I was a quick learner and avid student. I would be rich now if I had a penny for every time a tutor or Father said, “If only you’d been a boy, you’d go to Harvard, you’d be this, you’d be that…” They meant well, but the remark always riled me inside. The mind is like angels, neither male nor female, and I’ve never understood why people find that simple fact so difficult to grasp.
George is not bookish and makes no pretense to be, but he is my superior in temperament. I have struggled my whole life to tame my quick temper and curb my impatience. I have told our daughters to look for a steady temperament in their future mates. A man subject to sudden shifts in mood may be romantic in a novel, but makes a difficult husband who will require more care than their children.
I started teaching when I was 15. I taught mathematics, geometry, and general subjects.
“I heard you once taught surveying to a group of surprised young gentlemen, Mrs. Dozier,” George said on that Springfield country road.
“It’s been my general experience that gentlemen surprise far too easily, Mr. Donner.”
“Not this gentleman,” George said, and though I merely replied, “Good,” my heart was smiling.
When I was 18, I traveled to Maine for a teaching job. There were nine families there, and I had twenty scholars. I enjoyed myself highly and might be there still had not the regular schoolteacher unexpectedly recovered from his illness. Back in Massachusetts, still deep in recession, I cast about for teaching jobs and was compelled again to leave home and Betsey and Father, though not at such a great distance as before.
Then in 1824, when I had just turned 23, with Father’s and Betsey’s blessing I answered an advertisement for a teaching job in North Carolina, sailing there on a great ship at a time when many people thought that respectable women didn’t travel alone. For the benefit of those who may wish to follow my example and encounter similarly ignorant people today, I leave it on record that, far from considering me an outlaw, people of all stamps on that ship from the Senator, Author, & Southern planter treated me with attention & respect. In my lifetime people have sometimes wondered at my conduct, but they have never despised me. And I never shall be despised. Most people, properly so, are quite indifferent to me. As Betsey once sagely told me: Others think much less about us than we believe or fear, because they are almost always thinking about themselves.
It was in North Carolina that I buried my first husband, my son, and a daughter almost at full term in 1831, and struggled on alone, able to survive only because I had a profession. My brother, William, was living in Illinois, and after his wife died in 1836, he asked me to emigrate there to take care of and educate his children. I went—leaving a school worth five hundred dollars a year—because I knew how he suffered, although William acted as if he were doing me a favor. My surroundings were of little concern to me. Much to my surprise, I met and married George Donner. How glad I am that I went to Springfield. Had I stayed where I was, repeating the same familiar life day after day, a narrow house would have been my home.
And so my road, which began in Massachusetts, went to Maine, back to Massachusetts, to North Carolina, to Illinois, to meet with George Donner’s road at that juncture, the two of us then wending our way together on the California Trail almost two thousand miles west, is now temporarily stopped by ill circumstances. We have spent nearly three months trapped in the mountains with rescue yet to come.
Later
It occurs to me that when I write down George’s and my history for the children, I may be revealing a belief or a fear that I may not be there to tell it to them.
John Landrum Murphy, 16, d. Jan 31st 1847 at the lake camp
This morning I bundled up Frances, Eliza, and Georgia, anxious to get them outside, really to go outside myself, away from the gloom and the smell of sickness. “Come, children, we’ll walk Uno and visit Aunt Elizabeth.” Elitha was sleeping, and when I asked Leanna if she wanted to go, she said, “No, thank you, Mother.” I know from my own hardheaded mistakes that she suffers as much as Elizabeth or more. I heard my stepmother say, “Pity the instruction experience gives us can so rarely be transferred,” and I let Leanna be.
Uno, all bone and rib cage, frisked in the snow and started digging. Halfway across the drifts to Elizabeth’s shelter, Georgia stopped to stare at a foot sticking out of the snow. Samuel Shoemaker, one of our drivers, 25 years old, the first young man to go. I took Georgia’s hand, guided her on.
As always the snow soaked our skirts, weighing them down—if we raise them, our stockings get soaked—and we had to struggle some, the children stepping into my footprints, but the brisk, sunny day and the exercise perked them up. Eliza hummed a little singsong, “We’ll see Uncle Jacob and Aunt Elizabeth and all our cousins.”
I stopped just outside the hole leading into the ground. “Uncle Jacob doesn’t live here anymore, Eliza, but we’ll see the rest.”
On the flight of snow stairs leading down into the ground, Eliza grimaced. “Bad smell,” she said. She wouldn’t budge. “Come out here, cousins,” she called. “Out here.”
A feral-faced child, my niece Mary, 7, came from behind the hanging canvas, squinting in the light. She reached out a dirty hand to Eliza. Eliza recoiled, darted behind me, and began crying.
Mary started crying and disappeared behind the canvas, where someone else was crying.
I looked at Frances, who without a word took her little sisters’ hands.
“I’ll take you home and we’ll have a lovely tea party,” Frances said.
I watched the children and Uno trudge back across the clearing.
Disappear underground.
I don’t want to go in either, Eliza, I thought, walked down the snow stairs, and pushed aside the canvas, calling, “Elizabeth,” but of course no one answered.
