Legends of the Old West - FRONTIER TRAGEDY Ep. 4 | Donner Party, Part 4

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of cannibalism. The Donner Party experiences the worst case scenario. They’re starving and living in crude shelters. A small group begins the trek over the mountains to find help, but it loses members along the way. The people who remain trapped near Truckee Lake become increasingly desperate. But early in the new year of 1847, rescue parties start to arrive at the camps near the lake. The rescuers can hardly believe the conditions of the camps and the people. And the survivors tell the story of the most infamous wagon train in American history. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. To purchase an ad on this show please reach out: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning. This episode contains scenes of graphic violence and descriptions of cannibalism. It is not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is strongly advised. On October 28, 1846, James Reed and Walter Heron stumbled into Sutter's Fort in California's Sacramento Valley. Reed had been banished from the wagon train for killing a driver named John Snyder, and Heron had volunteered to travel with him. They were emaciated when they met John Sutter and reunited with Edwin Bryant, William Russell, and Lilburn Boggs. It must have seemed like another lifetime that these men had parted ways before the Hastings cutoff.

Bryant was the journalist who was always concerned about the slow pace of travel. Russell was the first captain of the wagon train, and Boggs was the second. As men with no families on the trip, they had traded their wagons for mules, ditched the things they didn't need, and split off from the caravan. They had made it through the mountains and down into the Sacramento Valley, while the wagon train was still mired in the badlands of Nevada. That night, after a proper meal, Reed and Heron heard all the news of California's war with Mexico. John C. Fremont was forming his California battalion with Kit Carson. Bryant, Russell, Reed, and others saw the writing on the wall and got ahead of things. They drew up a contract offering their services to fight with Fremont and recruit other immigrants

to the cause. But Reed added one important stipulation. Before he left to fight, he needed to help his family get through the Sierras. He had managed to squirrel away some cash and transport it all the way to California. He offered it as collateral to John Sutter. In return, Sutter gave him 30 horses, a mule, and food to take on a rescue mission into the mountains. Old friend William McCutcheon offered to go with him. McCutcheon and Charles Stanton had ridden ahead of the wagon train weeks earlier in an effort to find supplies at Sutter's Fort. When they made it to the fort, McCutcheon was sick and couldn't return to the wagon train.

Charles Stanton made the return trip with two members of a local Native American tribe. The three men had made it to the caravan, and now they were just a couple days away from being trapped at Truckee Lake on the other side of the Sierras. Sutter assigned two local men to lead Reed and McCutcheon through the snow. They left on November 1st, right before eight days of relentless snowfall pounded the Donner Party on the other side of the mountains. snowfall pounded the Donner Party on the other side of the mountains. The four men rode through four days of rain before reaching the head of the Bear River. There, they found 18 inches of snow, but no sign of the Reed family or the rest of the Donner Party. But they did find Mr. and Mrs. Curtis from Missouri. The couple had broken away from their wagon train over a disagreement.

Now they were holed up in a gap in the Sierras. They had decided to take their chances on wintering there instead of going forward in the unexpectedly early blizzards. The Curtises threw themselves at the mercy of Reed and his group. They were almost out of food. Their oxen had run off, and it was only November 6th. Though Reed and McCutcheon had food with them, they had not eaten since the day before. Rain and sleet had prevented them from making a fire, so when the Curtis's offered them a bit of what was in their Dutch oven, they didn't say no. Reed and McCutcheon had to be thinking about the family somewhere over the

mountains when they were offered well-cooked pieces of the Curtis's dog. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. This season, we're bringing you the disturbing stories of the Donner Party and the Bender Family, a murderous clan known as the Bloody Benders. This is Episode 4, The Donner Party, Part 4 of 4, Survival of the Fittest. On the morning of November 7th, Reed promised the Curtises he would retrieve them on the way back to Sutter's Fort after they'd rescued the Donner Party. Reed, McCutcheon, and the two guides slogged through the snow until dark and then made camp on the mountain. That night, Reed and McCutcheon heard horses neighing. They discovered that the two guides had sneaked away

and taken some of their horses with them. It was as if they knew what was in store and decided to save their own lives. Reed and McCutcheon pushed on with their remaining horses and provisions, but the falling snow obliterated any trace of the trail. They struggled to keep moving forward, and eventually it was impossible. At times, only the necks of the horses appeared above the white powder. Finally, Reed and McCutcheon left the horses and proceeded on foot,

but the snow was too soft and deep. Even if they had been able to walk the 10 to 12 miles to the summit and then down the other side, they wouldn't have had any food, since it was tied to the horses. Reluctantly, they turned back. They dug their horses out of the snow, collected the courtesies, and returned to Sutter's Fort.

