The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate Part 26

The hero was Rezanoff, an officer of high repute, sent by Russia in 1806 to inspect its establishment at the port of Sitka, Alaska. Finding the colony there in almost dest.i.tute condition, he had embarked on the first voyage of a Russian vessel to the port of San Francisco, California. There being no commercial treaty between the two ports, Rezanoff made personal appeal for help to Governor Arrillago, and later to Commandante Arguello. After many difficulties and delays, he succeeded in obtaining the sorely needed supplies.

Meanwhile, the young officer frequently met in her father's house the vivacious Dona Concepcion Arguello, and Cupid soon joined their hearts with an immortal chain.

After their betrothal, Rezanoff hastened back to the dest.i.tute colony with supplies. Then he sped on toward St. Petersburg, buoyant with a lover's hope of obtaining his sovereign's sanction to his marriage, and perhaps an appointment to Spain, which would enable him to give his bride a distinguished position in the country of her proud ancestors.

Alas, death overtook the lover _en route_ across the snows of Siberia.

When Dona Concepcion learned of her bereavement, her lamentations were tearless, her sorrow inconsolable. She turned from social duties and honors, and, clad in mourning weeds, devoted her time and means to the poor and the afflicted, among whom she became known and idolized as "the beautiful angel in black." After the death of her parents, she endowed St. Catherine's Convent with her inheritance, took the vows of the Dominican nun, and the world saw her no more.

Early in her sorrow, she had prayed that death might come to her in the season when the snow lay deep on Siberia's plain; and her prayer was realized, for it was on a bleak winter morning that we pupils gathered in silence around the breakfast table, knowing that Sister Dominica lay upon her bier in the chapel.

The meal was nearly finished when Sister Amelda entered, and spoke to a couple of the Spanish young ladies, who bowed and immediately withdrew.

As she came down the line selecting other Spanish friends of the dead, she stopped beside me long enough to say:

"You also may go to her. You comforted her in life, and it is fitting that you should be among those who keep the last watch, and that your prayers mingle with theirs."

After her burial, which was consecrated by monastic rites, I returned to the schoolroom with reverential memories of Sister Dominica, the once "beautiful angel in black."

The school year closed in July, 1858, and I left the convent with regret. The gentle, self-sacrificing conduct of the nuns had destroyed the effect of the prejudicial stories I had heard against conventual life. The tender, enn.o.bling influences which had surrounded me had been more impressive than any I had experienced during orphanhood, and I dreaded what the noisy world might again have in store for me.

My sister Frances and William R. Wilder, who had been betrothed for more than a year, and had kept their secret until we three returned from the convent, were married November 24, 1858, and soon thereafter moved to a pleasant home of their own on a farm adjoining Rancho de los Cazadores. The following January, Georgia and I entered public school in Sacramento, where we spent a year and a half in earnest and arduous study.

[Footnote 17: The subject of a poem by Bret Harte, and of a novel by Mrs. Gertrude Atherton.]

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE CHAMBERLAIN FAMILY, COUSINS OF DANIEL WEBSTER--JEFFERSON GRAMMAR SCHOOL--FURTHER CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS OF THE DONNER PARTY--PATERNAL ANCESTRY--S.O. HOUGHTON--DEATH TAKES ONE OF THE SEVEN SURVIVING DONNERS.

Our school home in Sacramento was with friends who not only encouraged our desire for knowledge, but made the acquirement pleasant. The head of the house was Mr. William E. Chamberlain, cas.h.i.+er of D.O. Mills's bank. His wife, Charlotte, was a contributor to _The Sacramento Union_ and leading magazines. Their daughter, Miss Florence, taught in the public schools; and their son, William E., Jr., was a high-school student, preparing for Harvard.

In addition to their superior personal attainments, Mr. and Mrs.

Chamberlain, each--for they were cousins--had the distinction of being first cousins to Daniel Webster, and this fact also served to bring to their home guests of note and culture. Georgia and I were too closely occupied with lessons to venture often beyond the school-girl precinct, but the intellectual atmosphere which pervaded the house, and the books to which we had access, were of inestimable advantage. Furthermore, the tuition fees required of non-resident pupils ent.i.tled them to choice of district, and we fortunately had selected Jefferson Grammar School, No. 4, in charge of Mr. Henry A. White, one of the ablest educators in the city.

Several resident families had also taken advantage of this privilege, and elected to pay tuition and place their children under his instruction, thus bringing together forty-nine energetic boys and girls to whet each other's ambition and incite cla.s.s rivalry. Among the number were the five clever children of the Hon. Tod Robinson; three sons of Judge Robert Robinson; Colonel Zabriskie's pretty daughter Annie; Banker Swift's stately Margaret; General Redding's two sons; Dr.

Oatman's son Eugene; beloved Nelly Upton, daughter of the editor of _The Sacramento Union_; Daniel Yost; Agnes Toll, the sweet singer; and Eliza Denison, my chum.

