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	Donner Party is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Misplaced Pages community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Article milestones Date Process Result March 25, 2010 Peer review Reviewed April 4, 2010 Featured article candidate Promoted
	A fact from this article appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 25, 2010.The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the three primary factors to survival in the Donner Party were age, sex, and the size of each person's family group?
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An Archaeology of Desperation

I got the book and am reading through it. Some interesting points to consider adding to the article:

• The condition of the sites following all the rescues. Some of the survivors went back to the sites to see if they could recover their possessions and in the meantime were able to identify some of the dead. News accounts and bureaucratic tidbits (identifying the dead so property could be distributed to relatives or rescuers) could only have been confirmed by members of the Donner Party who knew the deceased. The Breens recorded taking a trip into the mountains to see if they could recover any of their property.
• Conflicting eyewitness accounts state that bodies were buried, found dug up, reburied, etc., either by animals or grave looters up to 1850.
• Regarding questions as to encounters with Native Americans, Patrick Breen and James Reed both recorded encounters with Indians, who were probably Washoe. Breen recorded a single man came to him and gave him fibrous roots. Reed reported the first relief saw Indians on their way to rescue the Donner Party. The book includes a section on Washoe narratives about the Donner Party that were passed down through several generations. Washoe narratives address several encounters in which small groups of Washoe tossed fish, rabbits, roots, and other small offerings of charity to the people in cabins at the lake. Two stories relate the Donner Party members shooting at the Indians, possibly killing one of them. The book points out that the Washoe were, if not the same people who shot and stole Donner Party oxen and horses before they had to stop for the winter, related to them although the Donner members would not have known this. But the Donner Party and the Washoe had several encounters that created distrust between them. The Washoe learned, possibly by visiting the lake and seeing for themselves, that the emigrants were cannibalizing, and refused to interact with them after learning this. After all the members were rescued, the Washoe considered the area tainted by cannibalism and may have cleansed it by burying any remaining bodies, body parts, or artifacts away from the cabins so they could not be dug up again. They may have also buried coins for the same purpose, not sharing the same views on the value of coins as the emigrants.

As for the book's conclusions about archaeological evidence of cannibalism, this is what it has to say (pp. 325-328)

• Historical record (i.e. interviews, letters, first-hand accounts) state that cannibalism occurred on the snowshoe party, the Lake Camp, Alder Creek at some point between February 21 and 28, and on the second rescue.
• The book concentrates its archaeological focus on Alder Creek. They discuss trying to find the right spot in which to dig and acknowledge that they may not be digging exactly where the Donner families camped at Alder Creek, but it's closeby. They find many shards of animal bone and possibly human bone, as well as mid 19th century shot, pottery, and other artifacts. They cannot be sure that all the artifacts they found can be limited to the Donner Party participants. Hundreds of overland emigrants came through the same area during the Gold Rush.
• All the bone they found was preserved by heating. Of the 16,000 bone fragments they found, they were able to identify several types of animal bone, but none were human.
• They conclude several possibilities:

• No cannibalism at Alder Creek took place (what the authors term as a "radical interpretation" of the evidence: "While none of the scholars herein concur with this hypothesis, it remains a valid proposition.")
• They weren't searching in the right place.
• The most probable explanation of the lack of human bones is that the cannibalism at Alder Creek lasted at the most about a week, and consisted of taking organs or small samples of muscle tissue from the deceased and preparing it by cooking, and feeding it to the starving children. The bones that were found at the site had been preserved by heat. "Soft tissue" was taken off the bodies with a knife, instead of the entire bodies being cut apart, dressed, and cooked like deer. The bones of horses and oxen were boiled over and over to glean any fat or nutrition in them. Within the week where cannibalism took place, it was not necessary to re-boil human bones repeatedly for the same reason. Thus, human bones were not preserved because it was not necessary to do so. Therefore, there would be no archeological evidence of this kind of cannibalism to find.

I'm still reading. There is a chapter on the generalities of cannibalism in society and how the Donner Party incident fits into the framework of necessary cannibalism vs. symbolic. I haven't read through it all the way, just skimmed it. I welcome thoughts on any of the issues presented regarding how to improve the article. --Moni3 (talk) 15:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Donner Party comparisons

Posting something here on the comparisons to the Donner Party that are in a book I recently finished reading, called Devil's Gate (David Roberts, 2008), about the Mormon handcart pioneers.

