one of them wrapped his blanket about him and stood all night under a tree.”
In just three weeks, they’ve eaten all their food. The men, women, and children are all dying. Almost every day becomes someone’s last. They kill their pack animals. Then they eat charred bones, boiled hides, twigs, bark, leaves, dirt, and worse. Here’s George Donner’s daughter Eliza.
“Even the wind held its breath as a suggestion was made that, were one to die, the rest might live.”
Cannibalism. Christmas 1846. They eat their first human, averting their faces from each other and weeping. Only the two Indians, Luis and Salvador, refuse to eat. The bodies are cut up, flesh labeled so people don’t eat their own kin. The fourth rescue party brings out almost all survivors, but not all. The winter, recorded as the worst ever in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, is making it almost impossible for the rescue teams to operate. The very last rescue finds a delirious Lewis Keseberg alone, surrounded by the half-eaten dead. No one else was alive. George Donner’s body is found, skulls split open, brain removed. Tamsen Donner’s body is never found, though a survivor confessed to eating her. Two-thirds of the women and children made it through; two-thirds of the men perished. Here’s historian David McCullough.
“Of the eighty-seven men, women, and children in the Donner Party, forty-six survived, forty-one died: five women, fourteen children, and twenty-two men, counting John Sutter’s Indians, Lewis and Salvador. Of all the families, the Donners suffered the most. All four adults and four of the children died.”
The pass is renamed the Donner Pass, a testament to the hardship of the pioneers going West. News of the Donner Party tragedy made headlines around the world. Immigration to California fell off sharply. Then, in January of 1848, gold was discovered in John Sutter’s Creek. By late 1849, more than 100,000 people rushed to California to dig and sift near the streams and canyons where the Donner Party had suffered so much.
“Oh Mary, I have not wrote you half of the trouble we have had, but I have wrote you enough to let you know what trouble is. But thank God, we are.”
“The only family that did not eat human flesh.”
“We have left everything, but I don’t care for that. We have got through with our lives.”
“Don’t let this letter just and anybody. Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.”
For you read, had a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And what a story we just heard, with the Donner family itself paying the highest price for George Donner’s mistake, the Hastings Cutoff, which was going to save hundreds of miles—400 miles—in route and in the end only added miles to the route. And then came that dreadful storm, trapped up in those mountains for months, running out of food and resorting to… Well, you just heard the story of the Donner Party and the story of so many lives lost in the quest to head West, here on Our American Stories.
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