Betsey,
I need to tell you what happened after Jacob died.
December 18th 1846
In the clearing, wind and snow swirling around us, George, Leanna, Elizabeth, her older children, Jean Baptiste, Milt Elliott, and I hastily buried Jacob, wrapped in a quilt, in the snow.
George’s eyes were full of tears. “He’d still be alive if I hadn’t talked him into this. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t even want—”
I put my arm around him. “Your brother had the greatest adventure of his life.”
Elizabeth whirled around. “You both told Jacob he’d live out his days in a warm place. We should never have listened to you.” She looked at me with fury. “What were you thinking? You’re a mother. You should have known better. We’re all going to die.”
Leanna was so shocked she dropped her aunt’s hand, and the remark cut me so much I knew there had to be truth in it.
I try not to think about them, but her words burn inside me. Leanna has refused to go to Elizabeth’s shelter since that day, nor will she talk about it.
How I wish you were here to give me counsel and comfort.
Your sister
I
just realized with almost incredulity, Betsey, that you know nothing about these things indelibly seared in my mind.
I know not if my earlier letters wended their way to you, but think some must have. I wrote you and Allen Francis at least a half dozen times on the Trail, once enclosing prairie flower seeds I had dried for you.
I never wrote anyone after we swung southwest from Fort Bridger to take Hastings Cutoff—not that we ever saw an eastbound rider to give letters to. Even if my hands had been free, our minds and hearts were filled with anxiety. I recorded the dead in the Bible. I wrote only sporadically in my journal. Now my pen must do double duty: the particulars for you, dearest sister, the record for the book I planned to publish.
George and I go over it all endlessly. In our heads, at the fire, on our platforms at night. At first I asked him not to ruminate in front of the children, but then he went so many miles away from all of us that I couldn’t bear watching him suffering alone in his head. We talk through every step, but we always dead-end, never can find the certain mistake that brought us here. Fortunately, the little ones show no interest. In the beginning, Elitha and Leanna whispered together after their sisters fell asleep, but now Elitha claps her hands over her ears and goes under her blanket. More than once Leanna has said in exasperation, “What does it matter? We can’t go back and do it over.”
What does it matter indeed. Even if we found an answer
where we could look at each other and say, Yes, yes,
that
was it, it’s not a way out of here. Yet we remain consumed.
I am lucky to have the habit and solace and quiet of writing. Sometimes I too want to clap my hands over my ears when George says one more time as if for the first time, If we hadn’t taken Hastings Cutoff…If we hadn’t spent a whole day for Luke Halloran’s burial…If we hadn’t spent three days in Truckee Meadows…If, if, if…
The other day, George said, “You were right about Hastings Cutoff. I should have listened to you.”
There was a time I might have snapped, Yes, you should have. But what good would that do any of us now? That I was right is bitter comfort.
Still, I must admit, dear sister, and it will not surprise you, anger flashed through me.
Sept 21st 1846
Dear Allen,
I know not if my other letters have reached you, but think surely some have. I wrote you and my sister, Betsey, at least a half dozen times on the Trail, the letters piling up until a horseman coming from the West heading back East was kind enough to carry them with him. I gave three letters to the mountain man James Clyman at Fort Laramie in early July the morning he left. He put them carefully in his pack, leaned down from his horse, and said, “Lansford Hastings has more ambition than sense, Mrs. Donner. Talk to your husband.”
We put our lives into the hands of a false prophet, Allen. He was gone when we arrived at Fort Bridger, the man who promised us guidance on the short, high road to California gone a week already, but off we went, everyone but me in a general rush of good spirits, to catch up with the elusive Hastings. “Where others have gone, we can follow,” they shouted.
But only one wagon train had gone before us, and soon we were forced to leave even those faint tracks and make a new road through the tortuous Wasatch Mountains. We have had bickering from the beginning, but the Wasatch was where—
Betsey, this wrinkled and soiled paper is a letter I began to Allen Francis last September, warning future emigrants not to take Hastings Cutoff. I know not what interrupted me or why I stuck it in the Bible, but there it remained until I found it just now along with a letter just begun to you. I can only hope that James Reed at Sutter’s Fort has sent a warning letter back to Springfield.
A
t almost every campfire, Betsey, one man or another brought out that little red book James Reed waved so enthusiastically in our farmhouse that long ago winter’s evening—“Hastings discovered a shortcut!”—and debated whether to take Hastings Cutoff.
At Fort Laramie, in early July, the mountain man James Clyman, heading east, galloped up to the Reed wagons and shouted, “Where is the noble James Reed who served in the Black Hawk War with Abraham Lincoln and James Clyman?”