She was crying, and her children lay without moving on their platforms, while I stirred up the fire, untied a blue calico handkerchief, and poured bits of bone into a watery broth.
“These’ll thicken the soup,” I said. No flicker of interest from anyone. It crossed my mind that I might have saved them for my own family.
I gave my niece and nephews small pieces of bark and twigs of pine. “Chew on these. They’ll make you less hungry.”
My nephew William kept his back to me. “William, go out and help Jean Baptiste retrieve the wood.”
Each storm Jean Baptiste must climb higher up the trees to cut limbs that hurl down into the snow and have to be dug out and dragged and chopped.
“William.”
He reluctantly got up and started toward the stairs.
“Where’s Solomon?” I asked.
“Gone,” Elizabeth said.
“Gone? Gone where?”
“He set out for the settlements this morning,” William said angrily. “I wanted to go, but Mother wouldn’t let me.”
“Solomon said, ‘I’m not going to die like Landrum Murphy,’” Elizabeth said. “Now he’ll just die alone.”
“Elizabeth, kneel with me.”
I took Elizabeth’s hand, tugged her up, and the two of us knelt together. “The Lord is my shepherd,” I said. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me—Say it, Elizabeth. He leadeth me”—I waited until she finally joined me—“out by cool waters and reviveth my drooping spirit. Though I walk through the valley of death, I fear not, for I dwell in the house of the Lord. He dost spread a banquet for me—”
Walking slowly back home, I piled snow on the partially exposed foot and packed it down. I took one of the poles Jean Baptiste probes the snow with searching for buried oxen, tied the blue calico kerchief on it like a small, bright flag, and thrust it into the snow to mark the spot where Samuel lies. “Rest in peace, Samuel.”
On a log outside our shelter, Frances handed two rose-patterned china cups full of snow to Georgia and Eliza. Her china cup had a mended handle.
“I’ve fixed us all a lovely cup of custard,” she said. With a silver spoon, Frances took a dai
nty bite of snow and smacked her lips in relish. “Delicious.”
Georgia and Eliza followed suit.
As I passed the girls, Frances looked up and said quickly, “We’re being careful with your china, Momma.”
“You’re good girls,” I said and went into the shelter.
My precious china.
My Little Frances
Frances Eustis Donner, b. July 8th 1840
As the middle child, Frances has had her pick of age, going up with her big sisters or down to be one of “the babies”—the latter choice not often exercised anymore. She has always been mature for her age. I have to be careful not to ask too much of her.
Physically, they say she favors me most of my three youngest daughters. I feel that is another indication that people do not observe with care, but even George says it is true. If so, then it is I who is complimented. Even when I was Frances’s age, my hair was never as golden or curly as hers.
Now all our hair is limp and lackluster. I started braiding mine on the Trail so as not to have to fuss with it, though George used to love watching me brush it at night, and sometimes brushed it for me. Either Elitha or I braid all the children’s hair daily.
While her four sisters have black hair and dark brown eyes and skin that browns like wheat grain in the summertime, Frances and I have blue eyes and fair skin and always have to try to remember our sunbonnets. But Frances’s eyes are a true cornflower blue, while mine are lighter blue. I was told so often when I was younger that my sharp gaze made people uncomfortable that, with time and practice, I learned to moderate it, simply pull a shade back and look at people from behind that. It is with dismay that I have watched Frances’s pure, guileless gaze become penetrating, knowing. She is 6 and a half and has old eyes.
She’s a curious, observant child, but also one who keeps part of herself private. I would not be surprised at all if she became an artist.
On the Trail one day George took a reed, cut off its shoots with his penknife, burnt holes at regular intervals with a coal, and made a whistle. Much to all our delight, but especially Frances’s, he played “Buffalo Gals.” The whistle had a happy, round sound, and often we’d hear Frances inside the wagon playing little cheerful tunes that made anyone within earshot smile.
When she lies on her rack and plays the whistle here, it only sounds mournful, conjuring up lonesome prairies, vast empty spaces. Yesterday she played “Buffalo Gals” over and over like a dirge, and when Leanna asked her to please stop, I was glad.
Sometimes Georgia and Eliza weep, Eliza fastening her arms tightly around Frances’s neck, hiding her eyes against her shoulder. “Shhh,” Frances says, until they’re calmed.
She never cries, never complains. She often whispers to her doll, and I pray Dolly is her confidante.
February
1847
Feb 3rd 1847
Jean Baptiste, looking for game shortly after dawn, found my nephew Solomon Hook in the woods close to camp, snow-blind with his mind unbalanced. He had been gone forty-eight hours, circling around all that time.
Later
This morning, after applying cold compresses to Solomon’s eyes to relieve the sting, I made eye patches from padded muslin. We had to tie his hands to keep him from rubbing his poor swollen, bloodshot eyes. He says he saw halos around everything and his eyes feel full of sand. I remember that one of Father’s men suffering similarly from looking directly at the solar eclipse made a complete recovery, and I pray this will be so with Solomon.
