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This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. You're about to hear the most notorious tragedy. In the history of America's westward expansion, the Donner Party story. Let's take a listen. It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor Americans pursue prosperity, ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it.
They cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach, as if they expected to stop living before they had relished them. Death steps in in the end and stops them before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity. Which always escapes them. Alexis de Tocqueville. May 1846.
Thousands of men, women, and children. Riding, walking, pushing, they're heading for a new life, 2,500 miles away. Germans, Belgians, French, Catholics, Presbyterians, Mormons. One of the world's great mass migrations begins. The pioneer spirit is moving west.
In this colossal migration to Oregon and California, America will finally define its character. When the pioneer movement began, fewer than twenty thousand white Americans lived west of the Mississippi River. Ten years later, a half a million pioneers stepped off into the western wilderness. It's the American dream. Then as now.
The people want an already good life to get better. They can walk ten miles a day for up to six months straight.
Some go through ten pairs of boots each. Half are children. On route, one in five of the women are pregnant. But these aren't America's poor. Families sell farms.
Saved for five years to join the Exodus, risking it all. Here's best-selling author Jeanette Walls. I think if there is one episode that encapsulates the American spirit, I think it is probably the move west. Whip those mules and horses, and cross those rivers, and cross over those mountains to the unknown, and say, "I'm leaving everything behind. I'm leaving everything that I know behind to reinvent myself." A wagon and oxen cost a minimum of five thousand dollars in today's money, but it buys a complete life support machine.
The wagons carry a precious cargo: a thousand pounds of supplies and a grub stake for their journey. Your entire new life in the West. The pioneering spirit is ingenious. Essential drinking water, captured from rain on the wagon canvas, even the oxen's dung is fuel for fires. And like today, there are tolls.
The Indians charge ten dollars for road and one hundred dollars for river crossings, in modern money. But the greatest toll of all—human lives—in all. Twenty thousand Americans will die reaching the West, ten graves for every mile. But of all the stories to come out of the West, none has cut more deeply into the imagination of the American people than the tale of the Donner Party. This one story of suffering and death will show just how far the pioneers will go to conquer the West.
Here's historian Joseph King. I think we're curious, you know, about people who who've experienced hardship, who've gone through terrible ordeals, and certainly the Donner Party. You know, 87 people went through a crisis the like of which few human beings have ever faced, and we're curious about that. It can tell us something, I think, about ourselves. About the limits of human experience.
June, 1846. Nine brand new covered wagons rattle out of Springfield, Illinois, and head west. One of their leaders is 62-year-old George Donner. His wife, Tamzin Donner, is a schoolteacher. But on the trail, women must be ready to do anything.
Baby, is that the girl? Welcome to the world. These women were made up of the strongest fiber possible. The journey is tough, but the going is good. Tamzin Donner writes in her journal.
I could never have believed we could have traveled so far with so little difficulty. Indeed, if we do not experience anything worse, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started. But as leader of the wagon train, Tamson's husband George Donner is aware there's one final obstacle to their journey: the Sierra Nevada, peaks up to fourteen thousand feet. Failure to clear the mountain passes before the first snowfalls, the consequences are terrifying. And you've been listening to the story of the Donner Party with some really great backdrop, particularly that reading from Tocqueville.
And my goodness, there's no finer writer ever on the American character and the American people than Tocqueville. And that reading was just powerful and a great prelude. To the story about this unsettlement, this unsettling nature of Americans—we're always moving to the next place and the next thing—is pioneering spirit. And my goodness, it was there in spades. And the people who went west—twenty thousand in all—would die heading west.
A lot of pain and a lot of sacrifice. When we come back. What happens to the Donner Party as they head towards their destination? Here on our American stories. Lee Habib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts.
Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily. Again, please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories. Coming. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans.
It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past two hundred and fifty years, and now it takes form in a new way. The twenty twenty six semi quincentennial coin and medal program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new.
New official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semiqu. That's usmint.gov slash semiqu. This is Hoda Kotb from Joy One Hundred and One with Hoda Kotb. Halloween has a funny way of making you buy things you'd never normally buy. A ten foot skeleton, sure.
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Required and see you weighed insured. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rushing the Field. I'm Nicole Auerbach, and I'm Joshua Perry. We're so excited to be here to chat about our favorite thing in the entire world, college football. From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the stories shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football.
Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered. Watch rushing the field on NBC Sports now. And we continue with our American stories, and the story of the Downer Party. Let's pick up where we last left off. Nine brand new covered wagons rattle out of Springfield, Illinois, and head west.
One of their leaders is 62-year-old George Donner. His wife, Tamzin Donner, is a schoolteacher. But on the trail, women must be ready to do anything. Another girl. Welcome to the rail.
These women were made up of the strongest fiber possible. The journey is tough, but the going is good. Tamzin Donner writes in her journal. I could never have believed we could have traveled so far with so little difficulty. Indeed, if we do not experience anything worse, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started.
But as leader of the wagon train. Tamsen's husband George Donner is aware there's one final obstacle to their journey: the Sierra Nevada, peaks up to fourteen thousand feet. Failure to clear the mountain passes before the first snowfalls, the consequences are terrifying. But as the Donner party approaches Utah, George Donner makes a fateful decision, leading a splinter group off of the main party. The group now consists of 87 people, nine families, and 16 single men.
