Donner Party cannibalism article

The latest issue of WildWest magazine to hit the stands might interest readers of this blog -- it features an article called "Donner Party Cannibalism: Did They or Didn't They?" by some bimbo named Kristin Johnson (that would be Moi). How did that happen? Well... It was work. A lot of hard work. The hardest thing I've had to write so far, because, despite all the revision, it's still much less than satisfactory. There's only so much you can shoehorn into 3,700 words. Special thanks to Greg Lalire at WildWest, who put up with my angst and vaporings while (apparently) remaining relatively sane.

George R. Stewart wrote long ago that, in a sense, cannibalism is actually a minor part of the Donner saga, and he was right. Once you get over the initial horror and look at the larger picture, cannibalism was the culmination of a lengthy series of events and, for almost all of the emigrants compelled to it, lasted a relatively short period of time.

I've downplayed the cannibalism for years because I just don't find it all that interesting; once the shock wears off, there's nothing to sink your teeth into, so to speak. It's the human drama (who were these people? what happened to them afterward?) -- and the historical research (how do we know what we think we know? are there any more sources out there?) that have engrossed me.  However, over the last several years the  notion that Donner Party cannibalism is a myth seems to have gained credence in some segments of the general public, especially the online crowd. It's become such an annoyance that when the opportunity arose to confront it, I did.

Most of the information in the article will be old news to attentive readers of this blog, New Light, or An Archaeology of Desperation; what's different is that it pulls data scattered about in many different sources together in one place to make what I believe is a convincing argument. I haven't had any feedback yet, good or bad, but time will tell. Meanwhile, why don't you take a look and tell me what you think?

[Disclaimer: I get no royalties from sales of the magazine and will derive no financial benefit from your purchases, darn it.]

PS  Don't overlook the "Donner Party connections and intersections" on page 8.

John Snyder's grave

 
As Donner buffs will recall, John Snyder was the Graves family's teamster who got into a fight with James F. Reed and was stabbed to death. Snyder was buried near where he fell and Reed was banished from the train. There has been some confusion about where the fight and burial took place, but trail historians are agreed that it happened at Iron Point, Nevada.

John Grebenkemper is involved with the Institute for Canine Forensics, which uses Historic Human Remains Detection (HHRD) dogs specially trained to search for the scent of decomposed human remains, which can remain in the soil for centuries. It sounds incredible, but the dogs have had had some remarkable successes and are being used by "cultural resource management firms, archaeologists, American Indian tribes, construction companies, federal, state and local agencies, cemetery preservation foundations and families looking to locate lost family cemeteries," according to the ICF website. Back in 2003 or so, my friend Ken Dunn told me about these animals, I told the archaeologists, and the upshot was that a team of dogs investigated the Alder Creek site before the July 2004 dig -- you can watch a video about it here.

 In 2011 John and ICF founder Adela Morris turned to another Donner Party site, John Snyder's grave at Iron Point. To make a long story short, their border collies Kayle and Rhea alerted to human remains scent in one specific area only, in the road at the bottom of the "steep sandy hill." The three of us wrote up the results in "Locating the Grave of John Snyder: Field Research on a Donner Party Death" (Overland Journal 30:3 (Fall 2012), p. 92-108). John and I did the history, and John and Adela wrote about the dogs. We've gotten some nice feedback and it looks like John and Kayle are going to be busy this summer.

However, it also looks like nobody is going to try to dig John up any time soon. As I understand it -- and I hope somebody will let me know if I'm wrong -- archaeological laws prohibit disturbing known or suspected graves without good cause. If the site is threatened by construction, for instance, if remains have been exposed by erosion, or if they turn up as part of a larger dig, that's one thing, but digging up a possible grave just to see if it really is a grave (mere curiosity, in other words) is a different story. On public land, at least, you'd be extremely unlikely to get permission, and there are restrictions with regard private property, too. But never fear, there are other possible Donner Party sites to investigate...

