DONNER PARTY CAMPSITE SEARCH, JULY 2004

Digging into Donner Party history

Reprint from the Sierra Sun publication

David Bunker, dbunker@sierrasun.com
July 15, 2004

In a sun-dappled section of Alder Creek meadow, archaeologists from around the country are reading Truckee's most intriguing story one rusted musket ball and bone fragment at a time.

The artifacts tell the tragic tale of the Donner Party, and recent finds - located by highly trained sniffing dogs - have pinpointed what archaeologists believe is the exact location of the 21-member makeshift camp. The four-month-long camp was were 11 members of the Donner expedition died of starvation and cold during the brutal winter of 1846- 1847. Previous digs and local speculation had marked the Donner camp at several different spots around the meadow.

The George and Jacob Donner families were marooned by a broken wagon axle at the creek while the other members of the 81-person party made camp at Donner Lake. While historical accounts reveal that members of the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism at the Donner Lake camp and further over Donner Summit, whether the Alder Creek party ate their dead to survive is still a matter of speculation.

Funded by grants from the Truckee Tahoe Community Foundation and the University of Montana, archaeologists have uncovered fragments of bone, wagon parts and porcelain. Experts hope to do DNA analysis on the bones to determine whether they are from the deceased Donner members. All indications point to the bones being from animals, the researchers said Wednesday, but they are hoping for a human bone that they can verify with DNA analysis.

"We've been digging here for two weeks and it will probably take another year to analyze it," said Forensic Anthropologist Shannon Novak.

The pieces of bone, flint and porcelain are often very small, broken down over the 157-year lapse by the acidic soil of the pine forest.

"We are dealing with just crumbs of artifacts," said Julie Schablitsky, a University of Oregon Archaeologist.

Their biggest find is the remainder of a hearth that investigators believe marks the center of a camp that was improvised from quilts, brush and sticks.

"We are very excited to find what we think is ground zero for the campground," said Schablitsky.

The trained eyes of the researchers also see what they believe are the markings left by melting snow that ran off of the pioneers' tent.

"We are actually stepping back 150 years in time and seeing what it was like for them," said Schablitsky.

Lochie Wilder Paige, the great granddaughter of Elitha Donner Wilder, a Donner Party survivor, was at the meadow Wednesday to talk about her personal connection to the site.

While Paige emphasized the persevering pioneer spirit of her ancestors, "It's very emotional," she said the dig would raise the old questions about the measures the pioneers took to survive.

"We are aware that this will create more speculation about cannibalism," said Paige.

She also referred to her great, great grandparents decision to send their children to safety, while they themselves remained at the camp to die.

"We know what they find here ... will tell the story of those who gave so dearly so we could live," she said.

Dig unearths artifacts that may resolve Donner Party questions

Public release date: 15-Jul-2004

Contact: Melody Ward Leslie
mleslie@uoregon.edu
541-346-2060
University of Oregon

Researchers find hearth, artifacts and thousands of bone fragments

TRUCKEE, Calif.-- A bonanza of artifacts that may prove to be from the Donner family's camp is on its way to the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene.

A team of archaeologists led by UO and University of Montana researchers hit pay dirt earlier this week at Alder Creek Camp in the Truckee Ranger District of the Tahoe National Forest.

They uncovered a cooking hearth and bone fragments along with broken china, bits of jewelry, musket balls, fragments of a wagon and a chunk of a writing slate.

The discovery of the hearth provides what the UO's Julie Schablitsky says is the smoking gun needed to locate the camp and to settle whether starving members of the stranded group resorted to cannibalism to survive their desperate ordeal in the snowy Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-47.

"Here's where archaeology can come to the rescue and put contradictory statements and myths to rest," Schablitsky says. "If we are able to confirm that some of these bones are human, the debate over whether this is the Donner camp will be put to rest."

The team also hopes to establish what a starvation diet looks like. How were they processing what they did catch? Diaries don't say whether they were successful at hunting but Schablitsky says this new evidence indicates that they were.

And then there's the inevitable question about cannibalism.

For the answer, Guy Tasa, a human osteologist (bone specialist) at the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History, will perform the initial cataloguing and analysis of the bone. DNA testing will certify whether any are human and possibly even link them with living descendants of the Donners. If the bones have "pot polish" on them, which occurs when bone are boiled in water, this will be a sign that cannibalism did take place.

"It's like finding a treasure on the order of Custer's battlefield," says Tasa, who has participated in both digs. "The Donner Party is this infamous thing. We're going to really be able to talk in depth about the entire four-month period out here. At the least we will be able show a sequence of events that ultimately may have led to cannibalism."

The age and types of artifacts have convinced team members that they likely have located the Donner's camp, and not a mining or logging camp.

"We've uncovered the kinds of things that confirm the presence of women and children," Schablitsky says. "George Donner's wife, Tamzene, was a teacher. Finding the pieces of a writing slate brings to my mind a vignette of her trying to normalize the situation by teaching her children arithmetic and spelling around the fire."

Workers combing the site also found a broken teacup with a hand-painted design on it that looks a lot like holly and ivy, a whetstone and shards of medicine bottles.

Schablitsky and co-primary investigator Kelly Dixon, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Montana, brought a group of specialized researchers to this summer's dig, including Donner Party historian Kristin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif.; forensic anthropologist Shannon Novak, Idaho State University; and bioarchaeologist and cannibalism expert G. Richard Scott, University of Nevada, Reno.

