There is much we do not speak of, Betsey. Fear lies so close to the surface it cannot be fanned.
I am fortunate in that I have always been able to hide my feelings successfully.
Tonight I want to tell you about my sister-in-law, Elizabeth. She and I have never had an intimacy like ours, but we are close in age, and married to brothers. Those things were sufficient to forge a bond, I thought, even though Elizabeth was more interested in cooking than I am in books. “Guess what I cooked today” is how she greeted me daily for seven years. But Elizabeth is far superior to me in patience, a saint really. I could never have lived a second with her husband, Jacob, a complaining, whining man from the day I met him. George used to describe a Jacob so robust in body and spirit that, until this trip, when Jacob blossomed before my eyes, I wondered if it were just something he wanted to believe about his brother. I must admit that I’ve also most unkindly wondered if Elizabeth’s extraordinary patience with Jacob was just gratitude for his presence.
Elizabeth’s first husband, James Hook, and father of her two oldest sons, Solomon and William, abandoned the family in 1834. As modern as Springfield felt itself to be, it was still frontier, an arduous place for a woman alone with a farm to run and two little boys to raise. Elizabeth filed a suit for divorce, and George, who married her sister, Mary Blue, in a double wedding the same day Elizabeth married James Hook, testified on her behalf. Elizabeth married Jacob in 1835. All of this happened before I came to Springfield, but of course, in a small town you soon hear everything. Elizabeth and I have never spoken about her divorce, but I have always tried to convey that my sympathies are entirely with her. George says that, before Elizabeth married James Hook, she was “lively and gay.” And Leanna says that sometimes, when they cook together, Elizabeth laughs. I have never been privileged to see that side of her. Although usually amiable to me, she holds herself private, and there is a brittleness about her. Who can blame her?
I’m sure I wrote you about all the months that Elizabeth and I prepared together for the trip. But maybe I didn’t, and either way, it helps me pass the hours. More important, I find that, when I revisit the past, it often reveals something quite unexpected—too often some humbling or unpleasant truth that seems clear as day now. Those were joyful months of anticipation for me, and for Elizabeth too, I thought. Almost every day on our way back from town, George and I never passed their farmhouse to go on to ours without stopping to show the mail-order packages that had just arrived.
My arms loaded with parcels, Elitha, Leanna, Frances, and Georgia on my heels, I pushed open their kitchen door, “Elizabeth!” George had Eliza astride his shoulders and an armload of bolts of silks, satins, laces, and velvets.
Our niece Mary and four of our six nephews accosted us with noise and hugs. “Aunt Tamsen! Uncle George!”
“Aunt Elizabeth,” Leanna said, pecking her aunt’s cheek at the oven and immediately donning apron and pot holders to help her.
“Look what came!” I said.
“Just the first load,” George said. “I’ll be meeting myself coming and going to town all day long.”
“Guess what I cooked today,” Elizabeth said, handing Leanna steaming pies to put on cooling racks. “Blueberry pies. At this time of year!”
I tore open the first mail-order parcel, filled with bright blue and red calico handkerchiefs, glass beads, brass finger rings, spyglasses…“Peace offerings for the Indians,” I said.
A little chill passed through the room, and Elizabeth’s eyes shot to mine. Indians were one of the Trail’s biggest fears.
“Oh, aren’t you afraid, Mrs. Donner?” Effie, the hired girl, said.
“Mother’s not afraid of anything,” Leanna said, but Effie, eyes wide, continued. “The savages kidnap white women, pass them around…”
“Hush, Effie,” I said. “You read too many penny novels.” Quickly I opened a second parcel addressed to T. E. Donner: filled with watercolors, oil paints, rulers…
“More school supplies,” George said. “Now what is that?”
“That’s apparatus for preserving botanical specimens,” I said.
George turned to the children. “Your mother came into my cornfield looking for specimens. And I’m the specimen she found.”
