FORLORN HOPE: The Donner Party--January 12, 1847

One hundred and sixty-plus years ago this week the sixty-some members of the desperate Donner Party were counting on the snowshoers who had left for the Pass and Sutter's Fort on December 16. The “Forlorn Hope” group, as it was known, had been gone for three weeks, but no rescuers had arrived back from California.

Forlorn Hope Struggles West
The pioneers at the Donner and Alder camps didn’t know it, but the snowshoers were still struggling to escape the mountains. But an extended period of cold, fair weather during early January had given the ten surviving snowshoers (five had died) a chance to find their way down the tortuous Sierra west slope.


The group had followed the North Fork of the American River westward. It is in a rugged canyon more than 1,000 feet deep. At one point where the river turned south, they were forced to climb up from the canyon bottom and over a ridge to the west. The terrain was so steep and rocky that the emigrants pulled themselves up by shrubs growing in crevices. From the top of the ridge they got their first glimpse of the green Sacramento Valley, still many miles away.

The snowshoers were battered and starving. Their toes were black and their feet were swollen and bloody from repeated frostbite. Their boots and moccasins were falling apart so they tied fragments of blanket around them. Jay Fosdick, weak and snow blind, had fallen behind the others, but he managed to catch up each night.

Finally, the survivors stumbled down a hill and out of the snow. They were so hungry they started a fire and took, toasted, and ate the rotted, leather thongs from their snowshoes.

In their desperate flight to get to help, as the weeks worn on, members of the group ate the flesh of their dead companions, as they died one by one. When all of this grisly fare was gone, William Foster, delirious and crazed with hunger, suggested killing the group’s two Miwok Indian guides, Luis and Salvador. Luis and Salvador had come up from Sutter’s Fort in November with Charles Stanton in an effort to rescue the Donner Party. William Eddy was against the plan and he told the Indians to flee while they could. They did, heading downhill into California.

Second Week in January 1847
By the second week of January, the snowshoers were out of food of any kind, so William Eddy and Mary Graves took a flintlock rifle and set out ahead of the others to hunt down a deer. The group was below the snow line and signs of game had become common.

Sarah and Jay Fosdick, William and Sarah Foster, Amanda McCutcheon, and the recently widowed Harriet Pike, were exhausted and remained behind. Two miles down the trail Eddy observed crushed grass where a deer had recently rested. The two crept along silently until at last they sighted an emaciated buck about 80 yards away, but Eddy was too weak to hold and sight the heavy weapon.

After two failed attempts to aim the rifle, Eddy was finally able to raise the gun vertically and as he slowly lowered the muzzle to track past the deer, he pulled the trigger and wounded it. Eddy staggered after the animal, overtook it, and killed it with his pocketknife. It was too far to carry any of the meat back to the others, so he and Mary Graves built a fire, roasted some of the venison, and filled their bellies for the first time in weeks. That night, back on the trail, Jay Fosdick died of exhaustion. Now there were only seven pioneers left.

When Eddy and Graves returned to the group the next day with the deer meat, the remaining survivors were eating Fosdick’s corpse. They were all delirious.

A few days later, the still-struggling pioneers came upon Luis and Salvador lying helpless on the trail. The Indians had been without food or fire for days. Once again William Foster suggested killing the Miwoks for food, and this time Eddy was unable, or unwilling, to stop him. This is the only known instance of a Donner Party member killing a human being for food.

Editor's Note: This installment is #28 in an exclusive, weekly series tracing the actual experiences of the Donner Party as it worked its way into American history. Mark McLaughlin, a weather historian and photographer, who lives on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, wrote the series for Tahoetopia. The Forlorn Hope picture is by the author; the Foster portrait from the Sutter's Fort Archive. Copies of all the installments can be found in the Tahoetopia archive on the Home Page under Donner Party.

“The Donner Party: Weathering the Storm,” was recently released by Mark McLaughlin. It offers a fresh and unique weather perspective on the Donner saga. The book is now available at local, North Shore bookstores or at www.thestormking.com.

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