of one day succeeded those of the preceding. Five of my companions had
died in my cabin, and their stark and ghastly bodies lay there day and
night, seemingly gazing at me with their glazed and staring eyes. I was
too weak to move them had I tried. The relief parties had not removed
them. These parties had been too hurried, too horror-stricken at the
sight, too fearful lest an hour’s delay might cause them to share the
same fate. I endured a thousand deaths. To have one’s suffering
prolonged inch by inch, to be deserted, forsaken, hopeless; to see that
loathsome food ever before my eyes, was almost too much for human
endurance. I am conversant with four different languages. I speak and
write them with equal fluency; yet in all four I do not find words
enough to express the horror I experienced during those two months, or
what I still feel when memory reverts to the scene. Suicide would have
been a relief, a happiness, a godsend! Many a time I had the muzzle of
my pistol in my mouth and my finger on the trigger, but the faces of my
helpless, dependent wife and child would rise up before me, and my hand
would fall powerless. I was not the cause of my misfortunes, and God
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Almighty had provided only this one horrible way for me to subsist.”
Did you boil the flesh?
”Yes! But to go into details - to relate the minutiae - is too
agonizing! I can not do it! Imagination can supply these. The necessary
mutilation of the bodies of those who had been my friends, rendered the
ghastliness of my situation more frightful. When I could crawl about and
my lame foot was partially recovered, I was chopping some wood one day
and the ax glanced and cut off my heel. The piece of flesh grew back in
time, but not in its former position, and my foot is maimed to this day.
”A man, before he judges me, should be placed in a similar situation;
but if he were, it is a thousand to one he would perish. A constitution
of steel alone could endure the deprivation and misery. At this time I
was living in the log-cabin with the fireplace. One night I was awakened
by a scratching sound over my head. I started up in terror, and listened
intently for the noise to be repeated. It came again. It was the wolves
trying to get into the cabin to eat me and the dead bodies.”
”At midnight, one cold, bitter night, Mrs. George Donner came to my
door. It was about two weeks after Reed had gone, and my loneliness was
beginning to be unendurable. I was most happy to her the sound of a
human voice. Her coming was like that of an angel from heaven. But she
had not come to bear me company. Her husband had died in her arms. She
had remained by his side until death came, and then had laid him out and
hurried away. He died at nightfall, and she had traveled over the snow
alone to my cabin. She was going, alone, across the mountains. She was
going to start without food or guide. She kept saying, ’My children! I
must see my children!’ She feared he would not survive, and told me she
had some money in her tent. It was too heavy for her to carry. She said,
’Mr. Keseberg, I confide this to your care.’ She made me promise
sacredly that I would get the money and take it to her children in case
she perished and I survived. She declared she would start over the
mountains in the morning. She said, ’I am bound to go to my children.’
She seemed very cold, and her clothes were like ice. I think she had got
in the creek in coming. She said she was very hungry, but refused the
only food I could offer. She had never eaten the loathsome flesh. She
finally lay down, and I spread a feather-bed and some blankets over her.
In the morning she was dead. I think the hunger, the mental suffering,
and the icy chill of the preceding night, caused her death. I have often
been accused of taking her life. Before my God, I swear this is untrue!
Do you think a man would be such a miscreant, such a damnable fiend,
such a caricature on humanity, as to kill this lone woman? There were
plenty of corpses lying around. He would only add one more corpse to the
many!”
”Oh! the days and weeks of horror which I passed in that camp! I had no
hope of help or of being rescued, until I saw the green grass coming up
by the spring on the hillside, and the wild geese coming to nibble it.
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The birds were coming back to their breeding grounds, and I felt that I
could kill them for food. I had plenty of guns and ammunition in camp. I
also had plenty of tobacco and a good meerschaum pipe, and almost the
only solace I enjoyed was smoking. In my weak condition it took me two
or three hours every day to get sufficient wood to keep my fire going.”
