Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 182

Here are excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny," by Michael Wallis.

The story of the Donner Party is a long and complex account of how a group of people from varied backgrounds, stratified in age, wealth, education, and ethnicity, followed their different dreams. Out of necessity, they were made to unite and battle against the unknown—weather, nature, and finally life and death. Their story has come to symbolize the Great American Dream gone awry. The Donner Party’s fate highlighted the ambitiousness, folly, recklessness, and ruthlessness that marked the great expansionist westward movement. The party becomes a microcosm of the United States which, while busily consuming other nations (Mexico and Indian tribes) that stood in the way of westward migration, had the potential to consume itself. This Gothic tale of cannibalism draws a real parallel between individuals consuming flesh and the desire of a country to consume the continent. 

Some members of this party of trail-weary pioneers became victims of their own greed. Their story is a frightening reminder of what could be. Were it not for a few wrong turns, bad directions, and fierce winter storms, the Donner Party would have been an unremarkable wagon train. But as it happened, it became a cautionary tale of Manifest Destiny and an unforgettable calamity.

Personal motives of the emigrants varied. Some planned to build permanent homes or farms, but others hoped to make or enhance their fortunes and return east. A few of the younger single men saw the journey into the unknown as the adventure of a lifetime. The bulk of the Donner Party, however, was composed of people who left the country of their fathers to dwell in the land they sincerely believed their children were destined to inherit. They were vivid examples of those who live in the future and make their country as they go along. They found that in pursuing what came to be known as the American dream, nightmares are sometimes the consequence.

The children of the Donner Party never forgot what it was like trying to survive in their prisons made of snow. They had no interest ever again in snowball fights, building snowmen, or riding in a horse-drawn sleigh beneath a winter moon. For them, freshly fallen snow was no longer beautiful. It was menacing and loathsome. The children retained many of their memories—both good and bad—from their experiences on the wagon trail and in the Sierra camps. Surprisingly, many of the children did not repress the times of trauma.15 What they recalled was not always accurate and often was influenced by the memories of others. Yet often even a seemingly simple moment was never lost but was tucked away and shared many years later.

It had been more than two months since any of them had eaten a complete, nourishing meal. Many of them showed the classic signs of starvation. They grew weaker and frequently felt dizzy as their fat reserves and muscles were depleted. The simplest tasks became difficult. Diminished circulation caused feet, ankles, and hands to swell. With continued weight loss, the emigrants experienced painful constipation followed by uncontrollable diarrhea. Their immune systems broke down, which made them susceptible to various infections.

Soon, they experienced disturbances in heart rhythm, severe muscle pain, listlessness, apathy, insomnia, and hallucinations. When they slept, the emigrants dreamed of food and eating large feasts. They were miserable in body and mind, knowing it would be a painful death marked by extreme discomfort and the loss of all bodily functions. Not so well known was that many people who starved or froze to death succumbed to a resulting infectious disease and went into cardiac arrest at the end.

All of them knew the end was near. Their confused minds raced in search of a survival plan. It was uncertain how many of the emigrants came up with the final solution. It must have crossed the minds of more than one. Finally, someone—likely Patrick Dolan—put the unthinkable into words. For the party to survive, extreme action had to be taken at once. Someone had to die so the flesh could be used to sustain all the others. Even if they had thought of it, hearing those words must have been shocking. That would be the ultimate taboo—cannibalism.

Members of the snowshoe party fell silent. Who would be the sacrificial lamb? Who would act as executioner? What would be the manner of death? Could they bring themselves to eat from a human body?

Many years later, the survivors spoke little about the cannibalism, and several of them vehemently denied that it had ever happened. But there was no denying that on December 30, 1846, the snowshoers, bearing packages of dried flesh, departed the Camp of Death.  Not one of them turned to look at the remains of their four companions whose deaths had saved their lives.

What made the Donner Party so distinctive was that this group of people had originally set out to civilize what they saw as a barbaric land. The acts of survival cannibalism refigured their story with a cruel twist—the civilizers themselves became savages.