Meanwhile, the various Donner Party factions huddled in their makeshift structures. They were 100 miles from Sutter's Fort, but they might as well have been on another planet. On November 21st, Charles Stanton, Luis, and Salvador made another attempt to get over the mountains. They found a route with crusted snow, which made it easier for humans to walk, but the mules were too heavy. They broke through, became exhausted, and slowed down the trek. William, Eddie, and some of the others tried to convince Stanton to leave the mules behind. Maybe they could make it to safety on foot.

But those mules belonged to John Sutter. Stanton refused to let the animals die, so the trio turned around and went back to their camp by Truckee Lake. The Donner family camp, seven miles away at Alder Creek, and the camps at Truckee Lake still had hoped that the storms would stop long enough for someone to get through to them. The men in both groups passed some time by scratching out promissory notes for anyone who did. In the notes, they offered cash for food once they got to safety. Thanksgiving wasn't a celebration so much as a marker of time. Both groups passed the day by eating bark, twigs, and boiled hides. There was no food except for the occasional lucky hit, like a mangy timber wolf. Sometime during the first

days of December, the Donner Cluster at Alder Creek walked out of their shelters during a quick break in the snowfall. They found their remaining horses and cattle dead in the snow, but at least the animals were there and could be harvested for a little food. Stanton's mules, which belonged to John Sutter, were gone. They may have wandered off or they may have been stolen by Native American raiders. At that point, it didn't matter either way. The stronger people in both camps looked for ways to survive. The women carefully parsed the tiny amounts of meat to distribute to the children and the most feeble adults.

George Donner's arm was badly infected. The accidental cut that he had suffered to his hand had become inflamed and infected, and the infection was spreading. His brother, Jacob, was on his deathbed. Three of the group's younger men, including Joseph Reinhart, were close behind. And then Charles Stanton and Franklin Graves got an idea. They knew a bit about snowshoes. If they could make enough of them, the strongest of the group might be able to walk far enough to find help. If anyone objected to the idea, they were quieted on December 15th. At the Truckee Lake camp, Baylis Williams, who worked for the Reed family, died of malnutrition. He was the first recorded death in the camps.

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Close behind him were unmarried men Sam Shoemaker, James Smith, and Joseph Reinhardt. Sam Shoemaker, James Smith, and Joseph Reinhart. Before Reinhart passed, he told a weeping Mrs. Wolfinger that he and Augustus Spitzer had killed her husband in the Badlands of Nevada. Two months earlier, Reinhart and Spitzer had volunteered to help Jacob Wolfinger bury his wagon loaded with goods when it became too difficult to haul the wagon through the desert. Instead, they killed him, probably robbed him, and blamed his death on the Paiutes. George Donner told the widow that once they were rescued, he would make sure Spitzer was held accountable. If the promise gave Mrs. Wolfinger comfort, it was probably minimal. There was very little energy for thoughts of justice or retribution. At the Truckee Lake camp, there was a break in the snow

and a tiny bit of sun, and the snowshoers decided it was now or never. The party that left on the morning of December 16th was composed of 17 men, women, and children. Franklin Graves and William Eddy were the de facto leaders. In addition to members of the Donner Party, there were Luis and Salvador, the men who had helped Charles Stanton return to the wagon train from John Sutter's camp. The group dressed as warmly as possible, with layers of blankets packed on their backs. They took a tiny bit of coffee, a bit of sugar, and about eight pounds of dry, stringy beef. They estimated they had enough food for six days, and the first day was problematic in an already

bad situation. The group quickly realized that for every step an adult took with the snowshoes, the children had to take two. William Foster had to take an exhausted boy and man back to camp, and then trek all the way back to the snowshoe party. They made very little progress the first day. The next morning, the remaining 15 members had high hopes that they could improve on the four miles they'd accrued the first day, and they did, making six miles over a deep snowpack. The next morning brought some sunshine, giving them hope that they could make it, even as some of them suffered frostbitten hands and feet.

