Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West- Blogpost #4

Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West- Blogpost #4
          Reed made use of his time by joining the war between Mexico and America over Mexican territory. He became an officer in the small battle and once in a while he would ted to his land for his family when they arrive. During this time, the Donner party were suffering. Lice appeared and one year old Harriet McCutchan was the most affected. She would scratch until she bled so the adults tied her arms to her sides; they had to block out her screams from their ears. The whole party were starving from lack of food and people began to died every 2 or 3 days. The survivors didn’t have enough strength to bury them in the ground, which was under a few feet of snow, so they covered them with the snow. Out of the five dogs the Reeds had, only one lived so they killed it and ate it  for temporary food. Starvation was getting to the party now and they wished that hope came soon. By mid- January, the Forlorn Hope party had arrived at Johnson’s Ranch; the place was too small to mount a rescue team so they had people from Sutter’s Fort to assembly it. About three weeks after the Forlorn Hope arrived, the rescue team left to the peaks. In about two weeks, they arrived at the cabins to find that no one greeted them. They called out and were confronted with the emaciated emigrants. This was only the rescuers’ first stop because they had to travel to Alder Creek where the rest of the group was staying. The returned trip was tomorrow and about half of the party was unable to travel. Before when the Forlorn Hope was created, it consisted of young adults while the other adults stayed to watch over the children; now it’s the opposite because this group was mostly made up of children and teens. The rescue group left the sick and the weak at the cabins. The rescue group was also struggling as they descended because they began to run out of food. A few more people died while they were walking down and even their situation was becoming desperate. When the rescuers left, the remaining group left behind began talking about eating the dead, though they didn’t do it yet, as if saving this opinion as their last resort. While the rescue group was heading back down, Reed was assembling his own rescue team. Selim Woodworth volunteered for the job of making another rescue group after Reed and they began to plan. On February 23rd, Reed’s group mounted up the mountain. They met up with the returning group and shared food. Once hearin that there were more people at the cabins, Reed urged his men to save the rest and the survivors to continue down. At the camps, the remainers were going crazy. Their last source of food was lying out in the snow and it was unknown on who took a knife, but they took the knife and went out into the snow. Meanwhile, the survivors heading down made it to Johnson's Ranch on March 7th and were treated. Back to the camps, what the remainers didn't know was that Indians were watching them since their climb up the mountains. They thoguht that the emigrants were inhuman but their fear turnned into sympathy and they left 5-6 roots as food; they didn't appear in front of the party again. The Reed rescue party were desperate to arrive at the camps as soon as possible because their quickness could save a few more lives; even though they were exhausted, they didn't want to waste time. When they arrived at the camps, they also thought that everyone was dead since no one greeted them. They saw a guresome sight; butcher corpses, bones, and skulls laid around. Well, this was the sorry according to Reed and his men nine months after the rescue. So the rescue went around and gathered people who were strong enough that could travel down the mountain. The next morning they led down seventeen people, most who were children. Reed left three men with the remaining fourteen people at the camps. Even though Reed's group left with some of the survivors, they were low on food quickly. To make matters worse, a blizzard appeared and they had to camp. The storm disabled them from hunting and staying out for more than ten minutes so the only thing they could do outside was to gather wood for their fire.

"Margret Reed told her children that when she and Levinah Murphy removed Milt Elliott's body from the cabin, they were so weak they had to drag it by the hair" (Rarick 158).

           I chose this quote because it struck me as odd and a bit harsh. Milt Elliott was an employee of the Reeds family and he was so close to Margret that he would called her "Ma". Now after his death, the person he called Ma is dragging his corpse by his hair. That was the harsh part but when I read over the part "drag it by the hair", I had to read it over. Reed had just described Elliott not by "him", but by "it" instead. It made me think for a while about it this was a typo or just on purpose. Just this one word made Elliott seemed like a thing instead of a human, and maybe it was a sort of foreshadowing for the future because when the Donner party does eat their dead companions, they probably forced themselves to think that they were gnawing on the flesh of something and not someone