So changed had the emigrants become that when the rescuing party
arrived with food, some of them cast it aside, and seemed to prefer
the putrid human flesh that still remained. The day before the party
arrived, one emigrant took the body of a child about four years of
age in bed with him and devoured the whole before morning; and the
next day he ate another about the same age, before noon.
This article, one of the most harrowing to be found in print, spread
through the early mining-camps, and has since been quoted by historians
and authors as an authentic account of scenes and conduct witnessed by
the first relief corps to Donner Lake. It has since furnished style and
suggestion for other nerve-racking stories on the subject, causing
keener mental suffering to those vitally concerned than words can tell.
Yet it is easily proved to be nothing more or less than a perniciously
sensational newspaper production, too utterly false, too cruelly
misleading, to merit credence. Evidently, it was written without
malice, but in ignorance, and by some warmly clad, well nourished
person, who did not know the humanizing effect of suffering and sorrow,
and who may not have talked with either a survivor or a rescuer of the
Donner Party.
When the Donner Party ascended the Sierra Nevadas on the last day of
October, 1846, it comprised eighty-one souls; namely, Charles
Berger,[19] Patrick Breen, Margaret Breen (his wife), John Breen,
Edward Breen, Patrick Breen, Jr.
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