Artefacts recall an American tragedy

Press, 8 November 1984, Page 21

Artefacts recall an American tragedy

DONALD FREDERICK,

National Geographic News Service

Hundreds of bone fragments and a number of artefacts related to one of the most tragic episodes during the years of the pioneer push westward in America have been uncovered in the Donner Memorial Park, California. The bone fragments and other objects, including a silver brooch and earring, jewelery beads, brass buttons, rifle balls, a religious medal, and a spoon fashioned from bone, were found at the site of a crude log cabin built by the Murphy family. The Murphys were part of the ill-fated Donner party, which was on its way to California, but became stranded in the rugged Sierra Nevada during the harsh winter of 1846-47.

Trapped by raging blizzards and huge drifts, 81 people, many of them children, were forced to take shelter in hastily built cabins, tents, lean-tos, even a bush wigwam. Incredible acts of fortitude, selfsacrifice, and heroism followed, but the hard-pressed pioneers also had to endure a nightmare that included robbery, murder, starvation, and cannibalism. Only 47 of them finally arrived at Sutter’s Fort in California.

“I have a lot of sympathy for the Donner party,’ says Donald L. Hardesty, a University of Nevada, Reno, anthropologist who directed the excavation at the Murphy cabin site. “Those people made some poor decisions, but they also suffered unbelievable streaks of bad luck.’

Dr Hardesty, whose work was supported by the National Geographic Society, found the site of the Murphy cabin exactly where it was supposed to be, near a large triangular rock in the pajfk. Because the cabin had to be hastily erected, it was built on the ground without any flooring. The crude logs and other material that formed the structure have long since vanished.

However, careful excavation of the area revealed the building’s dimensions. “The large size surprised me,’ says Dr Hardesty. “It was a square cabin with walls about 25 feet long. The rock probably helped form one of the walls’ According to contempory accounts, General Stephen W. Kearney and some of his troops visited the Donner camp in the spring of 1847, only weeks after the last of the group had been rescued. Appalled by the spectacle of dismembered bodies and stripped bones, he ordered a mass burial of the remains. Legend says this was done in the Murphy cabin, which was then burned to the ground. “I haven’t found any evidence that this took place there,’ says Dr Hardesty. “My suspicion is that most of the bone fragments we found belonged to animals that were cooked and eaten in the cabin. There may be some human remains, but I don’t think they’ll be numerous enough to support the mass burial theory.”