• From page 2: "Unlike the Donner Party, whose story will always remain fuzzy, thanks to a paucity of primary sources, the Mormon pioneer trek is well documented " Bit brief, but I thought it was an interesting comment
• From page 81: "Another Mormon legend has it that the Donner Party was made up of the very men who had persecuted the Saints in Missouri and Illinois. Their terrible end was God's punishment for their sins." Roberts states that the myth is indeed incorrect, but relates how it may have originated: Samuel Brannan, journeying eastwards after encountering the salvage party (this encounter is mentioned in the article), met on 30 June 1847 with the original party of Mormons, led by Brigham Young, that were journeying westwards and would soon found Salt Lake City. The report Brannan gave of the Donner Party's fate is recorded in the diary of one of Young's party, including the incorrect claim that the Donner Party included those who had persecuted Saints.
• From page 255, where Roberts discusses various estimates of the total death toll from the Mormon handcart trails: "...the total mortality count in the last two handcart companies amounts to between about 200 and 240. In contrast, the toll in the much more famous Donner Party disaster of 1846-47 was only from one-fifth to one-sixth the number of deaths incurred by the handcarters. the Mormon catastrophe of 1856 remains far and away the most deadly in the history of westward migration in the United States." This latter point is, I think worth making in the article, as it gives context to the statement that the Donner Party incident was relatively minor in terms of numbers.

Those are the only three substantive references from that book. I thought they might be of interest to those editing this article. There is more on how the later history developed for both tragedies, with one becoming very famous and the other less so, but that is more difficult to add to the articles, and I'm not sure whether it is better put at the 'Mormon handcart pioneers' article, rather than here. I do think readers of either article would be interested in the other one, so hopefully there is some sensible way of working in a reference somewhere in this article to other pioneer trail tragedies, including the Mormon one. Carcharoth (talk) 04:25, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Readers might be interested, but it's not reader interest that dictates what this article covers. It's what reliable sources have written about the Donner Party. While the source you're citing of course does mention the Donner Party, this source is concentrating its focus on the Mormon handcart pioneers.

The first two points you raise--I'm not sure how much clearer this article can be about the many stories and disagreements the survivors had, and therefore, how much historians have to take care to keep all the perspectives and motivations in mind. "Legend has it" sentences, per your second point, aren't appropriate for encyclopedia articles. It's quite a sloppy sentence to suggest that the people (women and children included) who died in the Donner Party kinda deserved it for being dicks to Mormons in Missouri, not that we know for sure they were dicks to anyone, really, so why include this? Also, they deserved it for anything they did? What a shitty point for a source to make to begin with. At most, adding anything to this article would make Samuel Brannan seem like a small-minded religious zealot with no compassion for the horrible shitstorm the Donner Party endured: News of the Donner Party's fate was spread eastward by Samuel Brannan, an elder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and journalist, who encountered the salvage party as they came down from the pass with Keseberg, and spread the news that the members of the Donner Party deserved what they got because they may have persecuted Mormons in Missouri. Eesh.

The first sentence in the Legacy section addresses the overall insignificance of the Donner Party in light of the multitudes of people who moved West and it's really the cannibalism that has attracted so much attention. Taboo=interest. That's adequately explained. Death was inevitable (alas, still is). In some places on the Oregon Trail, each mile was marked by another grave. Everyone who passed over the Oregon Trail no doubt saw these graves. Maybe this tidbit is more appropriate in the Wagon train or Westward migration articles. I just can't see how a sentence can be added that downplays the Donner Party because another event close in distance or time had a higher death toll. It seems like saying I don't know why all this attention is given to these whiny bastards in the Sierra Nevada, just because they had to eat each other to survive, the Mormons lost more people so therefore it should get a mention in this article too. Stupid whiny Donner Party.

I'm in the middle of watching Mr. Plinkett's reviews of the Star Wars prequels, which are pretty funny and spot on. I know you're trying to be helpful, Carcharoth. I'm just thinking in Mr. Plinkett's irreverent language, not trying to poop on your attempts to discuss sources. Of course, this is open to discussion and anyone can participate. Not that I would expect a lot of feedback. You can see several folks pushed to have information about the possibility that cannibalism never took place per the recent publishing of An Archaeology of Desperation, but once I put the summary of what that book covers on the talk page, it's all crickets here. --Moni3 (talk) 16:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

I know you are trying to be helpful too, Moni, but it would help if you didn't put words in my mouth, or misrepresent what I've said here. Why not try and obtain the source yourself and read it before opining on it so trenchantly? I made clear that Roberts said that this was a myth and incorrect, so quite why you are suggesting the wording you are, I don't know. The lack of response to the section you posted above is not my problem, though if you want me to comment there I will.

