Итан Рарик - Desperate Passage

The sharp rap of the master of ceremonies' gavel snatched away her reverie. She flashed back to the present, a time when an automobile or a train or even an airplane could carry one across Donner Pass in less time than it might take to walk to the far end of the lake. Two girls dressed in white drew away cords, and a veil fell from the monument.

WAS THE DONNER PARTY, AS THE MONUMENT builders believed, composed of heroes? In the traditional sense of the word hero, some members qualify. Stanton's willingness to return to a company in which he had no family members, especially when McCutchan's illness offered him a ready excuse, offered a sterling example of commitment. Eddy's leadership of the Forlorn Hope notified the California settlements of the party's dire condition and summoned help without which the entire company might have died. Rescuers displayed much valor, especially Stark, whose bullheaded insistence pulled the Breens from certain death.

But more than gleaming heroism or sullied villainy, the Donner Party is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity. The Breens hoarded their larger supply of meat when they deemed it necessary and shared it when they thought they could. Amanda McCutchan abandoned her daughter to the care of near-strangers when she left with the Forlorn Hope, but ultimately it was the Forlorn Hope that summoned help. Jean Baptiste Trudeau stayed to help the Donners as long as he could and left when he thought he might die. Tamzene Donner orphaned her daughters to comfort a husband sure to perish. Margret Reed left behind two of her children to care for the other two. Tojudge such decisions from the comfort of modern life is a fool's errand. The members of the Donner Party did the best they could, which is a form of Everyman's valor.

And therein lies the true lesson and attraction of the tale: They were Everyman. Often, adventure stories feature larger-than-life figures, grand Victorian explorers or indomitable generals or pith-helmeted naturalists resolutely seeking some wondrous discovery. They are tales of men seeking the South Pole or the North, or hunting the fortune of a lifetime at sea, or climbing to the top of the world. Such quests have much to teach us, but so too does the drama of the mundane gone madly wrong. The Donner Party is a narrative of merchants and farmers, of middle-aged parents with children and young couples with dreams, of infants and toddlers and teenagers on the cusp of adulthood. It is a story of American families doing what they have always done—moving west in search of a better life. It is a story of extraordinary deeds born of ordinary devotion.

That is why the most resonant moments of the Donner Party saga are often the quietest, the times when we can see glimpses of normalcy in lives torn asunder. There is no plainer exhibition of that fact than the day Patty Reed finally escaped the interminable snows. She had ridden down out of the mountains on her exhausted father's back and been taken ahead to the camp of one of the relief parties. She was fed a meal such as she had not eaten in months—rich California beef and soft fresh bread, even the almost-forgotten taste of sugar—and then led to a seat by the fire.

No one knew it, but months before, when the family had been forced to abandon one of its wagons on the harsh deserts of Utah, Patty had saved a precious artifact. Her parents told her that nothing could be preserved, but when adult heads were turned, she snuck from the wagon bed a doll that her grandmother had made for her—a tiny wooden figurine three or four inches tall, perfect for the grasp of a small hand, with a white dress and a red shawl and a bun of black hair painted on its head. Patty hid the treasured little item in the folds of her dress, secreting away the talisman through long months of fear and heartbreak, a private friend through an ordeal that called forth from Patty the courage and stamina of an adult more than the playfulness and gaiety of a child.

But now, at the relief camp, the nightmare was over. She pulled the doll from its hiding place and sank back into the lighthearted amusements of youth. She let the firelight shine off the wooden face. She smoothed the dress with her fingers. She laughed and chattered and listened to her companion's imagined replies. "Oh, what a pleasant little hour," she remembered decades later. Writing about the ordeal, it was that memory she seemed to treasure most, not her triumph over tragedy, but her return to the commonplace.

"Little Dolly looks old now," she wrote, "but she is appreciated by Patty as much today in April 1879 as she was in April 1846. You thought Dolly handsome, did you not Mr. McGlashan, when you seen her in San Jose a few weeks ago? My fine daughters and two sons look upon Dolly with feeling and respect for that little piece of wood, for their Mama had it to play with when she was a little girl, and carried it through all her troubles too."

This is a work of nonfiction. The story is true. In any piece of history, however, a writer must weigh conflicting and uncertain sources and make decisions about which are to be credited, and I have done so throughout the book. The events of the Donner Party story occurred in extremely difficult circumstances, involved many people, and often were not recorded immediately. Naturally, perceptions and recollections differed, and frequently the sources do not agree. As a general rule, I have relied most heavily on primary sources written at or near the time of the events, such as journals and letters. Second, I rely on memoirs and letters written years later by individuals who were directly involved. I have tried to place relatively little emphasis or reliance on third-hand accounts.

As with all writers who have recounted the Donner Party story, I created a chronology and at times had to choose among competing sources in selecting specific dates. Although I believe all the dates included in the book are accurate, I recognize that other Donner Party historians might reach different conclusions about specific dates. To preserve the narrative, assumptions must be made.

In places, I have relied on reasonable and obvious speculation to flesh out the narrative. Some things can be assumed. Parents fret about the safety of their children. Little girls smooth the dresses of their dolls. People wave farewell. At other points, I have relied on my own observations or experiences. During my research, I traveled the route of the Donner Party, and often one can still see today what one would have seen then: the heft of Independence Rock looming in the distance, the flat crawl of the Humboldt River across Nevada, the intimidating eastern face of the Sierra. I drew on personal experiences in other ways as well. I know, for example, the feel of a Sierra blizzard—the force of the snow against your face or the staggering, almost fearsome height of the drifts.

Readers familiar with the Donner Party story will note that some names are spelled differently in this book than in most others. In particular, I use Tamzene Donner instead of Tamsen, but also William McCutchan instead of McCutchen and Margret Reed instead of Margaret. Given that nineteenth-century spellings must be deduced from handwritten documents that are often unclear, the exact spelling of a name is sometimes open to dispute. I have reviewed countless original Donner Party documents and have tried to use the same spelling used by the person involved. I thank Kristin Johnson for her excellent research into the spelling of Donner Party names, on which I have also relied, and her willingness to share her knowledge with me.