The following day Elizabeth Graves had to make her own heartrending decisions. She still had four children aged eight or younger with her—eight-year-old Nancy, seven-year-old Jonathan, five-year-old Franklin Jr., and her infant, Elizabeth. She would have to stay in the mountains to care for them. But twelve-year-old Lovina and fourteen-year-old Eleanor would go. Elizabeth wanted Billy to stay, to cut wood and do the heavy work, but he was bent, he said, on getting over the mountains and bringing food back for his little brothers and sisters. Elizabeth relented and said he could go. If Franklin was dead, as she must have suspected, Billy was her only assurance that someone would at least try to return for her and the younger children. That night he chopped and stacked a fresh supply of firewood for his mother.
Peggy Breen and Levinah Murphy made similar decisions. For the most part, the older children would go and the younger would stay. But there were exceptions. Two-year-old Naomi Pike, whose widowed mother was waiting for her at Johnson’s Ranch and whose infant sister had died just two days ago, would go, Tucker and Glover announced. The men would carry her all the way. Twenty-three-year-old Philippine Keseberg had already lost one child here and wasn’t willing to watch another die. She would leave her hobbled husband and carry her three-year-old Ada as far as she could.
Margret Reed felt the same way. With no remaining resources of her own, reduced to eating the Breens’ cast-off bones, she was going, and so were all her children, even three-year-old Thomas. As long as they could walk, they were going to get out of there, or die trying.
John Denton, the English gunsmith, like many of the single men, was weakening rapidly, but he, too, decided he would go.
And so on the morning of February 22, the men of the First Relief stood in the snow at the eastern end of the lake, surrounded by children and grief-stricken mothers with hollow faces who clutched their children and wailed and then finally let them go. They trudged off into the snow—twenty-two of them—a long procession mostly composed of children and large men.
They had not gone far, though, before three-year-old Thomas Reed and eight-year-old Patty Reed gave out. Tucker and Aquilla Glover told Margret Reed the two children would have to go back to the cabins. Months later Virginia Reed described the scene in her letter to her cousin Mary.
O Mary that was the hades thing yet to come on and leiv them thar. [We] did not now but what thay would starve to Death. Martha [Patty] said, well ma if you never see me again do the best you can. the men said thay could hadly stand it. it maid them all cry.
When Patty and Thomas had been returned to the Breen cabin, the First Relief continued on its way, crossing the frozen lake, wading through deep snow. Exhausted and famished by the effort, they eagerly ate the remainder of their dried beef that night, knowing that they had cached a good deal more up at the pass for the return trip. The next day they scaled the cliffs at the western end of the lake. Nearly all of the men carried children, but still there were many children who had to walk. Six-year-old James Reed Jr. was up to his waist in the snow, but somehow he kept going, clambering over ice-slick boulders and wading through deep drifts of powder. With every step, he told his sister Virginia resolutely, he was “getting nigher Pa and somthing to eat.”
On the evening of February 23, they reached the pass and the platform of logs that they had built on the way in. But when they got there, they found trouble. When they had left their cache of food here, they had secured it from animals, probably by tying it in a bundle and suspending it from the end of a branch in a pine tree, out of reach of bears. But they had not reckoned on smaller and more agile animals like martens and fishers, who could climb to the ends of the pine branches. The cache had been ripped open, the food consumed or dragged away.
Alarmed, Tucker immediately announced that for the remainder of the trip everyone would be on short rations. From that moment forward, Tucker feared for all their lives. “Being on short allowances,” he confided in his notes, “death stared us in the face.”
On the morning of February 24, following the burned-out snags they had left behind on their ascent of the mountains, the First Relief resumed moving west. After a mile or two, though, John Denton began to fall behind. Reason Tucker held back, waiting for him, but the young Englishman had grown weak and snow-blind, and it was clear that he could not continue. The others could not wait for him. Tucker built a platform of pine saplings and kindled a fire on it for him. He sat the young man down, took an expensive coverlet from his own backpack, and wrapped him in it. Tucker assured him that help would arrive soon, though both men must have known that there was little prospect of that. Then Tucker walked on down the trail and rejoined the others. When Denton’s body was eventually found, it had been half consumed by animals.
