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Reasons For The Failure Of The Donner Party

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What would one do if they were trapped in the mountains, barricaded in by snow with no food or water left. The Donner Party was a group of people traveling by wagon to the west. The Donner Party was a left Springfield, Illinois on a journey heading west in the spring of 1846. The Party was led by Jacob and George Donner decided to take the so called shortcut hastings passage. The poor decisions made throughout the journey westward contributed substantially to the failure of this journey westward. One of the worst decisions made was choosing poorly educated and experienced guides, George and Jacob Donner. As Peggy Saari stated in “Great Misadventures: Bad Ideas That Led to Big Disasters,” “neither brother had any mountaineering or frontier …show more content…

They did not expect for the trip to take as long as it did. Before they knew it, they were out of food and supplies. In Peggy Saari Great Misadventures: Bad Ideas That Led to Big Disasters she states, “Worn out and low on food, the group had lost its sense of unity” (95). The Donners did not pack enough food for the journey because they believed that the Hastings passage was a shortcut and would have not taken as long as it did. But in reality the “shortcut” actually took longer than the original path to the west. Before any of them even realized, they were not close to their destination they were out of food. By not packing enough supplies, they were forced to resort to cannibalism in the end. In The Donner Party: A Doomed Journey Tim McNeese stated, “Lacking food and adequate shelter, about half the group died during the winter of 1846-47… some members of the party resorted to eating the bodies of the dead in order to survive” (1). The Donners thought that the trip was much shorter than it actually was because of false advertising. If Hastings had not have told everyone that his passage was a shortcut this possibly could have been prevented. But the leaders of the group were influenced by people like James Reed, Jim Bridger, and Louis Vasquez. These men convinced them that it was a shortcut and they were

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