Dark Journey: The Tragedy of the Donner Party - Hardcover

Eckert, Allan W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1931672539 ISBN 13: 9781931672535

Publisher: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2009

Synopsis

A region of such wealth and beauty as Upper California could not long be hidden from the eyes of restless Americans pressing steadily westward. In 1841 a party of men, women, and children set out from Missouri led by John Bidwell, the prince of California pioneers. Their trip to California across the plains and mountains, as revealed in the journal of their leaders, is a tribute to human courage, endurance, and faith. We knew only, Bidwell wrote, that California lay to the west. The Bidwell pioneers were followed by many other parties, including the Donner-Reed party. Caught in the Sierra Nevada mountains by the icy grip of an early winter, the Donner party built crude shelters and struggled to survive. Soup made of boiled leather and powdered bones became a luxury. Of the 79 persons who started, 34 died before an expedition out of California rescued the survivors. Allan Eckert s new book, Dark Journey, provides an accurate and comprehensive, yet dramatic, picture of the Donner-Reed Wagon Train s grim, harrowing odyssey from Illinois westward to California, beginning in the spring of 1846 and finally mercifully ending in the spring of the following year. It is the result of extended and intensive research through a multitude of original documents and contemporary accounts of this poignant chapter in American history. Dark Journey is fact, not fiction, The incidents described in this work actually occurred; the dates are historically accurate; the characters, regardless of how major or minor, actually lived the roles in which they are herein portrayed. In this volume, certain techniques normally associated with the novel form have been utilized to help provide continuity and narrative flow but never at the expense of historical accuracy. Where dialogue is used, it is actual quoted conversation from historical sources. Otherwise it is reconstructed from historically recorded interchanges between individuals but not written then as dialogue. In other instances, historical fact has been utilized in the form of conversation to maintain dramatic narrative pace but unfailingly in keeping with the character and fundamental perspective of the individual speaking the words.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

As the legions of Allan Eckert fans who have enjoyed all six fascinating volumes of his The Winning of America series can attest, throughout the 1700s and the 1800s Americans were afflicted with a terminal case of what John Steinbeck has called "westering and westering".During the early 1840s, two specific accounts focused the attention of restless Americans on the far West. John C. Fremont led a U.S. Army Survey Expedition, exploring the Oregon Trail area and then the Pacific Coast region. The published account of Fremont's expedition was widely read and served to enhance the beauty and potential of California in the national imagination. A still more widely read account, authored by Lansford Hastings in 1845, advocated a short-cut to California. Rather than following the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger (in present day southern Idaho) and then veering southwest to the headwaters of the Humboldt River and crossing the Sierras, Hastings strongly advocated departing from the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger and then puching west over the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Desert to the Humboldt River origins and the Sierras. This route was, indeed, shorter than the conventional California route, but Hastings, who named the route after himself, had never traveled it, nor had any wagon party. Those few who had crossed this way on horseback swore they would never repeat their near fatal error. Hasting's travel guide, however, was a national best-seller and became a well-thumbed Bible for tens of thousands of "westering" Americans.Of the hundreds of wagon trains which headed west during this period, only one—the Donner-Reed party—left an indelibe imprint on our national imagination.This train's fame was sealed by it's terrible fate.Influenced by Hastings' fraudulent claims of a 300-mile shortcut and already significantly behind the standard, accepted summer schedule for making the long trip, the Donner-Reed party made a tragic error: they took the virtually untried "Hastings Cutoff" and consequently lost weeks and weeks of time in their arduous struggle to drive their wagons first over the nearly impassable Wasatch Mountains and then across the even more formidable vast salt desert west of the Great Salt lake. Exhausted and demoralized, they finally ascended the Sierra Nevadas, only to be overwhelmed near the summit by the icy grip of an early winter in extremely deep snow and sub-zero temperatures. Soup made of boiled leather and powdered bones became a luxury. In the late stages of their unspeakably harrowing ordeal, some party members resorted to cannibalism. Of the 79 persons who started, 34 died before several rescue expeditions out of California finally reached the survivors.Allan Eckert's compelling new book, Dark Journey, provides a rigorously accurate and comprehensive, yet poignant and dramatic presentation of the Donner-Reed Wagon Train's grim, harrowing odyssey from Illinois westward to California, beginning in the spring of 1846 and finally—mercifully—ending in the spring of the following year. It is the result of extended and intensive research through a multitude of original documents and contemporary accounts of this haunting chapter in American history.

About the Author

Allan W. Eckert is an historian, naturalist, novelist, poet, screenwriter and playwright. The author of 40 published books, he has been nominated on seven separate occasions for the Pulitzer Prize in literature. He is widely-acclaimed for his series of historical narratives entitled The Winning of America.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jesse Stuart Foundation
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1931672539
• ISBN 13: 9781931672535
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 334
• Editor: Anderson Thayle