Unfortunate Emigrants: Narratives of the Donner Party

by Kristin Johnson

The story of the Donner Party remains one of the most tragic and compelling in pioneer history. Johnson gathers many rare early narratives detailing the participants' trying experiences into one of the most accurate accounts to date of this disastrous event.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

317 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1996

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers the experiences of the ill-fated Donner Party. It was chilling, sad, horrifying, and eye-opening. Would highly recommend it as well-documented and very readable. Not fiction! Would you have done what they had to do to survive?

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the best place to get the Donner story in one place, and as accurately as it can be told w/o a time machine. The first person accounts are the best parts. You can skip the dry bits that are meant for scholars. I'm told there is a "Donner Party Cookbook", by Terry Del Bene. I'm not familiar enough with it to specifically recommend it, but it must have taken some brass agates to publish it (it's NOT a cannibalism how-to).

[Alita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most intriguing compilation and by a librarian to boot! Pick this one up if you spent hours playing "Oregon Trail" in the late 80s and you had the secret desire to play pioneer.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of primary accounts about the 1846 Donner expedition and tragedy. Kristin Johnson is a co-worker at my library.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough account of what happened to the Donner party; too scholarly for my taste, but this is a great launching point.

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many stories, so many conflicting recollections. How could James Reed have forgotten that it was Pike, not McCutchen, who accompanied him and Stanton ahead of their party, to catch Hastings up and ascertain the route the wagons should follow through the Wasatch?

Pike and Stanton didn't survive to clarify Reed's recollections, but McCutchen did. Surely McCutchen could have later said, yeah, it was Pike, not I, or, conversely, yeah, I was the one who rode with Reed and Stanton.

How could a then 17-year-old Jacob Harlan, of the Harlan-Young party that preceded the Donner-Reed party over the Hastings cut-off and guided by Hastings himself, have remained absolutely convinced that the Donners et al. accompanied the Harlan party into the Wasatch and then decided to branch off, unfortunately for the Harlan-Young party, and disastrously for the Donner-Reed party.

This cannot be. It cannot. Yet Jacob Harlan never falters.

This book is a must read for the seriously Donner-addicted. As usual, I am left wishing with all my heart that my dad were still alive to read it.

[Mme Forte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a book on the Donner Party by another author who kept citing this book as a source. So, because I'm a geek like that, I had to read this one too. It's a compendium of, just as the title promises, narratives about the Donner Party, by people who survived it, by their relatives, and by other writers who (usually) had survivors' own words to work with. The author includes notes on each text -- where and when it first appeared; any conflicts in dates or events or names; and brief introductions of the writers. It was an excellent companion to the first book I read, and it served as an education on just how hard historians have to work to untangle the many threads of truth and error that arise within even firsthand accounts of historical events.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this, not realizing it was a compilation of sources/stories with footnotes. It does make it a bit drier, as it's like reading a research paper, but there are a lot of interesting facts. I found the first-hand telling quite compelling as it is someone telling you what they remember from their experience. I cannot imagine going on this trip in the first place in the 1800s by wagon. That, in and of itself, without coming across any problems, is a daunting adventure to start! Then add in all that entailed; I can't imagine how anyone survived. It's mind-boggling.

[Bonsai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is nobody going to mention the typos? I noticed at least nine, and I'm not by any means a good proofreader. I strongly suspect they're the result of using OCR to input the archival text into the manuscript, but given how nitpicky the editor is about other sources' accuracy it seems incongruous that so many slipped through. I don't know whether this is fair, but those little errors make me the tiniest bit uneasy about trusting this source as much as I want to. (And I do want to!)

[Kenneth Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down, Ms Johnson is the foremost expert on the Donner Party.