Part 30 (1/2)

James F. Reed of the Reed-Greenwood Party, the second to reach the emigrants, has been adversely criticised from time to time, because he and six of his men returned to Sutter's Fort in March with no more than his own two children and Solomon Hook, a lad of twelve years, who had said that he could and would walk, and did.

Careful investigation, however, proves the criticism hasty and unfair.

True, Mr. Reed went over the mountains with the largest and best equipped party sent out, ten well furnished, able-bodied men. But returning he left one man at camp to a.s.sist the needy emigrants.

The seventeen refugees whom he and nine companions brought over the summit comprised three weak, wasted adults, and fourteen emaciated young children. The prospect of getting them all to the settlement, even under favorable circ.u.mstances, had seemed doubtful at the beginning of the journey. Alas, one of the heaviest snow-storms of the season overtook them on the bleak mountain-side ten miles from the tops of the Sierra Nevadas. It continued many days. Food gave out, death took toll. The combined efforts of the men could not do more than provide fuel and keep the fires. All became exhausted. Rescuers and refugees might have perished there together had the nine men not followed what seemed their only alternative. Who would not have done what Reed did? With almost superhuman effort, he saved his two children. No one felt keener regret than he over the fact that he had been obliged to abandon at Starved Camp the eleven refugees he had heroically endeavored to save.

In those days of affliction, it were well nigh impossible to say who was most afflicted; still, it would seem that no greater dest.i.tution and sorrow could have been meted to any one than fell to the lot of Mrs. Murphy at the lake camp. The following incidents were related by her son, William G. Murphy, in an address to a concourse of people a.s.sembled on the sh.o.r.e of Donner Lake in February, 1896:

I was a little more than eleven years of age when we all reached these mountains, and that one-roomed shanty was built, where so many of us lived, ate, and slept. No!--Where so many of us slept, starved, and died! It was constructed for my mother and seven children (two being married) and her three grandchildren, and William Foster, husband of her daughter Sarah.

Early in December when the Forlorn Hope was planned, we were almost out of provisions; and my mother took the babes from the arms of Sarah and Harriet (Mrs. Pike) and told them that she would care for their little ones, and they being young might with William (Foster) and their brother Lemuel reach the settlement and return with food.

And the four became members of that hapless band of fifteen.

Mr. Eddy being its leader, his wife and her two children came to live with us during his absence. When my eldest brother, on whom my mother depended, was very weak and almost at death's door, my mother went to the Breens and begged a little meat, just a few mouthfuls--I remember well that little piece of meat! My mother gave half of it to my dying brother; he ate it, fell asleep with a hollow death gurgle. When it ceased I went to him--he was dead--starved to death in our presence. Although starving herself, my mother said that if she had known that Landrum was going to die she would have given him the balance of the meat. Little Margaret Eddy lingered until February 4, and her mother until the seventh. Their bodies lay two days and nights longer in the room with us before we could find a.s.sistance able to bury them in the snow. Some days earlier Milton Elliot, weak and wandering around, had taken up his abode with us.

We shared with him the remnant of our beef hides. We had had a lot of that glue-making material. But mark, it would not sustain life.

Elliot soon starved to death, and neighbors removed and interred the body in the snow beside others.

Catherine Pike, my absent sister's baby, died on the eighteenth of February, only a few hours before the arrival of the First Relief.

Thus the inmates of our shanty had been reduced to my mother, my sister Mary, brother Simon, Nioma Pike, Georgie Foster, myself, and little Jimmy Eddy.

When the rescuers decided they would carry out Nioma Pike, and that my sister Mary and I should follow, stepping in the tracks made by those who had snowshoes, strength seemed to come, so that I was able to cut and carry to my mother's shanty what appeared to me a huge pile of wood. It was green, but it was all I could get.

We left mother there with three helpless little ones to feed on almost nothing, yet in the hope that she might keep them alive until the arrival of the next relief.

Many of the survivors remember that after having again eaten food seasoned with salt, the boiled, saltless hides produced nausea and could not be retained by adult or child.

I say with deep reverence that flesh of the dead was used to sustain the living in more than one cabin near the lake. But it was not used until after the pittance of food left by the First Relief had long been consumed; not until after the wolves had dug the snow from the graves.

Perhaps G.o.d sent the wolves to show Mrs. Murphy and also Mrs. Graves where to get sustenance for their dependent little ones.

Both were widows; the one had three, and the other four helpless children to save. Was it culpable, or cannibalistic to seek and use the only life-saving means left them? Were the acts and purposes of their unsteady hands and aching hearts less tender, less humane than those of the lauded surgeons of to-day, who infuse human blood from living bodies into the arteries of those whom naught else can save, or who strip skin from bodies that feel pain, to cover wounds which would otherwise prove fatal?

John Baptiste Trubode and Nicholas Clark, of the Second Relief, were the last men who saw my father alive. In August, 1883, the latter came to my home in San Jose.

This was our second meeting since that memorable morning of March 2, 1847, when he went in pursuit of the wounded mother bear, and was left behind by the relief party. We spoke long and earnestly of our experience in the mountains, and he wished me to deny the statement frequently made that, ”Clark carried a pack of plunder and a heavy shotgun from Donner's Camp and left a child there to die.” This I can do positively, for when the Third Relief Party took Simon Murphy and us ”three little Donner girls” from the mountain camp, not a living being remained, except Mrs. Murphy and Keseberg at the lake camp, and my father and mother at Donner's Camp. All were helpless except my mother.

The Spring following my interview with Nicholas Clark, John Baptiste came to San Jose, and Mr. McCutchen brought him to talk with me. John, always a picturesque character, had become a hop picker in hop season, and a fisherman the rest of the year. He could not restrain the tears which coursed down his bronzed cheeks as he spoke of the dest.i.tution and suffering in the snow-bound camps; of the young unmarried men who had been so light-hearted on the plains and brave when first they faced the snows. His voice trembled as he told how often they had tried to break through the great barriers, and failed; hunted, and found nothing; fished, and caught nothing; and when rations dwindled to strips of beef hide, their strength waned, and death found them ready victims. He declared,

The hair and bones found around the Donner fires were those of cattle. No human flesh was used by either Donner family. This I know, for I was there all winter and helped get all the wood and food we had, after starvation threatened us. I was about sixteen years old at the time. Our four men died early in December and were buried in excavations in the side of the mountain. Their bodies were never disturbed. As the snows deepened to ten and twelve feet, we lost track of their location.

When saying good-bye, he looked at me wistfully and exclaimed: ”Oh, little Eliza, sister mine, how I suffered and worked to help keep you alive. Do you think there was ever colder, stronger winds than them that whistled and howled around our camp in the Sierras?”

He returned the next day, and in his quaint, earnest way expressed keenest regret that he and Clark had not remained longer in camp with my father and mother.

”I did not feel it so much at first; but after I got married and had children of my own, I often fished and cried, as I thought of what I done, for if we two men had stayed, perhaps we might have saved that little woman.”

His careworn features lightened as I bade him grieve no more, for I realized that he was but a boy, overburdened with a man's responsibilities, and had done his best, and that n.o.bly. Then I added what I have always believed, that no one was to blame for the misfortunes which overtook us in the mountains. The dangers and difficulties encountered by reason of taking the Hastings Cut-off had all been surmounted--two weeks more and we should have reached our destination in safety. Then came the snow! Who could foresee that it would come earlier, fall deeper, and linger longer, that season than for thirty years before? Everything that a party could do to save itself was done by the Donner Party; and certainly everything that a generous, sympathizing people could do to save the snow-bound was done by the people of California.