Reed greeted him with a big smile and a bear hug, then drew back. “Clyman, you still don’t bathe.”
At the campfire that night, Mr. Clyman said, “Don’t take the Cutoff. I’ve ridden with Hastings. He’s no mountain man.”
“With all due respect, Jim, this is 1846,” James said. “The days of the mountain men are over.”
Mr. Clyman shook his head and said, “Reed, you still don’t listen.”
A week later, a horseman from the West rode down our entire line of wagons, calling out a message from Hastings himself: “I wait at Fort Bridger to personally lead your wagons over my Cutoff.”
I turned to George. “Mr. Clyman said you can’t take wagons through that wilderness. He’s ridden that country.”
“With Hastings to lead us, what could go wrong?” George said.
July 19th, 1846, at Little Sandy, we reached the campfire of decision. We would either continue on the regular Fort Hall road or swing southwest to Fort Bridger to take the new shortcut. I had a very bad feeling. It was late, the men were tense, they had been arguing for hours.
“You can’t ignore that the Stevens Party of ’44 barely got through on the regular route—” the Irishman Patrick Breen said.
James Reed cut him off. “If I have to hear about the Stevens Party one more time, Breen—”
“What about the dry run?” the German Lewis Keseberg said again. “We already have to get women and children across one desert.”
James Reed looked at Mr. Keseberg with uncontrolled disdain. “At worst, it’s only forty miles. Men who fear forty miles belong back East.”
James didn’t see the look of hatred Mr. Keseberg directed at him, though it was clear enough to me ten feet away. With a stick, he retraced the Cutoff across the base of the rough triangle of Hastings Cutoff drawn in the dirt in front of him. “It’s clear as day,” he said again. “We cut across the base here—”
“I think we should take it,” Luke Halloran, a slight, rosy-cheeked young Irishman from Missouri, said again.
I cleared my throat. George didn’t look over at me, but he said, “Remember what Jim Clyman said, ‘Take the established route and never leave it—’”
Ignoring George, James said, “Lansford Hastings himself waits at Fort Bridger to lead us.”
George persisted. “Clyman said Hastings doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“For God’s sake, George, there’s a nearer route,” James said. “There’s no reason to take such a roundabout course.”
“I’m not necessarily against taking the Cutoff,” Mr. Breen said, “but
we should remember one of the Stevens Party of ’44 had to stay all winter in the mountains—”
“Call the vote,” James said.
I cleared my throat again, and then coughed, but George said nothing. He looked as if he were in an agony of indecision. “Mr. Donner,” I said.
A couple of the teamsters snickered; Reed’s eyebrows shot up; George remained silent.
“Call the vote,” James repeated.
“Those in favor of taking Hastings Cutoff say Aye,” Mr. Halloran said.
“Aye!”
James Reed shouted.
“My wife will set down the names,” George said, the first acknowledgment of my presence, though all the men knew I had been there all night, as I often am there sitting on my little campstool outside the ring of men, writing in my journal balanced on my lap. So upset I could barely write, I started recording the vote.
“James Reed. Aye!”
“Luke Halloran. Aye!”
“Patrick Breen from the Auld Sod, now a proud citizen of America, lately of Keokuk, Iowa—”
“Get on with it, Breen,” Reed said.
Breen’s brogue continued unrushed. “—soon to be a child of California, God’s own country itself. Patrick Breen. Aye.”
Mr. Eddy answered without hesitation. “William Eddy. Aye!”
“Lewis Keseberg. Aye.”
“Hardcoop. One last adventure, and then it’s home to Belgium to live with my daughter. Aye!”
George was next in the circle. He looked at the map drawn in the dirt. Looked at the mountain, its top covered with snow. Looked back at the map. Looked everyplace except at me.
“Judas Priest, George, piss or get off the pot,” James said.
“George Donner,” he said. And, after an interminable pause, “Aye.”
I jumped up, words bursting out of me. “How can you even think of leaving the old road and entrusting our lives to a man we know nothing about?”
All the men went silent. George half stood, then sat back down, looked at the ground. I left noisily, hearing the silence behind me.
James Reed broke the silence, “Stanton, you set down the rest of the names.”
“Jacob Donner,” I heard and turned around. Jacob looked at George, but George still looked down.
Jacob mumbled something.
“Was that an Aye, Jacob?” Reed said.
Jacob nodded his head. Yes.
“Charles Stanton. Well, I’m riding with George Donner, so it’s an Aye for me.”
Reed, jubilant, uncorked whiskey.
Inside the wagon, I got into bed, fully dressed, my heart pounding, Mr. Clyman’s words pounding,
Take the established route and never leave it. It’s barely possible to get through before the snows if you follow it, and it may be impossible if you don’t.
