The Wild West of Yester-Year
Virginia Reed
By Rachel Kovaciny
Twelve-year-old Virginia Reed loved to ride her pony beside
her stepfather, James Reed, at the head of the long line of
twenty-three wagons on the way to California. She was proud
of her stepfather, one of the group’s two leaders. The other
leader? A man by the name of George Donner. Although
originally called the Donner-Reed Party, we remember that
group of pioneers better today as simply the Donner Party.
At first, the trip must have seemed like a grand adventure
for Virginia. Heading west with her mother, stepfather,
grandmother, and three younger step-siblings, she was eager
to start their new lives in the fabled land of California.
The Reed family joined up with other families to make their
journey, trusting to the safety of numbers for the trip
across a scantily mapped continent filled with unknown
numbers of American Indians, some of whom were bound to be
unfriendly. Eighty-seven men, women, and children set out
from Illinois in April 1846, all dreaming of a happy new
life at the end of the trail.
The Reeds set off on the journey in grand style—no simple
farm wagon with a canvas cover for them! James Reed was a
successful entrepreneur who managed a sawmill, a factory,
and a store. He purchased a special two-level wagon for this
trip that included such conveniences as a built-in stove for
cooking. Their elegant wagon boasted comfortable seats,
bedrooms with actual beds, and even a large mirror. The
Reeds hired two servants to help drive their other two
wagons filled with supplies of every kind, from food to
bandages to a sizable collection of books.
Virginia’s grandmother, Sarah Keyes, was in her seventies
and bedridden. She refused to be left behind by her only
daughter, Margret Reed, so the family brought her along and
did their best to keep her comfortable in their wagon.
Grandmother Keyes died of tuberculosis while the wagon train
was passing through what is now Kansas. Given what was in
store for the rest of the group, they must have later seen
her peaceful death as a blessing in disguise.
James Reed and George Donner made a disastrous decision when
choosing what route to take to cross the mountains and reach
California. Rather than follow the usual California Trail,
which branched off from the Oregon Trail and meandered along
rivers and valleys, Reed and Donner chose the “Hastings
Cutoff.” This “shortcut” promised to get them through the
mountains before winter set in. Even though a friend had
warned James Reed against taking that route, Reed and Donner
led their party along the cutoff, anyway.
On their map, the Hastings Cutoff looked shorter and more
direct, but it was over a hundred miles longer than the
usual route. Unlike the California Trail, which had ample
water and grass for the oxen pulling their wagons, the
Hastings Cutoff took them through the Great Salt Lake
Desert. The group lost many oxen there and had to abandon
several wagons.
They reached the main California Trail in September. The
Donner-Reed party was running out of time, even as they
tried to find a speedy way through the mountains before
winter could strike. It wasn’t long before the group got
trapped in the Sierra Nevada, snowed in beside a frozen
lake.
To make things even worse for Virginia’s family, James Reed
got banished from the group after an altercation with
another member of the wagon train, John Snyder. Following
the fight, Snyder’s death led to James being charged with
murder and expelled from camp. He made his way alone to a
place called Sutter’s Fort, where he gathered supplies and
helpers, and then made two trips through the snowy mountains
to rescue his family and the other survivors.
Meanwhile, Virginia, her step-siblings, and her mother
slowly starved, as did everyone else in the little camp they
built near Donner Lake. Although the Reed family survived,
many others did not. The trapped pioneers ate every team of
oxen, horse, and dog they had brought with them. Most of the
party eventually resorted to cannibalism to stay alive,
consuming the remains of their companions, who had died of
hunger. Only forty-eight of the original eighty-seven
pioneers survived.
Later in life, Virginia Reed wrote a short memoir about her
experience travelling west with the ill-fated Donner-Reed
Party. She stated that her family and a few others did not
partake in the cannibalism, instead subsisting on soup made
from tree bark and the leather from shoes and harnesses.
As an adult, Virginia became a prizewinning equestrian,
celebrated for her expert horsemanship. She married
entrepreneur John Murphy in California, and the couple
settled in San Jose and had nine children. Virginia assisted
her husband in his fire insurance business, then took over
the business when he died. That made her the first woman on
the West Coast of the United States to run an insurance
business. They named Virginia Street in San Jose after her.
Although the Donner Party has become synonymous with
tragedy, its surviving members should also be remembered for
their eventual triumph over one of the grimmest situations
ever faced by American pioneers. ♦