The point about reader interest is an... interesting one. When I was in the shop at the 'This is the Place' heritage park, where I bought this book (almost exactly a year ago now), I looked at the blurb on the back and thought 'interesting, another account of a disaster that befell a group of pioneers heading west to new lands, just like the Donner Party'. I then expected to find an article on Misplaced Pages on the disaster that befell the Mormon handcart companies, but found instead an article covering the handcart movement as a whole (which is fair enough, I guess). Reading these two articles, and having briefly toured the areas in question, piqued my interest in the subject, and what I'm looking for, I suppose, is an overview of pioneer trail history, and why some aspects of the pioneer trail history became legendary and others didn't.

Oregon Trail (which itself only briefly mentions either disaster, and neither are mentioned in the 'deaths' section) may be a good place to start. But I suspect the reading list at the back of the book I have may be a better resource than the various Misplaced Pages articles in their current states (this one excepted). My point is that reliable sources do compare the two disasters (see here for one example) and they do have sufficient aspects in common (both are companies of pioneers caught by early winter snowstorms in mountains, leading to deaths by starvation) that I would expect both articles to mention the other, even if only in passing, or for them to be in the same template, or the same category.

You may have assumed from what I posted above that I was suggesting that the above be put in the article. That was never my intention. I wasn't entirely sure what was best , and thought it was better to ask first, rather than edit the article directly, though sometimes asking first can be a more painful experience (funny that). I was intending to suggest a link from this article to the handcarts one, and one back here (though a link from that article to this one might already exist), but was not sure how to do it, and didn't want to just add a 'see also' link. Carcharoth (talk) 18:02, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Having thought about this some more, I really don't want to get into a prolonged argument over this. I've already added the Mormon handcart pioneers article to Category:History of the American West, so both articles now have a category in common. There isn't really any category for articles on expeditions caught in snowstorms in mountains (probably too specific anyway, and the only other comparable one I've seen mentioned is the Fremont party, see the John C. Fremont article, the fourth expedition). So the only other thing I would suggest is (ignoring most of what I posted above) to add something about work done comparing the mortality rates in the Donner Party and one of the handcart companies (the last one, the Willie company). I'll post the three sources I have on that in a subsection, and that should be it. Carcharoth (talk) 22:11, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Mortality rates of Donner Party and Mormon handcart company

Three sources on this (all originating from the same basic studies):

• (1) Sex and the Survival of the Fittest: Calamities Are a Disaster for Men, Jane E. Brody, The New York Times on the Web (Women's Health, Special Edition), 24 April 1996
• (2) Page 125 of Human Biogeography (Alexander H. Harcourt, University of California Press, 2012, ISBN 9780520951778)
• (3) From 'New Directions in Donner Party research', specifically Page 115 of The Archaeology Of The Donner Party (Donald L Hardesty, Michael J. Brodhead, Donald K. Grayson, University of Nevada Press, 2005, ISBN 9780874176612), part of the Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in History And Humanities

The earlier study by Grayson is already mentioned in this article. The edition of The Archaeology Of The Donner Party used in this article is an earlier edition. I'm not sure if the section 'New Directions in Donner Party research' is present in that earlier edition or not. If not, possibly some updating of this article could be done. I'm still pondering whether the three sources above justify adding anything to this article or not. I'm tentatively coming to the conclusion that source on the Mormon handcart pioneer tragedy mention the Donner Party more than sources on the Donner Party mention the Mormon handcart tragedy. If anything is added here, it would only be based on the above three source, and would only be the very briefest of mentions (possibly only a footnote). Carcharoth (talk) 22:11, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Luis and Salvator