George Donner's two brothers, Jacob and James Reed, follow with their families. Donner has read one of the many popular New Trail guidebooks by Lansford Hastings. Hastings was trying to garner support from the government for his so-called shortcut to the West. Hastings Cut Off claimed to shave two weeks off the journey time. Lansford Hastings would not publish this immigrant guide showing us the best route to California if he did not travel every step of it himself.
Problem was, he never traveled it himself, let alone with a trail of wagons. Tomorrow, I turn my wagons to the Hastings Cut Off. Who will follow? George Donner's brother, James Reed, wrote in his diary on July 31, 1846. Hastings Cut Off is said to be a saving of 400 miles.
We are informed it is a fine, level road with plenty of water and grass. But Donner's information is wrong. In fact. The shortcut adds a hundred miles to the journey. Way should be clear.
Let's hope to God. The snow will close the passes in the fall, whether we're through or not. High in the Sierra Nevada, the Donner Party enters the Truckee Pass. They're only thirty miles from the California Plains. Then this happened.
It was sundown. The weather was clear. But a large circle around the moon indicated an approaching storm. John Breen. Supplies are dangerously low.
Their water supply is gone. Eighty crazed and dehydrated oxen have run away. Twenty-one other oxen are killed with poisoned arrows by Paiute Indians. From the bluffs above the river, they could hear the Paiutes laughing at their plight. Then.
A broken front axle. The Donner party stops to make repairs near Truckee Lake. Cutting timber for a new axle, George Donner gashes his hand. That night, five feet of snow falls. Five feet of new snow up there.
We've lost the road.
Soon, the drifts are sixty feet deep. Can we get through? No. What? Not anymore.
The pass is completely blocked. The Donner Party will be stranded for five months. We made a fire and got something to eat. Ma spread down a buffalo robe. And set up by the fire, the Indians knew we were doomed.
And one of them wrapped his blanket about him and stood all night under a tree. In just three weeks, they've eaten all their food. The men, women, and children are all dying. Almost every day becomes someone's last. They kill their pack animals, then they eat charred bones, boiled hides, twigs, bark, leaves, dirt, and worse.
Here's George Donner's daughter, Eliza. Even the wind held its breath as the suggestion was made that we're one to die. The rest might live. Cannibalism. Christmas, eighteen forty-six.
They eat their first human, averting their faces from each other and weeping. Only the two Indians, Luis and Salvador, refuse to eat. The bodies are cut up, flesh labeled, so people don't eat their own kin. The fourth rescue party brings out almost all survivors, but not all. The winter recorded as the worst ever in the Sierra Nevada mountains is making it almost impossible for the rescue teams to operate.
The very last rescue finds a delirious Lewis Keesberg alone. Surrounded by the half-eaten dead, no one else was alive. George Donner's body is found, skull split open, brain removed. Tamzin Donner's body is never found, though a survivor confessed to eating her. Two thirds of the women and children made it through.
Two thirds of the men perished. Here's historian David McCullough. Of the 87 men, women, and children in the Donner Party, 46 survived. 41 died. Five women.
Fourteen children and twenty-two men, counting John Sutter's Indians, Lewis and Salvador. Of all the families, the Donners suffered the most. All four adults and four of the children died. The pass is renamed the Donner Pass. A testament to the hardship of the pioneers going west.
News of the Donner Party tragedy made headlines around the world. Immigration to California fell off sharply. Then, in January of 1848, gold was discovered in John Sutter's Creek. By late 1849, more than 100,000 people rushed to California. To dig and sift near the streams and canyons where the Donner Party had suffered so much.
Oh, Mary, I have not wrote you half of the trouble we have had, but I have wrote you enough to let you know what trouble is. But thank God, we are the only family that did not eat human flesh. We have left everything, but I don't care for that. We have got through with our lives. Don't let this letter dishearten anybody.
Remember, never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can. Virginia Reed. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And what a story we just heard, with the Donner family itself paying the highest price for George Donner's mistake. The Hastings cutoff, which was going to save hundreds of miles, four hundred miles in route, and in the end only added miles to the route.
And then came that dreadful storm, trapped up in those mountains for months. Running out of food, and resorting to well, you just heard the story of the Downer Party and the story of so many lives lost in the quest to head west. Here on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past two hundred and fifty years, and now it takes form in a new way.
The 2026 semi-quintennial coin and medal program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop. New official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semiq.
That's usmint.gov slash s e m i q. Upgrade to Elite Checking from America's Christian Credit Union and earn up to three point five percent APY, plus everyday perks and access to your paycheck up to two days early with Early Pay. Don't settle. Choose checking that rewards you and aligns with your values. Visit AmericasChristianCU dot com forward slash iHeart.
Minimum balance of one cent required to earn advertised APY. Early pay not guaranteed. APY equals annual percentage yield. Membership eligibility required. Required and see you way insured.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rushing the Field. I'm Nicole Hourback, and I'm Joshua Perry. We're so excited to be here to chat about our favorite thing in the entire world: college football. From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the stories shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football. Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered.
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