Why does the Old West fascinate us so much? Maybe because it’s America’s origin myth of ordinary people seeking a better life, new adventures, more money, and more freedoms, of course at the cost of the folks who were already there—the Indians and Mexicans. The Old West has been a part of my psyche since I was four and half years old because of Star Wars. Yes, everything in Star Wars is derivative of old Western movies starring John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Gary Cooper, among others. George Lucas totally lifted a poignant, heart-breaking scene from The Searchers (1956) for Star Wars (1977). Boba Fett is modeled off of Clint Eastwood’s bounty hunter in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Han Solo has a touch of John Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn from the original True Grit (1969). In the same way that Star Wars will always be a part of my favorite stories, the Donner Party story has also worked its way into my obsessions.
Why the Donner Party? I first heard about the pioneers and their tragic story while watching/reading The Shining (1980). Jack and his family are driving to the Overlook Hotel and Jack Torrance remarks, “They got snowbound one winter in the mountains and they had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive.” The Shining is also about how the white man killed Indians—the reason the hotel is haunted is because it was constructed on sacred Indian ground. Of course, I was fascinated, but didn’t go crazy and do research—I did that later in 2011 after visiting the St. Louis arch and museum where they had a label about the Donner Party. After reading Wikipedia I was tripled grossed out and didn’t return to my Donner Party studies until this August when I challenged myself to write a song about an American woman from the 19th century who is considered a hero. That person is Tamsen Donner, matriarch of the Donner Party and here’s that song!
Here’s a famous line from Tamsen:
“Indeed if I do not experience something far worse than I yet have done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started.” –Tamsen Donner, 1846
Well, that didn’t work out so well. She and her husband, George, died, but all five of their daughters survived. Unfortunately, they had to resort to cannibalizing their deceased family members and teamsters to do so. Tamsen didn’t have to die, but she chose to stay with her dying husband until he died instead of leaving with her kids. Her kids left with William Eddy (he of the Forlorn Hope party and a hero) and the other rescuers and hours later he died. Her timing sucked. She was later eaten by Lewis “the Cannibal” Keseberg and nothing of her remained.
In this blog I intend to write more about the Donners, my newly found Mormon great-great-great uncle, James Henry Martineau, who was a contemporary of the youngsters in the Donner Party and also followed their trail, albeit four years later. His journals are all in in the book, An Uncommon Pioneer (2008) and are fascinating as hell. I also want to explore other ancestors who participated in the “teaching” (I’m using this word loosely) of Indian children at the Tomah Industrial School in Tomah, Wisconsin, in the early part of the 20th century. The more I research the Indian schools the more I learn how fundamentally horrible they were/are to native peoples. More later! Oh, and trains. I love trains and reading about hobos. And we can’t forget cowboy songs, work songs, and much more.
I’m also switching from poetry to fiction and am working on western sci-fi short stories, flash fiction and a novel—maybe involving the Donners, space, and time travel—you never know! I hope that this blog, which I’ll post in weekly will spur my creativity and get my writing fingers nimble again.
Before I close here’s a bit of info about the Donner Party—which definitely falls into the weird West category.
Till next time!
Who? The Donner-Reed Party consisted of 87 people who were part of a larger wagon train, The Russell Party. 46 survived, 41 died, 2/3 of the women lived.1/3 of the men lived. Why is that? Are women stronger? Yes and no. The menfolk were all tired out from building cabins and felling trees and what not and they were more likely to succumb to hypothermia and starvation than the women because their health was already at dangerous levels. Also, many of the men didn’t have women taking care of them–which proves that the love of a good woman is everything!
Where Everyone except the Donners were stuck at Truckee Lake, which is 15 miles from the Summit, the only way to get over the Sierras into California. The Donners were stuck at Alder Creek, 6.5 miles northeast of Truckee Lake.
Why? To escape cholera, malaria, typhoid, for greater economic opportunity, to make more money and buy land before everyone else did.