Scott Lankford's book describes the cruelty of the white settlers in California, and describes the conditions of natives as nothing worse than slavery. Moni3, remarks that L & S who some sources note were shot, killed and eaten, would have been hanged for loosing Stutter's mules. On this Lankford notes that Luis and Salvator must have had numerous opportunities to escape, being young, strong and familiar with the terrain. Lankford hypothesises that the presence of women and children in the party made them chose to stay in the party till "the bitter end". Yet they were shot in the back and eaten by those whom they had been sent to rescue.(page 76) Lankford writes about the silence of Donner Party historians, who fail to acknowledge or discuss these "cold-blooded murders" except briefly. He criticizes modern historians, and gives the example of Frank Mullen's The Donner Party Chronicles: A Day-to-Day Account of a Doomed Wagon Train, which he writes is otherwise "deliciously detailed and meticulously researched" but is brief on the killing of the duo. Mullen mentions "The crime is double murder but no court will ever hear the case. In 1847, Indians are casually killed in punishment for theft or just for sport." I argue that there be a separate section and a mention in the lead. My argument is further strengthened by Carcharoth's comments above regarding the relatively small loss of lives. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:58, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Numbers

The numbers of individuals in the party changed over time, and those numbers have been altered in this article relative to what was in the version that passed FAC. I have deleted the last round of changing numbers from the lead. Eric Corbett do you still have sources and can you rationalize these numbers? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:33, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The numbers did indeed change over time, as you suggest and as the article says, so adding the number "81" to the lead can't possibly be justified. Eric Corbett 16:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Since you have the sources, can you determine if other numbers have been altered over time? I only picked this up because of today's edits on my watchlist. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Where was Fremont?

In the section Donner_Party#Reed_attempts_a_rescue, there's the sentence: "He pleaded with Colonel John C. Frémont to gather a team of men to cross the pass and help the company, in return for which Reed promised he would join Frémont's forces and fight in the Mexican-American War." Other accounts state that Fremont has already left for Santa Barbara by the time Reed got to Sutter's Fort, taking most of the local men with him. That's given as one reason why it took so long to mount a rescue expedition. If someone has the Kristin Johnson book (or a detailed Fremont bio), could you check that? WCCasey (talk) 23:05, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Minor comment on article (edit proposal)

https://en.wikipedia.org/Donner_Party
In paragraph: Disintegration.
Line: The family had eaten all their stores, but the other families refused to assist their children.
Issue: Use of but.
The family had eaten all their stores and the other families refused to assist their children. Trouts2 (talk) 11:48, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, why not do it yourself? The article isn't edit protected... Roberticus talk 21:35, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Wording change reverted

I have reverted this change: (fix; migrants → emigrants; ce migrants → several members of the party) I would not call this a "fix" so much as a preference. IMO, when it comes to a GA editors have no business changing the work of others just because they prefer something to fit their particular style. I find migrant more accurate than the more often used word emigrants, which better describes one who has traveled from a different country.Gandydancer (talk) 11:04, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Or maybe not? Per WP: Emigration is the act of leaving one's native country with the intent to settle elsewhere. Conversely, immigration describes the movement of persons into one country from another. Both are acts of migration across national boundaries. Gandydancer (talk) 11:21, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Agree on the second part (some/migrants). On the first part, my take on it is this: "..was a group of American pioneer emigrants" ... I would change it to immigrants because the sentence establishes them as present in the area being pioneered, so immigrated to seems to follow in my view. If it were saying ".. was a group of Illinois families, then I'd use the emigrants. All that said, using either term beyond the original context of the lede seems forced to me; simply because these aren't people who have left a far off land or native country of origin. Seeing "emigrant" repeatedly just doesn't feel natural to me for people traveling within their own country, and I would change most cases of the word to "pioneers, explorers, travelers, etc". Just IMO. — Ched :  ?  12:44, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Considering all the work done on this article, I'd bet that the editors discussed this thoroughly and came to the conclusion that "migrants" is the best term. That said, to choose "migrants" is AFAIK an unusual choice. Perhaps it can be improved but IMO there is no excuse for changing it without first opening a discussion. BTW, looking back at the discussion put into this article, it is mind-boggling! Gandydancer (talk) 13:12, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. :-) I'm not one to go mucking about with FA pages, I was just thinking out-loud. — Ched :  ?  13:17, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Looking back I see the use of American pioneers as stable at one time. I like that one. Gandydancer (talk) 13:36, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