They traveled on down the Yuba River. Thus far they had been fortunate enough to have fair, warm weather, but the warm afternoon sun exacted a price, thawing the crust of the snow and making walking much harder. Three-year-old Ada Keseberg couldn’t manage it at all. Her mother had carried her for as long as she could. Then John Rhoads had carried her, but by that evening Ada Keseberg was failing. In the bitter cold of that night, she died.
When it was time to push on in the morning, Philippine Keseberg, who had seen her only other child buried in the snow back at the lake camp, would not part with her daughter’s body. She sat clutching Ada to her breast, would not relinquish her, would not move on without her. Finally, as most of the others began to trudge away, Tucker sat down with her: “I told her to give me the child and her to go on. After she was out of sight, Rhoads and myself buried the child in the snow best we could. Her sperit went to heaven her body to the wolves.” Then they continued along the Yuba and camped that night under the granite knob now called Cisco Butte.
By the middle of the next day, February 26, their provisions had grown so short that for a midday meal they resorted to toasting rawhide shoestrings. But Glover and John Rhoads had gone ahead looking for signs of a second relief effort, and shortly after eating the shoestrings, Tucker and his band of survivors came across two men with packs trudging through the snow toward them. Glover and Rhoads had indeed found a second relief party a few miles ahead and sent the two men back with dried beef. Billy, Lovina, and Eleanor Graves and Tucker’s other famished survivors sat down in the snow and feasted. And to make the meal all the sweeter for Margret Reed, the men who had brought the supply of dried beef had also brought news that filled her heart with joy. The Second Relief, now just a few miles down the trail, was headed by James Reed.
At about the same time, Reed learned from Glover and Rhoads that his wife and two children were alive just up the trail.
James Reed had lived an adventurous life since last he saw his wife. After failing to get through the mountains in his first effort to reach his family in October, he had returned to Sutter’s Fort looking for help. But he could not have arrived at a more inopportune time—all the able-bodied American men in the area had by now rushed south to join John Frémont and fight against Mexican forces still resisting the occupation of California. Unable to procure sufficient men or supplies for another rescue attempt, Reed put aside any immediate plans to effect a rescue and went instead to the American-held Pueblo de San José, where he enlisted as an acting first lieutenant in a volunteer company. While waiting for military action and pondering his next move, he petitioned the new American alcalde of San Jose, John Burton, for a large tract of land in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley, the second land petition he had filed in California in a little over a month.
On January 2, near Mission Santa Clara, Reed and a small detachment of men under his command joined a larger force of about eighty-five, closed with roughly one hundred fighters under the command of Don Francisco Sánchez, and engaged in a brief skirmish. An hour later one or two Americans were wounded, five Californians were wounded, three Californians were dead, and the Californians had surrendered. Using his saddle as a desk, on January 12, Reed wrote exuberantly to Sutter about his role in t
he battle.
I have done my duty and no more; but I am still ready to take the field in her cause, knowing that she is always right. I tell you, my friend, many were the dodges I made with my head from the balls that whistled by me….
After what came to be called, somewhat vaingloriously, the “Battle of Santa Clara,” Reed rode north to San Francisco, where he petitioned first U.S. naval authorities and then the general citizenry of the burgeoning American hamlet for aid in rescuing the Donner Party. The citizens responded with more than a thousand dollars, the navy with a promise to supply matériel and logistical support. A navy midshipman, Selim E. Woodworth, agreed to lead the effort to transport goods into the mountains with a contingent of navy men.
Meanwhile, William McCutchen had made his way to the Napa Valley, where he, too, was gathering supplies for an effort to rescue his infant daughter, Harriet, and the others still in the mountains. On January 27 he wrote Reed, somewhat testily, “You had better come in haste as there is no time to delay.” He wanted to get under way by February 1.
