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Wallis - The best land under heaven: the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny

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Wallis The best land under heaven: the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny
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Introduction : 1846 -- Prologue : Donner Lake, June 6, 1918 -- One. Call of the West. 1. A migrating people -- 2. The best land under heaven -- 3. Gray gold -- 4. Snake heads -- 5. California dreaming -- 6. The bold plunge -- 7. Wagons ho! April 1846 -- 8. Farewell, April 14-15, 1846 -- 9. Independence bound, April 15-May 10, 1846 -- Two. The journey -- 10. Queen city of the trails, May 10-12, 1846 -- 11. Indian country, May 12-18, 1846 -- 12. Soldier Creek, May 19, 1846 -- 13. The others, May 20, 1846 -- 14. People of the south wind, May 21-24, 1846 -- 15. Alcove Spring, May 25-29, 1846 -- 16. The rhetoric of fear, May 30-June 2, 1846 -- 17. Ebb and flow, June 3-7, 1846 -- 18. On the Platte, June 8-10, 1846 -- 19. Life goes on, June 10-15, 1846 -- 20. A letter from Tamzene Donner, June 16, 1846 -- Three. The promised land -- 21. Change of command, June 16-19, 1846 -- 22. Chasing mirages, June 19-25, 1846 -- 23. Sage advice, June 26-27, 1846 -- 24. A sense of urgency, June 28-July 12, 1846 -- 25. Parting of the ways, July 13-19, 1846 -- 26. The Donner party, July 20-28, 1846 -- 27. Betrayed, July 28-31, 1846 -- 28. The Hastings cutoff, August 1-22, 1846 -- 29. The fearful long drive, August 23-September 10, 1846 -- 30. Race against time, September 11-October 4, 1846 -- 31. Blood rage, October 5-20, 1846 -- 32. Perseverance, October 21-30, 1846 -- Four. Out of time -- 33. Snowbound, November 1846 -- 34. Desperate times, desperate measures, November-December 1846 -- 35. The forlorn hope, December 1846 -- 36. Camp of death, December 1846 -- 39. The starving time, January 1847 -- 38. In dire straits, January-February 1847 -- 39. Man on a mission, January-February 1847 -- 40. To the rescue, February 1847 -- 41. The first relief -- 42. The second relief -- 43. The third relief -- 44. The fourth relief -- Aftermath.;Westward ho! For Oregon and California! In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the American dream, this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Now, historian Michael Wallis continues his lifes work of parsing fact from fiction to tell the true story of one of the most embroidered sagas in Western history. Wallis begins the story in 1846, a momentous year of decision for the nation, when incredible territorial strides were being made in Texas, New Mexico, and California. Against this dramatic backdrop, an unlikely band of travelers appeared, stratified in age, wealth, education and ethnicity. At the forefront were the Donners: brothers George and Jacob, true sons of the soil determined to tame the wild land of California; and the Reeds, headed by adventurous, business-savvy patriarch James. In total, the Donner-Reed group would reach eighty-seven men, women, and children, and though personal motives varied--bachelors thirsting for adventure, parents wanting greater futures for their children--everyone was linked by the same unwavering belief that California was theirs for the taking. Skeptical of previous accounts of how the group ended up in peril, Wallis has spent years retracing its ill-fated journey, uncovering hundreds of new documents that illuminate how a combination of greed, backbiting, and recklessness led the group to become hopelessly snowbound at the infamous Donner Pass in present-day California. Climaxing with the grim stories of how the partys paltry rations soon gave way to unimaginable hunger, Wallis not only details the cannibalism that has in perpetuity haunted their legacy but also the heroic rescue parties that managed to reach the stranded, only to discover that just forty-eight had survived the ordeal. An unflinching and historically invaluable account of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny, The Best Land Under Heaven offers a brilliant, revisionist examination of one of Americas most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes.--Publishers description.

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ALSO BY M ICHAEL W ALLIS David Crockett The Lion of the West The Wild West - photo 1

ALSO BY M ICHAEL W ALLIS

David Crockett: The Lion of the West

The Wild West 365

Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride

Oil Man: The Story of Frank Phillips and the Birth of Phillips Petroleum

Route 66: The Mother Road

Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd

Way Down Yonder in the Indian Nation: Writings from Americas Heartland

Mankiller: A Chief and Her People

En Divina Luz: The Penitente Moradas of New Mexico

Beyond the Hills: The Journey of Waite Phillips

Songdog Diary: 66 Stories from the Road (with Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis)

Oklahoma Crossroads

The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West

Heavens Window: A Journey through Northern New Mexico

Hogs on 66: Best Feed and Hangouts for Roadtrips on Route 66 (with Marian Clark)