But as the third day passed, the sun's rays burned their eyes as it reflected off sheets of snow. Charles Stanton and Franklin Graves developed severe snow blindness. Graves' daughters and son-in-law helped him keep on track somehow, and he eventually recovered. Stanton, on the other hand, was in bad shape. His eyes grew red and watery. They twitched painfully and uncontrollably and then swelled shut. In addition, he was exhausted. Luis and Salvador took the lead, while Stanton dropped behind. On December 21st, just before the party got moving, Mary Graves,

one of Franklin's daughters, noticed Stanton sitting by their smoldering fire, smoking his pipe. She asked him if he was coming with them. Stanton was blind, so he turned toward the sound of her voice. He assured her that he was, but those were the last words anyone heard him say. They moved on, hoping he would catch up. He never did, and now they were down to 14. Mary later recalled that on December 24, 1846, they were delirious. They had been gone from their camps for eight days and without food for three. Some people wanted to go back. Luis and Salvador wanted to keep moving forward.

Mary said she wanted to keep going, too, because she couldn't bear to go back and hear the cries of her starving brothers and sisters. While the snowshoe party debated their options, their companions and families back at the camps continued to suffer. Patrick Breen started to keep a diary that month, in which he recorded the day-to-day misery of the lake camp. The miseries mirrored those at the Alder Creek camp. In essence, every minute was spent thinking about or searching for food. Eliza Donner, the three-year-old child

of George and Tamsin Donner, later said that they captured and ate little field mice that crept into the camp. They cut pieces of beef hides, scraped them, and boiled them until they were the consistency of glue and swallowed it as best they could. Bones that had already had their marrow sucked out were burned and eaten. They chewed on twigs of pine just to have something to chew. And they prayed that the snowshoe party had been successful and was bringing help back from California. The prayers for the success of the snowshoe party were not answered. The snowshoers wandered through the Sierras like zombies. They had no food, but they did have water by way of snow. The problem was they were often too delirious to

realize they were thirsty. Also, eating the snow instead of drinking it lowers the core body temperature, something they didn't know. Every time they ate a handful of snow, their body temperatures dropped a little bit and their bodies shut down a little more. All of them knew the end was near, and it was a man named Patrick Dolan who first spoke the unthinkable. He suggested they draw lots to see who should offer themselves up

as a sacrifice for the others. William Eddy quickly agreed, but some of the others demurred. William Foster was totally opposed, at least to the part about how they should pick the person. Eddy then had an idea. What if two of the men in the group drew lots, faced off in a duel, and shot it out? No one liked the idea. Instead, they decided to let nature take its course. Weary and confused, they pushed on, one painful step at a time. When they camped that night, December 24th, Christmas Eve, they moved as close as they could to the sad little fire they made with green twigs. While sleeping, a man named Antonio flung his arm into the flame. He was so

far gone that his nerve endings failed to register any pain. William Eddy quickly shoved him away, but the man's breathing was already in the form of a death rattle. Right after Antonio died, as if to add insult to injury, a storm blew out their tiny fire. Within minutes, Franklin Graves died. Before slipping away, Graves told his two daughters in the group to eat him if they had to. They laid his corpse next to Antonio's and tried to get a few hours of sleep in a makeshift tent of blankets. This required one of them to stay awake and hold a blanket up over them as they huddled in a circle so the snow wouldn't press the blanket down and smother them. A shrieking Patrick Dolan

woke them up on Christmas morning. One symptom of hypothermia is that its victims think they're on fire, and that was what happened to Dolan. He tore off all his clothes and kept trying to run away. William Eddy finally calmed him down, and Dolan fell into a deep sleep. He never woke up, and his body was placed next to Antonio and Franklin Graves. Then, William Eddy tried to start a fire using gunpowder for Tinder, only to have it blow up his powder horn and burn himself and two other women. Finally, after the most recent storm moved on, the snowshoe party took a patch of dry cotton from the lining of a woman's coat and ignited it with a spark from a flintlock rifle. They set fire to a large dead pine tree and got a roaring blaze going. Then they set down one important rule. No one

would eat a family member. And since no one was related to Patrick Dolan and he had no ties to anyone back at the camps or anywhere else, he was the first one they ate. The day after Christmas, the snowshoers couldn't look at each other. They didn't think of themselves as monsters. They were merely trying to survive, and they were losing the battle. Lemuel Murphy's condition worsened. He had been declining and acting irrationally, much like Dolan in Dolan's final hours. Lemuel had been so hungry the day before that he had eaten a mouse, alive. But now, he was delirious and he couldn't eat anything at all. That night, Lemuel Murphy passed away, with his head lying in his sister's lap. He was 13 years old.