Elitha and Leanna rolled their eyes good-naturedly: they’d heard this joke before.
I pointed to a box. “Open that one, George.”
Inside the big box was a pair of gleaming leather boots. George beamed.
“Handmade in Boston,” I said. “Size twelve and a half. If we have to ford any creeks, we can ride in them.”
Of course George had to put on his new boots right then. His childlike pleasure gave me pleasure. With the children taking turns riding on his feet, he strode around the room in his new boots. “Wait’ll Jacob sees these,” he said.
“He’s out in the barn with the teamsters,” Elizabeth said. “Wait.” She handed George a half a pie.
George took a big bite and declared, “Elizabeth, you are the best cook in the world. Except for my wife, of course.”
“I set a good table,” I said, “but it pales next to Elizabeth’s.”
Elizabeth beamed and said, “And my apprentice is going to rival me.” Leanna beamed, and George left, trailed by a pack of nephews.
“We’re taking ten pounds of sugar apiece,” Elizabeth said.
“Take twenty,” I said.
“Twenty apiece? We’ll have enough to feed an army. I could make pies every day. Well, I hope you think ten pounds of salt apiece will be enough. Children, keep the ruckus down! Who wants to take pies out to the barn?”
Leanna was whipping cream for the pies, Elitha already immersed in one of the new books. The other children, in happy chaos, adorned themselves with rings and bracelets. “When I finish this, bet I can get more bracelets on my arm than you,” Leanna said to her cousin Mary, who had bracelets up to her elbow. Frances peered at them all through a spyglass.
“I will,” I said, taking the two pies from Elizabeth—
Georgia is whimpering, I must stop.
Betsey,
I need to tell you what happened after Jacob died.
December 18th 1846
In the clearing, wind and snow swirling around us, George, Leanna, Elizabeth, her older children, Jean Baptiste, Milt Elliott, and I hastily buried Jacob, wrapped in a quilt, in the snow.
George’s eyes were full of tears. “He’d still be alive if I hadn’t talked him into this. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t even want—”
I put my arm around him. “Your brother had the greatest adventure of his life.”
Elizabeth whirled around. “You both told Jacob he’d live out his days in a warm place. We should never have listened to you.” She looked at me with fury. “What were you thinking? You’re a mother. You should have known better. We’re all going to die.”
Leanna was so shocked she dropped her aunt’s hand, and the remark cut me so much I knew there had to be truth in it.
I try not to think about them, but her words burn inside me. Leanna has refused to go to Elizabeth’s shelter since that day, nor will she talk about it.
How I wish you were here to give me counsel and comfort.
Your sister
Jan 15th, 75 days in the mountains
I just realized with almost incredulity, Betsey, that you know nothing about these things indelibly seared in my mind.
I know not if my earlier letters wended their way to you, but think some must have. I wrote you and Allen Francis at least a half dozen times on the Trail, once enclosing prairie flower seeds I had dried for you.
I never wrote anyone after we swung southwest from Fort Bridger to take Hastings Cutoff—not that we ever saw an eastbound rider to give letters to. Even if my hands had been free, our minds and hearts were filled with anxiety. I recorded the dead in the Bible. I wrote only sporadically in my journal. Now my pen must do double duty: the particulars for you, dearest sister, the record for the
book I planned to publish.
George and I go over it all endlessly. In our heads, at the fire, on our platforms at night. At first I asked him not to ruminate in front of the children, but then he went so many miles away from all of us that I couldn’t bear watching him suffering alone in his head. We talk through every step, but we always dead-end, never can find the certain mistake that brought us here. Fortunately, the little ones show no interest. In the beginning, Elitha and Leanna whispered together after their sisters fell asleep, but now Elitha claps her hands over her ears and goes under her blanket. More than once Leanna has said in exasperation, “What does it matter? We can’t go back and do it over.”
What does it matter indeed. Even if we found an answer where we could look at each other and say, Yes, yes, that was it, it’s not a way out of here. Yet we remain consumed.