The team members are planning a book about the science of the Donner Party, but for the next year or more, the focus will be on sorting through this new evidence. In addition, Schablitsky will begin teaching a new UO course this fall, historical archaeology.

Last summer, the Discovery Channel funded the team's excavation in the same area. Researchers unearthed burned bone, lamp glass, lead shot, bottle glass, ceramic dish fragments and a buckle. But a paper-thin layer of charcoal and a bone fragment with cut marks were not strong enough evidence to link the find directly to the Donners, so the team resolved to probe more deeply this year.

This summer's excavation was supported by grants from the Truckee Tahoe Community Foundation and the University of Montana's Office of Research. Additional support was provided by the U.S. Forest Service; Jones and Stokes, Inc.; Institute for Canine Forensics; Far Western Anthropological Research Group; Past Forward, Inc.; URS Consultants; Bureau of Land Management; and Summit Envirosolutions. Professional archaeologists from throughout the region volunteered their services to assist in the excavations.

Future work will include a spatial analysis to reconstruct the layout of the camp.

Additional public information contacts:
Rita Munzenrider, University of Montana, 406-243-4824, rita.munzenrider@mso.umt.edu.
Ann Westling, Tahoe National Forest, 530-478-6205, awestling@fs.fed.us.

Links:
UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History: http://natural-history.uoregon.edu/
Julie Schablitsky's home page: http://home.teleport.com/~julschab/Donner.html
Kelly Dixon's home page: http://www.anthro.umt.edu/faculty/dixon.htm
Kristin Johnson's history of the Donner Party: http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/

Scientists optimistic Sierra artifacts signal Donner Party camp

by SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press Writer - Thursday, July 15, 2004

(07-14) 16:45 PDT TRUCKEE, Calif. (AP) --

Archaeologists have unearthed a cooking hearth at a site in the Sierra where they believe the Donner Party gathered for meager meals in the months before starvation led to the country's most famous tale of cannibalism.

Government and university researchers said Wednesday that bone fragments they located appear to be large enough to allow for DNA testing to determine if they are human. They also found lead shot, musket balls, jewelry beads and wagon parts.

In addition, dogs trained to find graves in criminal investigations are repeatedly signaling the presence of human remains at the site in the Tahoe National Forest just north of Truckee about 35 miles southwest of Reno.

"There's many, many people ... who sincerely believe that this is the site based on the artifacts, the types of artifacts and what we call the archaeological assemblage that is here," Forest Service spokeswoman Carrie Smith said.
Before the latest discoveries, researchers had worried about not finding a hearth that they thought would be present at an authentic Donner Party site.

"We are very excited to find what we believe is ground zero for this location," said Julie Schablitsky, a co-leader of the dig from the University of Oregon State's Museum of Anthropology.

"The big discovery is a definitive hearth. We also found large piece of charcoal and pieces of bone 1-11/2 inches long."
Some of the bones clearly are not human -- probably deer, she said. But others could prove to be through nuclear DNA testing.

Adela Morris of the California-based Institute for Canine Forensics said search dogs had been trained to locate where a human body decomposed even if the remains are gone. They have been able to locate soil samples from grave sites 2,000 to 3,000 years old, she said.

"The dogs agree this could be the location of the camp," Morris said. "The dogs are not interested in any of the other sites."

The dig is taking place at a picnic area at Alder Creek Camp, where it's believed the George and Jacob Donner families were trapped during the fateful winter of 1846-47. A Discovery Channel team found the site last summer by using ground-penetrating radar.

This summer's dig found the hearth buried about a foot deep in a meadow covered with foot-high wildflowers and surrounded by 100-foot-tall ponderosa pines -- much as it looked a century and a half ago when the party found a tract not yet covered by snow.

Although the Donner Party members are famous because starvation reduced them to eating their dead companions, archaeologists and Donner family descendants said the project is focused on more than cannibalism.

"Cannibalism is part of their story, but it's not the most important part," Lochie Paige, a Sacramento nurse who is a great-great granddaughter of George Donner told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

"To me, the real story is how they lived day-to-day, starving in the deep snow, and how terrible that must have been for them," she told the newspaper.

The Donner Party families traveled west in the spring and summer of 1846 to claim free land in California. The party took an unproven "shortcut," and was delayed on the trail in Utah and Nevada. The 81 men, women and children reached the Sierra in late October and were trapped in the snow at two camps, one at Donner Lake and the lower camp at Alder Creek.

About half the pioneers died and some survivors ate the flesh of their dead companions to stay alive. The last survivor, Lewis Keseberg, was brought off the mountain in April 1847.

Although contemporary accounts agree cannibalism occurred, archaeologists have found no evidence to prove it, such as human bones with butcher marks.

Cannibalism is a sensitive subject for Donner descendants.

"My grandmother wouldn't speak of it at all," Paige said. "I remember stories about people passing Leanna Donner's house and saying 'that's where the cannibal lady lived.' There's a stigma to it all, but attitudes have changed and the families are proud of their role in history."

The Donner Party members ate their remaining cattle and their dogs, tried to hunt and fish, and for months boiled leather and ate the resulting glue before they resorted to cannibalism.

"The general public understands the reasons for cannibalism now," Paige said. "They realize the pioneers had no choice. What would you do in that situation if you were starving and had kids to feed?"