Historic McGlashan site up for grabs

In 1893, newspaper editor, lawyer, and Donner Party historian C. F. McGlashan completed a remarkable building on a hillside in Truckee, California. White, with numerous tall windows and columns all around, the Rocking Stone Tower overlooked the town.

The tower was built was a 30-foot-high boulder with a flat top, at whose center perched a smaller rock (only 16 tons) so perfectly balanced on edge that a slight push would make it move gently, then rock back into place. Worried that the locals who scaled the base and larked about with the rocking stone might unseat it, McGlashan bought the property and built the circular tower, which housed his "museum" -- Donner Party relics, his butterfly collection, Washoe artifacts, and various other curiosities, including the rocking stone itself. 

Several years later, he completed a house close to the boulder and attached to the tower by a bridge. The house and tower became a landmark, even appearing in postcards, such as the one the image above is taken from. Until his death in 1931, McGlashan made his home in the "castle" on the hillside. Nearly four years after his passing, however, the house met its own fate. At 3:15 A.M. on October 18, 1934, a watchman discovered the blaze in the kitchen and was seriously burned attempting to douse it. The house burned to the ground, but the tower and its contents emerged unscathed. In 1939, the tower became Truckee's Veterans Hall Memorial Building.

Now the local Powers That Be have determined that the site is "surplus property" and have put it on the chopping block, with no publicity or input from residents. See the Sierra Sun article "Our Turn: Truckee history for sale" for more details about this latest development. For more about McGlashan's home and tower, see Give Me a Mountain Meadow, by M. Nona McGlashan.

I'm ba-a-ack!

It's been over a year since I last posted, but it's not for lack of things to post about or lack of interest in the Donner Party. During my sabbatical of wrestling with boring offline, real life stuff, I've continued to research and correspond about the Donners, so I have a lot of news to share about all sorts of events, places, and people. For example (in no particular order):

  * John Snyder's grave
  * French book about Mary Graves
  * Canadian article about John Baptiste Trudeau
  * Selim Woodworth
  * Charles Cady
  * California Trail Interpretive Center
  * Threat to Hastings Cutoff
  * Patty Reed descendants
  * Genealogy
  * Article by Elitha Donner Wilder descendant
  * Donner Party songs
  * Donner Party musical (!)
  * and more

Over the next weeks I'll be writing about these and other topics -- stay tuned!

Happy 2012

The New Year is a promising one for Donner Party buffs, with a new movie, books, and an anniversary or two, plus there's some exciting new research coming out. I'll be reviewing and blogging about these as I view, read, or write them up.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year to all.

Eating crow

Ah, the joys of writing! No matter how hard you try, errors inevitably creep into your work. It's dishearteningly easy to make dumb mistakes, and even if you catch them, your edits don't always make it into the published book. My copy of An Archaeology of Desperation has become a correction copy, with penciled notes scattered here and there throughout my contributions to the book. So you dedicated Donner fanatics can make the following changes to your copies:

p. 8, Figure 1.1: The symbol representing Mary Blue, George Donner's first wife, is defined as "female, divorced"; it should be "female, deceased." This error I deny having made -- evidently it's the result of a miscommunication somewhere along the line -- but it's attributed to me, so I'll correct it.
p. 20, Table 1.1: Sarah Keyes should not be listed.
p. 33: The Donner Party "parted from the other emigrants to Fort Bridger to rendezvous with Hastings"; this gibberish should read "parted from the other emigrants to rendezvous with Hastings at Fort Bridger."
p. 39: "Dorothea Wolfinger, about twenty" should be "about twenty-nine."
p. 56: Jacob Donner's family left Springfield "in April 1847" (tch!) should be, of course, "in April 1846."
p. 57: "in utero" should be italicized.
p. 63: the Fourth Relief left the cabins "on April 17, 1847" should be "on April 21, 1847."
p. 299: "the last three months of 1847" should be "the last months of 1847."

There are no doubt more goofs I haven't noticed yet, and I'd change a lot of other things if I could; I had to leave out many details for lack of space, for instance, and admit I could have worded some passages better. In addition, the editorial staff at the U of OK Press did some tinkering with the citations and bibliography that I don't necessarily agree with. It's possible that the other contributors may have corrections, too, I don't know. But hey, the book is out at last; it is what it is.

So there you have it -- I'm taking my lumps in advance of any reviewer's criticisms. Remember, you read it here first!

Donner Party horror flick

Last May I blogged about a new Donner Party movie in the works, a horror film to be called Donner Pass. Well, it's finished and is being shown today at the Eerie Horror Film Festival in Erie, Pa., according to an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The directory, Elise Robertson, claims,“The script is so rich in character detail – each of our teens has a complex and surprising arc – all adding up to a meaningful commentary about human nature.” Umm-humm.

From the description, it sounds like a typical unsupervised-teens-meet-killer-creature scenario. As in 2010's Necrosis, a group of young people go to the Sierra for a ski trip, get snowed in, and run into a murderous Donner Party revenant. The Arroyo Films press release states, "A legend persists that the Donner Party fell victim to an evil curse, a hunger that remains in those mountains to this day – even that George Donner himself is still out in those woods, still hunting."

If you can't make the screening today, you can watch the trailer at the movie website. The film will appear in wide release in January, and shortly thereafter will be available on DVD.

Radio interview

On Thursday, October 20, Jeffrey Callison interviewed three of the authors of An Archaeology of Desperation on Capital Public Radio (KXJZ) in Sacramento. Book editors Drs. Kelly J. Dixon, co-director of the dig, and Shannon A. Novak, a bioarchaeologist who examined the bone fragments recovered, and I were on the air for about 20 minutes. You can listen to the show here.

Naturally, there was much discussion of cannibalism. A lot of people seem to think that the goal of the Donner Party Archaeology Project was to prove or disprove cannibalism, but it started in 2003 as a brief dig funded by television program; the goal was actually to continue previous work in the area and look for a hearth. The results were so promising that the archaeologists came back the next year.

True to form, the Sacramento Bee's coverage of the program asserts that "cannibalism continues to be an unsettled question," but "many experts... continue to believe it did occur to some extent." Oh, yeah? Find me an expert that says it didn't happen.

Oh, well, perhaps somebody will read (and understand) the book.

The Book!

Yesterday the University of Oklahoma Press officially released the new Donner Party book, An Archaeology of Desperation: Exploring the Donner Party’s Alder Creek Camp. Call me biased, but I think it's quite a contribution to the literature of the Donner Party, with lots of new and interesting perspectives on the entire episode, and I hope that readers will agree.

Naturally, it's too soon for reviewers to have plowed through it yet, but you can get an idea of what the book is like from the galley of the introduction, which is available here. DiscoveryNews ran an article about it last week, and the University of Nevada has also issued a press release, since several people associated with the university worked on the project.

You can order it directly from the publisher or at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers.

What the -- ?

Okay, so I find a "Donner Party" hit on YouTube and open this "video" by The Donner Party:



Now, I'm not at all au courant with this sort of thing, so would be obliged if some more with-it reader could explain to me what this is all about.

Bill Maher and the Donner Party

Back in November 2008, when the election was over, I blogged about the frequent use of the Donner Party as a metaphor for the parlous state of national politics. Both liberal and conservative commentators have referred to the other side as a Donner Party ruthlessly savaging their companions in a desperate attempt to survive. One entrepreneur had even made up a Donner political party logo, available on t-shirts, canvas bags, mugs, etc., at zazzle.com.

Last week, humorist/political commentator Bill Maher took it up a notch. On August 5's Real Time, inspired by the recent Congressional debt ceiling debate, he proposed that, like the Republican's Tea Party, the Democrats should have their own radical party-within-a-party, the "Donner Party" -- "We will literally eat each other before we give an inch." He had a lot of fun with the concept, and one fan has even proposed himself as the Donner Party candidate for President. The segment has been posted on a variety of websites, including this this complete version, but caveat viewer: Maher's opinions and language will undoubtedly offend some people.