At the end of the term, _The Daily Union_ closed its account of the public examination of Jefferson Grammar School with the following statement: "Among Mr. White's pupils are two young ladies, survivors of the terrible disaster which befell the emigration of 1846 among the snows of the California mountains."

Even this cursory reference was a matter of regret to Georgia and me.

We had entered school silent in regard to personal history, and did not wish public attention turned toward ourselves even in an indirect way, fearing it might lead to a revival of the false and sensational accounts of the past, and we were not prepared to correct them, nor willing they should be spread. Pursued by these fears, we returned to the ranch, where Elitha and her three black-eyed little daughters welcomed our home-coming and brightened our vacation.

Almost coincident, however, with the foregoing circ.u.mstance, Georgia came into possession of "What I Saw in California," by Edwin Bryant; and we found that the book did contain many facts in connection with our party's disaster, but they were so interwoven with wild rumors, and the false and sensational statements quoted from _The California Star_, that they proved nothing, yet gave to the untrue that appearance of truth which is so difficult to correct.

The language employed in description seemed to us so coa.r.s.e and brutal that we could not forgive its injustice to the living, and to the memory of the dead. We could but feel that had simple facts been stated, there would have been no harrowing criticism on account of long unburied corpses found in the lake cabins. Nor would the sight of mutilated dead have suggested that the starving survivors had become "gloating cannibals, preying on the bodies of their companions." Bare facts would have shown that the living had become too emaciated, too weak, to dig graves, or to lift or drag the dead up the narrow snow steps, even had open graves awaited their coming. Aye, more, would have shown conclusively that mutilation of the bodies of those who had perished was never from choice, never cannibalistic, but dire necessity's last resort to ease torturing hunger, to prevent loss of reason, to save life. Loss of reason was more dreaded than death by the starving protectors of the helpless.

Fair statements would also have shown that the First Relief reached the camps with insufficient provision to meet the pressing needs of the unfortunate. Consequently, it felt the urgency of haste to get as many refugees as possible to Bear Valley before storms should gather and delays defeat the purpose of its coming; that it divided what it could conscientiously spare among those whom it was obliged to leave, cut wood for the fires, and endeavored to give encouragement and hope to the desponding, but did not remain long enough to remove or bury the dead.

Each succeeding party actuated by like anxieties and precautions, departed with its charges, leaving pitiable dest.i.tution behind; leaving mournful conditions in camp,--conditions attributable as much to the work of time and atmospheric agencies as to the deplorable expedients to which the starving were again and again reduced.

With trembling hand Georgia turned the pages, from the sickening details of the _Star_[18] to the personal observations of Edwin Bryant, who in returning to the United States in the Summer of 1847, crossed the Sierra Nevadas with General Kearney and escort, reached the lake cabins June 22, and wrote as follows:

A halt was called for the purpose of interring the remains. Near the princ.i.p.al lake cabin I saw two bodies entire, except the abdomens had been cut open and entrails extracted. Their flesh had been either wasted by famine or evaporated by exposure to dry atmosphere, and presented the appearance of mummies. Strewn around the cabins were dislocated and broken skulls (in some instances sawed asunder with care for the purpose of extracting the brains).

Human skeletons, in short, in every variety of mutilation. A more appalling spectacle I never witnessed. The remains were, by order of General Kearney, collected and buried under supervision of Major Sword. They were interred in a pit dug in the centre of one of the cabins for a cache. These melancholy duties to the dead being performed, the cabins, by order of Major Sword, were fired and, with everything surrounding them connected with the horrible and melancholy tragedy, consumed.

The body of (Captain) George Donner was found in his camp about eight miles distant. He had been carefully laid out by his wife, and a sheet was wrapped around the corpse. This sad office was probably the last act she performed before visiting the camp of Keseberg. He was buried by a party of men detailed for that purpose.

I knew the Donners well; their means in money and merchandise which they had brought with them were abundant. Mr. Donner was a man of about sixty, and was at the time of leaving the United States a highly respectable citizen of Illinois, a farmer of independent means. Mrs. Donner was considerably younger than her husband, an energetic woman of refined education.

After Georgia left me, I reopened the book, and pondered its revelations, many of them new to us both; and most of them I marked for later investigation.

Bryant found no human bones at Donner's camp. His description of that camp was all-important, proving that my father's body had not been mutilated, but lay in his mountain hut three long months, sacred as when left by my little mother, who had watched over him to the pitiful end, had closed his eyes, folded his arms across his breast, and wrapped the burial sheet about his precious form. There, too, was proof of his last resting-place, just as had been told me in sight of Jakie's grave, by the Cherokee woman in Sonoma.