”Some time after Mrs. Donner’s death, I thought I had gained sufficient
strength to redeem the pledge I had made her before her death. I started
to go to the camps at Alder Creek to get the money. I had a very
difficult journey. The wagons of the Donners were loaded with tobacco,
powder, caps, shoes, school-books, and dry-goods. This stock was very
valuable, and had it reached California, would have been a fortune to
the Donners. I searched carefully among the bales and bundles of goods,
and found five-hundred and thirty-one dollars. Part of this sum was
silver, part gold. The silver I buried at the foot of a pine tree, a
little way from the camp. One of the lower branches of another tree
reached down close to the ground, and appeared to point to the spot. I
put the gold in my pocket, and started to return to my cabin. I had
spent one night at the Donner tents. On my return I became lost. When it
was nearly dark, in crossing a little flat, the snow suddenly gave way
under my feet, and I sank down almost to my armpits. By means of the
crust on top of the snow, I kept myself suspended by throwing out my
arms. A stream of water flowed underneath the place over which I had
been walking, and the snow had melted on the underside until it was not
strong enough to support my weight. I could not touch bottom with my
feet, and so could form no idea of the depth of the stream. By long and
careful exertion I managed to draw myself backward and up on the snow. I
then went around on the hillside, and continued my journey. At last,
just at dark, completely exhausted and almost dead, I came in sight of
the Graves cabin. I shall never forget my joy at sight of that
log-cabin. I felt that I was no longer lost, and would at least have
shelter. Some time after dark I reached my own cabin. My clothes were
wet by getting in the creek, and the night was so cold that my garments
were frozen into sheets of ice. I was so weary, and chilled, and numbed,
that I did not build up a fire, or attempt to get anything to eat, but
rolled myself up in the bed-clothes and tried to get warm. Nearly all
night I lay there shivering with cold; and when I finally slept, I slept
very soundly. I did not wake up until quite late the next morning. To my
utter astonishment my camp was in the most inexplicable confusion. My
trunks were broken open, and their contents were scattered everywhere.
Everything about the cabin was torn up and thrown about the floor. My
wife’s jewelry, my cloak, my pistol and ammunition were missing. I
supposed Indians had robbed my camp during my absence. Suddenly I was
startled by the sound of human voices. I hurried up to the surface of
the snow, and saw white men coming toward the cabin. I was overwhelmed
with joy and gratitude at the prospect of my deliverance. I had suffered
so much, and for so long a time, that I could scarcely believe my
senses. Imagine my astonishment upon their arrival to be greeted, not
with a ’good morning’ or a kind word, but with the gruff, insolent
demand, ’Where is Donner’s money?’”
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”I told them they ought to give me something to eat, and that I would
talk with them afterwards, but no, they insisted that I should tell them
about Donner’s money. I asked them who they were, and where they came
from, but they replied by threatening to kill me if I did not give up
the money. They threatened to hang or shoot me, and at last I told them
I had promised Mrs. Donner that I would carry her money to her children,
and I proposed to do so, unless shown some authority by which they had a
better claim. This so exasperated them, that they acted as though they
were going to kill me. I offered to let them bind me as a prisoner, and
take me before the alcalde at Sutter’s Fort, and I promised that I would
then tell all I knew about the money. They would listen to nothing,
however, and finally I told them where they would find the silver
buried, and gave them the gold. After I had done this, they showed me a
document from Alcalde Sinclair, by which they were to receive a certain
proportion of all moneys and property which they rescued.”
The men spoken of by Keseberg, were the fourth relief party. Their names
were, Captain Fallon, William M. Foster, John Rhodes, J. Foster, R. P.
Tucker, E. Coffeemire, and - Keyser. William M. Foster had recrossed the
mountains the second time, hoping to rescue his wife’s mother, Mrs.
Murphy. Alas! he found only her mutilated remains.
Chapter XX.
