This advice, penned in an 1847 letter from an overlander to his eastern kin, was based on terrible experience. The writer was one of the emigrant party led west by George Donner in the summer of 1846 with California their goal, but tragedy their eventual destination. It started easily enough. Although the emigrant party took the name of George Donner, its captain, it was originated by James Reed, a businessman of Springfield, Illinois, who was descended from Polish nobility (his family surname was Reednoski). Reed had been a private in the same company as Abraham Lincoln during the Black Hawk War of 1832, when Illinois troops had driven Sauk Indians from their tribal lands and slaughtered them in the Bad Axe Massacre. Afterwards, Reed had become a manufacturer of cabinet furniture, a farmer and railroad speculator. His wife, Margaret, suffered from “sick headaches”, and it was because of these that he decided to go west, hoping that the climate of California would improve her health.
What do You think about The Mammoth Book Of The West?