The book had also a copy of Colonel McKinstrey's letter to the General Relief Committee in San Francisco, reporting the return of the first rescuers with refugees. In speaking of the dest.i.tution of the unfortunates in camp, he used the following words sympathically:

When the party arrived at camp, it was obliged to guard the little stock of provisions it had carried over the mountains on its back on foot, for the relief of the poor beings, as they were in such a starving condition that they would have immediately used up all the little store. They even stole the buckskin strings from the party's snowshoes and ate them.

I at once recognized this friendly paragraph as the one which had had its kindness extracted, and been abbreviated and twisted into that cruel taunt which I had heard in my childhood from the lips of "Picayune Butler."

A careful study of Bryant's work increased my desire to sift that of Thornton, for I had been told that it not only contained the "Fallon Diary," but lengthier extracts from the _Star_, and I wanted to compare and a.n.a.lyze those details which had been published as "Thrilling Events in California History." I was unable to procure the book then, but resolved to do so when opportunity should occur. Naturally, we who see history made, are solicitous that it be accurately recorded, especially when it vitally concerns those near to us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph by Lynwood Abbott. THE CROSS AT DONNER LAKE]

Shortly before school reopened, Georgia and I spent the day with cousin Frances E. Bond; and in relating to her various incidents of our life, we spoke of the embarra.s.sment we had felt in cla.s.s the day that Mr.

White asked every pupil whose ancestors had fought in the war of the American Revolution to rise, and Georgia and I were the only ones who remained seated. My cousin regarded us a moment and then said:

"Your Grandfather Eustis, although a widow's only son, and not yet sixteen years of age, enlisted when the Revolutionary War began. He was a sentinel at Old South Church, and finally, a prisoner aboard the _Count d'Estang_."

She would have stopped there, but we begged for all she knew about our mother's people, so she continued, mingling advice with information:

"I would rather that you should not know the difference between their position in life and your own; yet, if you must know it, the Eustis and the Wheelwright families, from whom you are descended, are among the most substantial and influential of New England. Their reputation, however, is not a prop for you to lean on. They are on the Atlantic coast, you on the Pacific; so your future depends upon your own merit and exertions."

This revelation of lineage, nevertheless, was an added incentive to strive for higher things; an inheritance more enduring than our little tin box and black silk stockings which had belonged to mother.

An almost indescribable joy was mine when, at a gathering of the school children to do honor to the citizens who had inaugurated the system of public instruction in Sacramento, I beheld on the platform Captain John A. Sutter. Memories both painful and grateful were evoked.

It was he who had first sent food to the starving travellers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was he who had laid his hand on my head, when a forlorn little waif at the Fort, tenderly saying, "Poor little girl, I wish I could give back what you have lost!"

To me, Captain Sutter had long been the embodiment of all that was good and grand; and now I longed to touch his hand and whisper to him grat.i.tude too sacred for strangers' ears. But the opportunity was withheld until riper years.

During our last term at school, Georgia's health was so improved that my life was more free of cares and aglow with fairer promises. Miss Kate Robinson and I were rivals for school honors, and I studied as I never had studied before, for in the history, physiology, and rhetoric cla.s.ses, she pressed me hard. At the close of the session the record showed a tie. Neither of us would accept determination by lot, and we respectfully asked the Honorable Board of Education to withhold the medal for that year.

About this time Georgia and I enjoyed a rare surprise. On his return from business one day, Mr. Chamberlain announced that a distinguished-appearing young lawyer, S.O. Houghton by name, had stopped at the bank that afternoon, to learn our address and say that he would call in the evening. We, knowing that he was the husband of our "little cousin Mary," were anxious to meet him and to hear of her, whom we had not seen since our journey across the snow. He came that evening, and told us of the cozy home in San Jose to which he had taken his young wife, and of her wish that we visit them the coming July or August.

Although letters had pa.s.sed between us, up to this time we had known little of Mary's girlhood life. After we parted, in 1847, she was carried through to San Francisco, then called Yerba Buena, where her maimed foot was successfully treated by the surgeon of the United States s.h.i.+p _Portsmouth_. The citizens of that place purchased and presented to her the one hundred _vara_ lot Number 38, and the lot adjoining to her brother George. Mr. Reed was appointed her guardian and given charge of her apportionment of funds realized from the sale of goods brought from her father's tents. She became a member of the Reed household in San Jose, and her life must have been cast in pleasant lines, for she always spoke of Mr. and Mrs. Reed with filial affection. Moreover, her brother had been industrious and prosperous, and had contributed generously to her comfort and happiness.

Some weeks later, we took Mr. Houghton's report home to Elitha. We also showed her a recent letter from Mary, sparkling with bright antic.i.p.ations--antic.i.p.ations never to be realized; for we girls were hardly settled on the ranch before a letter came from cousin George Donner, dated Sacramento, June 20, 1860. From this we learned that he had on that day been summoned to the bedside of his dying sister, and had come from his home on Putah Creek as fast as horse could carry him, yet had failed to catch the bay steamer; and while waiting for the next boat, was writing to us who could best understand his state of mind.