On December 30th, the snowshoers left what was later called the Camp of Death. There were now ten of them, five men and five women. They tried not to think of the four people who had saved their lives through their deaths. On the last day of 1846, the survivors managed to walk six miles, inching over a steep ridge and carefully crossing snow-covered ravines. For a while, blood marked their path because all of their feet were swollen and cracked from frostbite. On New Year's Eve, they ate the last pieces of their friends. On New Year's Eve, they ate the last pieces of their friends. In the new year of 1847, Luis lost a toe to frostbite.

William Foster was beginning to show signs of delirium. The delirium, coupled with the generally racist attitudes, spurred Foster to propose killing Luis and Salvador for food. William Eddy disagreed, but others agreed with Foster. Realizing the danger to his friends, Eddy warned Luis. Not surprisingly, Luis and Salvador sneaked away in the night. The next morning, William Eddy managed to track and shoot a deer. He and Mary Graves chased the wounded animal until it died, and then drank its blood after cutting its throat. A man named Fosdick passed away. He and his wife had fallen behind as his condition worsened, and now his wife hurried forward to find William Eddy and Mary Graves and the others.

Along the way, she encountered William Foster and his daughter Sarah. They were backtracking in order to butcher Mr. and Mrs. Fosdick for food. Despite Mrs. Fosdick's protests, they harvested her husband. There were now seven snowshoers left. The women were in the best shape, which might have been the reason why William Foster proposed killing one of them. William Eddy shut down the idea, though he understood how hunger was driving his companion mad. They were soon distracted by a set of bloody footprints.

The two men and five women pushed their starving bodies to take them to the source of the prints. Two miles later, they found Luis and Salvador. They were nearly dead, having no more energy to move, and lying prone on the ground at the base of a tree. The women could see in Foster's crazed eyes what he planned to do, and they moved out of the way. Foster grabbed a rifle, ignored William Eddy's pleas, and shot both men in the head. The nutrition robbed from Luis and Salvador allowed the remaining band of snowshoers to find an Indian trail two days later. In the most horrible of ironies, they stumbled into a village of the tribe that Luis and Salvador were from. The villages nurtured the starving, delirious travelers

back to baseline health. Eventually, the villagers took William Eddy to the cabin of a white couple at a lower altitude while the others stayed behind. The white couple and others in the area helped the other six snowshoers move down to the cabin. 33 days earlier, 17 men, women, and children began a nearly hopeless journey on snowshoes. Now there were just two men and five women left, but those seven were safe. Back at the Truckee Lake and Alder Creek camps, the situation was almost as bad. On December 28th, a man named Charlie Berger died in Lewis-Keysburg shelter. On New Year's Day, Margaret Reed told her starving kids that she was taking the last of their five

family dogs for a walk. They cried for hours when they found out she'd killed it for food, but they knew she had to do it so they could survive just a little longer. With no communication from the outside world, they had no idea how long it would take to get rescued, if help was coming at all. Margaret Reed couldn't know it, but her husband had already tried to reach her and had been stopped by the weather. Then, on January 31, 1847, 30 days after she had been forced to kill the dog, the first relief party was finally able to leave Sutter's Fort. It took nearly three weeks, but the rescue party reached the Truckee Lake Camp on February 19th. The rescuers stared at the camp in wonder. They couldn't see or hear any living thing. Then, a skeletal woman emerged from a hole in the snow. It was Mrs. Murphy. She asked,

Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven? Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven? Nine members of the lake camp were already dead, and a baby succumbed the night the rescuers arrived. The rescuers doled out pieces of food very carefully, knowing that a starving person who eats too much too quickly can die of stomach issues. No one from the Alder Creek camp had died since Jacob Donner, but George Donner was close. Besides starving, the cut on his hand had turned gangrenous.

The rescuers assured everyone that the snowshoers had all arrived safely at Sutter's Fort. It was a lie, but it was necessary to get them motivated to go over the mountain. necessary to get them motivated to go over the mountain. The rescuers visited both camps and picked a total of seven adults and 16 children to make the trip. They began immediately, but a few of the children had to go back because the trek was too hard. Louis Kiesberg's wife tried to make the trip with their small daughter Ada. Unfortunately, Ada didn't survive, and her mother had to bury her in the snow. Two days later, the group saw ten men approaching on snowshoes. They carried huge packs on their backs. One was James Reed, who was relieved but somber when he heard that his family was alive.