I am lucky to have the habit and solace and quiet of writing. Sometimes I too want to clap my hands over my ears when George says one more time as if for the first time, If we hadn’t taken Hastings Cutoff…If we hadn’t spent a whole day for Luke Halloran’s burial…If we hadn’t spent three days in Truckee Meadows…If, if, if…
The other day, George said, “You were right about Hastings Cutoff. I should have listened to you.”
There was a time I might have snapped, Yes, you should have. But what good would that do any of us now? That I was right is bitter comfort.
Still, I must admit, dear sister, and it will not surprise you, anger flashed through me.
Sept 21st 1846
Dear Allen,
I know not if my other letters have reached you, but think surely some have. I wrote you and my sister, Betsey, at least a half dozen times on the Trail, the letters piling up until a horseman coming from the West heading back East was kind enough to carry them with him. I gave three letters to the mountain man James Clyman at Fort Laramie in early July the morning he left. He put them carefully in his pack, leaned down from his horse, and said, “Lansford Hastings has more ambition than sense, Mrs. Donner. Talk to your husband.”
We put our lives into the hands of a false prophet, Allen. He was gone when we arrived at Fort Bridger, the man who promised us guidance on the short, high road to California gone a week already, but off we went, everyone but me in a general rush of good spirits, to catch up with the elusive Hastings. “Where others have gone, we can follow,” they shouted.
But only one wagon train had gone before us, and soon we were forced to leave even those faint tracks and make a new road through the tortuous Wasatch Mountains. We have had bickering from the beginning, but the Wasatch was where—
Jan 16th 1847
Betsey, this wrinkled and soiled paper is a letter I began to Allen Francis last September, warning future emigrants not to take Hastings Cutoff. I know not what interrupted me or why I stuck it in the Bible, but there it remained until I found it just now along with a letter just begun to you. I can only hope that James Reed at Sutter’s Fort has sent a warning letter back to Springfield.
Hastings Cutoff
At almost every campfire, Betsey, one man or another brought out that little red book James Reed waved so enthusiastically in our farmhouse that long ago winter’s evening—“Hastings discovered a shortcut!”—and debated whether to take Hastings Cutoff.
At Fort Laramie, in early July, the mountain man James Clyman, heading east, galloped up to the Reed wagons and shouted, “Where is the noble James Reed who served in the Black Hawk War with Abraham Lincoln and James Clyman?”
Reed greeted him with a big smile and a bear hug, then drew back. “Clyman, you still don’t bathe.”
At the campfire that night, Mr. Clyman said, “Don’t take the Cutoff. I’ve ridden with Hastings. He’s no mountain man.”
“With all due respect, Jim, this is 1846,” James said. “The days of the mountain men are over.”
Mr. Clyman shook his head and said, “Reed, you still don’t listen.”
A week later, a horseman from the West rode down our entire line of wagons, calling out a message from Hastings himself: “I wait at Fort Bridger to personally lead your wagons over my Cutoff.”
I turned to George. “Mr. Clyman said you can’t take wagons through that wilderness. He’s ridden that country.”
“With Hastings to lead us, what could go wrong?” George said.
July 19th, 1846, at Little Sandy, we reached the campfire of decision. We would either continue on the regular Fort Hall road or swing southwest to Fort Bridger to take the new shortcut. I had a very bad feeling. It was late, the men were tense, they had been arguing for hours.
“You can’t ignore that the Stevens Party of ’44 barely got through on the regular route—” the Irishman Patrick Breen said.
James Reed cut him off. “If I have to hear about the Stevens Party one more time, Breen—”
“What about the dry run?” the German Lewis Keseberg said again. “We already have to get women and children across one desert.”
James Reed looked at Mr. Keseberg with uncontrolled disdain. “At worst, it’s only forty miles. Men who fear forty miles belong back East.”