The Art of Cars (with Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis)

The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate (with Michael S. Williamson)

Copyright 2017 by Michael Wallis All rights reserved First Edition For - photo 2

Copyright 2017 by Michael Wallis

All rights reserved
First Edition

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact
W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830

Book design by Marysarah Quinn
Production manager: Anna Oler
Jacket Design by Cardon Webb
Jacket Painting: Among the Sierra Nevada, California 1868 by Albert Bierstadt / Bequest of Helen Huntington Hull, granddaughter of William Brown Dinsmore, who acquired the painting in 1873 for The Locusts, the family estate in Dutchess County, New York / Smithsonian American Art Museum / Google Art Project

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Wallis, Michael, 1945 author.
Title: The best land under heaven : the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny / Michael Wallis.
Other titles: Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny
Description: New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of
W. W. Norton & Company, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017012937 | ISBN 9780871407696 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Donner Party. | PioneersCaliforniaHistory19th century. | PioneersWest (U.S.)History19th century. | Overland journeys to the Pacific. | Frontier and pioneer lifeWest (U.S.) | Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.)History19th century.
Classification: LCC F868.N5 W36 2017 | DDC 978/.02dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012937

ISBN 978-0-87140-770-2 (e-book)

Liveright Publishing Corporation
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS

FOR S UZANNE ,
MY LOVER, PARTNER ,
AND COMPANION
ON EVERY TRAIL

CONTENTS

T HIS IS THE story of a large cast of disparate characters whose lives intertwine in pursuit of a single actionthe opening of the American West. Much of their quest is revealed through quotations and paraphrase of their own letters and journals.

In telling the story of the Donner Party, many families and individuals emerge throughout the chapters. Not all those characters started with the Donner and Reed families and their hired hands and servants who comprised the original wagon caravan that departed from Springfield, Illinois. To help the reader, I have included a complete list of all members of the Donner Party and a route map.

I have also selected several major figures that had a significant role in the Donner Party drama. The voices and actions of those central characters, along with many secondary characters, are interwoven throughout the book. Although most accounts of the Donner Party portray the members actions as either heroic or villainous, it can be argued that there were no shades of black and white, but only gray.

The canvas for this story stretches westward from the dark topsoil of Illinois across prairies, deserts, and mountains to the foothills of the high Sierras flanking the midsection of California.

This is the story of individuals and families... who they were and how they lived. It is the important and neglected backstory of these pilgrims of Manifest Destiny.

1846

By the 1840sdespite the bounty harvested from the fertile Illinois soilrestlessness crept across the land. Mindful of the severe cholera epidemics and the lingering consequences of the financial panic of 1837, some farmers, like so many more to come, were inspired also by the promise of a richer life. They had heard the call that swept across the nation as fast as prairie fire, clearly expressing the widely held belief that the United States had a mission to expand, to spread its form of government and way of life across the continent.

The catch phrase Manifest Destiny gave the movement a name. John L. OSullivan, a New York publisher, coined this rallying cry in an editorial in the July-August 1845 issue of the Democratic Review when he proclaimed that it was by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty....

On April 15, 1846, some of the early foot soldiers of Manifest Destinya band of emigrants that came to be known in American history as the Donner Partydeparted Springfield, Illinois, headed for the Mexican province of Alta California. The America they were leaving behind was a nation of some 20 million people, including Indians and others held in bondage as slaves. Plantations and farms still predominated, but the surge of cities, the stirring of industry, and the rush of transportation and commerce marked the times. There was no holding back America in 1846.

Historian Bernard DeVoto later called 1846 the year of decision. Not all the decisions proved wise. America was evolving from a struggling new nation into an international force. Only the year before, the sovereign nation of Texas had been annexed and become a slave state. But America wanted morepresent-day California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. So the nation, led by the bellicose and land-hungry President James K. Polkknown to be single-minded and fanatical about acquiring the Westwent to war with Mexico. Before the war ended, the United States had lost two thousand men in action and twelve thousand more to diseasebut in return, it got all that land.

Some political leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln, the new Whig congressman from Illinois, believed the content of the countrys national character had changedfor the worse. But some of Lincolns acquaintances in Springfield did not share those feelings. As more than a million starving refugees from Irelands potato famine came to America, thousands of Americans were eager to become part of what they thought would be a grand adventure.

The Donner Partys collective dream, however, tragically morphed into a collective nightmare. Poor timing, terrible advice, and even worse weather meant that only about half of those who started the journey reached their final destination. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near the border of present Nevada and California, the party ran out of food and resorted to feeding off the flesh of their dead companions and family members. It is this aspect of the Donner Party story that makes it grotesquely fascinating and one of the most haunting to come out of the settlement of the West.

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