The very afternoon that the third relief party reached the cabins, Simon Murphy discovered a woman wandering about in the snow as if lost. It proved to be Mrs. Tamsen Donner. She had wearily traveled over the deep snows from Alder Creek, as narrated in a previous chapter, to see her children, and, if necessary, to protect their lives. Oh! the joy and the pain of the meeting of those little ones and their mother. As they wound their arms about her neck, kissed her lips, laughed in her eyes, and twined their fingers in her hair, what a struggle must have been taking place in her soul. As the pleading, upturned faces of her babies begged her not to leave them, her very heart-strings must have been rent with agony. Well may the voice quiver or the hand tremble that attempts to portray the anguish of this mother during that farewell interview. From the very first moment, her resolution to return to her husband remained unshaken. The members of the relief party entreated her to go with her, children and save her own life. They urged that there could only be a few hours of life left in George Donner. This was so true that she once ventured the request that they remain until she could return to Alder Creek, and see if he were yet alive. The gathering storm-clouds, which had hovered over the summit for days, compelled them to refuse this request. An hour's delay might be fatal to all.
George Donner knew that he was dying, and had frequently urged his wife to leave him, cross the mountains, and take care of her children. As she held her darlings in her arms, it required no prophetic vision to disclose pictures of sadness, of lonely childhood, of longing girlhood, of pillows wet with tears, if these three little waifs were left to wander friendless in California. She never expressed a belief that she would see that land of promise beyond the Sierra. Often had her calm, earnest voice told them of the future which awaited them, and so far as possible had she prepared them to meet that future without the counsel or sympathy of father or mother.
The night-shadows, creeping through the shivering pines, warned her of the long, dreary way over which her tired feet must pass ere she reached her dying husband's side. She is said to have appeared strangely composed. The struggle was silent. The poor, bleeding heart brought not a single moan to the lips. It was a choice between life, hope, and her clinging babes, or a lonely vigil by a dying husband, and an unknown, shroudless death in the wintry mountains. Her husband was sixty-three; he was well stricken in years, and his life was fast ebbing away. If she returned through the frosty night-winds, over the crisp, freezing snow, she would travel fourteen miles that day. The strong, healthy men composing the relief parties frequently could travel but five or six miles in a day. If she made the journey, and found her husband was dead, she could have no hope of returning on the morrow. She had suffered too long from hunger and privation to hope to be able to return and overtake the relief party. It was certain life or certain death. On the side of the former was maternal love; on the side of the latter, wifely devotion. The whole wide range of history can not produce a parallel example of adherence to duty, and to the dictates of conjugal fidelity. With quick, convulsive pressure of her little ones to her heart; with a hasty, soul-throbbing kiss upon the lips of each; with a prayer that was stifled with a sob of agony, Tamsen Donner hurried away to her husband. Through the gathering darkness, past the shadowy sentinels of the forest, they watched with tearful eyes her retreating form. As if she dared not trust another sight of the little faces—as if to escape the pitiful wail of her darlings—she ran straight forward until out of sight and hearing. She never once looked back.
There are mental struggles which so absorb the being and soul that physical terrors or tortures are unnoticed. Tamsen Donner's mind was passing through such an ordeal. The fires of Moloch, the dreadful suttee, were sacrifices which long religious education sanctioned, and in which the devotees perished amidst the plaudits of admiring multitudes. This woman had chosen a death of solitude, of hunger, of bitter cold, of pain-racked exhaustion, and was actuated by only the pure principles of wifely love. Already the death-damp was gathering on George Donner's brow. At the utmost, she could hope to do no more than smooth the pillow of the dying, tenderly clasp the fast-chilling hand, press farewell kisses upon the whitening lips, and finally close the dear, tired eyes. For this, only this, she was yielding life, the world, and her darling babes. Fitted by culture and refinement to be an ornament to society, qualified by education to rear her daughters to lives of honor and usefulness, how it must have wrung her heart to allow her little ones to go unprotected into a wilderness of strangers. But she could not leave her husband to die alone. Rather solitude, better death, than desert the father of her children. O, Land of the Sunset! let the memory of this wife's devotion be ever enshrined in the hearts of your faithful daughters! In tablets thus pure, engrave the name of Tamsen Donner.
When the June sunshine gladdened the Sacramento Valley, three little barefooted girls walked here and there among the houses and tents of Sutter's Fort. They were scantily clothed, and one carried a thin blanket. At night they said their prayers, lay down in whatever tent they happened to be, and, folding the blanket about them, fell asleep in each other's arms. When they were hungry, they asked food of whomsoever they met. If any one inquired who they were, they answered as their mother had taught them: "We are the children of Mr. and Mrs. George Donner." But they added something they had learned since. It was, "And our parents are dead."
Chapter XIX.
False Ideas about the Donner Party
Accused of Six Murders
Interviews with Lewis Keseberg
His Statement
An Educated German
A Predestined Fate
Keseberg's Lameness
Slanderous Reports
Covered with Snow
"Loathsome, Insipid, and Disgusting"
Longings toward Suicide
Tamsen Donner's Death
Going to Get the Treasure
Suspended over a Hidden Stream
"Where is Donner's Money?"
Extorting a Confession.
Keseberg is one of the leading characters in the Donner Party. Usually, his part in the tragedy has been considered the entire story. Comparatively few people have understood that any except this one man ate human flesh, or was a witness of any scene of horror. He has been loathed, execrated, abhorred as a cannibal, a murderer, and a heartless fiend. In the various published sketches which have from time to time been given to the world, Lewis Keseberg has been charged with no less than six murders. His cannibalism has been denounced as arising from choice, as growing out of a depraved and perverted appetite, instead of being the result of necessity. On the fourth of April, 1879, this strange man granted an interview to the author, and in this and succeeding interviews he reluctantly made a statement which was reduced to writing. "What is the use," he would urge, "of my making a statement? People incline to believe the most horrible reports concerning a man, and they will not credit what I say in my own defense. My conscience is clear. I am an old man, and am calmly awaiting my death. God is my judge, and it long ago ceased to trouble me that people shunned and slandered me."
Keseberg is six feet in height, is well proportioned, and weighs from one hundred and seventy-five to one hundred and eighty pounds. He is active, vigorous, and of an erect, manly carriage, despite his years and his many afflictions. He has clear blue eyes, regular features, light hair and beard, a distinct, rapid mode of enunciation, a loud voice, and a somewhat excited manner of speech. In conversing he looks one squarely and steadily in the eye, and appears like an honest, intelligent German. He speaks and writes German, French, Spanish, and English, and his selection of words proves him a scholar. His face generally wears a determined, almost fierce expression, but one is impressed with the thought that this appearance is caused by his habitually standing on the defensive as against his fellow-men. Since he has never before had an opportunity of speaking in his own defense, it is perhaps fitting that his statement should be given in his own language: