TOWARDS CALIFORNIA: the tragic Donner expedition
TOWARDS CALIFORNIA: the tragic Donner expedition
by Kyt Lyn Walken
[Instructor and Official Representative of Hull’s Tracking School, Conservation Ranger certified by Conservation Rangers Operations Worldwide, Columnist for American and English newspapers]
Wendy:
Isn’t this where the Donner expedition was buried in the snow?
Jack:
I think it’s further west of the Sierra.
Wendy:
Oh!
Danny:
What was the Donner Expedition?
Jack:
They were a group of pioneers who moved around in caravans. They remained trapped in the snow for a whole winter, in the mountains. They resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.
Danny:
Does that mean they ate each other?
Jack:
They had to, to survive!
Perhaps in the dynamics of the whole vision of a masterpiece of cinema such as Stanley Kubrick’s Shining this quote has gone unnoticed by most people. So much so that it is a ruthless story, as often are those of survival. Even this story, as in the case of the first article (LINK) dedicated to Christopher Knight, faces specific choices. Not the desire for a solitary life, made of renunciations of the daily surplus, synonymous with intimate malaise, but of ardent hopes for a better future, both economic and religious, in that state and for many, perhaps for everyone, in those years (spring of 1846), represents the Promised Land: California.
A booklet had paved the way: “The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California” by Lansford Hastings: small compendium on how to reach the desired destination through the Great Basin and the Salt Lake Desert. There was only one problem: those last hundred miles (almost 160 km) that crossed the Sierra Nevada. A great nuisance if it started to snow.
April 16, 1846: 500 wagons from Springfield, Illinois join and form a long caravan. They are large families, like daughter Reed – the undisputed leader of the expedition – which has thirty-two members. There are also older people and children. They have food, supplies, chests, beds, furniture and furnishings of all sorts with them in order to start a new life. On July 5, I’m in Fort Laramie, Wyoming. August 4th in Echo Canyon, Utah. From August 30 to September 3 they laboriously cross the Great Salt Lake, losing oxen and starting to see the certainty of reaching their destination wavering through the shortcut indicated by Hastings in his manueletto. Its own tracks, now dating back to previous weeks, are difficult to follow, and significant internal disagreements had now begun to wear down the unity of the group, which is found near the Truckee river at the beginning of winter, after having crossed unimaginable steps for such an expedition. The attempt to set up a makeshift winter camp, together with the decision to send some members for help, seems to be the only possible decision.
The rest of the story is summarized in the initial quotation from the film Shining, and it is not for me to tell macabre details of a cruel and cruel affair: only 48 people are rescued after three rescue expeditions have been activated from California.
The story of the Donner Expedition is, in some way, the daughter of that time: many of the people involved, of wealthy extraction, had no notion of survival, yet they managed, feeding first on their own pack animals, then trying to hunt, also resorting to snow and boiled leather belts, up to the tragic end. They did not have the pemmican with them, so well known in polar expeditions.
For those wishing to learn more, I recommend two books:
“The devil on the Sierra” by Angelo Solmi
“The Hunger – The Hungry” by Alma Katsu
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