• Why are they migrants in the first paragraph and emigrants in the second and subsequent ones? I hope you realize that migrants has a specific meaning that is not interchangeable with emigrants. Migrants move to one place during a certain time of the year and another during the opposite time. Immigrants leave their home country and go to a new one, and emigrants move from one area of a country to another. Rationalobserver (talk) 16:44, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I watch over several of Moni's articles. Do you have any objections if I change the wording to Moni's version? IMO the wording used that brought the article to an FA would be the best solution here. I have a great deal of respect for our editors that go through the massive amount of work to bring an article to FA status. Gandydancer (talk) 17:00, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean, did Moni call them migrants? Rationalobserver (talk) 17:02, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

When Moni left the wording was American pioneers. From the articles that I watch over, I know that she carefully watched over her articles. This has been fortunate for me because by experience I have learned that the same things tend to come up again and again, and rather than try a (most likely rather lame) attempt on my own, I refer the editor to Moni's well-thought out reasoning. Gandydancer (talk) 17:18, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, all I'm saying here is that "migrants" is not the correct word, though emigrants and immigrants do migrate, they aren't migrants as they do not move back and forth between two or more places. This is undoubtedly a mistake, and as I said, notice that they are only called migrants in the first paragraph; in the rest of the article they are called emigrants and never migrants, because that term is flat wrong for this. Rationalobserver (talk) 17:22, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I could support a return to pioneers. — Ched :  ?  17:26, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I think dictionary definitions are in order here.

• migrant - a person who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions.
• emigrant- a person who leaves their own country in order to settle permanently in another.

It was fine as it was. J3Mrs (talk) 17:35, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Then why does the article call them all emigrants everywhere except the first paragraph? Rationalobserver (talk) 17:43, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

And if you are, wrongly, using them interchangeably, why was my edit in error? Rationalobserver (talk) 17:46, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Ched and I both like American pioneers, as I believe it was when it passed FA. Will there be any disagreement if I change it to that? Gandydancer (talk) 19:05, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with that, as migrants is currently being used in error. Rationalobserver (talk) 19:09, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

What's Stewart's and Rarick's source material

The article does not seem to indicate that any members of the party kept a journal. So where did Stewart and Rarick's source material come from? Rationalobserver (talk) 16:54, 26 February 2015 (UTC) I se now that Breen kept a diary, but his account is not used as a source in this article. Rationalobserver (talk) 19:01, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Rationalobserver. I think the notes and bibliography, as well as the general methodology, for Rarick's book are pretty clear. You point to the first note from chapter one; you'll see that the second and third notes reference a letter from Tamzene Donner to Elizabeth Eustis, consulted in the archives of the Huntington Library. As for the rest, this is what historians do: they compile sources and create a narrative from them. And I see no evidence of reconstructed dialogue; you, at least, have not provided any. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:14, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, it seems that Rarick's book similar to the Waters' work. Can you please explain why one is forbidden and the other acceptable? Rationalobserver (talk) 17:27, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Rarick

The first note, chapter 1, reveals that Rarick has reconstructed dialogue and settings. This should not be swept under the rug until it's resolved. That reviews are published in reliable sources does not guarantee the book does not contain reconstructed "scenes" as Rarick calls them: "scene around Tamzene: She does not describe the scene around her in great detail. The portrait here is based on various emigrant accounts." Rarick here is explaining that he has reconstructed the scene using generic emigrant accounts not related to the Donner Party. Rationalobserver (talk) 17:48, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Per Rarick (in author's notes): "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". Rationalobserver (talk) 17:52, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Rarick's notes can be seen here, and a quick glance shows that much of this "account" is actually taken from stories about emigrants in general, and not the Donner Party; e.g., Chapter 13, note 7 reveals that the description of the storm is not based on Donner Party accounts, but it's rather a generic and fictionalized telling of what it might have been like. Chapter 15, note 124 reveals that his description of the Donner Party's starvation is based not on accounts from the Donner Party, but on a University of Minnesota study and reports of the conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII, i.e.; it's a fictionalized. Rationalobserver (talk) 18:56, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Why no Morgan or Breen?

• I'm surprised to see that this article does not use Morgan's Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail, Volume 1 as source material, but instead uses Rarick's narrative that draws heavily from it. Same with the Breen diary, which ought to be cited to directly. There are no "according to Breen" or "according to Morgan"s in this article, but as primary source material they ought to have been directly utilized. Rationalobserver (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Excessive and probably inaccurate detail in Familes

I think Familes runs afoul of WP:SUMMARY. Also, Rarick states that "19th century ages are notoriously imprecise".(note 118) Rationalobserver (talk) 18:48, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

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