While I can appreciate the humor of the analogy, it's obvious that none of these people have any clue as to what the real Donner Party was actually about.

Fifteenth Anniversary

Fifteen years ago this month, Utah State University Press published my book "Unfortunate Emigrants": Narratives of the Donner Party. This is a collection of previously unanthologized Donner Party primary sources, some well known, some less so, and a few "new" ones, which I had struggled to locate in my own research. I edited them, annotated them, wrote introductions and biographical sketches, found portraits and a cartographer, and with the help of USU Press's editorial staff (thanks, John!), put together what I considered a respectable contribution to Donner Party scholarship.

My, how things have changed! In 1996 Internet was in its infancy, home computers were far less common, and there was no Google God, no Wikipedia, no instant access to a world of information in palm of your hand. Many of the documents that had been so hard to find can now be found online for free at places like Hathi Trust, Project Gutenberg, and Google Books; sites like Abebooks (my favorite), Alibris, and eBay make it possible to find original editions; and there are a number of print-on-demand outfits that can provide facsimile reprints relatively inexpensively.

The state of Donner scholarship has changed, too. In 1996, Joseph A. King's Winter of Entrapment (1992) was the latest word on the Donner Party, and a number of people so were taken with its revisionist claims that they ignored its bias and innumerable errors. Unfortunate Emigrants was, in small part, a response to King's book, but in a relatively understated way. Back then, Winter of Entrapment was the only significant history of the Donner Party since George R. Stewart's Ordeal by Hunger (1936; rev. 1961), but now we have Ethan Rarick's Desperate Passage (2008) and Daniel James Brown's The Indifferent Stars Above (2009) and can kiss both Stewart and King good-bye.

Unfortunate Emigrants is in print (as print-on-demand) and still sells a dozen or so copies each year. I still consider it a worthwhile compilation, but in the intervening 15 years we've learned much more about the Donner Party, and there are documents I'd like to add, to say nothing of typos to fix, errors to correct, and passages to rephrase. The state of scholarly publication is pretty precarious and a second edition is out of the question for the foreseeable future, but someday...

Archaeology book news

Guess what! An Archaeology of Desperation: Exploring the Donner Party's Alder Creek Camp is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble, and, no doubt, other fine emporia. The publisher is the University of Oklahoma Press, the ISBN is 1806142103, and the release date is October 20, 2011. Dr. Kelly Dixon is just checking the last set of galleys, and then that puppy's going to bed!

This isn't a trade book, so Amazon and B&N aren't offering any discounts off the list price of $34.95. But it's worth it (IMO) for a hefty tome (~350 pages), with a lot of variety (10 chapters, 18 contributors), and a lot of new and exciting information. Here's the table of contents:

• Sufferers in the mountains: the Donner Party disaster / Kristin Johnson
• The aftermath of tragedy : the Donner camps in later years / Kristin Johnson
• Historical perspectives on the archaeology of the Donner Party / Donald L. Hardesty
• An archaeology of despair / Kelly J. Dixon
• A family in crisis : archaeology of a survival camp / Julie M. Schablitsky
• What remains : species identification and bone histology / Gwen Robbins and Kelsey Gray, with contributions by Guy L. Tasa, Ryne Danielson, and Matt Irish
• Man and beast : skeletal signatures of a starvation diet / Shannon A. Novak
• The delicate question : cannibalism in prehistoric and historic times / G. Richard Scott and Sean McMurry
• Under watchful eyes : Washoe narratives of the Donner Party / Jo Ann Nevers and Penny Rucks, with contributions by Lana Hicks, Steven James, and Melba Rakow
• "All remember the fate of the Donner Party" : history and the disaster at Cannibal Camp / Will Bagley and Kristin Johnson
• Concluding thoughts / Kelly J. Dixon and Julie M. Schablitsky
  

Plus there are illustrations, maps, tables, etc.