James Reed, who was relieved but somber when he heard that his family was alive. A few miles later, he made it to the Alder Creek site. In the space of just one week between the departure of the first rescue party and the arrival of the second with James Reed, the situation in the camps had gone from desperate to the worst-case scenario. The accounts from survivors and documents left behind by the dead indicate that people in both camps were thinking about it and talking about it before the first rescue party arrived, but they may not have done it yet. By the time James Reed and the second rescue party arrived,

the camps were a horror show. Dismembered corpses and human body parts were strewn everywhere. The children of Jacob Donner sat on a log near a campfire, eating their father's heart and liver. There were bloodstains on their chins, and they completely ignored the rescuers. On the ground around the fire were bits of hair and bone and skin. Their mother vowed she would die before she resorted to eating part of her husband. Reed and the relief party made her as comfortable as possible and continued on. Reed found his two children in the care of the Breen family, and Patrick Breen swore that the kids had done

nothing abominable. At the cabin of the Murphy family, the situation was far worse. Mrs. Murphy had essentially gone crazy. She was caring for a collection of kids who were horribly dirty and infested with lice, but they seemed to be more with it mentally, though they had probably done things similar to Jacob Donner's children. Reed discovered the remains of Milton Elliot, his faithful wagon driver. Milt's head and face had not been touched, but the rest of him had. Like the first rescue party, Reed's group distributed food, provided some care for the people who would have to remain in the camps, and collected those who could make it over the mountains.

In March, a third rescue party saved 11 people, including nine children. A hero named John Stark carried the children two at a time down the mountain. He saved all nine of them. A fourth and final rescue mission was delayed by a month because of yet another round of blizzards in the Sierras. When that mission finally got up to the camps, it was April 17, 1847. It had been one year and three days since the Donner Caravan left Springfield, Illinois. Seven men entered the camps that somehow looked worse than they had before. Outside a tent, they found an iron kettle. It's not clear who looked into the kettle first,

but whoever it was surely wished he hadn't. Inside was human skin. The rescuers found just one more survivor, ragged and emaciated Louis Keesburg. In his decrepit cabin, there was a pan of water that contained what appeared to be a fresh human liver and lungs. Keesburg had eaten Tamsin Donner, George Donner's wife, but he swore he didn't kill her. The rescue party collected him and started the long journey back to the Sacramento Valley. Along the way, they stopped at a site along the Yuba River. Keesburg noticed a piece of cloth sticking out of the snow. He tugged at it, and the body of his daughter tumbled into his arms. She had died two months earlier, and he didn't know until that

moment. Louis Kiesberg was the final member of the Donner Party to make it to safety. Eighty-one people became trapped in the mountains. Forty-five survived. Most were physically scarred from frostbite and malnutrition. All were mentally and emotionally scarred by the horrors of their experiences and what they had to do to survive. And yet, they moved on. Some had more success and happiness than others.

Louis Kiesberg was reunited with his wife and they had more daughters. But rumors of his alleged murder of Tamsin Donner and his supposed rabid taste for human food dogged him for the rest of his life. All the members of the Breen family and the Reed family survived. All of the Donner adults died, but most of their children survived. For about eight months, stories of the Donner party shocked people enough to make them think twice about attempting the long and dangerous trip to California.

But that changed on January 28, 1848. John Sutter and his new business partner James Marshall were building a sawmill and a gristmill on a branch of the American River about seven miles northwest of the spot that would eventually be the city of Placerville. Marshall noticed shiny flecks in the workings that turned out to be gold. It was the start of America's first major gold rush. In the frenzy to find gold at the place that would be known to history as Sutter's Mill, people quickly overcame their fear of the experiences of the Donner Party. But they never forgot the story. Congratulations if you survived the tale of the Donner Party. Next time on Legends of the Old

West, it's part one of a two-part story about a murderous family on the Kansas Prairie who are thought to be some of America's earliest serial killers. Mercifully, there's no cannibalism in that story. The tale of the Bloody Benders begins next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. Thank you. blackbarrelmedia.com This series was researched and written by Julia Bricklin. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts

or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And all our episodes are available on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. Thanks for listening.