Donner Party Quotes

“When all is said and done I think the story tells us that hope is the heroes domain, not the fools. Because we dare to hope, even when doing so might undo us. We leave the worlds we create behind us, swirling in our wakes, eternal and effervescent with the beauty of our aspirations.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

“The number of ways in which their children might come to harm along the trail was staggering . . .

Children fell under wagon wheels and were crushed to death or crippled for life. They wandered off into the tall grass and were never seen again. Occasionally they were abducted by Native Americans. Much more frequently they drowned when swept away by rivers their families were trying to ford. Drowning incidents were so common, in fact, that some mothers wrote their children's names in indelible ink on labels and sewed the labels into their children's clothes. It didn't prevent them from drowning, but it sometimes allowed a grieving mother to identify a body that had been in the water for too long. Children were bitten by rattlesnakes, struck by lightning, trampled by unruly oxen or horses, pummeled by hailstones as large as turkey eggs, and shot by the nearly daily accidental discharges of the guns that their fathers carried. They died of measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, influenza, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, malaria, infected cuts, food poisoning, mumps, and smallpox.”
― James Daniel Brown, The Indifferent Stars Above