A note on the cover: the illustration first appeared on the New Yorker of April 24, 2006, which contained Dana Goodyear's article, "What Happened at Alder Creek? Investigating the Donners."

Standard disclaimer: I have no financial interest in the book, alas. Although it will probably sell well (for a scholarly book), there are so many contributors that a division of the royalties would net each author a mere pittance, so the proceeds are being donated to an archaeological organization instead.

New museum

At last work has begun on the new museum at Donner Memorial State Park. The planning started back in 2002 or earlier -- the old museum, which opened in 1962, had become too small for current operations and is not structurally sound or ADA-compliant. The federal grant and the state parks bond that provide the funding have been in place for some time and cannot be used for anything else, so despite California's parlous economic climate, construction has begun.

The present museum will be open during construction.

To read more about the project, see the Sacramento Bee article of June 13, 2011. There's also a concise overview here, but if you like exhaustive details, see the PDF of the General Plan and Environment Report.

Long time, no blog

It's been quite a while since I last blogged -- I came down with an acute attack of RLS (Real Life Syndrome) and got out of the habit. I haven't given up on the Donner Party, though -- all sorts of things have been going on.

Back in October I visited Alder Creek for the first time in ages. It was great to be back! John Grebenkemper and I -- mostly John, actually -- have been checking out some new leads that might help locate the missing Donner camp.

As y'all are aware, the 2003-04 digs at Alder Creek established the presence of a hearth in the meadow, some distance from the "George Donner Tree." The artifacts recovered date it to the mid-nineteenth century, indicate that it was not an Indian or transient camp but a Euro-American domestic camp, occupied for some time, and that the residents were starving. In other words, it can only be a Donner Party camp. Although we don't know if it was George's or Jacob's, one of the brothers' camps remains undiscovered. (There's no good evidence that a third camp, the so-called "teamsters' wigwam," ever existed.)

At any rate, armed with new evidence, John thinks he knows the general area where the missing camp was located. We'll be publishing our findings eventually, and with any luck we might interest another set of archaeologists in excavating at Alder Creek some day.

Tour at Donner Memorial State Park

On Sunday, October 31, Donner Memorial State Park interpreter Gayle Green will guide visitors on a tour of the state park and the Alder Creek campsite. The event will begin at 10:30 and last about two hours. No fee is mentioned in the Sierra Sun article. You can also visit the state park website or call (530) -582-7892 for more information. The date was chosen because it was when the Donner Party (or some of them) arrived at the lake, not because of Halloween, but ask Gayle if she knows any Donner Party ghost stories anyway.

Upcoming October events

In case anybody is interested (not that I expect them to be), I'm going to be on internet radio next Monday night, October 4. Ron Miller is going to interview me on his program The Chosen, which covers a variety of unusual topics such as UFOs, the paranormal, conspiracy theories, and so on. (Cannibalism is sufficiently outré to merit inclusion, I'd think.) Ron got the idea after last spring's "no-Donner-Party-cannibalism" brou-ha-ha, did some research, and contacted me. The interview is to cover cannibalism, the Donner Party, and the archaeology flap, and will take place Monday night, 8:00 Eastern, 7:00 Central, etc., online at Talktainment Radio. There's a toll-free number you can call during the broadcast to comment or ask questions, and if you don't make the live event, it'll be archived on the website so you can listen at your convenience.

I've been meaning to write about this for ages and now it's pretty late: October 9-10 is the 18th Annual Donner Party Hike in Truckee, California. On Saturday there are six guided hikes exploring different areas of Donner Summit, and on Sunday there'll be a guided visit to Alder Creek. There's a $45 fee for each hike and a $15 fee for the Alder Creek tour. For more information, visit the Sierra Nevada Geotourism or Truckee Donner Chamber of Commerce websites.

It's been a while...