What? George Donner and James Reed (our fearless leaders) thought it best to take the Hastings Cuttoff, the much-touted short cut that Lansford Hastings had written about in the Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California. California wasn’t yet a state (1850).
From Hastings himself: “Unless you pass over the mountains early in the fall, you are very liable to be detained, be impassable mountains of snow, until the next spring, or, perhaps, forever.” (ouch!)
The Reeds survived with their family intact and never ate other humans. Of course, I’ll share more about the awesome Reeds, but here’s a quote from the oldest daughter after the ordeal: “Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.” (one of my favorite quotes ever)
When? They left Independence, Missouri, on May 12, 1846. They were snowed in Oct 31, 1846. There were 10 major snowstorms in the Sierras from mid-Oct to early April 1847 (ouch!) The rescues started February 17, 1847.
The Cannibalism
It all started with the Snowshoe Party (later named the Forlorn Hope) leaving Truckee Lake in mid-December 1846 with the goal of reaching Johnson’s Ranch on the Bear River: Fifteen started out, only 7 survived. Only two men survived: William Eddy and William Foster. The women: Harriet Pike (Foster shot her husband—kind of awkward), Sarah Graves Fosdick, Mary Ann Graves (Sarah and Mary Ann were sisters), Amanda McCutchen, and Sarah Murphy Foster. All resorted to cannibalism: the first two were Patrick Dolan and Franklin Graves. William Foster murdered their two Indian guides, Luis and Salvador, for food. The Forlorn Hope ate the flesh of six of the eight men who died. And it took them 33 days to reach Johnson’s Ranch. As a result of their sacrifice, the First Relief rescue party was quickly organized and they arrived at Truckee Lake on February 17, 1847. When they guys arrived, they heard this from a skeletal Levinah Murphy: “Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven?”
Great website and blog. Cheers to one of my favorite FaceBook friends. I love your spirit, observations on life, writings, and music. Your postings make me smile. Keep marching to the different drum. Peace.
Thank you, my friend! Your comment today made me smile!!! I’ll keep marching and marching….~Peace! Alice
Wonderful stories! Can’t wait to read more!
Thank you, my dear friend! You inspire me with all of your extensive fiction writing! I’ll be honored to keep up! Merry Christmas ~Alice
Great blog! Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for your comment and your support! Merry Christmas! ~Alice
The first time I saw the original Star Wars I said it’s like a Western in space!
Thank you, Fran, for reading my new blog~as a little kid I didn’t know what that meant when my dad told me George Lucas had copied old Western movies, but it sure made sense because those were the “Star Wars”-like movies Lucas saw as a kid!
Alice finds heroes in unlikely places and interesting threads in stories of intricate cloth. I’ll gladly follow the journey your re-nimbled fingers are set to explore.
Thank you so much, Doug! I’m working on another Donner Party-related song~more soon~Alice
That’s what I do. I type and I know things.
This is a wonderful post Alice! And I would like to add to this discussion. The “lifting” of characters and plot from “old” westerns to Star Wars, has two important aspects: 1. Resonance; and 2. Contextualisation. Any successful story needs to do both. Its hard to unpick these two ideas, a real chicken and egg situation, but I’ll fumble to my point.
There is something deep in our DNA that makes storytelling an essential part of our cultural evolution. Myths and legends evolve. They carry deep message, warnings, and wisdom. We keep retelling these stories till they become ubiquitous to our lives, and we look for their archetype in our day-to-day undertakings. There are reasons why societies find and recast events to fit myths, for example, here in Australia we have the legend of Ned Kelly an outlaw which is very much cast as a Robin Hood-like individual. So when a story hits a chord and resonates with us, we will devour it.
Game of Thrones, Outlander, Breaking Bad, The Saprano’s, The Last Kingdom, The Warlord Chronicles, all deal with themes, issues, and stories that, at some level, we connect with.
Let’s go a little deeper.
Why was Harry Potter so popular? Because the plight of going to school, facing challenges, difficulties at home, dreaming of something bigger and better, are near universal issues that resonate with the target audience.