James didn’t see the look of hatred Mr. Keseberg directed at him, though it was clear enough to me ten feet away. With a stick, he retraced the Cutoff across the base of the rough triangle of Hastings Cutoff drawn in the dirt in front of him. “It’s clear as day,” he said again. “We cut across the base here—”
“I think we should take it,” Luke Halloran, a slight, rosy-cheeked young Irishman from Missouri, said again.
I cleared my throat. George didn’t look over at me, but he said, “Remember what Jim Clyman said, ‘Take the established route and never leave it—’”
Ignoring George, James said, “Lansford Hastings himself waits at Fort Bridger to lead us.”
George persisted. “Clyman said Hastings doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“For God’s sake, George, there’s a nearer route,” James said. “There’s no reason to take such a roundabout course.”
“I’m not necessarily against taking the Cutoff,” Mr. Breen said, “but we should remember one of the Stevens Party of ’44 had to stay all winter in the mountains—”
“Call the vote,” James said.
I cleared my throat again, and then coughed, but George said nothing. He looked as if he were in an agony of indecision. “Mr. Donner,” I said.
A couple of the teamsters snickered; Reed’s eyebrows shot up; George remained silent.
“Call the vote,” James repeated.
“Those in favor of taking Hastings Cutoff say Aye,” Mr. Halloran said.
“Aye!” James Reed shouted.
“My wife will set down the names,” George said, the first acknowledgment of my presence, though all the men knew I had been there all night, as I often am there sitting on my little campstool outside the ring of men, writing in my journal balanced on my lap. So upset I could barely write, I started recording the vote.
“James Reed. Aye!”
“Luke Halloran. Aye!”
“Patrick Breen from the Auld Sod, now a proud citizen of America, lately of Keokuk, Iowa—”
“Get on with it, Breen,” Reed said.
Breen’s brogue continued unrushed. “—soon to be a child of California, God’s own country itself. Patrick Breen. Aye.”
Mr. Eddy answered without hesitation. “William Eddy. Aye!”
“Lewis Keseberg. Aye.”
“Hardcoop. One last adventure, and then it’s home to Belgium to live with my daughter. Aye!”
George was next in the circle. He looked at the map drawn in the dirt. Looked at the mountain, its top covered with snow. Looked back at the map. Looked everyplace except at me.
“Judas Priest, George, piss or get off the pot,” James said.
“George Donner,” he said. And, after an interminable pause, “Aye.”
I jumped up, words bursting out of me. “How can you even think of leaving the old road and entrustin
g our lives to a man we know nothing about?”
All the men went silent. George half stood, then sat back down, looked at the ground. I left noisily, hearing the silence behind me.
James Reed broke the silence, “Stanton, you set down the rest of the names.”
“Jacob Donner,” I heard and turned around. Jacob looked at George, but George still looked down.
Jacob mumbled something.
“Was that an Aye, Jacob?” Reed said.
Jacob nodded his head. Yes.
“Charles Stanton. Well, I’m riding with George Donner, so it’s an Aye for me.”
Reed, jubilant, uncorked whiskey.
Inside the wagon, I got into bed, fully dressed, my heart pounding, Mr. Clyman’s words pounding, Take the established route and never leave it. It’s barely possible to get through before the snows if you follow it, and it may be impossible if you don’t.
An hour later, George climbed under the blanket and reached out for me. I pulled away.
“I’m the one who should be upset,” he said. “You embarrassed me.”
I sat up, livid. “You were embarrassed? You should have been ashamed. James Reed just bullied this through. And you went along with him.”
“Sometimes you go too far—” George began.
“Too far? And may I ask who is setting the boundaries, Mr. Donner?”
“Tamsen, you know I thought about the Cutoff a long time—”
“It didn’t need thinking about. And Jacob just went along with you. It’s wrong that women aren’t allowed at the campfire, it’s immoral. If we had a vote, there’s no way it would’ve passed—”
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