But it was February 19 by the time that Reed had rendezvoused with McCutchen, driven a string of horses to Johnson’s Ranch, and begun slaughtering cattle and drying strips of beef. On February 21 some of the men who would make the attempt caught up with Reed and McCutchen at Johnson’s. Among them was a familiar face—Hiram Miller, who had been a teamster for the Donners back on the plains before going ahead with the Russell Party. Selim Woodworth, they reported, had paused at Sutter’s Fort, and they could not say when he would arrive.
The next morning Reed told Johnson to inform Woodworth that he had gone ahead without him and to follow on his heels as soon as possible. Then, with about two hundred pounds of dried beef, seven hundred pounds of flour, and more than two dozen horses, Reed, McCutchen, and the men of the Second Relief left Johnson’s Ranch and started up the Bear River.
Sarah’s heart must have lightened at least a bit as she watched Reed, McCutchen, and their men leave Johnson’s and ride up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. She knew now that there were two parties of strong, hearty, and well-provisioned men bent on saving what was left of her family, and she knew that a third, led by a U.S. naval officer, would soon be on its way. The First Relief, in fact, had been gone long enough that she could begin to expect—or at least to hope—to see them riding down the river with her mother and siblings any day now.
But she could not know just how dire the situation at the lake camp was now growing. On the same day that advance men from Reed’s Second Relief met the returning First Relief and handed out food, some of the women who had been left behind in the mountains were making desperate and hitherto-inconceivable decisions. Patrick Breen recorded their plight in his diary the next day.
Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that [she] thought she would commence on Milt & eat him. I don’t think that she has done so yet, it is distressing. The Donners told the California folks that they [would] commence to eat the dead people 4 days ago…. I suppose they have done so ere this time.
The following day, February 27, Reason Tucker and the First Relief met James Reed, William McCutchen, and the main body of the Second Relief somewhere in the vicinity of Yuba Gap. Told the afternoon before that his wife and two of his children were alive, Reed had stayed up through the night, baking sweet cakes for them.
When he saw black dots on the bright snow ahead slowly growing larger, Reed rushed forward to meet Margret, Virginia, and James Jr. Recognizing him, they stumbled forward themselves, trying to close the distance between them. Margret Reed fell to her knees in the snow, overwhelmed with the emotion of seeing her husband for the first time since he had ridden away into the Nevada desert and an uncertain fate five months before. Reed stooped to embrace her. But when he looked into her eyes, and then into the eyes of the other survivors, he was horrified, much as Eliza Gregson had been when she first looked into the eyes of the snowshoe party. “I cannot describe the death-like look they all had ‘Bread Bread Bread’ was the begging of every child and grown person,” Reed later wrote. “I gave to all what I dared.”
Reed already knew from Glover and Rhoads that two of his children—Patty and Thomas—were still at the lake camp and that his journey wasn’t going to end there. So he stayed with Margret only minutes before Tucker and Glover lead Reed’s family and the other survivors down toward Bear Valley. Then he and McCutchen and their men began to hike eastward toward the lake camp, meeting stragglers from Tucker’s group and handing out sweet cakes to them as they went.
Forty-eight hours later, Reed and the Second Relief crossed Truckee Lake and approached the Breen cabin. The snow had melted a bit since the First Relief had left, and the eaves of the cabin were now protruding above the snow. Reed saw his daughter, Patty, sitting atop the cabin, her feet resting on the snow. When she saw that it was her father who was approaching, Patty Reed ran toward him but fell face-first into the snow. Reed bent and scooped his daughter out of the snow and embraced her quickly. Then he plunged into the dank depths of the cabin, where he found his son, Thomas, alive but asleep on a bed of pine boughs. As Reed later reported to a writer named J. H. Merryman, he was that afternoon “in raptures.”