Resonance also covers genre and characters. When Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue, he basically set in stone the archetype for the mystery story. When we pick up a mystery story, we have expectations about the way it is structured and what it will do. Agatha Christie’s, Hercule Poirot is, I will say, the archetype of a consulting detective (I’ll use Sherlock Holmes later). So many consulting detectives have been based on or a parody of Poirot (think Inspector Clouseau).
TV writers use resonance to capture audiences. The TV series House, is Sherlock Holmes meets ER. The mystery stories of Holmes capture us, wanting to know how he solves these crimes in a single logical step. ER, has drama, life and death, emotion, and complicated medical procedures. The Authors of Hosue didn’t hide the connection between Holmes and House (get it?): Watson and Wilson; Heroin and Vicodin; Classical Violin and Classical Piano; and the list goes on. The key is, when we watch the episodes of House, there is something familiar about what is going on, what is going to happy. It resonates with us. It’s interesting to see the reaction when authors and writers mess with Holmes’s character; more often than not, the audience denounces the chances and reject character changes, because Holmes is Holmes, and my changing him, he no longer resonates. This is the reason why I chose Poirot not Holmes as the archetype for the consulting detective (You can mess with Poirot but not Holmes). Another interesting byplay is the connection between an episode of House and the BBC series Sherlock, where a minor scene is almost entirely taken from House, its kind of coming full circle.
This is just not restricted to TV series. Here are a few movie elevator pitches that fall into the same category: The movie Aliens is Jaws on a Spaceship. Star Wars is a Western Set in space.
This brings me to contextualisation (Again, I’m Australian its an s not a z!). Any story or narrative, needs to connect with its genre. We need to understand how it fits with other stories. Again this helps the story resonate with the audience. We pick up across the genre, repeated character types (e.g. Boba Fett), story structure, key scenes.
I remember my Dad being so angry that the movie Paint Your Wagon, simply didn’t connect to other western movies, or characters, structure, and Clint Eastwood didn’t kill a stack of people.
Here is a final example. In the 1950’s the scandal of the Cambridge Five, and the positioning of Kim Philby near the top of the British Intelligence establishment, sent shock waves throughout the world. In his novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John LeCarre retells the warning of complacency, public risk, duty and self-sacrifice. For the record, Philby’s biography, My Silent War, needs to be read with caution and should be treated as fiction in large parts, that is my view. LeCarre, brings back George Smiley, the man who looks like a shrunken toad, and spends too much money on poorly fitting clothes. To reveal the mole, who is right at the top of the Circus and has been there for years. The novel parallels a number of events of the time, even the identification of five suspects who could be the mole, including Smiley. So the story resonates because it connects with the real world events, risks, fears and themes.
Every espionage novel since has a few key scenes and characters that echo TTSS. A “retired” special branch man (Mendel), who is brought in to do the tasks the protagonist (Smiley) cant do. There needs to be the initial trigger that there is a mole, and it needs to come out the blue, and yet be so obvious. There needs to be the identification of suspects, in the BBC series The Game, Joe Lambe and Jim Fenchurch sit in a café drinking cheap coffee and give every suspect a code name from a deck of cards, including himself. This is clearly the scene from TTSS, “we sat there, in Controls flat putting it together, drinking that cheap Cyprus sherry he always gave. […] Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. Alldeline was Tinker, Haydon was Tailor, Bland Was Soldier, and Toby Esterhase was Poorman, We dropped Sailor because it rhymed with Tailor. You [Smiley] were Beggarman.” The scene connects with the wider literature and reader expectations. There needs to be the unmasking of a wider conspiracy. There needs to be a trap set. The trap needs to be sprung and the reveal of the mole. There needs to be a clean up. Which may or may not go well for the protagonist.
We all have a tender heart for cripples and bastards and broken things. We love to hear their stories, to hear a story that fits with our wider set of expectations, a story should never forget what it is, the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armour and it will live forever.
Thank you so much, David from Australia, for your well-thought out comment/essay–I so appreciate learning from your insights–you make me a better human! Merry Christmas!! ~Alice
You are far too kind!