Donald L Hardesty - The Archaeology Of The Donner Party

Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in History and Humanities : Series Editor Jerome E. Edwards

University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada 89557 USA
Copyright 1997 by University of Nevada Press
All photographs and illustrations 1997 by Donald L. Hardesty, unless otherwise noted
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Book design by Carrie Nelson House

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hardesty, Donald L., 1941
The archaeology of the Donner Party / by Donald L. Hardesty, with contributions by Michael Brodhead... [et al.].
p. cm. (Wilbur S. Shepperson series in history and humanities)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87417-290-X (cloth)
1. Tahoe, Lake, Region (Calif. and Nev.)Antiquities. 2. Truckee Region (Calif.)Antiquities. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)Tahoe, Lake, Region (Calif. and Nev.) 4. Excavations (Archaeology)CaliforniaTruckee Region. 5. Donner Party. 6. Overland journeys to the Pacific. I. Brodhead, Michael J. II. Title. III. Series.
F868.T2H27 1997 96-46836
979.4'38dc21

ISBN-13: 978-0-87417-661-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-87417-366-6 (ebook)

Many people and organizations contributed to this book. To all, I offer my deepest appreciation. Fritz Riddell, then of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, started me on the archaeological journey into Donner party history by piquing my interest in the Murphy cabin site. The National Geographic Society provided financial assistance with Grant Number 2814-84. Warren Beers and the staff at the Donner Memorial State Park made our lives easier and offered logistical support. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the field school students, field supervisors, staff, and volunteers who worked on the Murphy cabin site: Rick Morris, Susan Lindstrm, Jack Lagoni, Rolla Queen, Terry Satathite, Mary Panelli, Judy Knokey, Nancy Sikes, Leslie Hill, Grace Fuji, Barbara Sutherland, and Carrie Smith. Many other people contributed to the project. Of these, the following deserve special mention: Sheilagh Brooks and Richard Brooks (University of Nevada, Las Vegas); Amy Dansie (Nevada State Museum), Richard Ahlborn (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History); John Cordine; Martin Rose; William Frank (Huntington Library); the staff of the Bancroft Library; the staff of the California State Library; the staff of the Nevada Historical Society; Michael Brodhead (National Archives); John Foster, Robert Macomber, Norm Wilson, John Rumming, and Lee Motz (California Department of Parks and Recreation); and Jerold M. Lowenstein (University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco).

Richard Markley of the Tahoe National Forest encouraged and made possible the archaeological research at the Alder Creek site. The Tahoe National Forest supported the work with Participating Agreement Number 630154. Carrie Smith (Tahoe National Forest) helped immensely with the logistics of the project. Many field school students, field supervisors, staff, and volunteers worked at the Alder Creek site: Susan Lindstrm, Arlene Amodei, Gary Bowyer, Tom Cates, Hershel Davis, Mick Sterling, Cynthia Peterson, Sujata Halarnkar, Sherry Reed, Carol Lindsay, John McKenzie, Pharalee Travis-Pawelek, Marvin Pawelek, Sondra James, Jill Jackson, Bonnie Wilson, Jeanne Albin, Barbara Mackey, Gayle Kromydas, Kellye Vaughn-Gabbert, Janet Shim, Stephanie Wigger, Ava Hahn, Barbara Simmerman, Patee Clark, Donald Griever, Warren McMillan, Florence Rygg, Pat Breckenfeld, Lee Manning, Edith Lasswell, Rick Stafford, Bill Manning, Richard Kraushaar, Ruth Everingham, and Angela Edington.

I also thank Richard Markley and Donna Day (Tahoe National Forest) for organizing and managing the PIT (Passport in Time) metal detector survey of the site in 1993. PIT field supervisors, staff, consultants, and volunteers who worked at the site include Susan Lindstrm, Leslie Steidl, Deanna Wood, Jan Prior, Sally Metcalf, John Damann, Cheryl Bradford, Priscilla Peterson, Gayle Green, Bruce Steidl, Jack Shipley, Mick Sterling, John McClure, Beppie McClure, Jerry Reddig, Eloise Houston, Chester Zorecki, Dorothy Hildreth, Darryl Nelson, Bob Livesay, Chuck Adams, Nancy Daily, Doris Landberg, Eugene Painter, Rosmarie Mitchell, John Ebel, Hazel Livesay, Jim Hallett, Arlene Amodei, John Roggero, Dolly McClure, Hal Apperson, Frank Williams, Connie Williams, John Tolar, Dorothy Tolar, and Buck Amodei.

Finally, I thank the Nevada Historical Society; the Oregon-California Trails Association; Colonel Charles Graydon and John Corbet for their valuable advice; Norm Wilson; Don Wiggins for allowing me to use his transcription of an emigrant diary; Peter Goin (University of Nevada, Reno) for his two photographs; John Betz (Tahoe National Forest) for his artistic rendering of the reconstructed Murphy cabin; Karen Laramore and Susan Hardesty for the illustrations; C. Lynn Rogers (University of Nevada, Reno) for identifying the buttons; Olive Jones (Canadian Parks Service) for identifying the glass bottles; George Miller (Greiner and Associates) for identifying the ceramics; Glenn Farris (California Department of Parks and Recreation) for identifying the coin from the Isle of Man; Lester Ross for identifying the beads; Harold Klieforth (Desert Research Institute) for climatological information; and Kristin Johnson (Salt Lake Community College), the late Joseph A. King, and Jack Steed, who made me aware of relevant information contained in documents. To those I have overlooked in these acknowledgments, and Im sure there are many, I offer my apologies and a belated thanks. Finally, I thank my wife, Susan, for her encouragement and patience in bringing this book to a close.

In the winter of 18461847 nearly half of a group of emigrants traveling overland on their way west to California perished after being trapped by snow in the high elevations of the Sierra Nevada (Figure 1). The survivors lived by eating the boiled hides of their oxen, their pet dogs, wild mice, and anything else edible; finally, they cannibalized their dead. Written accounts of their ordeal appeared shortly afterward, and the tragedy became one of the best-known sagas of the nineteenth-century American West.

Eyewitness accounts of the Donner partys ordeal are not abundant. Perhaps the best known is the diary kept by Patrick Breen, a member of the party, at the mountain camps between November 20, 1846, and March 1, 1847, when he was rescued. there. No emigrant accounts mentioning the campsites have been found for 1847 and 1848, however, because most of the overland emigrants went to Oregon and Utah in those years rather than to California. Military records help to fill the gap. A detachment led by General Stephen Watts Kearny passed the campsites on June 22, 1847, on its way east from California to Fort Leavenworth, and its members not only recorded what they saw there but also buried some of the Donner party dead. Most of the surviving emigrant diaries that mention the winter campsites of the Donner party were written by California forty-niners. In 1850, most California emigrants took the Carson River route. Some did travel along the Truckee River route, however, and a few of their diaries mention the campsites.

Secondary histories of the Donner party tragedy began to appear soon after the event. In 1848, Edwin Bryant, who came to California in 1846, published