The men of the Second Relief went next to the Murphy cabin. The scene there was ghastly. Skeletal, hollow-eyed women and children crawled out of the dark portal of the cabin and gathered around them. Scattered about the cabin, where Tucker and Glover had seen bodies covered by quilts a week and a half before, human bones now lay, with shreds of pink flesh still clinging to them. Levinah Murphy took Reed down into the reek of the cabin where the surviving children in her care had been lying in bed for fourteen days, too weak to stir. Clumps of human hair were strewn about, matted in bloodstained clots.
Reed told the survivors that in just two days those who were able would have to walk out. One of the men set about making soup to build the strength of those who would make the attempt. Then McCutchen and Reed continued on to the Graveses’ cabin.
They found Elizabeth Graves and all her remaining children alive but, like all the others who had been here since October, emaciated and nearly disabled by famine. Again they doled out small amounts of food and explained that in two days’ time they would be leaving with all who were willing and able to accompany them. Then Reed went outside and joined William McCutchen to help him dig the body of his infant daughter, Harriet, out of the snow and rebury it in some exposed soil near the cabin.
The next morning, March 2, Reed, McCutchen, and several of the others pushed on to the Donners’ camp at Alder Creek. A few of the men, though, stayed behind with Elizabeth Graves. She had told them of a problem that she needed help with. Somewhere beneath all the snow surrounding her cabin lay her family wagon and the cache of silver coins on which her family’s whole future now depended. Under her direction the men began to dig for the wagon and the silver. But she could not have been happy that so many now knew about something she had thus far successfully kept concealed.
When they arrived at Alder Creek, Reed and McCutchen found two men they had sent ahead—Nicholas Clark and Charles Cady—tending to what was left of the Donner families. Elizabeth Donner, lying prostrate in her tent, was too enfeebled to do much of anything for her five children. In the other tent, George Donner lay near death. Tamzene was emaciated, but still healthy enough to get around. The three children remaining there—Frances, Georgia, and Eliza Donner—were all reasonably hale and hearty. Many years later Georgia would explain one possible reason that the children in the camp appeared more robust than the adults. For at least several days now, the children had been receiving more nourishment than that supplied by their usual rations of burned ox bones and boiled hides. Georgia sadly and cautiously recounted what the adults had decided to do.
When I spoke of human flesh being used at both tents I said it was prepared for the little ones at both tents…. I did not mean to include the larger children or the grown people because I am not positive that they tasted of it. Fathe
r was crying and did not look at us during the time, and we little ones felt that we could not help it. There was nothing else.
Reed and McCutchen quickly assessed the situation in the two tents and then told the two mothers there that once again they had to make some quick and difficult decisions, just as they had less than two weeks before. Anyone who could walk should come with them immediately, the men said. Those who could not should wait for Selim Woodworth and his men, who Reed and McCutchen believed would arrive soon. Elizabeth Donner was clearly among those who were too weak to walk out, so once again she had to decide whether and how to divide her children. This time she chose to send seven-year-old Mary, five-year-old Isaac, and her son by a previous marriage, fourteen-year-old Solomon Hook. She would not part with her two youngest, Samuel and Lewis.
The men urged Tamzene Donner to come with them and to bring all of her children. But Tamzene was adamant. Once again she would not leave her husband here to die alone. She and her three daughters would stay and wait for Woodworth. The men packed Mary and Isaac Donner onto their backs and set off for the lake camp.
They left behind seven days’ worth of provisions and two men—Clark and Cady—to help Jean Baptiste Trudeau cook for the surviving Donners and perhaps nurse them back to health so that they would be able to travel when Woodworth arrived.
By eight o’clock that night, Reed and McCutchen and the others had made it, exhausted from carrying the two Donner children, back to the Graveses’ cabin. McCutchen and Reed pressed on to the Breen cabin. There they finally sat down to a meal of fresh bread that Patty Reed had baked during their absence, using flour her father had left her that morning.
The night before, Patrick Breen had made the last entry he would make in the diary he’d begun back in November.