Things have been a mite slow on the Donner Party front lately. I continue to research -- Ancestry.com has just added the 1852 California State Census to their online databases, so I've been tracking down Donner Party survivors and rescuers, or trying to -- some of them are pretty darn elusive. Some are right where you expect them, while others show up in surprising places. Baptiste, for instance, was living in Sonoma in 1852, or maybe he just happened to be there the day the census-taker came by. George Donner was over in Solano County -- he was there in the 1860 census, too. I found Philippine Keseberg and her two girls in Sacramento, but Louis isn't listed with them. Same with Flavilla Eddy -- she and the kids were in Santa Clara County, but where was Will? And Patrick Dunn, an obscure member of the Second Relief, was down in Santa Barbara County making a living as a monte dealer.

You may also have seen the Donner Party around the web lately -- the political metaphor has been making the rounds again, this time equating the Tea Party and/or Republicans with the Donner Party. This is a vile slander. I don't care about the political parties, they can fend for themselves, but I detest the image of the Donner Party as bunch of maniacs ripping at each other in a frenzied struggle to survive. Didn't happen, folks!

50 years ago

Fifty years ago today, construction crews working on Interstate 80 along the north side of Donner Lake inadvertently started a huge wildfire on Donner Ridge. Whipped by winds, it roared eastward. Firefighters stopped the blaze from destroying the historic Donner family camp at Alder Creek, however, by bulldozing a line in time to protect the area. Consequently, when three years later Highway 89 was completed and the site had become the Donner Camp Picnic Area, the (alleged) George Donner Tree still stood, and continued to stand until its top fell off about 1996, leaving the snag that remains today. (See the article in today's Sierra Sun for more about the fire.)

The Lincoln Muster Roll

This morning, July 19, 2010, The Papers of Abraham Lincoln has announced the discovery of a new Lincoln document, a muster roll of Captain Jacob M. Early’s militia company from the Black Hawk War. The document is interesting because of its early date (1832), unusual nature (Lincoln filled out only part of the document – the rest is in another hand), and especially because of its history: the muster roll survived the Donner Party.

In the summer of 1832, Early commanded a company of volunteers from Sangamon County, Illinois, which included Abraham Lincoln (Private No. 4 on the list) and James F. Reed (No. 5). At some point after the unit disbanded, the roll came into the possession of Reed, who was a friend of Early’s and an administrator of his estate.

The story of the roll’s subsequent history is pieced together from two separate newspaper articles published 10 years apart. According to what Patty Reed Lewis told their authors, her father took a number of documents with him when he set out for California, including the roll and other papers from the Black Hawk War. In September 1846, after the disastrous crossing of the Great Salt Lake Desert, Reed was compelled to abandon two of his wagons. He cached their contents, but his wife saved the papers and other heirlooms, carrying them in a small carpet bag. The following February, when the First Relief rescued Margret Reed from the Donner Lake camp, she again saved the documents, this time carrying them in her bosom. These details are from a 1909 article about Lincoln by Edwin A. Sherman and from Evelyn Wells' 1919 series of articles about the Reeds and the Donner Party. Both appeared in the San Francisco Call and used facsimiles of the Reed papers as illustrations.

I first learned of the muster roll's existence about 1995, when I discovered the Wells article. It was a great story, but was it true? I had no idea, so I filed the information away for future reference. Over the years more details turned up: the roll was not among the Reed papers at Sutter’s Fort, as I'd assumed; I found the the Sherman article; discovered that the elusive Black Hawk War documents were at the California State Library; and eventually stumbled on the Papers of Abraham Lincoln website. Last February, around Presidents Day, I started to blog about Lincoln and the Donner Party and revisited the Lincoln papers website. There’s a form you can fill out online to report possible new Lincoln documents, so I gave as much information as I could and hit “send.” After a few weeks I got a phone call acknowledging receipt of the information, and a few weeks after that a call from Dan Stowell, the director of the project. After due investigation and analysis, the roll passed muster – the handwriting, or rather, part of it, was identified as Abraham Lincoln’s. Dan told me that this is one of the oldest Lincoln documents in existence and that only about a dozen predate it.

But I never did finish that blog about Lincoln and the Donner Party.