This afternoon, Solomon calm and resting, I was walking back from Elizabeth’s shelter, so relieved to be done there for the day. The sun, sparkling on the snow, had thawed the top layer, my feet going crunch crunch as they broke through the crust. Do you remember how I used to break the thin layer of ice on puddles and Mother scolded me for ruining my shoes and scolded you for letting me? I saw Elitha and Leanna come out from our shelter to gather the bedding they had put out to air earlier, the sound of their feet breaking the snow crunch crunch sailing across the clearing, and just like that I was in the Great Salt Lake Desert.
Crunch, Elitha, Leanna, and I stagger alongside a wagon, its wheels bog down in the salty crust, our shoes break through the crust crunch, the sun sparkles off the salt crystals so brightly it hurts our inflamed eyes, the gritty dust pelts us, I blink my eyes. Blink again.
Twenty women with forty girls walk in the same direction we do. I put my hand on Elitha and Leanna and stop.
The twenty women do the same.
I raise my hand in salute.
The twenty women salute.
Father told me that sometimes after weeks at sea, only water building and rolling, building and rolling, he saw mirages, once an island nearby that never materialized, staying in front of them for days, never getting closer, until it suddenly vanished as quickly as it had appeared. A trick of the mind, Father said, manifesting your desires, your hopes.
Standing stock-still in the clearing this afternoon, recalling the mirage or vision I saw in the desert, watching my daughters coping so heroically, I was filled with a fierce hope. We will get them out of here, and California will be advantageous for them. In a new land, they can act for themselves. They can act. For an instant I felt at one with all the women through time who walked their own unbroken trails, preparing the way for me and my daughters and their daughters and their…
I raised my hand in a part wave, part salute to Elitha and Leanna. It seemed an oddly solemn gesture as I did it, and I can’t tell you if it was triumphant or defiant or both. They waved or saluted back, and began gathering bedding off the ground.
Feb 4th dawn
Sometimes I wonder if I am going mad. My feelings change constantly, my thoughts collide. I see things. Shapes. Several times at night, I lifted my head up from my writing and saw the shadows move, although everyone was motionless on their platforms. Are we so close to death a veil is lifting? Is death coming to take us? Or is this what hunger does?
I was born with a caul on my face, so some of the old people said I had second sight. I’ve never felt I had any special gift, I just think I pay more attention than many. But my senses have grown very keen here. Every day they seem to refine more.
Last night after I saw the shadows, I lay on my platform and listened to the children breathe, pacing my own breath to theirs, as if I could will their bodies to hold on steadily.
As if I could breathe for them while they sleep, guarding their lives from the moving shadows.
As if I could breathe life into them.
Night
Even here at the table I can hear Elitha’s teeth grinding. I don’t have to walk over there to see her lick her lips, open her mouth, groan, lick her lips, open her mouth…She dreams about food, the recurrent dream we all have of tantalizing food we can see, smell, that comes to our very lips, but always always always something interferes that prevents the food from reaching our mouths.
Jean Baptiste is staying at Elizabeth’s for a while. He is the only one strong enough to restrain Solomon when he goes into one of his rages.
5th
Uno ate one of Frances’s shoes. In a sudden temper that startled him as well as us, George cuffed Uno, immediately regretting it, and tried to soothe the cowering dog while I calmed the crying children. I gave Frances one of my shoes, and we stuffed the toes with paper. I will wear one of Elizabeth’s, because she no longer goes out.
Later we also cut paper to pad the holes in the other children’s shoes with old copies of the Sangamo Journal that we had used for packing. I was remembering a faraway time and place when I wrapped china in these same papers and Allen Francis balled them up to fill the spaces in our crates.
“My sister, Betsey, writes that Thoreau has retreated to Walden Pond,” I said, “but goes a mile down the road every night to his mother’s for dinner.”
Allen laughed. “Everyone doesn’t have to go twenty-five hundred miles to find what he wants.”
“It’s true I have a taste
for travel,” I said, and then we laughed again. George looked up from wrapping a plate, looked back down.
“To carve out a new home, a new country!” Allen said. “How lucky you are! What a book you will write! Now remember. Send me every detail. My readers will be eager for them, but none so much as I.”
I handed George another shoe and some newspapers and said, “Do you remember Allen Francis saying when we had nothing to do we could read these papers in California? I look at them now, and they might as well be in a foreign language.”
George laid the paper on the platform, weighted it with the shoe, cut strips with his left hand for a while, and then said quietly, almost abashed, “I was a little jealous of Allen Francis.”
“Whatever for?”
George kept his eyes on the paper. “You shared a world with him. All those books I’ve never read. Writing poetry—”
I looked at him, amazed. “I share many worlds with you. The children are whole universes you and I share. Our love of travel and adventure…” I smiled ruefully. “This place.”
He looked up. “This is none of my business…You don’t have to answer if you don’t—”
“What?” I said.
“Is it true he asked you to marry him before I did?”
“Yes.”
George looked at me then with such sadness I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.
I waited.
“If you had married him, you’d still be in Springfield,” he said.
“Yes, I would,” I said. “Allen was a rocking chair traveler.” Suddenly a little laugh came out of me. “They’ll never say that about us,” I said.
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