The Donner Party has taken its place in American history as the stuff of
legend. A tale of hope, desperation, colonial expansion, starvation, and
the shocking lengths human beings can be pushed to for survival. The
struggles of the group provide an opportunity to conduct demographic
analysis of who lived and who died, offering insights specifically into
the survival rate of different groups in a cold weather, starvation
scenario. Additionally, the story of the Donner Party was adopted as
both inspirational and cautionary tale by proponents of American
expansion and Manifest Destiny. A review of the origins of Manifest
Destiny and how the movement used the Donner Party to influence American
identity in the second half of the 19th century provides some
interesting insights into what inspired thousands of would-be pioneers
to venture into the unknown despite the skills and experience necessary
to live in the wilderness. And beneath the analysis, discourse,
political maneuvering, and nation-building that stems from this story,
there is the real human experiences of those who were present. This
extreme scenario saw incidents of violence, cruelty, selfishness, and
death, including the impossible choices forced on family members to
decide who would live and who must be abandoned to die. At the same time
there were incidents of heroism, kindness, selflessness, sacrifice,
loyalty, and love. Beneath everything else, what the Donner Party
teaches us is that in extreme situations there are no good people nor
evil people, simply frightened people doing their best to survive.