Dates of the Rescues
Arrival of the Fourth Relief
A Scene Beggaring Description
The Wealth of the Donners
An Appeal to the Highest Court
A Dreadful Shock
Saved from a Grizzly Bear
A Trial for Slander
Keseberg Vindicated
Two Kettles of Human Blood
The Enmity of the Relief Party
”Born under an Evil Star”
”Stone Him! Stone Him!”
Fire and Flood
Keseberg’s Reputation for Honesty
A Prisoner in his own House
The Most Miserable of Men
December 16, 1846, the fifteen composing the ”Forlorn Hope,” left Donner
Lake. January 17, 1847, as they reached Johnson’s ranch; and February
5th Capt. Tucker’s party started to the assistance of the emigrants.
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This first relief arrived February 19th at the cabins; the second
relief, or Reed’s party, arrived March 1st; the third, or Foster’s,
about the middle of March; and the fourth, or Fallon’s, on the
seventeenth of April. Upon the arrival of Capt. Fallon’s company, the
sight presented at the cabins beggars all description. Capt. R. P.
Tucker, now of Goleta, Santa Barbara County, Cal., endeavors, in his
correspondence, to give a slight idea of the scene. Human bodies,
terribly mutilated, legs, arms, skulls, and portions of remains, were
scattered in every direction and strewn about the camp. Mr. Foster found
Mrs. Murphy’s body with one of her limbs sawed off, the saw still lying
by her remains. It was such scenes as these which gave this party their
first abhorrence for Keseberg. The man was nowhere to be seen, but a
fresh track was discovered in the snow leading away from the cabins
toward the Dormer tents. The party pressed forward to Alder Creek.
Captain Tucker writes: ”The dead bodies lay moldering around, being all
that was left to tell the tale of sorrow. On my first trip we had cut
down a large pine tree, and laid the goods of the Donners on this tree
to dry in the sun. These goods lay there yet, with the exception of
those which Reed’s party had taken away.”
George Donner was wealthy. His wealth consisted not merely of goods, as
many claim, but of a large amount of coin. Hiram Miller, of the relief
parties, is authority for the statement that Mr. Donner owned a quarter
section of land within the present city limits of Chicago. This land was
sold for ten thousand dollars, shortly before Mr. Donner started for
California. Mr. Allen Francis, who has been mentioned as the very best
authority concerning this, family, camped with them on the evening of
their first night’s journey out of Springfield, Illinois, saw Mr.
Donner’s money, and thinks there was ten thousand dollars. Mrs. F. E.
Bond, of Elk Grove, Sacramento County, California, does not remember the
exact amount, but knows that Mr. Donner started with a great deal of
gold, because she helped make the belts in which it was to be carried in
crossing the plains. The relief parties always understood there was at
Donner’s camp a large sum of money, estimated at from six to fourteen
thousand dollars. It is not disputed that Halloran left about fifteen
hundred dollars to this family. Yet Capt. Fallon’s party could find no
money. It was clear to their minds that some one had robbed the Donner
tents.
Remaining over night, thoroughly searching in every place where the
supposed money could be concealed, this party returned to Donner Lake.
On their way they found the same mysterious track, also returning to the
cabins. They probably discovered Keseberg in about the manner described.
It is plain to be seen that they regarded him as the murderer of Mrs.
Donner. In forcing him to tell what he had done with the money, they,
too, claim to have choked him, to have put a rope around his neck, and
to have threatened to hang him. On the other hand, if Keseberg’s
statement be accepted as truth, it is easy to understand why he refused
to surrender the money to men who treated him from the outset as a
murderer and a robber.
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Let the God to whom Lewis Keseberg appeals be his judge. It is not the
part of this book to condemn or acquit him. Most of the fourth relief
party have already gone before the bar at which Keseberg asks to be
tried. Capt. Tucker is about the only available witness, and his
testimony is far more lenient than the rumors and falsehoods usually
published.
If Keseberg be guilty of any or of all crimes, it will presently be seen