Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West Blogpost #2

Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West Blogpost #2

            The group had no objections James Reed’s opinion to follow the new route and they began to separate from the main trail. The only one skeptical was Tamzene Donner, who noted that they never met Hastings and all of a sudden they decided to go along on his trail that could decide their fate. They still went on their journey to California, heading towards Fort Bridger to meet with Hastings and follow his group on the trail. Newspaperman Edwin Bryant traveled with the Donner Party and decided to gallop ahead from the main group. His concern was that the wagons’ pace was too slow. He met Hastings and Joseph Walker, an experience mountain man, there at the fort; Walker spoke disapprovingly about the new trail. Nevertheless, Bryant and a few other men decided to take the risk and went along on the new trail. Bryant’s new worry was that his condition and the Donner’s condition were different since single men can avoid hazards while wagons and families cannot. He left a letter with the fort operator with messages and left. The Donner party came nine days later at the fort to find that their promising man had deserted them. Upset, they looked for other routes and found one that would lead them back to the main route with everyone else. There’s some dramatic irony in here because historians founded out that the fort was losing business because the main trail was far off. To keep business coming, they didn’t deliver Bryant’s warning and told the Donner party that Hastings’s trail was perfect to travel on. The Donner party decided to follow the Hastings path again; they had two chances to decide whether or not to follow the main route or Hastings trail, and twice they chose Hastings’s path. Six days after leaving the fort, they found a note from Hastings telling them to find him so he can lead them to a safer path since the one ahead goes through a canyon. Three people, James Reed, Charles Stanton, and William Pike, left to go ahead to scout for Hastings. They found him and leaving Stanton and Pike with Hastings’s current group to recover, Reed and Hastings went back; Hastings broke his word again and instead of leading the Donner party himself, he pointed out a path to Reed with the point of his finger and returned to his previous party. Reed joined back with his party and they began to follow Hastings’s poorly pointed out map. They couldn’t go back and retrace their steps since it would be too time-consuming so they decided to follow Hastings’s new, and barely existed, path. They travel through the canyon, crossed a river many times, and hacked their way through a jungle-like forest. Moving ahead took days and their crossing took two weeks off their precious time. The Donner party knew that they were far behind the main group of emigrants that were heading west but a few parties were even behind them. Two smaller parties joined with the Donner party, which completed all the members in the tragic to come. The party was heading towards the Great Salt Lake Desert, where water was non-drinkable, grass was scarce, and resources were low. In the desert, the rich Reed family that had the most cattle and materials lost it and were lower to a poor family that had to be supported by another. After spending so much time in the wilderness or with each other, the tensions within the party were increasing. Stress sky-rocketed and it burst out into a fight between Reed and Snyder, a person in the party. In a flash of chaos and confusion, Reed stabbed him and Snyder used his ox whip to gash Reed’s head. They were both bleeding but by the end, Snyder died. The party buried him and in a court-like case, the party banished their leader from the party. Reed decided to rode out ahead to return with food for his family and left, accompanied by Walter Herron. They rode out to the point where they ran out of food and became delirious until they met Stanton with another party. He was returning back to the Donner party with provisions, saying that Pike was too sick to make the journey back. Stanton traveled back to the Donner party while Reed went to a fort to bring back more supplies. Along the way, the Donner party had encounters with Indians. Unlike before, when the Indians would have dinner with them, they began to steal cattle and provisions and in a week or so, the Donner party had lost half of their food source. After making it through the desert, they encounter an oasis with much joy.

“They had six hundred more miles to go” (Rarick 66).

            I chose this quote because this was right after the Donner party had passed through the canyon. In this canyon, they spent much time to pass through it. They had to upload and reload their wagons so they could be transported across and cut through the thick forest with families. Single men could quickly go through these obstacles but it would take time for families, wagons, and children to pass through them. Even though the Donner party had only passed this trial, they still had a desert and other unforeseen dangers that lurk ahead.