An hour later, George climbed under the blanket and reached out for me. I pulled away.
“I’m the one who should be upset,” he said. “You embarrassed me.”
I sat up, livid. “You were embarrassed? You should have been ashamed. James Reed just bullied this through. And you went along with him.”
“Sometimes you go too far—” George began.
“Too far? And may I ask who is setting the boundaries, Mr. Donner?”
“Tamsen, you know I thought about the Cutoff a long time—”
“It didn’t need thinking about. And Jacob just went along with you. It’s
wrong
that women aren’t allowed at the campfire, it’s
immoral.
If we had a vote, there’s no way it would’ve passed—”
“They elected me Captain—”
“Captain? All the Captain does is select campsites and set the morning departure time. Did you endanger us all just to be Captain? Do you always have to be so agreeable? I can’t understand how you—”
George’s voice was cold. “It’s done now. From now on, we’ll be known as the Donner Party.”
I was so upset I couldn’t sleep, Betsey. George was awake too, he tossed and turned.
I lay still as a rock.
The perfidy. How could he? Just that morning, at our campfire, we had been in agreement…
“I’m leaning toward taking the shortcut,” George said.
“After what Mr. Clyman said?”
He looked at the Weber Mountain peaks, capped with snow. “July nineteenth, and look at those peaks. I thought I knew all kinds of country. I’ve seen drought, locusts, even a tornado, but I don’t understand this strange land at all.”
“That’s why we should take the established route.”
After a moment, he nodded. “I guess you’re right. I just want us to get to California the fastest we can. I don’t feel comfortable with this weather.”
Yes, I’m right, I raged inside, and it’s
wrong
that the women don’t have a vote, he knows that.
I knew if I spoke, I would say ugly things.
I lay there angry and afraid.
W
hen I think about Lansford Hastings now, I feel almost detached, someplace in these terrible months his shoulders grown too weak to bear full responsibility for this nightmare.
We prepared carefully. That is some consolation to us. Information about ’44 was widely available, and the great successes of ’45 continued to filter back. Scarcely a week went by in our months of planning without another newspaper dispatch come directly from the new country, and I would be surprised if more than a half dozen of the scores of letters scribbled by those already en route escaped our eager eyes. Allen Francis brought each letter to our reading circle before he even published them in the paper.
Our eagerness was always tempered with prudence, because we of ’46 were the first families on the Trail.
It’s strange, Betsey. Things I hardly thought about in the rush of those days come back now, the smallest detail etched clearly, as if it had been stowed somewhere carelessly in haste to emerge slowly and completely in confinement.
February 1846 Illinois
Outside our window, it was snowing heavily. Inside our cozy farmhouse, George piled more wood on the fire, and set the chairs in a semicircle around the hearth. Allen Francis and I were looking through a new book, I can feel the heft of it in my hands this
second. My sister-in-law, Elizabeth, Elitha, and Leanna put refreshments on the table. They were using my good rose-patterned china. George’s brother, Jacob, was half dozing in an easy chair, as usual.
“What will you read this week, Mother?” Elitha asked.
I held up the book, and read its title, “
Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–44
by John Frémont.”
She wrinkled up her nose.
“This is history in the making, Elitha.”
“I’d rather Dickens,” she said.
Jacob glanced up. “I’d rather my feather bed.”
“We might fight Indians, Uncle Jacob—” Leanna began excitedly.
But Jacob had already sunk back, his mouth gaping open. I wanted to shake him, but I concealed my annoyance and said, “Let’s hope not, Leanna. We’ll wait a few minutes more for Mr. and Mrs. Reed—”
I didn’t see Frances in her nightgown tiptoe to the table, reach for a small cake, and knock off the china cup, but I heard it hit the floor and break.
“Frances!”
Now I see her face crumple, but then, I knelt down, picked up the cup and its broken handle, looked at it with distress.
“You know you’re never supposed to touch my china, Frances. That’s all I have from my mother…”
Frances started to cry.
“Crying isn’t going to fix it, Frances,” I said. “Don’t touch my china again.”
I might have gone on haranguing her, but the door burst open with a
whoosh
of wind and snow. James Reed waved a book and shouted, “Hastings discovered a shortcut!”
Behind James, Margret tried in vain to restrain him. “James, your boots. The floor—”
“No one worries about snow in California, Mrs. Reed,” I said.
“Hot off the presses!” James said. “We can save three hundred miles!”
Then everyone gathered round him, talking at once. In all the hubbub, Georgia and Eliza ran out in their nightgowns and yelled happily with everyone else. Even Jacob perked up.